When I look at the daily dose of crime and violence in the media, the uninhibited exhibitionism current at this time, how vacuous some of those who presume to lead can be, inter alia, and compare these with many of the letters to the editor in which good men and women speak out on issues in striving for a better T&T, I feel there is hope yet.From their desperate cry that the DEA should remain in T&T, to their plea for an end to this runaway homicide rate; from their calls for greater care and attention on the roads to more moderation in this season of noise; from their inquiry into State support for Soca which is slowly strangling our original calypso to death to calling for criminal prosecution against those falsifying academic qualifications, a few issues of so many, these writers write with a passion to rescue this country from its current path of infamy and degradation.
None more so of late, than Suzanne Bhagan of Chaguanas with her literary gem in the fashion of Orlando Patterson in The Children of Sisyphus, writing about the decay and the decadence, the mix of affluence and filth, tightening like a rope around the neck of My Strangled City, and Sarah Parks capturing with such incisive and graphic detail, the contradiction in the powers that be looking at every nook and cranny and not at itself in what "lies" beneath.But will these voices ever be heard or will they make a difference? This seems improbable as a prospect for wrongdoing with the accompanying indifference to the consequence of such wrongdoing, is becoming so endemic in the society that it seems to permeate its every facet recreating itself like the contaminating effect of a plague or the inexorable spread of a virulent virus.
Which is why, seemingly against all reason and good sense, that drivers break the red light or they drink and drive and speed and die, or against all humanity, robbers terrify tiny tots at a kindergarten or rapists violate granny despite her plaintive cry, or with no thought of the shamelessness of their actions, men and women lie about their qualifications or politicians, with no concern about their sacred duty to serve the people, lie and dissemble to serve themselves.
And I can go on and on and on! When youngsters who should be working hard at school can be accused of murder as in this recent incident, it is not because of any intrinsic evil, but simply because their innocent blood has been infected by the contagion of wrong-doing without consequence that has almost become the norm. If they can do it and get away, why can't we?So what antidote can our voices in these letters provide to counter this rampaging addiction? We can only hope with the media to hold these maladies up to public scrutiny, as with the Editorial in one newspaper about false qualifications, so that somewhere along the line we will see the level of our degeneracy as a people, and say "enough is enough!"
Dr Errol Benjamin,
via e-mail