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Idiom: Have blinders on
There is a plethora of ongoing scandals in Japan involving government members or close associates.
One primary reason for this is the political class in Japan tends to go through life while wearing blinkers.
Another is that they fail to understand the reach of technology in modern society, but we won’t go into that today.
The focus of this little post is the idiom to have blinders on or to be wearing blinkers.
Blinders or blinkers are the little sheets of leather placed at the sides of horses’ eyes so they can only see straight ahead.
Their purpose is to prevent them from being distracted by things, not in front of them.
The horses have, for all intents and purposes, tunnel vision.
People can only see things one way when they wear blinkers or blinders.
They have become narrow-minded and can’t or refuse to see other opinions or possibilities.
Part of the issue for Japanese politicians is age-related.
They have failed to stay in touch with the thoughts and ideas of general Japanese society.
The blinders they have on always cause them to be caught off guard when they are front page news for doing something in 2022 that forty years ago was completely acceptable and perhaps even expected.
Whether it’s misogynistic comments, government kickbacks, ‘consulting fees’ or pork-barrel politics, politicians constantly try to walk back what they have said or deny saying it.
They live in an ancient world where technology is not commonly used, but they are trying to govern a society intimately connected through the Internet.
Their lack of technological savviness makes them go through life with blinkers on when their constituents know everything.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 15th-grade education (age 60 – 70).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 59.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.