The Action-Men of politics, Trump, Johnson & Modi, are enjoying soaring popularity ratings, while others are floundering – By Damian Wilson (Russia Today) / March 30 2020
Decisive action over Covid-19 has led to soaring approval ratings for populist leaders, in sharp contrast to the fortunes of other heads of state. Could that encourage rash decisions and unnecessary risk-taking?
No-one ever thought we’d arrive at a point in time where the health of the entire population of the United Kingdom lays in the hands of a guy whose most memorable public photo was of him dangling in the air like a piñata, stuck mid-zip on a zipwire waving a pair of Union Jacks during the launch of an Olympics fun-ride.
Just as weird, elsewhere, would the well-being of 330 million Americans be determined by an outrageously orange bloke with a comb-over who spent 15 years as the star of a reality TV programme telling dimwitted wannabes “you’re fired!”
And perhaps even more bizarrely, in the world’s second most populous country, upon launching his reaction to a global pandemic, a leader who enjoys cult-like popularity would tell 1.2 billion Indian people to stand on their doorsteps and make a racket banging pots and pans, a call which quickly led to pseudo-scientific claims on social media that the vibrations combined with the right planetary configurations would destroy a killer virus. Genius idea!
While some of these scenarios have an almost dreamlike quality to them, the reality is that these leaders are winning growing support with every move they make. I mean, who woulda thunk it?
There is absolutely nothing like a crisis to bring out the best in a populist leader.
They were all – Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Narendra Modi – elected as men of action.
Continue to article: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/484514-trump-johnson-modi-coronavirus/
