Killings A New Normal

A very dear friend tried to con­vince me he was no alco­holic awhile back, ” Mike after mi nah dring rub­bin alco­hol, ungle if mid did a drink rub­bin aco­hol mi wudda sey mi need help.”
Two stints in prison lat­er, as a result of his drink­ing and dri­ving, he is still con­vinced that he does­n’t have a drink­ing problem.

There is a cer­tain sense of con­tent­ment, or res­ig­na­tion peo­ple feel in their cir­cum­stances, I guess it makes them accept far less than they were cre­at­ed to accept.
Whether it’s as my friend say he is no alco­holic, or Jamaican peo­ple say­ing “crime de every weh”, in response to the fright­en­ing mur­der rate it seems deni­a­bil­i­ty has now become a cop­ing mechanism.

In the United States, the all-out assault on once held soci­etal norms for the high­est exec­u­tive office is passed off as just Trump being Trump.
We have become so accus­tomed to the vul­gar­i­ty and gar­ish behav­ior that we tell our­selves that is the way it has to be, this is the new normal.
Back home the killings elic­it a glance if at all, the crime scene tape has become a spec­ta­cle, a spec­ta­cle which lasts until the corpse is removed and the blood is washed away and it’s back to busi­ness as usual.

I am always a lit­tle miffed at the idea that we can­not make a change as if we are total­ly pow­er­less. I have nev­er shared the per­cep­tion that it’s up to some­one else to do for us what we ought to be doing for ourselves.
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus and ignit­ed a movement.
There is some­thing each and every per­son can do to make a bet­ter world. If the price of a cer­tain brand of bread is too high sim­ply stop eat­ing that brand, no mat­ter how much you like the taste of that brand.

I don’t like the way the few NFL play­ers are being treat­ed for tak­ing a knee dur­ing the singing of the nation­al anthem. No one will notice but I have stopped watch­ing since Colin Kaepernick has been black­list­ed and will nev­er watch anoth­er game unless he is hired by a team.
So you say what dif­fer­ence does t make if you stop watch­ing many more peo­ple are?
Many peo­ple are watch­ing but I ain’t, that’s the dif­fer­ence. If enough of us stand up and say no what do you think the out­come will be?

The urge I have and the adren­a­line rush of watch­ing a good game are strong but they do not out­weigh my resolve to stand on prin­ci­ple and not sell out for a cou­ple hours of fun.
Former President Barack Obama was always quick to remind us, we are the change we seek. It is not up to some­one else to fix things for us.
Each Generation has a duty to the cause of jus­tice and broth­er­hood, peace and pros­per­i­ty so that when we have fin­ished our leg, the baton will be passed leav­ing the next run­ner with a good shot at this race called life.

We call ill afford to hand the baton to the next run­ner leav­ing him no chance of winning.
Winning is life, it is our exis­tence, it is the dif­fer­ence between sur­vival and extinc­tion. Don’t ever for one minute believe that we can­not be evis­cer­at­ed as if we nev­er existed.

What we should not be doing is doing our ene­my’s work for them. If the wan­ton sav­agery and the bar­bar­ic killings are not stopped by some­one or some­thing who will be left?
How about each and every one of us decides that we will not sup­port crim­i­nal behav­ior and mean it?
How about we make the deci­sion that at least in my house­hold there will be no blood money?
We may not think it’s can­ni­bal­ism when the mon­ey the mend bring home was tak­en from the per­son whose life he had just snuffed out but it is.
Today it’s that per­son, rest assured tomor­row it will be you.