At the highest level of crime are to be found phalanxes of lawyers, accountants, politicians and other businessmen who are in the direct employ of those men and women who have made big time crime their business.
There are scores of Bahamians who work for these kinds of criminals. Some of these people decry this countryﾒs slide into that kind of place where thuggery and other violent crime seem to be the order of the day.
They delude themselves. Crime is crime. Crime in the penthouse and crime on the streets and in our nationﾒs homes are all aspects of that syndrome where laws are flouted and where ﾑonly the strong surviveﾒ.
In this kind of world, some live well at the expense of others.
This is wrong.
Even now, there are old timers who yearn for those days when children could be taught that manners had the power to take them through life; and for sure these same old timers fondly remember the time when the report of a murder was exceptionally bad news for the community at large.
Indeed, we ﾖtoo- remember that there was a time in The Bahamas when the community itself could be revolted and when families could be shamed by the errant antics of one of its members. Alas! Those days are gone, and for the most part, those days have been forgotten.
Sad to say, there are tens of thousands of Bahamians who know no other world than the one that has been depicted by none other than the current prime minister of The Commonwealth of The Bahamas, the Rt. Hon. Perry Gladstone Christie. As we recall he made a pointed reference to the impact of violent crime on Bahamian society.
He was of the view that the level of violent crime in our society is simply unacceptable. The level of viciousness in the commission of murders and rapes and robberies in our society is simply intolerable.
While this may indeed be true, there is also cause for concern when scores are settled otherwise. In a sense, then, treachery can be even more vicious.
In this regard, some Bahamians are quite adept at settling scores. On any given day, some Bahamians settle scores with their employers. They do so when they lie, pilfer or otherwise undermine the enterprise that employs them.
And then there are those other Bahamians who have grievances with each other. Some of these are trivial, whereas others are extremely serious. These are the ones that turn on issues like money, love and the care of children.
In case after case, these issues sometimes become extremely violent. Children are sometimes wounded, maimed and traumatized.
On other occasions, a man or woman is killed. These are the kinds of occasions where angry people are pushed to that point where they tell themselves that the time has come to deal with a problem, once and for all.
This explains ﾖin part, at least- the proliferation of so-called domestic crimes. And sadly, some of the people who are hardest hit are the children who somehow survive the wars that were started by their angry parents.
We suspect that these kinds of violent outbursts are but the festering tip of a larger dynamic. We would venture that a reading of this bigger picture would show that social systems in The Bahamas and the wider Caribbean are under continuous assault from life styles and cultures that glorify gratuitous violence; that dehumanize people and which also work to undermine family life and community formation.
This cheap version of the American idea of the good life ﾖone that focuses on violence, greed, sex, pleasure and death ﾖ is itself anathema to the kind of life Bahamian and Caribbean people once had.
Put otherwise, what we are suggesting is that the fast life is doing irreparable harm to this country and this region. the time, the information reaches the news; the report of escalating crime is symptomatic of a time and place where human life and values are obliged to take second place to the pursuit of money, celebrity and power.
And so, as community is hammered from the outside, family life crumbles. Wars between men and women become the norm and children are therefore bred in environments that are hostile to life and community.
There must be another way for human beings to live. This other way should be the kind of way where human beings are respected, cared for and loved.a
Editorial from The Bahama Journal
