Liberals and Conservatives – Why?

Seems like wherever people form themselves in groups, eventually they neatly divide themselves into liberal and conservative schools of thought. Pretty soon, they’re all hard at bashing each other to gain control over the direction of the entire group.

Why is this always the case?

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense, though. Liberals tend to be largely those who believe that existing societal injustices ought to be addressed by rule changes that impact the entire group. The most fervent liberals of course, will be those that are directly impacted by these injustices. Thus, they will fight hard to gain remedies in order to enjoy more full membership of the group i.e. society at large.

We see this most clearly with the waves of European, then Asian, immigrants that journeyed to American in the 1800s and 1900s. African ‘migration’ to America from the 1600s to mid-1800s resulted in millions of people seeking social justice well into the mid-1900s.

New immigrants were perceived to be the dregs of society – the takers, the vagrants, the ones that were ‘here’ to reap the rewards earned by the sweat and tears of previous generations of immigrants. Check out TV shows like BBC America’s ‘Copper’ or films like ‘The Gangs of New York’ to get some insight into how the ‘nativists’ treated the starving Irish, arriving in droves during the Potato Famine, as well as escaped or freed African slaves coming up from the American south.

However, a funny thing happens once a sub-group gains its measure of social justice, becoming an ‘equal’ member of the larger group.

Conservative views find fertile ground. The liberal focus on injustice, even while other sub-groups are still undergoing that experience, shifts instead to economic progress, as well as a consolidation of the hard earned rights of membership. With the yoke of persecution lifted, people can more freely compete as equals, investing their treasure and effort, seeking to earn just rewards.

People are liberals, until they feel they have an equal part in society. After that, they wax conservative, determined to maintain and improve their place. Perfectly human behavior.

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StoryTelling – Discovering the Classics #1

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Claire Underwood, Frank Underwood, House of Cards, Jamaica, MacBeth, Marlon Johnson, MJC Studios, Ragnar Lothbrock, Rollo, Shakespeare, Vikings

I’ve finally had the chance to finish reading my first Shakespearean work “The Tragedy of MacBeth”.

Much credit goes to the “Access to Shakespeare” series by Lorenz Educational Publishers, whose books feature a side by side Contemporary English translation of Shakespeare’s original words. The approach does indeed improve accessibility to Shakespeare’s work, making MacBeth an thoroughly enjoyable experience.

By the way, if there’s a testament to the constancy of human nature across the centuries, MacBeth is surely it. Indeed, the quest for power, and unbridled ambition, can leverage an honourable mind to justify unseemly deeds.

Couple that with the serpentine psychological manipulations of the coldest of spouses, Lady MacBeth, and MacBeth is well on his way to meet his doom.

Such is the literary influence of the Lady MacBeth, that many television, film and novel characters have been created in her mold. Consider Claire Underwood (NetFlix’s #HouseOfCards) or Siggy (History Channel’s #Vikings), as they command their men to do whatever must be done to seize the object of their ambitions.

“Yet I do fear thy nature. It is too full of the milk of human nature to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great; are not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly, thou wouldst holily; wouldst not play false, and yet wouldst wrongly win.” (Lady MacBeth, Act One, Scene 5)

For newly President Frank Underwood, it’s so far so good. For Rollo Lothbrock, not so much. Last we saw, he was begging his brother, Ragnar, forgiveness for taking sides with Ragnar’s forked-tongue enemy.

Shakespeare’s MacBeth is an impressive read, a treatise of sorts on the corrosive effects of ambition run amuck. Definitely required reading for anyone chasing dreams – your methods do matter.

Mishandling Jamaica’s Leadership Change

I’ve been trying to get a question answered all week, to no avail. Why isn’t Andrew Holness immediately sworn in as Prime Minister?

Per our constitution, the Prime Minister is not directly elected. He is simply the majority choice of the duly elected Members of Parliament. So, since our PM is stepping down, the sitting MPs just need to meet and pick a new person. They tell the Governor General who the choice is, and she/he becomes PM.

Leadership of Country and Party Not the Same

Instead, it looks like there is about to be a massive waste of time in Jamaica. Time is now going to be wasted as Jamaica waits for a JLP party conference to first designate a Party Leader, who will then be de facto PM. That is certainly backwards!

Jamaica doesn’t have that kind of money or time to waste on the involvement of the Electoral Commission and the Constabulary Force in the JLP’s internal party activities.

The current PM is toying with the Constitution by effectively allowing his party’s delegates to pick Jamaica’s new leader. This is a travesty. If the JLP decides to select the new PM (per Parliament’s choice) as leader in their party private activities, then they are free to do so. The announced course is clearly out of order.

Modern (Flawed) Election Strategy

MP Chris Tufton and Senator Mahaloo-Forte, on separate Wenesday evening TV programs, presented similar arguments for Andrew Holness as JLP Leader. It seemed to me that Holness as PM was an afterthought.

What I heard last night was ominously familiar. This sounds just like the designation of PNP MP Portia Simpson as Prime Minister in 2006 all over again. Just win the elections, man – we can decide on policy and national strategy later.

Mr. Tufton, sounding quite Prime Ministerial himself, made his case in this way, and I paraphrase heavily:

(1) To continue current policy, the JLP needs to win the next election.
(2) To win the election, the JLP base and donors (as well a few of the rest of us Jamaicans) need to be motivated to vote.
(3) To motivate electors, the JLP needs to put forward a popular candidate.
(4) In the search for a popular candidate, Andrew Holness emerged as a frontrunner per internal agreement, and per limited street polling.

Thus, the party will nominate Mr. Holness as JLP Leader at their internal, private conference next month. On TV, Mr. Tufton threw down the guantlet to the PNP. Can match up the JLP’s shiny new trump card, Mr. Holness as Leader?

