In the penultimate article I wrote I attempted to address the issue of Politics. In that post I referenced the way politics has colored our perceptions that it is almost impossible for some people to operate outside the narrow parochial confines of Jamaican politics. I was always aware that in a way it was a form of identity for some to cling to, a sort of grouping of sorts , being week minded and feeble they are unable to strike out on their own and find their own way. Instead they tether their wagons to the nastiness of Jamaican politics. In the 2008 Presidential campaign, then candidate Obama speaking to a group of donors behind closed doors, spoke to those truths when he excoriated certain mid-westerners, for what he characterized as their propensity to cling to their guns and bible.
What candidate Obama was frustrated with, was the almost kamikaze-like fanaticism with which some people hold themselves back because of their refusal to let go of some of the things they know, thus excluding themselves from the limitless possibilities of the future. As I articulated in the previous post, I too was once a part of that class, it took me awhile to recognize that what I was was a man first, then a Jamaican second. Anyone familiar with my commentary over the years understand that I do not care about Jamaica’s two political gangs. I have seen them both at their worse. Interestingly, it seem even today there are some who cannot see any issue outside the confines of JLP/NP. Over the lasts several decades thousands of our country-men and women have been slaughtered, their homes reduced to ashes, because of local politics. No sector of Jamaican life has been left free from the noxious fumes of Jamaica’s fetid rotten politics.
It was of no surprise then that even as I went to great lengths to try to show just how destructive that infatuation has been for our people, there are some who moronically accused me of having an agenda, that my writings have a political stench. I will agree with the gentleman it does have a political stench, it is the very same stench that has kept my country in poverty to the point almost every Jamaican would leave if they had a chance. It is the stench that points to the almost 1600 of my countrymen/women slaughtered annually for no good reason. It is the stench of countless rapes, assaults on our children, little children forced into prostitution. The stench of the rise of the “don“culture which has divided up our little country into political zones of exclusions and turfs, the kind only found in sub-Saharan Africa. It is the stench of witnessing the Police Force I served in, reduced to an inept poor excuse of a security-guard band of sad-sacks, which is so corrupt that people prefer to go to the don for help.
The stench which saw the dollar reduced to a worthless piece of thrash that our people would rather receive a foreign currency than our own. Yes the stench of failed leadership which stole and wasted borrowed money which has created a balance of payment situation which makes our future worse than Greece. Yet I do not expect some to understand the dire consequences this has for the future of our country, after all( “you are nammin a food rite now, arent you”)?I reminded myself that the reason the JCF has the reputation it has is because of some of the people who entered through it’s doors. Part of the tragedy is some can barely read or write yet they were allowed in, the damage they do will live for infamy.