We live in explosive times and life is increasingly a minefield, ever ready to detonate the most compulsive obsessive along with the entirely innocent and unwary. Stepping lightly, looking both ways and always before leaping are no longer guarantees of safety or survival.
There’s not much consolation for us two-foots in the Big Bang theory, which credits all our terrestrial lives to the originating explosion, although philosophically we might accept the logic that we’ll end where we began—baboom! There are no ashes without fire and while some of us might prefer the cool earth to the final flames, we’re all destined for the dust.
One person’s explosion is not another’s: tell that to Japanese women footballers, blown away by an American four-goal salvo within the first quarter of an hour of Sunday’s World Cup final. Or spare a moment of commiseration for the family and friends of 22-year-old Devon Staples, a young American, who redefined “blowing your top” when in the midst of July 4 celebrations, he attempted to launch a firework from the top of his head. Firework and head exploded simultaneously. What seems like a good idea one moment can blow up in your face the next, or simply fizzle out.
We all take risks, because risk taking (along with random chance, or pure luck) is part of survival; otherwise we’d be paralysed by paranoia, locked down in the stasis of a catatonic corner. But there’s an ocean of difference between the risk an individual might take, which will affect only the individual-whether positive or negative, and the risk taken individually, the effects of which damage others whose only connection to the risk taker is physical or emotional proximity. The same goes for the explosions which are now as much a feature of the postmod transglobal unreality we now inhabit, as social media and medieval barbarity.
What can we say of comfort to those mourning the depravity of the Charleston church shootings, or the suicide bombing in a Nigerian church last Sunday, the 100 men and boys gunned down during prayers at a mosque last week? What again can one possibly say to the parents of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped last year by the same Boko Haram, Isis support group, responsible for the latest wave of all-female suicide bombings. Reports are now emerging from escapees that quite a few of the girls have been “turned” or radicalised and are now taking part in some of the atrocities they were themselves victim of.
Here in our very own Fools’ Paradise we’re playing with fire, not realising that the old daze of grandcharge and playin’ yuhself have given way first to virtual and then to grim reality. We may be an island, but as that most metaphysical of poets Johnny Boy Donne so aptly put it, we are all part of the main and the mainstream is not a pretty sight from wherever you stand. While little boys and the hard-backed men duping them play jihad, posting Facebook videos complete with inane gangsta-talk lyrics, concocting an instant celebrity bubble of narcissism and laughable machismo tenuously linked to mainstream madness, the crippled republic staggers and crawls.
Our boys in blue can effectively gridlock the island, without a single jefe pre-warned but are unable to lock down a small part of Central because the men to boys did receive advance warning—straight from the donkey’s mouth. The difference being that the gridlock was about dollars, while the abortive raid in Central was merely a matter of national insecurity. At least we can be clear on our national priorities.
Quite apart from the irony of the Enterprise standoff (a gang toting the moniker Rasta City, embracing the gun rather than the peaceful high of ganja, facing off with “The Moslems” whose criminality exceeds their religious fervor) there are explosive aspects to this round of Ramadan violence we should be taking more seriously.
Genuine disaffection joined with criminal elements and a quasi-religious cause resulted in an attempted coup 25 years ago. Rumours and signs were disregarded, the capital razed, sheep and lambs slaughtered along with the culpable and a paper democracy badly shredded. Since then the world has digitalised and social media offers any psychopath an open platform for real life drama of the grotesque, where the aggrieved metes out instant injustice and horrific brutality—usually to the innocent —in the name of whichever demon is flavour of the day.
Since 1990 the fault lines of our complacent limers’ republic have yawned wider at earthquake pace, fuelled by more drugs, more corruption and a hedonistic myopia that refuses to contemplate several abysses. Jihadism and criminality are partners: drug and people trafficking, extortion, torture, sexual slavery are the weapons of choice along with the gun, sword and fire itself. Undoubtedly the viral “Caliphate” is recruiting in T&T and must be immensely appealing to those whose lives have no meaning beyond ghetto deprivation and ignorance.
While the pappyshow of the general election deafens and distracts, let’s hope the rumbling of impending explosions is not ignored, or we can only expect things to blow up in our faces.