Tuesday, January 16, 2018

10 Thoughts on the President and the 'S---hole Countries'
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Posted: Jan 16, 2018


10 Thoughts on the President and the 'S---hole Countries'

Here are 10 thoughts on the president's alleged use of the word "s---hole" in describing Haiti, a Central American country and African countries:



1. There are few filters between President Donald Trump's mind and mouth. That is his
appeal and his weakness. It is very common that a person's strengths are also weaknesses. I wish Trump's tweets and comments were as forthright -- as un-P.C. -- as they are now but stated in a sophisticated way. I also wish that cheesecake were not fattening. But just as cheesecake comes with sugar, Donald Trump comes with unsophisticated rhetoric. People are packages, not a la carte menus
.


2. As a rule, a president of the United States should not label countries, let alone continents, "s---holes." I don't know what word the president actually used, but had he used the word "dysfunctional" instead of "s---hole," that actually might have been a service to the people of many of these countries. I have been to 20 African countries. Corruption is Africa's greatest single problem. That's why those who truly care about Africans, many of whom are terrific people, need to honestly describe the moral state of many or most African countries. What benefit is it to honest, hardworking Africans or Latin Americans or others to deny the endemic corruption of these societies?

As Guatemalan columnist Claudia Nunez wrote on Trump in the Guatemalan newspaper Siglio 21: "The epithets he uses to describe certain groups are unfortunate and exemplify the decadence of the current political scene. But he has also said things that are true, for example, that it is we citizens of migration countries who have accommodated ourselves to the need to export people, as we have calmly allowed excessive levels of corruption to grow for decades."



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