Dear Editor,

Hate is the sordid underbelly of the culture that drives the American “dream” to which far too many young Belizeans hitch their aspirational wagons.

“America First” is the professed philosophy of the president of the United States who declared that he was a “nationalist”, just falling short of including the prefix “white” to declare his true manifestations. And embracing nationalism over patriotism gives him the option to be selective in his choice of which codes of conduct he embraces.

When they slaughtered those two Black men out West, or when the gunman approached that synagogue in Pittsburgh with malice, aforethought, they were not acting out of anger, or vengeance, or even jealousy: they were expressing an inbred venom that has been at the core of American society ever since its founding, and which has just culminated in the historic slaughter of eleven innocent Jews as they knelt in worship of their God.

We Belizeans must be forever vigilant, living in a divergent multicultural, multiracial, open society as we do, that we do not fall prey to the excesses of unbridled tribalism that befall, far too many societies today. For it is far easier to hate than to embrace, to reject than to protect, and to forget that “all a we da one!!!!”

Howard A. Frankson
[email protected]