Ronald Thwaites | What basis for trust?

“Everything is fine and, what isn’t, just give us time to fix it”. That’s the mantra of many Republican candidates in the upcoming November elections in the United States. At least that is the line of the sane ones, not the nativists who are in denial about fuel prices, the cost of war, and the spiral of debt.

The apologists for war, debt, inflation and jingoism may yet prevail since the United States has unlimited, unpayable credit from the rest of the world. More so, the benefactors of unbridled capitalism will spend billions to seduce insecure voters into believing that conquest of the Western Hemisphere is their manifest destiny.

What century are we living in when, in the sanctuary of peace, the United Nations General Assembly, there can be a credible threat to “annihilate the Iranian civilisation” and a boast that, in respect of Venezuelan oil, “to the victor belongs the spoils”?

This is the new world order. As the enormously powerful Trumpist, Mr Stephen Miller, himself acknowledged by his leader as a white supremacist, says, talk about rights and freedoms are of no significance in the face of the raw power of the gun, of military and economic dominance.

Ask yourself where people like us fit into that power equation. Our self-determination and nominal independence are of no consequence.

At a juncture of history where there is reasonable fear that technology may overtake and subjugate the humans whose wit devised it, in what could be the last throes of self-destruction, we support leaders who devote more resources to mining the surface of the moon than to feeding the fifth of humanity, including plenty of Jamaicans who are underfed, undereducated and less cared for every day.

A BETTER VISION

Contrast Pope Leo, who confronts this expensive and soul-sapping banality within and beyond his own billion-and-a-half adherents with a conviction of the inalienable dignity of every person.

Leo advances the Gospel-grounded principle that all humans are created equal and have a sublime purpose in life to use the abundance of creation to advance themselves through relationships with, and care for, others, particularly those most disadvantaged.

He declares that happiness is found not primarily in the reflection of ourselves on a computer screen but in the eyes of love gifted and received between sentient beings.

Which of these radically different life purposes attracts the majority of Jamaicans? In what direction are we teaching our children? Towards what impulses of generosity or selfishness are we luring ourselves through mass media?

Mia Mottley, that fearless successor to Portia as an Esther of the Caribbean, at the United Nations last week earned the applause, properly denied Trump’s bragging and Netanyahu’s Hitler-esque rant, as she affirmed the justice due to the South of this world and called out the relentless grab of the money-changers and the military-industrial class as the reincarnations of the enslavers of old.

She is brave and consistent. Are we? Is humble service reflected in our “blue-light cabal”, who teach us to ignore law and order by their own pretentious law-breaking at every sighting?

DRIVEL

And that’s the least of it. “Everything is fine and, what isn’t, just give us time to fix it”. Check the illogical drivel which claims that mandatory sentences, being coincidental with a reduction in murders and, alongside police killings, slaking the public’s thirst for blood, must therefore be causally related.

Nobody is forgetting the rights of victims. No one is suggesting that intentional gun criminality should not be sanctioned appropriately when proven.

It is beneath a minister’s dignity to caricature the very positions which he used to espouse and knows to represent justice.

Citizens should be able to take what a prime minister or president says very seriously. The most powerful must be the most trusted. Last week, our leader proclaimed that the “State is not above the law”. Most Honourable King Charles’ Privy Councillor, don’t you see what is happening with the manipulation and deprivation of due process? Please pay heed to the careful analytical wisdom of retired Assistant Commissioner Heath.

Andrew invites us to attend to “the bigger picture in people’s lives” and to develop “higher-order thinkers”. On both counts, he is correct. Please advise as to the measures we are going to take in the next budget to achieve these crucial objectives. The truth is, we have enough money but we are spending it ineffectively. You preside over that system to our peril.

The 12- and 13-year-olds entering Grade 7 at my favourite high school this September are all reading below Grade 1 level. There are many other schools in the same situation. If that were the only problem, we now know how to remedy it in two years.

Worse than cultured illiteracy is their sullen, hopeless attitude towards learning and about themselves. Most carry wounds from home, community and society which need serious diagnosis, exposure and therapy. Their earnest teachers are hardly trained to cope with these maladies, apparently more acute this year.

We have had to introduce an urgent programme of social-emotional reorientation, as well as establishing a neurodivergent centre to begin to rehabilitate these youngsters to love themselves, respect and trust others, and gain a yearning for learning.

We will try to visit every home to engage their parents. Building sustained connection between home and school is an essential part of the remedy.

REBUILDING TRUST

So is rebuilding trust between ourselves and our leaders, where we can rely on the goodness of their philosophical and spiritual moorings instead of relating to them out of fear or scorning them with learned apathy.

The relearning process with this cohort of young people will be rigorously assessed. Thanks to the Ministry of Education for allowing the flexibility to do this.

This is crime-fighting. But what about the rest whom we are not reaching?

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the retired principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.