Ronald Thwaites | Disorder and order

Nobody should be shocked at MP Clifford E. Warmington’s full-throated disqualification of Mark Golding to ever be prime minister on the basis of his ethnic origin. He, a full minister, has now declared himself a bigot, in addition to his often-demonstrated loutish and rabid nature. Don’t ever forget too that if he, who the prime minister has made the superintendent of billions of taxpayers’ dollars, which he arrogantly insists are within his gift, doesn’t favour any constituency, the same taxpayers from whose pockets the money comes, they are just ‘salt’ when it comes to road repairs. And when he trumpets his feistiness, he gets cheers from the rapt crowd, yearning in their own powerlessness for a black caudillo.

When said ‘Warmy’ says he doesn’t give a rat’s ass for any critic, he gets away with, I am told, a little talking-to. Really? No apology?

So what has Michael Andrew Holness got to say about this clearly well-thought-out and deeply convicted outburst? And who could fail to see the gaggle of Labourite leaders who the television displayed to world view, listening to Warmington in awed acquiescence, if not approval?

Daryl, Ann-Marie, Karl and Matthew, and even the octoroon ‘Jah Mike’, if what Warmy says stands, you too bear the mark of the white beast, as did your avatar, the late E.P.G. Seaga. Is that OK with you? Where are your backbone?

So check the reactions. Duncan issues his usual tiptoe, ‘both sides should restrain’ kind of statement. Horace Chang, with his eyes on conference and South West’s capacity to erupt, is his usual wishy-washy, ‘a no nuttn’ self. Sadly, because he knows better, Deputy Horace habitually excuses every excrescence as “politics”and “unfortunate”– seemingly unmindful of the debasing of his own craft in the process.

Many of the others who should denounce racism and corruption ‘tek bush’.

True to his regular, illogical form, the Brahman from St Catherine says that since the PNP started “it” with “My fadda born ya”, him a go “finish it”. So that’s their standard after all? And the ‘pee-pee cluck-clucks’ of the party machinery followed suit. In the end, as with everything else, is the PNP cause it.

“Nobaddy” can talk to this guy – given his supermajority! Et tu, Andrew? It is clear that you can’t control Warmington, and that reflects more on you than him.

Hello! Anything less than denunciation and sanction of this doubled-down, unrepented bigotry by anyone, worse one given the title and responsibility of ‘Honourable Minister’, implies complicity.

I really hope that before this is published, the Most Honourable (what does that really mean?) will have acted to restore his honour and our credibility.

SAME THING ON THE ROADS

If you traverse the streets of our capital or any major town, you may agree with me that the operations of motorcyclists and taxi men constitute a template of the dominant own-account, get-ahead-at-all-costs values and behaviour of the society.

Mostly without rider training, neither helmet, insurance, nor silencer, bikers do anything they please to get ahead. Pass on the left or in-between, outspeed the police; show skill by riding with your front wheel in the air and ignore every stop light. Having few, if any, other arenas to preen self-worth and experience thrill, capsizing order on the road becomes inevitable.

It is the same ethos of normalised selfish chaos: ‘nobaddy’ cyan talk to them.

Consider the taxi men. For many, the driver’s licence was bought, the owner man’s money must mek, gas gone up, so plenty trip mus mek. Pick up and let off anywhere, drive with one hand and jump any traffic line. Got to get ahead. Police are not a problem. Just an expensive nuisance. JUTC is a joke to them, a cost to us.

I fear that the society is past a tipping point in respect of road safety and public order. The schoolers are learning more on the street than in the classrooms; more from listening to Warmy and watching Parliament than from civics lessons or devotions.

ORDER IN PHYSICAL RELATIONSHIPS

But then there was the story last week of the higgler mother at Half-Way Tree, who has worked her stall to put her two daughters through university. What a blessed lady!

No show-off fashion or fancy food or big house, just solid, sacred virtues about sacrifice for her children and the value of education. How much better it would have been if their fathers had stood up to their responsibilities. That mother’s type is to get national honours, instead of some of the ones who recommend themselves. Redemption is possible.

ORDERED FAMILY, ORDERED SOCIETY

The worst wound of slave society was the intentional destruction of African family patterns, the discouraging of marriage, and the debasement of sexual intimacy within the power context of the plantation. Tragically, many of us continue that pattern, baptise it as culture, and ‘nasty up’ lives with hedonistic self-indulgence.

A society is a community of families. The fulfilment, happiness and productivity of countless Jamaicans, especially women but also men, are squandered by the lack of supportive partners, fulfilling work, decent housing – an environment in which do the most difficult, rewarding and sacred task done by humans – to raise the children of their love.

Happiness comes from loving relationships and family, not from fashion and celebrity posing. If consenting adults want to screw around, for God’s sake, don’t have any children. Surely, the consummate cruelty is to mess up an innocent child. And how about teaching our children, by word and example, the joy and sacrifice of stable relationships.

And then the order, peace and money could follow.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.