Claude Mills, Staff Reporter
A man's wisdom gives him patience. It is glory to overlook the offence Proverbs 19:11
REMEMBER THE Oral Roberts prayer thing in the 1980s when he tried to sell us on the idea that 'something good is going to happen to you'? It's a lie. This is real life, something bad is going to happen to you, and if it's not bad, it's going to be bloody awful and pretty soon.
Over the last few weeks, I have been gritting my teeth against the grind of daily life. You see, I am kind of running out of hope.
Light bills have gone up by 25 per cent. The dollar is sliding. Lay-offs are in the news again. The teachers are restless. The murder tally since the beginning of the year is racing towards the 100 mark. There is a passionate discontent in the hearts of the people. Poverty is closing its blood-grimed fist around hundreds. Slowly, people are giving up, some go quietly, others commit suicide while still others go 'mad' in the most literal way.
Are you scared yet?
Britain, and Bermuda have installed a visa regime to restrict the movement of our citizens to their countries. Other countries are lining up to do the same. Who can blame them? We have become a country whose principal export is citizens who can shoot. That Malvo fellow is the poster child for the angry, troubled, betrayed teenager that we all pretend not to see in our own communities. How many more Malvos do you think are here?
Are you scared yet?
I grow tired of going to the island's ghettoes to do articles about yet another unemployed mother who has lost yet another son in another episode of macho street theatre. The rooms almost always smell of urine and despair, and the story is always the same. Father dead or absent. Not working. No money. Out of control son. Pregnant daughter. Nutten nah gwaan.
Jamaica, are you scared?
I know I am.
Am I the only one aware of the genial contempt with which the politicians treat us? I watched them prance, and perform as they revved up the crowds in Half-Way Tree Square from the political platform. And I smiled. The country suspended its belief, and we slipped into election mode. And what did they do as soon as elections were over? They parlayed the election euphoria into a huge pay increase. I don't know whether I should lift my hat to them, or begin to write each of their names on individual pieces of parchment paper.
Whatever happened to patriotism, and taking one for the team?
I don't know about you but I am a sizzle of overcooked nerves right about now. Jamaica is not what you might call a geyser of opportunity. There is nothing you can do for the 'great unwashed', the poverty-stricken tide of humanity in the country. The government has spurned them for too long. You can't sell these people dignity. You can't inspire them or tell them about the common good. You can only manipulate them.
Our Government, led by our fearless leader PJ Patterson, seems to have run out of ideas. It (Government) would not know governance if it jumped up and bit it in the armpit. I am not for publicly flogging politicians for making bad choices, or forever rubbing their noses in their own mistakes, but I am TIRED. The leaders talk of morals, values and attitudes, yet why exonerate a meddling, middling politician of actions that have cost this country billions of dollars?
We have already strapped ourselves down in another roller coaster ride in this giant bemusement park, where rides are four years long. This Government is a repository of failed businessmen, brown-nosers and lackeys which allows the boorish and the phenomenally untalented among them to continue to squander away our tax dollars.
The Government has betrayed us and they continue to betray us. What kind of creature takes such a thing? Takes such a trust and abuses it?
I fear that nothing good shall come of this present PNP administration, and we shall all have to continue to live our diminished little lives at the edge of the Dark. There will be a reckoning in this country. The reckoning may not be this year, or a decade from now. When today's young people 'wise up' and decide to turn on civil society, who will protect us then? The members of an increasingly ineffective and corrupt police force?
My only concern is: Who is going to offer the public a blindfold and a final cigarette?
Ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive. Eliminate the negative, as the old song goes. But I cannot.
I can hear the slow rumbling of the people's discontent. That rumble is the echo of inevitability the herald of the coming reckoning.
And the reckoning will be dark. And bloody.
Oh yes.
Dark.
Are you scared?
You can e-mail me at cmillsy@yahoo.com
