This Christmas Day finds us in the darkest time ever in Trinidad and Tobago with the worst leadership we could have had at a time when we needed the best. They are certainly not the saviors they claimed to be.
They have done nothing to arrest the social decay that is producing unprecedented levels of murder and crime, domestic violence, child abuse, and student hooliganism, among other ills. The economy has sunk under their fossilized approach, temporarily saved from high energy prices by the occupation of Ukraine. This has not stopped the closing of businesses, the increase in unemployment, the shrinking of the middle class, the increase in poverty and deprivation; with not a single idea in seven years about economic revival. And citizens continue to be deceived by inadequacies in all public institutions—police, judiciary, ministries, government offices, departments and agencies—deep rot in most. The nation is crying out for liberation. This Christmas Day, Trinidad and Tobago needs a savior, but none will be born.
Society is intellectually, culturally, socially and politically impoverished. Therefore, it will not produce the revolutionary human spirit that Jesus exemplifies, as did Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, wanting a just and humane society and willing to risk life and personal freedom to achieve it. There is no civilization in Trinidad and Tobago for the birth and education of a lifesaver.
Indeed, the simple elements of civilized living that we achieved continue to diminish. But, hiding from reality, we engage in deception, our favorite illusion is “our great culture”. But what evolutionary cultural steps have we made in 60 years of independence? Have we nurtured the courage and commitment to fight and die for this country as the Ukrainians are doing for theirs against the invading Russian army? A flag and an anthem do not make a nation. That Ukrainian patriotism and love for the motherland was never nurtured here. We lack the depth of culture for it.
Instead, the pinnacle of our “great culture” is the annual degradation when tens of thousands of half-naked “summers” walk the streets, all trivialized, many committing acts close to fornication in public. And we have been promised the “mother of all carnivals” next year. Sadly, we continue to stifle the birth we need. Four years ago, I wrote about “a tyranny of shallowness here. Threatening anarchy or not, leaders care about the materialism, hedonism and superficiality that crucified Christ on Calvary.”
I am unable to contemplate today’s baby in the manger without thinking of the extraordinary human being he became. Four years ago, in “Come, Resurrection”, I said: “Christ embodies the triumph of the human spirit.” Here was a man of conviction and devotion, who sought to be spared the bitter cup, but was brave enough to submit to the cause that served him; who, in the face of overwhelming odds, including betrayal, triumphed with the full force of his inner power and overcame all, including death by crucifixion, leaving a message that has endured for over two thousand years.
Has Trinidad and Tobago, always celebrating Christmas and Easter, really benefited from that message? I have said “Christ was the revolutionary in action. When the money changers desecrated the temple, he drove them out. He reviled the Pharisees and chief priests for their vanity and hypocrisy. He made it clear that he came to bring ‘not peace, but a sword’, the weapon of discernment and conviction that separates the wheat from the chaff and inspires courage to speak it as it is, to speak truth to power. Trinidad and Tobago, do you have philosophers, visionaries and luminaries to raise the conscience to tell the truth and save the nation and the future of the children?
Draw from the experience of wider humanity. As I wrote ten years ago, “The world got worse after the crucifixion. For two thousand years, we had untold carnage from the many wars from the fall of the Roman Empire to the two World Wars. We had plagues, pestilences, terrible natural disasters, poverty, slavery, captivity, the Holocaust, dehumanization, alienation, tyranny and injustice.
“Not surprisingly, as we approached the 20th century, doubt arose in the Western mind, Nietzsche’s ‘God is dead’ idea took root, and so did the absurdist view of a random and irrational universe.
“But,” I continued, “during those millennia which culminated in doubt, Western civilization also emerged from the obscurity and feudalism of the early Middle Ages into the growth of towns and cities; the renaissance of the arts, literature, and philosophy; the religious reformation and ‘priesthood of of all believers’; the scientific and industrial revolutions that brought prosperity, physical comfort, and longer lives; the Enlightenment that fueled the American and French Revolutions; emancipation, decolonization, and the spread of liberal democracy; globalization, the information revolution, and the world wide web; all creating greater space for more people to discover and express their humanity and shape their society. The indomitable human spirit defied despair, driving civilization forward.”
That spirit sleeps in Trinidad and Tobago, today. Wake up people, look at the rot that surrounds you, sickening your vision and country’s vitality. You do the worst violence to yourself when you doze while sinking.
Wake up this Christmas morning – it is you who must summon the birth we need.
-Ralph Maraj
