Are We There Yet?

When is it okay to cross the line?
At what point is it justifiable to become what we hold in contempt, especially if WE think it's in everybody's 'best' interest?
Seriously, isn't that a lot like parents who beat their children 'for their own damn good, or husbands who beat their wives?'

The news and the headlines are tickling our interests more now, because things are heating up politically.
Not so much on the platforms mind you, (the claims and counter claims have gotten quite old now) but on the ground between party supporters who are determinedly for or against one or the other and their opposite number. Add to this the police's 'find' of arms and ammunition and tee shirts supporting a radical fringe group and we get some ingredients if not for disaster, then at least for concern.
The politics appear to be straying out of the realm of political discussion and debate and risking the possibility of conflict and conflagration

There is a real difference between tearing your opponents advertising down and replacing it with your own and say, firebombing people's homes.
There is also a difference between being victimized and attacked and in perpetrating a hoax and making it up out of whole cloth.

People have a way of seeing what they WANT to see, especially on highly charged issues like politics and religion; but now is not the time for thinking people to abandon their ability to think, the next nine days are going to require some serious level headed behavior, especially from those in high places.

The entrenched Opposition forces are making some very serious claims about provocation, threats of intimidation and harassment, and the embattled Government is itself making some very serious allegations of their own; of people faking claims, perpetrating hoaxes and outright lying for sympathy and attention.
These noises are only gaining traction because of a lack of serious issues in this campaign. One side has built its entire campaign on removing one man, so the other side has dug in on their position of his right to stay.
The first scenario, if true, is scary because of what it portends for our future as a nation. The inability to disagree without becoming disagreeable is a foundation stone of democracy, and one that should not be trifled with under any circumstances.
The second scenario is more frightening because of our willingness to 'copycat'. Opposition forces may want to take it on themselves to retaliate against perceived attacks by Government supporters, and Government supporters, upset at being lied on and made scapegoats of, may decide to make fiction into reality and say 'yuh want firebomb? take dat in yuh pweffin.'

And then what? Downstream from that everybody loses. This place too small, scars of battle will last a long time, business will not be business as usual, and the liberties we take for granted will be curtailed for a long time.

This everybody either for one side or the next has ripped a line right down the middle of of our country, through families, communities and friendships, so the spirit that held us together through tough times in the past has already been degraded for expediency.
The media houses, delighted in the ad revenue of a political campaign, are themselves fanning the flames of confrontation to deliver eyeballs at news time. In a country as divided as ours is, that in itself is highly irresponsible.

The point of this is to highlight excesses being perpetrated against people who want none of what you have to offer expecting that you would respect their right to reject your position.

The flash point, if one comes, will be when the two opposing forces achieve unstoppable force, the collision will be inevitable.

We need to take two steps back.

We need responsible people to stop fanning the flames of conflict just to make headlines. Party Leaders need to encourage their supporters to back off this politics of confrontation before it escalates, and we need supporters to be less feral and more thinking in their approach to their support, because Trinidadians have a way, once we turn a corner, of not being able to find our way back.