BRAIN DRAIN

I have drunk two cups of coffee. I have twice risen from my study desk to  stretch. I have replaced the mellow reggae mix CD with a crazy Brazilian  combo and upped the volume of the player. And I’ve just realised that each and every one of these actions has been utterly useless for they have failed  to conjure up a muse of any form, which means that at 10.30 on this Saturday morning, the page of my Microsoft Word document is as alarmingly white as it  was four hours ago. Four hours and I can’t construct one paragraph of a column that I’m trying  to write about Thursday’s shooting on the Brian Lara Promenade. I can’t recall when last I suffered such severe writer’s block, a condition which most dictionaries describe as “a psychological inhibition preventing someone from proceeding with a (written) piece.”   Psychological inhibition, huh?

That is an apt two-word summary of what’s happening here this morning. My brain is not of creative, but irritable disposition today. It wants a rest, to sit and look at a plot less, hot, action movie or a silly comedy. No more crime talk. Its underlying argument for not responding to my morning’s unclogging efforts is: “What Suzanne? What do you want us to say about the crime situation in this country that we haven’t said before? Have you heard of the expression ‘ad nauseam’? Where was your mind last night when you and I were looking through the dusty folders containing copies of our past columns,  trying to locate all the pieces we had written about crime in TT? And look, after a week like this, we need to chill!”

I can’t argue with a brain, not when it’s being logical. For years we — my brain and I — have been predicting that Thursday’s downtown shootout was inevitable, that the gang violence could not be restricted to the poor areas, as many were saying or hoping. We have repeatedly condemned the Prime Minister and his Government for trying to reassure us that the average citizen was safe because crime was mainly occurring in “ghetto” neighbourhoods. We — my brain and I — have stated without mincing words that such ridiculous pronouncements on crime demonstrate that Patrick Manning is indifferent to the violence around him. We have described him as a man who  is displaying icy naivet? in the face of bloodshed. So why waste more time and energy we don’t have?

For example, on Sunday December 22, 2002, we wrote: “The spilling of blood is not containing itself to impoverished enclaves as Manning says. The red fluid is flowing down the hills and across our plains. It stains our roads, shops, schools, kitchen floors, beaches, rivers, seas, our soil. Moreover, it blemishes our psyche for we feel safe nowhere.” Isn’t this exactly what happened Thursday and what’s going to occur more and more in the future? Aren’t we all walking bull’s eyes and “collateral damage” everywhere and anywhere?

My brain and I have also — ad nauseam — argued that crime and national security seem to be the last concern of the PNM; that this Government lacks the will and the ability to begin to stem the violence; that it is more concerned with its FTAA Headquarters, its new Parliament, with erecting tall buildings, or as a colleague shrewdly put it last week: it possesses “an edifice complex.” My brain and I have asked what makes our leaders feel investors want to come to a war zone. We have wondered what we are going to announce on flights bringing diplomats, businessmen and other important visitors to crime country. “Welcome to Piarco International Airport. Please collect your helmet and bullet proof vest in the VIP lounge.”? We have warned that crime is also putting a strain on local business and prompting several of our productive, bright citizens to flee.

As many other columnists, I and my brain have written of the need for the separation of all governments from criminals of every class. We have advocated the end to programmes like URP, which we all know is one of the root causes of the gang warfare, no matter if our ostrich Local Government Ministers say otherwise. We have asked instead for Government to set up employment and training centres. We have warned that our education system is failing our children, that many are leaving school qualified to seek employment only in criminal enterprise. We have calculated that the murder toll will soon surpass the number of days in a year, leap years included. We have said that the police continue to be ill-equipped to handle the criminals and many of the very police are part of the problem. With regard to the police reform bills, we have argued that the PNM cannot place all its crime cracking eggs in the UNC basket and that it should never have hustled the bills out of the Joint Select Committee before their scrutiny was complete.

I realise my brain is spot on. Why bother? Tomorrow will be as bad as today and yesterday, no matter what we write. No, sorry, it will be worse. TT has “graduated” from shootings outside Movie Towne to shootings on Frederick Street and to bullets flying on the Brian Lara Promenade. And above all, without even being aware of it, we — not just my brain and I — are losing all the rights and fundamental freedoms promised us in our Republican Constitution. Well, you try to convince my brain and I otherwise. Do you feel you truly enjoy the right to life, liberty, security of person, enjoyment of property, the protection of the law, and freedom of movement? Not any longer. How can any of us when we can’t even go to buy lunch in town without having to run for cover? So whose brain wouldn’t be drained? suz@itrini.com