Could it happen again?
In our time I am become Death, destroyer of worlds. (J Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita upon the successful testing, in New Mexico in July 1945, of the first atom bomb) Now we are all sons of bitches. (Test director Richard Bainbridge) It’s already clear that, down [...]
Lest we forget
In Our Time Seventy years ago last week, the armies of Hitler swept into Poland, in the opening act of what would soon be World War II. By the time that war ended, some 60 million human beings had been killed, and the Holocaust in Europe, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, had shockingly extended [...]
The penitence of the prince
In Our Time Some time around midnight on July 18, 1969 (easy to remember the date, since it was my 25th birthday), on Chappaquiddick Island off Martha’s Vineyard, a ’67 Oldsmobile drove off the rail-less Dike Bridge, flipped and sank upside down in an inlet. The driver managed somehow to get out. His companion did [...]
Jesse made history here
In Our Time It’s an emotion under siege by our explanatory, know-all, internet age: Wonder, I mean. So much so that it seldom makes an appearance anymore: someone’s much too likely to jump up and explain why it’s inappropriate, the product of mere innocence, indeed, ignorance; if the wonderer had only considered the genetic (or [...]
In the US racist hysteria grows
In Our Time It’s a thought to madden a Manichaean, but the usual outcome of any struggle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ isn’t victory for one or the other, but stalemate. Good and evil both survive to fight another day. Thus, the astonished delight over Barack Obama’s victory in the US presidential elections last November hadn’t [...]
Keeping score on Obama
In Our Time Six months ago, Barack Obama came to office with his plate overflowing: a stricken US economy, two wars, and ambitious (and politically expensive) plans to reform health care and move the US towards (clean) energy independence. The jury is still out on each of his policies re these. The US economy appears [...]
‘Untellable grief’
In our time Jokes about Jamaican ostentation abound — jokes mostly told by Jamaicans themselves. You pull up next to a woman at a stoplight and notice she’s perspiring heavily, even though her windows are up, implying her air-conditioner is on. The explanation: her car’s air-con has stopped working and she can’t afford to fix [...]
What ‘post-racial’ America?
In our time “Dr Du Bois took the lead in making the United States and the world recognize that racial prejudice was not a mere matter of Negroes being persecuted but was a cancer which poisoned the whole civilization of the United States.” (CLR James, speaking of WEB Du Bois in London, 1967) “Racism [...]
In our time
Water, water everywhere? When, many years ago, VS Naipaul referred to the land of his birth as “the little island in the mouth of the Orinoco,” Trinidadians resented what they interpreted as an intentionally belittling description. But Trinidadian yachtsmen knew Naipaul was right. ‘Little’ Trinidad, in so many ways different from the rest of the [...]
The Obama era
The world on his plate Ten months ago, when John McCain suggested that rival Barack Obama join him in suspending his campaign to make a dramatic dash back to Washington to ‘fix’ the US’s suddenly looming financial catastrophe, Obama declined. A president, he said coolly, ought to be able to do more than one thing [...]
More on the Muse of Hatred
The Obama era Wayne Brown is a well-known Trinidadian writer and columnist who now lives in Jamaica. This is the 31st in his new series on the Obama era. Barack Obama’s historic and earth-shaking campaign for the US presidency last year left behind it many unforgettable moments: from the initial shock of his victory over [...]
The Obama era
The muse of hatred Back in mid-April, the US Department of Homeland Security under new Obama appointee Janet Napolitano released a sobering report on the recent rise of right-wing extremism in the US. The report noted that the election of the first African-American president; growing joblessness created by the current economic downturn; the ongoing epidemic [...]
The Obama era
The silent majority Wayne Brown is a well-known Trinidadian writer and columnist who now lives in Jamaica. This is the 29th in his new series on the Obama era. aTo ideologues, they’re what’s wrong with democracy; to others, they’re what gives the process stability, protects it from extremists of the right and left, and tethers [...]
The Obama era
A new America Wayne Brown is a well-known Trinidadian writer and columnist who now lives in Jamaica. This is the 28th in his new series on the Obama era. By now, progressives who supported Barack Obama’s presidential campaign must despair of ever settling into a simple, pro or con attitude towards his presidency. For every [...]
The Obama era
by Wayne Brown(Wayne Brown is a well-known Trinidadian writer and columnist who now lives in Jamaica. This is the 27th in his new series on the Obama era.) Crying wolf The phrase ‘crying wolf’ implies fecklessness. It means someone has raised a false alarm so often, there’s no need to take him seriously next time [...]