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Author Topic: To serve man.  (Read 639 times)

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Offline Die_Hard

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To serve man.
« on: January 21, 2011, 10:51:30 PM »
Wrote this three days after elections, took a lot of stick for it from people who telling me now boy yuh was right, yuh was right, yuh was right.

I told Winston people too fed up of Manning to vote PNM, take a chance, let the COP go it alone.

Now look where we are.
...

Plain Talk - Phillip Edward Alexander

Thursday, May 27, 2010Reality There is a Twilight Zone episode called “To Serve Man.”

Aliens come to Earth and bestow upon humankind a swift, easy and free path to plenty. Hunger ends. Peace reigns. No one questions the aliens’ motives, except for one man who is trying to decipher a book entitled “To Serve Man,” which the aliens have given to the world’s leaders.

He too soon gives up and joins the throngs of tourists flying off to visit the aliens’ planet. He’s boarding the spacecraft when his secretary tries to stop him, hollering what it is they’ve decoded: “To Serve Man — it’s a cookbook!” - So, as you see, there is no free lunch, literally or figuratively. But there is lunch — and you may be it.

I almost got all teary eyed at the swearing in yesterday and, having abandoned my concerns and reservations about the coalescence of the mismatched and the perverse, jumped on the bandwagon myself...

Almost.

There are problems with the picture.

My major concern is that the science does not bear out the outpouring of emotion and people have a sort of political amnesia. They literally see what they want to see.

We've been here before.

The reason coalitions are doomed to fail is not because we're a cynical lot, but because the ideologies of the protagonists are so different as to run afoul of each other during the planning stage of any adventure. It's easy for everyone to get along when it's 'us' against 'them'. When it becomes 'us' against 'us' is when the plot really thickens. What will hold it together then, the flag? Patriotism? National Pride?
 
Trinidad's cup does not really run over with these things, it's not like we're Jamaica or Barbados, Islands where the people retain their identity even when in exile in foreign lands; but I digress.

Those who would justify this experiment (adventure) have compared Trinidad's coalition with what is obtaining now in Great Britain, and even that is at some point bound to fail because if it does not, it will expose the lie that politics has an 'either or' option. Were it not so, why have a Parliament?

What would be the point of Opposition if we could all just get along? Add to that the fact that Trinidad is made up of fundamentals that cannot be changed by wishing, and which cannot be erased by the best of intentions and you will not be surprised when the thing collapses.

I wrote a note entitled 'Where Do We As A People Go From Here', which attempted to outline a brief history of the differing elements (tribes) that make up our nation, and the goals and objectives of each and why they differ, and must differ fundamentally (http://plainlytalking.blogspot.com/2010/05/where-do-we-go-from-here_06.html).

In that note I asked three basic questions:

1. Is national unity a hoax?

2. What divides us?

3. Can what divides us be rewoven into something more of a national identity?

As an example of the divide - For all his best intentions, Daaga cannot undo the damage done to the Africans by slavery, nor the mad distribution of wealth of this country called the Cedula of Population (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedula_of_Population).

A truly afro-centric Government would be more interested in the redistribution of the national treasure and rightly so, because the wrongs done to a people that have kept them socially dependent can only be undone by collective responsibility, collective atonement, and a national attempt to put the wrongs right.

To any Afro-Trini worth his history reading the above, the point is at least valid and worthy of discussion.
To the heirs of the white planters who were given the divided acreage based on the total amount of African slaves they owned, well, let's just say their view would be different. To the people who think history is just that, history; who want to pretend that we aren't where we are because of historical wrongs want to see black people as white people with a groovy tan.

Am I picking a side. No, not yet. I am simply saying that there are very deep divisions that need to be addressed and joining of hands to walk up the magic mountain is not going to solve them.

The above was used as a basic example, and divisions obtain for all the races.

The point I am making is, can you make Beetham Gardens into Goodwood Gardens by a joining of hands?

Is crime the result of wayward black youth who need to be aggressively policed, tried and jailed? Or is crime the result of a failed social system that ignored the plight of the weak and downtrodden even as the wealthy raped the treasury and made off with the national treasure? Can black people be put in their place? Should they? Where exactly is that, the bottom of the social ladder? Perpetual servitude?

I am going to judge this new Government not on pollyanna feelings of butterflies and rainbows, but on the yardstick of its promises as laid out in its manifesto.

I will also judge it on what it failed to say.

The concept RISE, that was hijacked and used as a gimmicky party slogan was much, much more than that. It was intended to be a part of a national program of understanding, atonement and restoration. The people of this country are rubbing abrasively against each other because gimmicks are not working.

We need time honored truths like respect and 'right of place' to be established for ALL people regardless of race, tribe or religion. We need to forget the 'Douglarisation' and 'Chutneying' of the nation and focus instead on the core issues that affect the differing groups and, in respecting and repairing wrongs on a historical and national level, pass on responsibility for things like law and order and national pride and respect to the true leaders of these communities.

The concept of rise was to empower the different communities, respect their individual cultures and get them to work, because when the people feel a sense of belonging, their natural response is to defend and build.
The fist lesson in psychology is the absence of hope brings madness.


Have we learned that from our national experience as yet? Or are we going to distract the natives with gimmicks and hoodwink them so we can enrich ourselves. Are we again going to give the natives platitudes as trinkets instead of real leadership aimed at a cohesive plan of National reconstruction?

Time alone will tell.

The first 120 days were enunciated by this new Government as the timeframe for major programs to be enacted that would form the bedrock of social change that would free our people from the low expectations we REALLY have of those who lead us.

I am going to try to reserve judgement for 120 days (I said try).

I remain a political activist. Political Activists don't get to dress up and clink glasses to herald the changing of the guard. nor do we jockey for position and patronage in any new administration.

We man the wall. We ring the bells and set off the alarm when danger arises.

Nothing has happened thus far to make me believe true change has come.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2011, 10:55:32 PM by Die_Hard »

 

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