SL: dying to be born on some ‘Fourth of Never’

THE nation that was born today, the Fourth of July, is demonstrably no longer “the land of the free and the home of the brave”.

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There is no demanding burden of proof that may be laid at this editorialist’s door, but the invitation to read the daily media dirge on the decline and fall of Trumpistan, to discern that the bastion of democracy and all that was good in (it if at all or ever) has been shaken to its foundations.

That among certain x-men/twitterati or defenders of the faith in the hired press one may find apologists for the bully boy ethos, which has come to pervade the White House and all things American politics, redounds to a remnant of patriotism and pride in the erstwhile First Nation’s values and worth. We could say that again. It means wilful blindness dies hard. Not only Stateside...

It is not with the freedom and courage of the people of those United States of America, however, that one has truck today of all days.

It is with the diminished glory of a nation state that was born five months and 77 years ago, on the Fourth of February, with which one might take more meaningful issue on this day.

In the aftermath of last week’s visit by UN human rights chief Dr. Volker Türk to our once sunny isle, now clouded over by the echoes of a past conflict, yet clearly unresolved to date, it is evident that we islanders still have a lot of soul-searching to do. Together. Separately.

That too before we can by any means aspire to bring closure to the open wounds of internecine war that still fester and emit fetid odours chronically. Around the days of wrathful memorials and reprisals against those who dare to defy commonsense, civic duty, patriotism etc — and remember.

Grave concerns

On the one hand, the forensic evidence emerging over this week from even the most cursory inspection of the mass grave at Chemmani demonstrates that humanity’s inhumanity to humankind did not spare our island race the horrors of conflict among kith and kin at closest or cousins in the more distance sense of DNA-wise connection.