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I hate the nonsense and wish more people were direct like the Dutch.

In my experience pure academics and scientists are more arrogant and lack empathy rather than being Dutch and direct.



Biased as I am, I'd agree. It's unlikely for a dutch person to mislead you or be dishonest. There's no agenda. It's safe, reliable and comforting.

And should such a direct remark upset you, the other party expects directness in return, and can handle it.

As for academics and such, we reject elitism. Sure enough we accept differences in success and wealth, but we won't let it get to your head:

https://images0.persgroep.net/rcs/rl7MK73sKTwSudzEJaBS-jjwW7...

That's our PM cycling to work. You can talk to him should you come across him. There's no secret service, as in our society, he's "just another guy".

This is expressed in another local slogan: "stick your head above the corn field and we chop it off".

It's not a reference to communism, it means don't get cocky when successful, don't believe you're better than anybody else at a human level, and don't take yourself so serious.

Admittedly, times are changing and inequality is on the rise.

I'll end with saying that the "bluntness" some complain about is still a suppressed version of our actual directness. I'll illustrate by means of a recent conversation with a friend:

Me: what do you think of my new clothes? Friend: Did you dig this up from the graveyard?

I love my country :)


> It's unlikely for a dutch person to mislead you or be dishonest.

Er...didn't the Dutch government just resign due to a fraud scandal?


Well, now we're getting quite off-topic.

Obviously my remarks should be seen as a stereotype, I'm not going to vouch for 100% of dutch people. The point I was trying to make is that dutch people speak directly in general, so what they say is close to what they think. The lack of an additional agenda.

I would hope that you agree that as it comes to politicians, the above is the least likely to be true. Dutch politicians operate in a massively complex consensus culture where it's inevitable that they have quite a lot of hidden agendas.

In this case, it was a cover up. Few would care, but I can give some background as to what happened. The Netherlands has a relatively generous welfare system, which invites abuse. There have been incidents, such as immigrants claiming all kinds of benefits without even living in the country.

The response was a more firm approach in checking eligibility. Yet this new firm approach got out of hand and incorrectly flagged a group of people as fraudulent, whilst they were not, at huge individual cost. Many got into huge debts, lost their house, and so on.

Shit happens. It's an error, or plain incompetence. The true scandal is the response. Instead of admitting the error and compensating the victims, most effort went into denial and covering it up.

So, you have a point. But we're comparing apples to oranges. The typical dutch person in the streets is not the same thing as a sleazy politician.




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