This bloody country – bah! bah, I say. Political apathy isn’t laziness, isn’t cowardice, it is, for me, a manifestation of the disgust and the contempt that I feel for these pseudo-politicians, these wheelers and dealers, this kleptocracy, this excuse for a democracy. Don’t talk to me of PNM or UNC or Team Unity. Don’t speak to me about Maha anyone, or Ralph whoever, or this bribe, or that airport, or that bank account. Let’s talk about not wanting to read the newspaper, because of all the reports of the murders, and the deaths, and the kidnappings and the robberies and oh look at that, another minister indicted.
Let’s talk about trying to make children go to school in places you wouldn’t allow your dog, about roads falling apart, about the flooding because of the shoddy infrastructure for which we “tendered,” about the lack of Parliament, the flimsy Constitution with no hope of reform. Let’s talk about the viscious inanity of electoral campaigning, based usually on “I tief less dan he!” or vote for me, I’m black or indian or pink with yellows dots too, and everyone else is The Oppressor trying to Keep Me Down.
And oh I’ve got perspective, I’m not pretending it’s the worst, but I’m tired of it. Tired Tired Tired. Of being afraid to lime because I might get raped. Of making jokes about buying new shoes for UWI so that I can run from would-be-predators. Of seeing people arrested for smoking weed when every day, every bloody day, child molesters and murderers and kidnappers don’t even get booked, because they Own half of the underpaid police.
No it’s not Columbia, it’s not Jamaica (though they’d be proud of our homophobia), it’s not Zimbabwe or Eritrea, but what it so stop us from going that way?
The line about it being the responsibility of the young people to “fix it” is bullshit, because the young people can’t won’t don’t go to school, don’t have the rights, don’t have the power, don’t care enough, why should they, when it’s easier to get rich by embracing our corporate culture, because who needs to pronounce paradigm correctly when one can refer to missiles coming from the Soviet Union
Mother of God.
