{"id":56183,"date":"2024-11-05T05:59:15","date_gmt":"2024-11-05T09:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=56183"},"modified":"2024-11-05T05:59:15","modified_gmt":"2024-11-05T09:59:15","slug":"the-ultimate-barbarian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=56183","title":{"rendered":"The ultimate barbarian"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
\nNovember 05, 2024<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>It may seem an exaggeration, but the Leader of Our Grief is the most obnoxious leader we have had in our 62 years of independent rule. He has revealed himself as an unsophisticated bully who is unaware of his social and political responsibilities to the nation.<\/p>\n

His latest display of incivility was wrapped up in a perfumed package of royal pomp and circumstance. He boasted that after having had dinner with King Charles III, Mia Mottley of Barbados, King Mswati of Eswatini, and President Irfaan Ali of Guyana he discovered that the UNC and its leaders had criticised the person he had selected to turn our economy around. He called his critics \u201cthe most destructive, unpatriotic louts among us\u201d.
\n
\nWhether one is in a king\u2019s castle or in a lowly ghetto community, the essence of one\u2019s character always bursts forth to betray the baseness of one\u2019s soul.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Patrick Manning detected this personality flaw in the Leader\u2019s character; he said: \u201cThe minute you oppose my good friend, he gets very, very angry. And if you oppose him strongly, he becomes a raging bull.\u201d That astute psychological analysis captured the torment in the latter\u2019s soul.<\/p>\n

The Express tried to be charitable, when it declared: \u201cRather than changing his behaviour to avoid giving such openings, Dr Rowley has repeatedly lived up to the late Manning\u2019s description.\u201d (Express, October 27.)<\/p>\n

The Express should have mentioned that a leopard never changes its spots.<\/p>\n

The Leader penned his repulsive statement while he was in the company of King Charles, the heir of a regime that controlled the British Empire since 1558. Elizabeth I participated in the slave trade and slavery. She gave \u201ca large royal ship to the slave trader John Hawkins in 1564 in exchange for a share in the profits of voyage\u201d. (London Guardian, April 6, 2023.)<\/p>\n

Around 1612, William Shakespeare wrote The Tempest, his most trenchant play on colonialism. Roberto Fernandez Retamar, a Caribbean scholar, explains: \u201cIn The Tempest, the deformed Caliban\u2014enslaved, robbed of his island, and trained to speak by Prospero\u2014rebukes Prospero thus: \u2018You taught me language, and my profit on\u2019t \/ Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you \/ For learning me your language.\u2019\u201d (\u201cCaliban\u201d, Casa de Las Americas, 1971.)<\/p>\n

Prior to publication of The Tempest, Europeans used the word \u201canthropophagus\u201d to describe people who ate human flesh. Shakespeare, however, introduced the word \u201ccannibal\u201d into the English language \u201cto speak of the bestial nature of colonised people\u201d.<\/p>\n

Octave Manoni\u2019s Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonialism (1950) first identified \u201cCaliban\u201d with colonial people. Aime Cesaire (Martinique) and Edward Brathwaite (Barbados) also explored this topic. This denigrating use of the term Caliban to refer to colonial people allowed Retamar to conclude: \u201cWhat is our history, what is our culture, if not the history and culture of Caliban?\u201d (14.)<\/p>\n

Our history is not that of only politicians who sit in golden rooms and make disparaging statements about their fellow citizens. It\u2019s made primarily by revolutionaries such as Toussaint L\u2019Ouverture, Simon Bolivar, Julien Fedon, Paul Bogle, Antonio Maceo, Marcus Garvey, Fidel Castro, Maurice Bishop and Bob Marley.<\/p>\n

I have visited all the countries to which the Leader referred when he disparaged the Leader of the Opposition. The people who live there are ordinary people trying to make ends meet. They are far removed from the officiousness of these \u201ccolonial leaders\u201d who think they are being sophisticated when they malign their own people.<\/p>\n

Although the coloniser gave us language, progressive leaders always used that very language to shape new societies. They have always rejected Miranda\u2019s (Prospero\u2019s daughter) absurd claim: \u201cAbhorred slave, I pitied thee \/ Took pains to make thee speak, \/…When thou did\u2019st not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but would gabble like \/ A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes \/ With words that made them known.\u201d Caliban\u2019s heirs must always use language to raise up one another rather than to pull other people down.<\/p>\n

Every communique or speech of the Leader of Our Grief is filled with derogatory and insulting remarks about his people. It\u2019s important that Kamla Persad-Bissessar follow Anita Hill\u2019s advice to Kamala Harris: \u201cNever let the people who despise you define you.\u201d (The New York Times, October 28.) Hill was also assailed by racist and misogynist people who hated her because she was a black woman who spoke against a black man.<\/p>\n

In addressing the Commonwealth Heads of Government, Samoa PM Fiame Naomi Mata\u2019afa told delegates: \u201cThe reality insists that we are dependent on each other. We work together, or we suffer in isolation. It is in this togetherness that the real strength and value of the Commonwealth can be found.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wish the Leader of Our Grief should extend similar courtesies to those who disagree with him on social, economic and political matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe November 05, 2024 It may seem an exaggeration, but the Leader of Our Grief is the most obnoxious leader we have had in our 62 years of independent rule. He has revealed himself as an unsophisticated bully who is unaware of his social and political responsibilities to the nation. His … Continue reading The ultimate barbarian<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,30,7],"tags":[60,171,49],"class_list":["post-56183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-tt","category-pnm","category-politics","tag-keith-rowley","tag-selwyn-r-cudjoe","tag-tt-govt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56184,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56183\/revisions\/56184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}