De­spite min­imis­ing my quo­ta of news and so­cial me­dia in­take, the vi­o­lent rhetoric in our head­lines and the on­go­ing dis­cours­es are deep­en­ing anx­i­eties.

The world seems al­ways to be on fire but, no­tably, for a long time, the blaze has al­most al­ways felt con­trol­lable, and it al­ways seemed that T&T was an ob­serv­er of the heat rag­ing in dis­tant places.

My un­set­tle­ment with glob­al wars and con­flicts is pos­si­bly from over­pro­cess­ing the trou­bles and tri­als con­flict brings to a pop­u­la­tion, and stems from a deep ner­vous­ness for the “house of to­mor­row- those af­ter us–and what they will in­her­it.

This is a dif­fer­ent world from the one in which I grew up and I em­brace that ful­ly. Khalil Gibran’s po­em On Chil­dren is one ref­er­ence for un­der­stand­ing my place. Gibran be­gins say­ing, “Your chil­dren are not your chil­dren” and de­fines a per­spec­tive on how to live in this world.

Gibran says, “They (chil­dren) have their own thoughts ... For their souls dwell in the house of to­mor­row, which you can­not vis­it, not even in your dreams.”

Some­times, es­pe­cial­ly now, I won­der if that house stands a chance. Giv­en the so­cial malaise of this time, I shud­der to think what would hap­pen if there were no suc­cess­ful in­ter­ven­tions to take down the vi­o­lent tem­per­a­ture of the world. And now, I’m in T&T will­ing a to­mor­row, as I wit­ness the un­want­ed po­si­tion in which we cur­rent­ly find our­selves.

Mon­day’s ear­ly morn­ing sal­vo in the news got me out of my slum­ber as Venezuela’s De­fence Min­is­ter Gen­er­al Vladimir Padri­no López re­port­ed­ly warned T&T and Guyana about sup­port­ing US mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion against Venezuela.

To me, it sound­ed like a threat rather than a “warn­ing”, as the min­is­ter re­port­ed­ly said these two coun­tries “will re­ceive a re­sponse” and that “they would face a force­ful re­sponse in le­git­i­mate de­fence” if they fa­cil­i­tat­ed the US in an at­tack against Venezuela.

By ear­ly af­ter­noon, the oth­er news head­line was that of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro ac­cus­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of mak­ing state­ments “al­most like a de­c­la­ra­tion of war” against his coun­try. He even aligned her words to that of US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, while high­light­ing T&T and Venezuela’s long-stand­ing neigh­bour­ing re­la­tions and co­op­er­a­tion.

The fires be­ing stoked here are dis­com­fort­ing. From pol­i­tics to per­son­al re­la­tions, it has be­come dif­fi­cult to see the path to peace and peace­ful res­o­lu­tion in my liv­ing space. No sec­tor stands out to me as one bent on ame­lio­ra­tion of some of the neg­a­tive, vi­o­lent, and bor­der­line vi­o­lent rhetoric and ac­tions that have gripped this coun­try’s soul for far too long.

None has been more un­set­tling than the lan­guage of our lead­ers, specif­i­cal­ly the PM’s “Kill them all vi­o­lent­ly” as T&T’s po­si­tion on ad­dress­ing drug traf­fick­ers. The com­ments in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber sought to sup­port and up­hold the US war­ship as­sault killing 11 peo­ple sus­pect­ed of car­ry­ing drugs aboard a Venezue­lan ves­sel.

While I too have “no sym­pa­thy for traf­fick­ers” and I am less ed­u­cat­ed on these mat­ters than the PM, an at­tor­ney of law and se­nior coun­sel, I felt that such an as­sault was ques­tion­able and pos­si­bly vi­o­lat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al law or treaty. I could not help but think that even though the jus­tice sys­tems seem un­able to cur­tail the il­le­gal arms and nar­cotics trade, killing some traf­fick­ers could nev­er be the so­lu­tion to transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime. How many would we need to kill?

The wide­spread crit­i­cisms from home and abroad seemed on­ly to fu­el the vi­o­lent po­si­tion. Even cau­tion that T&T should re­con­sid­er adopt­ing US ac­tion over our decades-old his­to­ry on for­eign pol­i­cy and re­gion­al diplo­mat­ic ef­forts for peace did noth­ing to pla­cate the fren­zied re­ac­tion.

The PM, with Gov­ern­ment sup­port, seemed to re­solve that such vi­o­lence is nec­es­sary to abate crime. But this is not ex­act­ly the crime plan that many en­vis­aged in a pop­u­la­tion de­sir­ing com­fort­ing ac­tions and so­lu­tions from Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­ers ap­point­ed to ad­dress the prob­lems here.

In­stead, our pop­u­la­tion of 1.5 mil­lion, a tiny speck on a world map, is now be­sieged by rhetoric threat­en­ing the safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty, and well-be­ing of T&T, an is­land na­tion ill-equipped to fight a war of any mag­ni­tude.

As the PM read­ies to speak at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly on Sep­tem­ber 26, one can on­ly hope that peace­ful diplo­ma­cy in the re­gion would be up­per­most in her thoughts (and the minds of her ad­vi­sors) and would trump the brava­do about killings, re­tal­i­a­tion, and the like.

Hope­ful­ly, our PM will con­sid­er the col­lec­tive un­easi­ness of our pop­u­la­tion and de­cide not to add the ag­gres­sion of war­ring words and im­pend­ing war to the woes she was elect­ed to al­le­vi­ate.

Hope­ful­ly, she will con­sid­er ap­pro­pri­ate non-vi­o­lent phras­ing that can make the same point and not fur­ther prime the psy­che of a pop­u­la­tion to vi­o­lence as a re­ac­tion or so­lu­tion. There is suf­fi­cient sci­en­tif­ic re­search to teach us that there are long-term neg­a­tive con­se­quences from choos­ing vi­o­lence – ac­tion and rhetoric – to treat with so­cial prob­lems.

Hope­ful­ly, she will con­sid­er her lega­cy in the “house of to­mor­row.”