SPEAKING THE WORDS THAT BOTH HEAL AND HURT

America thought that banning words banned sentiments.

In the last few decades we have seen the canker of "political correctness" and "right-speaking" infect the American society - and by extension the world -to the point where people police their speech with fanatical diligence. It began with banning words like nigger, chink, homo, spik, retard... Which seemed wise, didn't it?

Are you shocked to read those words typed out? Why? People have been saying them all lately, in fact screaming them out in paroxysms of hate and release from constraint.

Did banning the words ban the sentiments? Or did it drive them underground? The unvented resentments, those festering feelings were not resolved or acknowledged. That vile infection of racism, misogyny, and discrimination pulsed under the dark scab of that psychic wound. The flesh healed, and weren't we proud?
How evolved and civilized we were, how egalitarian!

We were "giving" minorities "protection", defending them from ugly words that might hurt or damage their self-esteem and social standing. Or was it our own image of ourselves we were really defending? Were we avoiding the telling mirror of unguarded words? Freudian slips, as it were...

Over the decades the scar over that wound grew tight and hot, pushed high by the pulsing pus of hate fermenting under it...And now a finger prodded and the flesh opened a vile and venomous mouth. Out spilled all those hidden and denied sentiments, and America is shocked, horrified.

The Nation founded on the principals of humanism;  equality and the pursuit of happiness as Universal rights, founders in self doubt.

It has elected an acknowledged and unapologetic racist, a man who despises women, a man who hates any one of a different race or religion, culture or ethnicity quite openly.

Everyone asks: "How did Trump get elected?"
Easy! America voted. You can shield yourselves behind the story of the complicated rigmarole of the Electorate College, or you can face the truth about Trump.

AMERICA WANTED HIM. The very same country that elected Barack Obama 8 years ago has now elected his antithesis.

Obama was a man of colour, and wasn't America proud? Only decades after the vicious unacknowledged civil war that was the Civil Rights Movement, America elected a Black man as President.

As it happened, his colour was not relevant. Obama was a man for his people, whatever colour: American-born or immigrant. A man of dignity, integrity and with a grace that raised high American prestige among the international community.

Now we see the volte-face, the ricochet: a boor, a beast, a cad in a flashy suit with a fat and pouty mouth who has lived a life of dissolute and public privilege.

So again, WHY?

I think that festering unacknowledged hate, anger, fear and resentment grew as Obama ruled.

I think every hidden racist forced by "political correctness" to swallow their words, to smile and mouth pretty platitudes raged at the idea that a Black man ran the White House, gave executive orders, made decisions for them, in their name. A "boy" ran the greatest nation on earth, sat in the chair of slave-owner Washington, and he did it well.

So now they have elected a man who openly accepts the support of the Klu Klux Klan... Need we detail Mr Trump's curriculum yet again?

He is the scream of protest of that unvented, unacknowledged hate. He is who America is, whether they will, or not.

Meet the true face of America today, masks off.

Ban the ghosts; admit the hate and prejudice and fear, lance the abscess and finally start that healing process.

Speak the words and you remove their power - forbid them and you drive them deep into the subconscious where they become the seeds of rage; the goading spike, a rallying cry for the haters, leading to unthinking violence and death.

Manuela Cardiga