Breaking the Chains...

In politics it is the business of words to turn ideas into power. Details and plans are used in so far as they facilitate this process, but concepts such as truth and lies have no meaning when the end objective is power for power sake. Campaigning then, can be considered as just a delivery tool, a means to accomplish this process, highly advanced trickery at its best. So what of the people from whom all power ostensibly flows? In our need to have state serve us, we the people have abdicated our responsibility to the management of our resources and have selfishly settled for corrupt enrichment over sensible holistic policies that guides the collective forward, further emboldening those whose view of government and government position as nothing more than a means to a personal end. Journalism is hobbled by easily tamed publishers beholding to commercial interests that are themselves further beholding to other social special interests, muddying the responsibility of the fourth estate and compromising journalistic integrity for access, advertising and sometimes outright graft. So what is the real journalist to do? Those to whom the work is itself a mission and a calling? Some either learn to suborn their principles and find a benefactor, others find it easier to find another field of work. Sean Penn's character at the end of the highly charged political drama 'Fair Game' said - “The responsibility of a country is not in the hands of a privileged few. We are strong, and we are free from tyranny as long as each one of us remembers his or her duty as a citizen. Whether it’s to report a pothole at the top of your street or lies in a State of the Union address, speak out! Ask those questions. Demand that truth. Democracy is not a free ride, man. I’m here to tell you. But, this is where we live. And if we do our job, this is where our children will live.”

How do we translate that to an increasingly jaded and drunken electorate, to whom the responsibility of a country is to 'take care of the people?' What obtains now is a ludicrous parody of a real nation, of racist divides and religious agendas competing for space among the openly corrupt and those in the drug enterprise, to whom Trinidad and Tobago is simply a conduit to the richer northern countries where there wares are consumed in ernest, and a place to easily transform narco-dollars into real estate and bank instruments of deposit. How does one by raw effort alone, superimpose over that the words of our collective mission as contained in our national anthem, where every creed and race could find an equal place? An equal place in what exactly? Our culture, long heralded as a golden egg and among the best in the world has been hijacked by alcohol companies and stripped down to the bare necessities of vice and gluttony, where the people parade like zombies thrusting their genitalia at each other hoping for a bite. Our education system costs in excess of four billion a year to churn out a never ending stream of fast food cashiers and security guard recruits. Even our agriculture and food production has been moved from feeding a nation to rewarding hacks and friends to the detriment of the genuine farmer.

No, the work that has to be done to save this nation from the looming social collapse has to begin with a redevelopment of the people themselves, but who is going to bell that cat? Who is going to tell the public that URP, CEPEP and all the other versions of government sponsored state hand outs are in fact tools that enslave them and their children anew?

The revolution we need is a revolution of hearts and minds, of a forward thinking people understanding that strong families is the heart of the community, the building blocks of the nation and willing to undertake to do our part. To resist the flash of 'ends for ends sake' but instead be a 'means' people, of values, of character. When enough of our people get that we could begin the work of building a nation.