Wake me up when it’s over

Another July 27th, another anniversary of the worst day in our nation’s history swept quietly under the rug. Our leaders have once again demonstrated how deeply unserious they are. Former PM and President Robinson puts it best:

I don’t think they understand the significance of the anniversary and of the memorial in the grounds of the Red House! That is part of our problem in Trinidad & Tobago: we really don’t have the sense of what it means to be a nation.

Of course, when I heard what was said about the then leaders of the opposition-that one had said, “Wake me up when it’s over” and the other that it was a matter between the Robinson and the Muslimeen man-when I heard that, I said, “No, this is not a country at all!” I just couldn’t understand it.

Given the uninterested reactions of Manning and Panday during the coup, I’m not sure why we’re surprised about their actions today. They’ve never cared about the country, and they’ve given us plenty of opportunity to see that, from 1990 on.

Citizen of the world

Having lived in Germany for a few months during the run up to the Iraq War, all I can say is that I’m deeply impressed with Obama’s appearance. The idea that 200,000 Germans, people who despised America in 2002, would show up to cheer an American presidential hopeful and wave the flag deeply impresses me. Maybe there’s hope for our reputation, after all.

American media distortion chamber

Occurred to me today that you never really see someone in distinctly Arabic or Pakistani wear on American television, except when discussing terrorism or some other sort of violence (or oil prices, I guess). I don’t have anything terribly original to say about this. It was just a jarring reminder of how limited one’s view of certain parts of the world can be if you depend on American news media. Basically, the networks treat the swath of land between Algeria and Pakistan as a landscape dotted with nothing but guns, bombs, and oil wells, and people bent on using those three things against us.

And that’s why you end up with people talking about the “muslim smear”.