Delivered live on LOVE 101.7 Radio in Jamaica this morning on Election day.
Hope in my book is “confident assurance of the ‘not yet’” and though hope of whatever kind is fundamental in life (meaning you can’t do without it)for everybody, hope is also fragile (meaning it can frustrate or disappoint very easily). Political hope is especially fundamental and fragile for political parties and die-hard political tribalists whether green or orange in colour.
A forgotten fact about hope is that it is the guarantee/guarantor beneath your hope that determines whether it is just blind optimism or ‘fool-fool’ or it qualifies as confident realism or sensible.
Fool-fool hope is like whistling in the dark to keep your company when yu ‘fraid like puss’. And the expression ‘fraid like puss’ is an insult to cats because they can see better in the dark than humans! Sensible hope has logical foundations anchored in reality. Political hope tends to be illogical in a few ways.
- In political campaigns I cringe when I hear the nonsense argument of what a party or a leader has done in the past used as evidence of what will be or can be. This, quite frankly, is an eediat argument. With humans, has been is no guarantee of even ‘can be’ worse yet of ‘will be’. Who knows the realities of the future really?
- Political party or leader performance is dependent on many variables, e.g., national, regional and international economic and other realities. Take the Covid-19 reality for example. Any party who wins today’s election will face the mammoth task of finding the human and financial resources to handle a serious spike in disease spread GIVEN THE GLOBAL CRISIS CAUSED BY THE PANDEMIC. So, there are not many ports if any to call on to beg or borrow money, equipment or health-care specialists.
- Politicians know but under the duress of campaigning choose to make promises that they know they can’t keep simply because keeping those promises is not entirely up to them even if, big if, they are sincere in making the promises.
Political hope ‘confident political assurance of the not yet’ is fundamental but fragile and illogical for the reasons I just gave.
I close off with 1 illogical base beneath the hope of die-hard political tribalists and fence-straddlers. Almost all such hope to be paid to vote with the base plan ‘nyam dem out an vote dem out’. BUT hear me well unless during and after today’s election we all behave ourselves properly it does not matter which party wins, daag nyam wi suppa same way.
Political hope, confident assurance about the not yet is both fundamental and fragile. It is necessary but can frustrate so easily. Go out and vote if you can but be careful and smart.