Friday, February 14, 2025 at 5:38 PM

I think that one of the hardest things to come to grips with is the conflict within me about being a Bel-am, in trying to justify the vast divide, and straddling that split between those two worlds. Maybe not so much conflicted, but uncertain of what the end result will be of the obvious turmoil my country of birth, and my country of choice are now experiencing. What will the end game be? For those who aren’t familiar with the term Bel-am, it means Belizean American.

Belize is facing an existential crisis, as its very democracy is being challenged by the implosion of the opposition! This is not the fault of the ruling party, the PUP. The fault lies in an opposition rife with nepotism, with unqualified politicians and candidates, and without any clear agenda which the voters can support, and which could stir that emotional fervor that is necessary to propel them into contention! A leaderless, rudderless band of malcontents, who have misspent any goodwill they had engendered from the public in the past. The almost weekly changing of alliances within the UDP is mind blowing in its constancy. One would have thought that after 12 years in power they would have a hierarchy, a leader in place to lead them back to glory, and the trust of the electorate; but noooooo, they have lost touch and have become cannibalistic, repeatedly devouring and spitting out each other. A never-ending cycle of pappyshowism!

The party in power is, and after the elections will continue to be, a de facto dictatorship. And who could blame them? Unchecked power leads to dictatorship.

For the next 5 years they can do whatever they want, supported by a weak court, a police force whose leadership is also rife with nepotism and political hacks. Who chooses whom to discipline, and whom to let get away with anything, including abuses against the very citizens they are supposed to be protecting. An executive in the office of the Prime Minister who has more power than all the rest of the ministers put together. Unchecked power that was handed them by an opposition who is suffering from ED. And again, who can blame them?

In the United States, the Crimson King and his acolytes are doing everything in their power to remake America into a White Christian nation, and doing so enthusiastically while the Democrats, suffering from whiplash and disbelief, are floundering under the weight of Trump’s energy and zeal to take the country in the wrong direction! The Democrats are an embarrassment to our democracy, just as the UDP are in the Jewel. Their political correctness, their weak immigration policies, their social zeal to cater to the whims of some of the most asinine programs, their belief that politics is an honorable vocation instead of the dog-eat-dog contest that it is, have left them humiliated and left for dead! The country has moved on, leaving them in the wasteland to lick their wounds while trying to reconfigure a winning strategy.

We, who did not vote for Trump, cannot blame him for his victory! He was a better salesman than Kamala was. He wanted it more, was more desperate, and the fear of prison made him say and do the most outrageous and outlandish things; and the people said yeah, he gets us. It is not his fault that the United States will be going to hell in a hand basket. He did the unthinkable. He succeeded in upsetting the world order, and will now remake it in his image. He has to be given credit for his tenacity. Wat a ting!

And now he has a caravan of fools, his yes-men Cabinet, who will carry out whatever crazy nonsense he comes up with in that fevered mind of his, with only the courts as a guardrail against his worst impulses. Neither his Cabinet, nor the Republicans in congress, will challenge him in any of his decisions; they will willingly follow him off the cliff.

Maybe I’m just crying wolf; maybe it’s good to be shocked into common sense. To start paying attention to politics and civics, and to offer people alternatives to the political candidates whom we follow blindly, because of name recognition or political affiliation. This is what we get because of a weak opposition, and because of a distracted electorate!

We are living in a time of uncertainty. Wat a ting!

Glen