Trump trumps the pack of GOP candidates: Why?

Why is Donald Trump incredibly popular as a presidential candidate, other than his status as a TV celebrity? One answer: He doesn’t use politicianspeak or CEO-speak (which is ironic because he is a CEO). According to netlingo.com, CEO-speaks is defined as: “. . . the language of corporate leadership. ‘CEO-speak’ explores the metaphors and persuasive strategies used by leaders of the corporate world, for example ‘The current downturn reached sufficient strength this quarter that we could not power up against it,’ and ‘We are an issues-focused firm with high-end engagements across the board and we want to be the market leader in the industries we serve.’” Huh?

When a CEO says “The current downturn reached sufficient strength this quarter that we could not power up against it,” he or she is really saying “The economy got worse and we lost money this quarter because we did not increase sales sufficiently and cut enough costs.”

Career politicians use a similar language to make themselves sound more sophisticated and often to deceive. It’s called politicianspeak or politicianese. Urban dictionary describes it this way: “The language used by politicians for the express purpose of misleading and deceiving the voters while they figure out their next lie. It is a distinct dialect of Newspeak that has become embedded into nearly every real world language to scramble the minds of the electorate, to get them spouting doubleplusgood duckspeak; and most of all, to keep them from thinking for themselves. It is a combination of ‘politician’ and ‘speak’ put together in true Orwellian 1984 fashion.”

Regular folks know there is a high likelihood of being flimflammed when a politician uses politicianese to communicate with we the people about the very real problems we face in the trenches of life. So far, Donald Trump, whatever you think of him as a businessman or a person, has spoken directly to the people in clear simple language that everyone can understand. While I do not think Donald Trump is a particularly religious person, he has hit on a spiritual principle which I will describe below.

It might be that Trump is exceptionally shrewd and his “plain language” is itself a ruse. In other words, he may be endearing himself to the electorate via plebian vernacular to assume office and support policies in alignment with his personal aspirations (if you’ll pardon my use of politicianese). In other words, he could be lying for selfish reasons. But let’s assume Trump is sincere. If so, his use of language is more in alignment with the Biblical principle of integrity found in Matthew 5:37 and James 5:12 where Christians are told to let our yes be yes and no be no. In other words, God wants us to have tremendous personal integrity so that we do not need to say any more than yes or no in order for people to trust us. The context in these two Scriptures refers to the ancient practice whereby people made creative or elaborate oaths in order to get other people to believe what they were saying, such as in the context of a business transaction. It’s like when we were children and we said “Cross my heart and hope to die.” God takes our promises seriously. As for politicians, if they have integrity (and that’s a big “IF”), there is no need to dress up their speech with elaborate politicianese.

The unexpected rise of Trump in the polls over his run for president demonstrates how desperate people are for a politician who speaks in plain language regarding issues that are very real and personal to regular folks, even if Trump sounds braggadocios and uncouth at times. People are so desperate for plain speech that they are even willing to overlook some of the foibles coming from Trump’s mouth, and they admire the fact that Trump does not apologize when he gets blowback for his tone and the direct things he says. Either that or voters are more obtuse than I thought. Trump’s rise in the polls is an indictment of politicians in general. I just hope our lust for plain language, combined with our infatuation with celebrity, does not blind us and cause us to elect someone who will do more harm to Americans.