by Colin Hyde
Bye again to Brother Clinton. You are gone, but your expressed thoughts live on, illuminating, and sometimes causing trouble. The thoughts I express now, well, you will not be able to deal with them here, but I expect that when I cross over you will put me right, if over there there is concern for our numerous little problems here. Confining matters to this part of the universe, you have your many acolytes to carry on. I am glad I got a chance to tell you personally that I had great respect for your views, and agreed with you on a number of things, though I thought that sometimes you were a little too aggressive for little Belize. Hey, respect and love, to your acolytes too.
Okay. Discussions on reforming our Constitution are taking place across the country at this time, and in his piece, “Educate the Belizean people and stop copying others”, which appeared in the Amandala earlier this month, Brother Clinton Canul Luna opened up on our system, offered what he thought was our best path to take, and which path we ought not to take. I needn’t say that American footsteps were the ones in particular he said we needed to avoid.
Brother Clinton said the American story is a vile lie. He said they are not a country “that believes in freedom or equality, since those who live there know that there are 50 million people, North Americans, whether they are black, whether they are Latino, whether they are white, who live in vile poverty, and for drugs to enter that country, it is because there are people inside, the same American cartels, who control it. And the same government knows it…”
It seems to me it is best to look at the total package of the Americans, the good with the bad. I read somewhere that someone from Arabia said “better a hundred years of tyranny than one day of anarchy”. We will agree that there is no anarchy in the Americas today. I think we owe some gratitude to the bully Americans for that.
Ouch, they are kicking our behinds, and that we can’t be grateful for. Well, we shouldn’t be. Hmm, we have heard these stories about men who don’t mind being handled like taffi. Personally, I think the battered guy should go to a gentleman’s bar, and turn to drink, totally, to drown his grief, to get some respite from being run over, taken for punching bag. But, ehm, we must make space for different people. Yep, some guys love to be bullied, apparently.
Ah, on this matter of the US bullying us, one reason I think there isn’t near wholesale rebellion is because in the worst of times, hope is alive to the south of the Rio Grande. When you think, realize, that the imported system only allows for one or two Lotto winners among starving masses, you have to wonder how this hope survives. But it is very easily explained.
This American dream, their world, they captured our physical hearts with glittering trinkets, and they captured our little minds with Scooby Doo, Hollywood, and Magic Johnson. What did PM Said say? He said television was worse than an army of 10,000. American soldiers from Hollywood, they dominate on the television. That’s why they can do us what they want, why we are like sheep when dehn du us ting, why we are there loving it.
Doubtless we need to keep them in check, but how? Bah, no leader in our parts who doesn’t do the bidding of the US survives in office very long, and those who get too bold end up in exile or somewhere with an inscription over their heads. Those ruthless bohgaz Americans!
Rank and file Americans appear to be dumb to what is going on in countries right around them, and the why of it, but all Americans enjoy the considerable spoils. My, it’s absolutely fascinating how black, brown, yellow and red join white in their celebration of the eminent domain. Fair is fair, those bohgaz do work hard to excel. Thank gudnis they can’t play football. When it comes to football I think dehn shit’n.
Agh, they have their heels upon our necks. All we get is crumbs. We have excruciating poverty in many places, and our young men shoot each other down in their mad scramble to get a piece of the spoils from the drug war they created, and our young girls trade their precious bodies. But, but there is no anarchy here. No, we shouldn’t give them a pass for the tyranny, for the price is a little steep. Yes, we get only crumbs. But there is no anarchy here.
My take on the Trumpists and war
It’s no news that mentally free people like themselves. Chinese have Chinese ideas of beauty, and Indians have Indian ideas about beauty. Europeans have European ideas about beauty. The only people who don’t have love of self that way are black people removed from Africa. We all know the why of that — 500 years plus of being told of being less than others. That didn’t begin to change until the entry of the great Marcus Mosiah Garvey. It is a work in progress.
It’s no news— this European belief that they have the ideal looks, and it’s not hard to understand their ignorance that they are smarter than everyone else. Liking yourself is natural. World domination, because of their military hardware which they love to use, is responsible for the false view that they are smarter.
Donald Trump and many of his followers are white supremacists. If you have any genes from Africa, or are Chinese or Indian, you are looked down on by Trump and his crowd. How that crowd handles non-white geniuses, like a Dr. Ben Carson, well, that is explained by the 500 years in their genes.
My take is that Trump and the Republicans wanted to forge an alliance with Caucasian Russia to defeat equally uppity but not white China. Biden and the Democrats, who are far less into white supremacy, want to keep both at bay. Trumpists who say their man is about peace, have to understand that while he wouldn’t engage Russia, he and his crowd would push a war with China.
What’s so hard about having Customs tell us what it is
A well-known caller to the Krem WuB said Tuesday morning that she couldn’t understand why questions weren’t put to the Customs Department about the price of goods when they leave their compound. Her call was prompted by the GoB move to limit the percentage markup on certain imported goods, the response of the business community to GoB’s initiative, and the recent closure of some popular shops that have been around a while. Explanations for shops closing are many, but in these extremely nervous times, everything causes people to worry that the sky is falling.
For generations there have been stories that the Customs Department is a real hotbed of corruption. I don’t know the truth there, but firsthand I’ve seen those lines and all those goods at the Chet and Melchor borders, and my little mind concluded that even one who forgot his eyeglasses could see that things could happen there. The hands of bank tellers must get eechi too, but it’s easy for them to blind the greed, because they have to reconcile the books every evening.
Hey, a friend of mine studied stealing at a school in the US when he lived there, so he could stop that crime. My friend is like a Houdini with locks. One time he explained to me how unscrupulous people at the ticket booths worked their wicked magic. But my little brain froze at step one or step two, because it was exploding at the, ehm, creativity. I don’t know what is going on at Customs. It would be interesting if they shared the data with the people who are paying their, ehm, official salaries.