When Misogynistic Dancehall Artistes Are Your Role-models…

It is not easy to look at the street events in our coun­try and not walk away hav­ing thrown your hands in the air say­ing, “I give up, I just give up”.
It is hard not to become dis­il­lu­sioned at the lev­el of deep-seat­ed igno­rance and unadul­ter­at­ed law­less­ness, for no rea­son oth­er than to be total imbe­ciles.
But we still have to har­bor hope that some­how, there is a silent major­i­ty that does not show up at those street events, scant­i­ly clad, if at all, bod­ies gyrat­ing to the ear-bust­ing crescen­do of what now pass­es for music, the lyrics of which helped to shape the degen­er­a­cy we are expe­ri­enc­ing today.
The insipid crass­ness should nev­er be con­strued to be a prod­uct of the ghet­to only, or to be con­fined geo­graph­i­cal­ly to the under­served areas below cross­roads.
In fact, much of the Bhutto behav­ior that crept into the broad­er nation­al dis­course, and has now become main­stream, was intro­duced by the old dirty dish tow­els that were turned into table cloths overnight.

My grand aunt who raised me (Mamma) [God rest her won­der­ful soul] always told me that if you dress up a pig and put the best clothes on that pig and put it in a church it does not make the pig a Christian it makes the church a pig­pen.
You could dress up a pig all you want and put lip­stick on it, but a pig is still a pig. Given a chance, it defaults right back to rolling around in the mud. That is why it makes no sense to give pearls to swine.
Okay, Mike real­ly?, Enough with the pig metaphors, you are a pork eater, you can­not be on cow’s back and still a cuss cow, man.
I know right, but you see the Bhutto behav­ior in the parliament,& that in and of itself gives license to hood­lums in the ghet­tos uptown and down­town to act with the sense of rabid law­less­ness we are witnessing.

The desire to be liked, the desire to be pop­u­lar, the desire to be seen as a man of the peo­ple has lit­er­al­ly shaped the way the news gets report­ed, it shapes how top­i­cal issues are dis­cussed, and it even influ­ences some of the same dishrags turned table­cloths to bring the nas­ti­ness into the high­est seats of deci­sion-mak­ing and acad­e­mia.
Gangstas who glo­ri­fy misog­y­ny, mur­der & muti­la­tion are revered, cel­e­brat­ed, and exalt­ed, made into earth­ly gods, they are now thought-shapers and influ­encers.
Faith and fam­i­ly are replaced with nihilism & a total dis­re­gard for tra­di­tion­al norms that pre­vi­ous­ly served as guardrails to keep anar­chy and chaos at bay.

The trou­ble is that we can nev­er get back to where we were. In order to get back to where we were, much less a bet­ter place than where we were, would require lead­ers with guts and moral for­ti­tude. Not just to inspire, but to make the hard deci­sions to adopt & draft the right poli­cies and make them into law.
It would require par­ents wor­thy of the title [“PARENT”], not just peo­ple capa­ble of engag­ing in ani­mal­is­tic cop­u­la­tion pro­duc­ing new life as a con­se­quence, real par­ents anchored in God, fam­i­ly & coun­try.
Where can those peo­ple be found in this Serengeti of mad­ness?
Hey, actions have con­se­quences, it is a sim­ple con­cept to under­stand.
Here’s a thought, when Jamaicans leave the coun­try and go to oth­er coun­tries there are approx­i­mate­ly three out­comes. (a) We assim­i­late, inte­grate, and adapt to our adopt­ed coun­try’s way of life, ie fol­low their laws, work, get an edu­ca­tion & thrive. (b) Bitch about how we hate our adopt­ed coun­try, but play by their damn rules and thrive. © Do as we please, break their laws.….….….…you know the rest.

Look we Jamaicans are cut from a dif­fer­ent cloth, we are a rebel­lious peo­ple who do not take kind­ly to being told what we can and can­not do.
Our peo­ple are large­ly from the Ibo, Ashanti & Cormmantie tribes. Some his­to­ry books now reveal that the enslaved peo­ple who end­ed up in Jamaica were the enslaved Africans who did not suc­cumb or adapt to being enslaved.
The his­to­ry of the so-called Maroons and the bat­tles they waged to force the British from Jamaica bears tes­ta­ment to our fear­less free & indomitable spir­its.
Nevertheless, just being rebel­lious and ungovern­able in 2020 is a pre­scrip­tion for dis­as­ter. The con­se­quences of mak­ing dance­hall artistes role mod­els, instead of ele­vat­ing our doc­tors, nurs­es, teach­ers, police offi­cers have borne bit­ter fruits and the coun­try is now reap­ing those bit­ter fruits. It is nev­er a good thing when the tail wags the dog.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.