YeKengalé

The devil is a dog. But that gives dogs a bad name. A dog is a man’s best friend, but not any dog. Dogs can be treacherous. Especially stray dogs of no abiding city or household. Street mongrels. We’ve all noticed how they stealthily walk around you and circle behind your back with their heads trained on your face. When your eyes disappear from their view, then they attack. Treacherous creatures. Scum of the earth. Worthy of every stone thrown at them. Perfect nuisance.

But not every dog. There is the dog who has become a citizen. The civilized dog. Faithful to the end. A terror to the unrecognized stranger, who if not chained, will look them straight in the eye and head for the jugular. Unafraid. Supremely loyal. Ever vigilant. The dog is perhaps the only creature we have metaphorized diametrically as the epitome of pure evil as well as pure good. Judas and Jesus. Faithfulness and treachery. Both behaviours and dispositions perfectly iconized in one specie.

This apparently is what Nature does when it cant seem to make up its mind… or make up ours, so it tests us with ambiguities till we arrive at the point of dissimilitude.

The behavioral scientist will take more of an interest in root cause than problematic condition. What causes pathological behaviour? Why did she lie? Why does he steal? Others cant be bothered. Just shoot the thief in the head once you catch him in the back yard. Problem solved. Except when the behavior is endemic, and the outcome is genocidal. Then, if no antidote can be found, you have to copy the behaviour to cure it. And that is no solution at all.

But what does animal behaviour have to do with foreign policy? Everything; considering foreign policy decisions rely completely upon an accurate mapping of friend and foe nations and their capacities; and in the light of those, the strategies most likely to serve and protect the interests of whichever people group to which one belongs. Bad maps, bad assessments or bad strategies can be catastrophic in life, for when it comes to human beings, whether individually or in collectives, unlike dogs lacking imago deo, we are possessed with creative and destructive capacities without measure.

Nowhere and never before on earth has that concern been more focused and concentrated on one single human being – the current president of the United States of America. Narcissists achieving absolute power is certainly nothing new, but never before in the history of mankind has absolute power been so absolutely powerful, and very rarely has a narcissist been so absolutely unhinged, and never before has this been the expressed opinion of friend and foe alike.

There are those with blind faith in the integrity of the 250 year old institutions and ideas that occasioned his rise to power. They were built for this. Others recognize that what man can create, man can destroy, and he seems built for this.

What is absolutely certain … if not to everyone, to a watchful few with the alertness of remembered history to recognize that apathy seldom profits and that whatever is taken for granted generally returns the favor … is that never before has the requirement for astute foreign policy been so existential. I’m really trying to say this nicely. My heart is to represent the Holy. I really mean to be respectful of all. But proper communication demands of me superlatives: When a lion is on the loose is no time to f… around.

A friend of mine was close to retching after viewing the following clip of the President of Guyana which she might have characterized as making obeisance before the US throne. Whether people believe me or not, I am not here to defend either position. I am here to defend him and her. Both are Caribbean people. Both have equal right to exist, express, experience and do whatever each can for themselves and for the common good. Ali’s words offended her to the core of her being. I however found nothing particularly interesting there. More interesting to me was the face of the ambassador in the background, like many of the Trump administration, mercifully transparent and atypical of the seasoned diplomat.

I have come to appreciate deeply the lonesome road politicians must walk. You enter the field to serve. Nobody told you you are expected to be Jesus Christ. And political crucifixion is sometimes certain not only should you fall short, but even should you meet the expectation. And how can you protest being nailed to the cross, when you marketed yourself as savior to get the job?

We love to dissmiss the radical left as impragmatic, as hysterical, detached from reality. Again, I have put a lot of thought in how to properly say this. I’m known to have a way with words. If the ones I usually use are failing to capture the gravamen of the situation, it is beacuase we are indeed facing extreme experience. Language fails.

But it needs to be said in a way that is heard and felt, because it is gutteral. And that’s what I appreciate about hysteria. It goes deeper than the gutteral to the very womb of experience itself and captures the bloody mess that is life. It is neither decorous nor dignified. but like the agony of a new mother’s scream or the baby’s wail, both rudely ripped from comfort into necessary agony, it is most human!

I mean how the f… do you tell someone how to grieve?!!!??? The utter torment of Pain! of Loss! What do you think radicalizes people? It sure as hell is not ideology. Certain ideologies magnetize only because of their promise of a solution, whether that promise is a pipe dream or not. Beyond certain threshholds, all pain knows is itself and it will commit suicide, commit murder, commit any abomination or absolution, make any promise or petition, it will grovel, beg, steal, murder or cannibalize its own family, whatever provides hope for a solution, to be relieved of its unliveable burden, or even find some small reprieve.

This is not an easy time to be alive. Life is not always an easy choice, except for the narcissist, who was always only alive for himself anyway. Sacrifice is not relevant to his psychology. All people exist only for and at his convenience. And that is, in human terms, in psycholgical terms, the existential threat the world faces right now. And that is no exaggeration. Just plain simple fact.

And so like never before, it is a time to “Cry alound and spare not!”. When the considered heartland of free speech and Democracy has become an open bastion of naked intimidation and coerced conformity; when once proud senators now cower and cringe indicating that Southern slavemaking technologies have reemerged in the 21st century with expanded prejudice against every color, white included, save only green, then we must be bold and loud with our truth and lift up united voice as a trumpet as Isaiah declares in the 58th chapter of his book.

It’s not a time for decorum. There are people wilfully blinded by ideological blinkers who are perfectly willing not to see whole nations erased, populations wiped out, human terror unleashed at scale upon the most vulnerable, in order to catch the World Cup Finals. (That’s right, the decision is not to ‘see’ to see). When a narcissist is on the throne, you can be sure there is also a contagion. If only hysteria can innoculate one from this greater madness and assassination of humanity, then we all need a dose.

How are civilizations conquered? their sovereignty savaged? their systems sabotaged? The frightening answer is that we have as much to fear from stealth as might. Throughout history, many are those who were not overrun by armies, or decimated by bombs, but conquered by whispers – enemies without posing as friends within whispering this in the ear of one and that in the ear of another, sowing discord, creating disturbance, subverting peace and destroying trust. Once unity is broken, invading armies easily mop up the resistance.

Make no mistake, there is naked war and bloody mayhem threatening to devour the east but a more insidious war of another kind is concurrently consuming the west: the erosion of our freedoms, the desecration of our values, the pillaging of institutions and arrangements guarding our way of life. And silent witness to this universal conflagration from pole to pole is an apathetic citizenry totally distracted, desensitized and deluded about the reality facing them, willing to surrender their dignity and sell their children for an extra night at the movies and some popcorn, or in front of the tv watching sports, eating pizza.

Divide and rule works with secrets and seduction. We must either discover an antidote, or having had enough exposure to learn the rules of the game, now be determined to play it and win.