There is a small “roundabout” along the Saddle Road in Santa Cruz, constructed some years ago to address habitual recklessness at an intersection that grew busier as the years passed.
On Saturday, the car in
front of mine suddenly avoided the diversion and sped through the wrong side of
the encircled area and went its way. We steupsed as I correctly began negotiating
the roundabout at my typically irritating snail’s pace.
Halfway in, the left
front wheel of my car hit a pothole that threatened rim, shocks, suspension,
and passengers in one go. “That’s why!” I thought to myself. I took my licks
and drove on.
Another pothole not far
away offered the remote, sadistic prospect of a solid aim by the transgressor
in front who had by then long disappeared.
By that time, I had
already begun contemplating the difficulty of an August 31 newspaper column
given successive escapes from such responsibility through fortuitous timing over
the years.
Where existed, I had
been thinking, the perfect metaphor? On which current experience could I
negotiate a suitable turn of phrase? I had read a week of columns and social
media commentary comprising no shortage of gaslighting, trolling and manufactured
disgust.
Sure, there have also recently
been (failed) campaigns hinged on COVID denial, vaccine hesitancy and concerted
resistance to every single official intervention.
The accompanying false
narrative of lone, isolated, punitive national actions and of our own supposed “overkill.”
All now exposed as cynical partisan narratives aimed at some kind of political
advantage. So, no longer need to go there.
There is also, more
recently, the sticky, leaky, painful bandage of collective punishment on the
scrap metal industry, destructively resisted with absolutely no reference to
the obnoxious reality of hanging phone lines and disfigured lampposts everywhere
we turn.
The amateurish
concealment of preference as professional commentary also lies in wait like a
Santa Cruz pothole – know it only when you feel it or, like I usually do (yet
not on Saturday), spot it from a distance.
So, yes! The pothole at
the roundabout!
On previous (rare) occasions,
I have cited CLR and Best and Williams and (Dennis) Pantin who all shared the
view that the challenges of social, political and economic independence could
not be engaged without an understanding of a vision of society beyond mere recitation
of noble constitutional aspirations.
For, every time you see
the word “vision”, there is fast and easy but usually futile resort to the
amorphous values of the watchwords: Discipline, Production and Tolerance.
There is also easy
reference to displays of the national flag and daily declamation of the National
Pledge (once touted as effective instruments of the social engineering of
children) – all things we did at primary school in the 1960s and which made no
difference in the manner in which we conducted public and private life while
building the foundations for today’s dysfunctionalities.
All of us who witnessed
the polite, correctly spelled and enunciated embrace of inequity, bigotry and
privilege are often amazed at pronouncements about “the good old days.”
It’s among the myths to
be dispelled. In it contains a hankering for what amounts to a case of collective
Stockholm Syndrome defined by persistent, unspoken depravities we dare not find
time to expose.
This finds us, among
other things, repeatedly (and proudly) complaining about ourselves to others. “Naughty,
we’ve been naughty. Spank us, please.” Spank us, Privy Council. Whip our butts,
Embassy. Tap us on the head, United Nations. Bring out the tambran whip, OAS!
So, today - Santa Cruz
pothole and “vision” in mind – I turn not to Williams or Best or CLR or Pantin
but to Donric Williamson aka Lord Funny.
His classic calypso of
1987 – ‘How You Feel’ - was irresistible as artistic expression at a time of
political change amidst looming social and economic change. It sounded alerts
that were roundly ignored at the time.
Despite the admonitions
of ‘How You Feel’, we barreled through the wrong side of the roundabout and, by
1990, even those who had tried to stay the course had hit a tragic pothole lower
down the road, sustaining irreversible damage.
Some of us went around
and around getting nowhere as efficiently as we had arrived at the juncture.
Funny captured the
timelessness of the development challenge, not having inherited the best of
circumstances but confident that change was possible.
“You feel that we just
keep moving on, or backing back on we heel … 25 (60) years have gone, how you
feel?” There is a pothole at the roundabout waiting for we.
