Speak your mind! The age-old political tradition of strategically balancing personal views with politically popular ideas has incrementally been coming to an end, with the potential for a new era of politics being ushered in by two presidential hopefuls. These two candidates have tossed aside (most) political norms and resorted to what used to be thought of as political suicide: brutal, unedited honesty.
Bernie Sanders, one of the few Independents to be elected to federal office, frequently condemns the establishment of Super PACs, in addition to criticizing both the system of governance we live in and the individuals who he feels have corrupted it further. He has no restraints on topics such as health care, wall street, and campaign finance. He even goes so far as to label himself a Democratic-Socialist, a label that would have warranted an investigation by The House Un-American Activities Committee in the McCarthy era.
Donald Trump, an outsider to the political arena, spews narrative that incites mass public support, while at the same time demonizing vast majorities of the electorate, calling for a ban on Muslims and a suggesting that he would build a wall across the Mexican border. He holds back nothing and apologizes to no one.
Both of these individuals make the occasional intellectual dodge to protect the ideology they adhere to. Despite this, both have broken the barrier and articulate the partisan subtext that dominates otherwise politically correct speech.
This new reality has provided an incomparable level of transparency into the minds of these two presidential hopefuls, whereby a five-second soundbite does not misrepresent the candidate. The popularity of these two political outsiders represents the appetite for honesty that the American public has always had, but, until now, never savored.
The once career politicians that prided themselves on a holistic presentation of ideology and pragmatism see their popularity diminish in the wake of the new Sanders/Trump rhetoric. Honesty is the new policy in American politics; but not honesty of facts, only honesty of personal opinion, where facts are flexible.
In the world of Donald Trump, jobs are things that can be taken, $100 million dollars is a small loan, and there is no such thing as a non-Muslim terrorist. In the world of Bernie Sanders, there is such thing as a free lunch.
In the case of Trump vs. Sanders, brutal unedited honesty has revealed one candidate a bigot and the other an idealist. Should these two face off in the general election as the Democratic and Republican nominees the era of political correctness will end, perceived honesty will be the measure by which our politicians are evaluated, and reason will continue to fall by the wayside.
