drag one’s name through the mud
ドナルド・トランプ氏について筆者の意見が書かれています。
Donald Trump must think we’re all fools
Abraham Lincoln is said to have offered one of the sharpest, smartest defenses of the intelligence of a democratic people I’ve ever seen: “You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.” In short, we’re smarter together.
Trump’s advocacy for the release of Obama’s birth certificate is worth probing. The idiotic conspiracy theory was not hard to see through, yet a stunning number of Americans went along with it. And now, despite having pushed to excess for transparency in that case, Trump expects us not to notice, or to disregard, his own refusal to meet a basic norm of transparency. He is dragging our intelligence through the mud.
今回取り上げる表現は，“drag one’s O through the mud”です。これは，『ジーニアス英和辞典』（大修館書店）に，“drag O’s name through the mud”で「の名を汚す」と記載されていました。さらに，Merriam-Websterには，“drag through the mud/mire”で“to unfairly damage or ruin”とありました。“mud”の代わりに“mire”を用いることができるようです。ここでは，「トランプ氏は，アメリカの知性を汚した」と述べられています。
この表現に関連して，“mud”を用いた表現を調べました。『ジーニアス英和辞典』（大修館書店）には，“fling [hurl, sling, throw] mud at O”で「〈人〉をけなす」や“O’s name is mud.”で「〈人の〉評判が地に落ちた，〈人が〉不利な立場にある」などがありました。(Nao)
