How to dismantle a democracy: For billionaires only. It might not be a bestseller, but it would not need to be. The fact is, the power of the people is great when it works for you, but people are highly unreliable. Even Jesus Christ got a taste of it. The crowd that crowns you today crucifies you tomorrow and what if you’re not particularly into crucifixion? What if bowing out gracefully is not in your repertoire? Worse if you were forcefully ejected once already and the bad taste is still in your mouth. Well, you may say, that’s why the grave is a reliable cure for all ills, but what if we’re not talking about a man but a movement? Slavery wasn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser, but it endured 400 years.
The reason that we are trafficking in a lot of ‘what if’s’ is that the future, for the first time really in recorded human history, has become highly uncertain and extremely volatile, which says a lot, since we are including some pretty dark moments, such as the Bubonic plague, the Spanish Flu, two World wars, The Cold war, where we grew comfortable with the idea of total annihilation being just a button-press and 30 minutes away, none of which eliminated more than 10% of humanity.
The confluence of climate change, AI, Humanoid robots and the automation revolution, the dissolution of NAFTA, the economic, social and political signs indicating the end of the era of US global dominancy, the gap that now opens up in geo-politics and the instability likely to attend the process of it being filled, the demographic conflicts arising from net migration from zones of conflict and poverty to the metropoles of predator nations with assumptions of cultural superiority and privilege, nuclear proliferation, growing hostilities amongst nations in conflict and I’ll prematurely end the long list here so as to conserve space; but all this spells U-N-C-E-R-T-A-I-N-T-Y, and with more latent volatility than we have known before. Those with least tolerance for uncertainty are those most heavily invested in planned outcomes. They are most engaged in mitigating every destabilizing factor as it arises. And everyone knows, ever more unstable than weather is the mood and mind of the people. Moneyed interests have long since invested most heavily in mind control…or more palatably put, in behavioral science and its applicability to social influence.
Neutering the US population, perhaps the most boisterously dominant society on earth – setter of trends in every field – religion, politics, sexuality, economics, philosophy and education etc, was not an easy task. Much investment had to be made to rein in unwarranted direction. It’s quite useful to have a philosophy of people empowerment and a philosophy of people rule, as long as it remains a philosophy and not a practice, which would be highly intolerable. So, whether by terror or enticement, it became necessary to neutralize the will of the people and judging from the state of the Union Division, they’ve done a damn good job.
Next in line are the neighbors. If you cant control your backyard, you cant secure your household. So Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and any nation particularly inclined to ambitious assertions of sovereignty unaligned with US govt and economic interests needs to be processed, by whip or bribe or both, till conformity is achieved.
This of course has always been the narrative of one set of people. We may know who they are by now. We in the Caribbean, by virtue of size, strength and predicament, have historically been forced to be creative in non-conformity. Righteousness alone will not do, because our version of justice has always been extremely threatening to global superpowers. We have invested very heavily in please and thanks before considering other strategies.
So much things to say… but this week, we begin with Haiti. Expect to see the documentary film somewhere near you soon. The discussions were profound.
YeKengalé 