When fear rules

Just sounding an arguably badly timed alert here. Smack in the middle of difficult fete choices, disputed competition results, blue and green roses, costume preparation, and mayhem on the road.

Acknowledging therefore that it’s likely to be just as lost as purposefulness in addressing some urgent issues of the day.

But still trying this because when the dust clears, our minds need to be directed sooner rather than later toward the manner in which we have slipped up badly on the subject of addressing criminal violence.

This, of course, is not to contribute to hysteria over this in the public domain. So, yes, party, celebrate, and have fun. But consider how we operate at this time of year and the positive attributes (an absence of mutual suspicion?) that point in the general direction of solutions and, perhaps, a route out of the malaise and sense of hopelessness.

I was taught a long time ago that while authoritarianism certainly points to the behaviours of the rulers, the compliant participation of the ruled is equally important to consider.

Position this thought alongside the fear, anxiety, grief, anger, and rage that accompany outrageous, murderous violence and what follows is more likely than not a pervasive response conducive to reinforcing authoritarian instincts and actions.

It’s amazing that the real experts at this have not been clinically examining our collective condition in this manner. This is not dry, esoteric theory.

What we have been witnessing – and this is not peculiar to any political administration – is a tendency to avoid nuanced, deliberate, and careful attention to emotion-inducing realities and instead “solve” problems in the same manner in which they greet us. Violence, therefore, tends to stimulate more violence. Impunity greets impunity. And dissent, poetic or not, will not be tolerated.

They say this is perfectly understandable when people feel besieged by a challenge. If it involves threats, injury or death there is going to be fear and anger and a reliance by the affected on those in charge to end it.

There is more attention to “what” is needed than to the “how.” A few weeks ago, for instance, this space was employed to have people consider why a penalty of death is so easily integrated into a notion of punishment.

Survey the population today – even in the middle of a wine or jump – and capital punishment for acts of criminal violence will win overwhelmingly. Then ask whether people believe that the shortcomings within policing and the criminal justice system can mean the execution of someone who might well be innocent.

Well, that’s okay, it’s unlikely to happen to “people like me” -  “I do not look like the usual suspects. I do not live where they live.”

Include in the survey questionnaire the method of punishment and list the options: public lynching, dismemberment, burning at the stake. “Wait till somebody you know is raped, maimed, or killed!”

Responsible official action needs to dampen the bloodlust rather than fuel it, as in saying out loud that “stand your ground” does not mean a right to murder a housebreaker or mango thief. That the more guns there are, the more shooting there will be. That genuine ameliorative measures aimed at underlying causes are essential in any proposed solution.

We have not considered, as well, that continued use of emergency powers actually signals a sad failure (incompetence?) to administer ordinary law and the systems that uphold it. Global examples establish an addictive nature. Forget, for now, suspicious, perennial, “specific threats” to national security.

There are also countries that have reached such a persistent and longstanding pass largely on account of perceived political threats. It’s an easy segue from “threat to national security.”

In the Philippines, for example, disgraced ex-president Rodrigo Duterte (and I am aware of people here who were once proud of him) employed emergency powers to address “lawless violence” more than once.

Human rights groups estimate that as many as 30,000 people were killed over six years of his rule by the police, vigilante groups, and other civilian “supporters” of the move to bring order to crime linked to the trade in illicit drugs. Narco-terrorism?

Perish the thought that civil liberties should be asserted under such conditions. That new measures should be so framed as to protect the innocent and to minimise rather than increase violence in all its manifestations.

Such a posture requires credible, trustworthy, honest leadership that does not exploit understandable public panic. What is unfolding before our eyes are long-term consequences that will lead to community alienation, unaccountable police behaviour, and a loss of confidence in the administration of justice.

In other words, it’s possible to take one step forward and two backward on this issue.