No Public Examination?

I couldn’t care less about who the members of the JLP select to lead themselves. That is their business. However, things become much more serious when a person is presented to be the Prime Minister of my country. In that capacity, what am I, a Citizen, to make of Mr. Holness?

Disappointingly, there has been no real investigative assessment in the press of Mr. Holness’ tenure as Minister of Education. From all indications, much has happened under his watch, and it would be good to learn more about his achievements and challenges there.

Similarly, there has not been much analysis of his work as Member of Parliament for West Central St. Andrew. TVJ and CVM-TV both visited his constituency for feedback from citizens. I do not want to base my assessment of his performance as MP on their reports, but I was dismayed at what I saw on screen.

‘Youth on the Move Worldwide’

In the media discussion about Mr. Holness, many comparative references have been made to US President Barack Obama. I have seen Mr. Obama struggle against entrenched politicians in his party and the opposition Republicans.

In the US system of Government, Mr. Obama cannot ride slipshod over Congress to get things done his way. He must negotiate with Democrats and Republicans, highly sensitive to the opinions of the people they represent, to get things done. This has been painfully obvious to the US President and his frustrated supporters.

Jamaica’s winner-take-all Westminister system is a different animal. The JLP is quite justified in pushing for victory – once they are in the majority, there are no real checks against their policies and agenda. The PNP, of course, wants the same thing to achieve their own objectives.

Mr. Holness as PM will have virtually unlimited power in Jamaica. Even though he won’t really need to, I would hope to see some evidence that he can temper his approach and work with opposing MPs on national issues. Again, such evidence has not been presented, to my knowledge.

What will Mr. Holness do when faced with roadblocks to his agenda put up by members of his own party? It would be encouraging to hear about instances of fortitude when he has had faced down Members who were determined not to move his way.

In the real world, the watchdog of our freedoms, the Press, is more excited about the sexier topics of personalities, polls and elections. We’ll worry about policy and professional history later, after the elections.

Stop wasting Jamaica’s Time

Why is Bruce Golding even allowed to pick a date on which he leaves Jamaica House? By law, if he no longer has the confidence of the majority of the sittings MPs, then he has no right to be Prime Minister. The Governer General should have intervened by now to get the new PM decided on and sworn in. That is his lawful duty.

As the PM and PM Designate (a silly, totally unnecessary term) gallivant along until the big JLP hurrah in November, what of Jamaica?

What happens if major decisions impacting Jamaicva’s future need to be made immediately? The JLP may argue that Mr. Holness is already part of the Cabinet and so would be a party to all such decisions. (However, that line of reasoning would open up lines of attack in which the PNP can tie Holness to all of Golding’s decisions.)

Get Going, Man!

The JLP, and the media, are treating the selection of a PM as a massive affair of State. By our Constitution, the PM is not head of state – Jamaica still has a pesky entanglement with the British Queen, represented by the Governor General.

I, a Citizen, demand that Parliament’s House of Representives (the rightful body) get together immediately to select a Prime Minister. That person goes to knock on the GG’s door, presents himself for swearing in and, baps, wi done.

For God’s sake, for Jamaica’s sake, get on with it. It ought to be a very simple process.

That’s the law.

From a Citizen.

BBC Caribbean Service to close. Life will go on.

“The World Service. British Standard Time eight o’clock.” Every morning before school, on Jamaica’s RJR.

So the Brits have come to the realization that they can’t afford to provide free news service in the local languages of many of their former colonies. In Jamaica, there’ll probably be the usual hand-wringing over the loss of an irreplaceble ‘institution’.

An executive at RJR, Jamaica’s oldest radio group, has called for a review of regional capabilities to fill the gap. Why in the world are we just now doing this? It appears that the regional powers-that-be were lulled to sleep as the free product from the BBC continued to flow decade after decade. I would have expected that someone, somewhere, in the Caribbean would have been pressing for investment to improve regional media outlets like CANA.

What Exactly Are We Losing?

I was initially confused about just what the BBC Caribbean Service actually delivered to us islanders. I had thought that the BBC was gathering news in the region and then delivering it to radio stations both here and back in the UK. Apparently, it was quite the opposite: BBC broadcasts worldwide news for delivery in ‘Caribbean English’ to the region’s networks free of charge. Over time, this must have been quite a savings for our Caribbean stations who would not have had to spend on an international news gathering organization. Just where have these savings been invested over the last fifty years?

Do We Need To Replace the BBC Service?

Maybe, but we have to look at it carefully. With the prevalence of the internet, cable and satellite television throughout the region, is there a really demand for international news via radio? One simple test would be to simply charge for the service. Any takers? I think not, especially as news is readily available on over-the-air television stations, such as CVM-TV and TVJ in Jamaica.

Getting an Unfiltered View of the World

I remember the Old People in Jamaica making statements along the lines of ‘the British provide unbiased coverage’. I won’t debate that point, but it does raise a good question. Lots of people wonder about the angles each news outlet has on a situation. Losing the BBC’s radio coverage is certainly a blow in this regard, eliminating one more point for triangulating the truth.

Focusing on the Bigger Picture

We continue to miss the big picture as the world begins to move faster and faster. We are so reliant on the reporting and journalism of others that we’ve failed to invest in our own capabilities. We have the responsibility to develop our own Caribbean worldview. I am not aware of many compelling, must-see regional news programs that address the world through Caribbean eyes. Again, it comes down to basic economics: if we’re truly interested in a regional viewpoint of the world, there would be ready local audience (and advertising market) for such programming. It hasn’t happened, and so it may just be that the BBC Caribbean service will give up the ghost, never to be replaced by a regional equivalent.