Fifth column
A hero for today: Trump or Gump? E T Ranger compares and contrasts
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with it. An expatriate child growing up in a developing country, attending an elite international school with fee assistance from a major employer, may have a comfortable sense of privilege and an image of a ladder of ambition on which we start half way up. Another is the Gump model. Forrest Gump started with physical, intellectual and social disadvantages in an impoverished single-parent family, and in due course life delivered all the miraculous events which the mythology of his home community could picture. This creed of infinite ‘can do’ is a staple of lands of great and institutional inequality, where the climb from the depths is clear and the target obvious. Cinderella, Aladdin and his lamp, Dick Whittington and his cat, are all similar fantasies from past eras which Summer |
Winter
We need heroes. Who do we identify with? In those imaginary pre-industrial village times beloved of pop psychology, it was our fathers and mothers, and we aimed to be as good as they at whatever craft the family practised. Boys, we used to be told, might aspire to be blacksmiths, or farmers, or hunters, or camel-drivers – and girls to be mothers. Today, especially in the allegedly wide world served by international schools, we have myriad models available to us. One is the Trump model. Given a million dollar launchpad, and the confidence that comes with being richer than most people roundabout, one can make a fortune, and many people would accept that as their aim in life. Very few of us will follow that pattern, but we may have much in common
| 2020
