By Abdulillah
My fellow citizens: is this true? Has rationality been trumped by irrationality in our beloved land. It appears so. Lately these days is seems that when anyone starts to speak about approaching a problem - be it social, political, economic or otherwise - with rational arguments he or she is quickly shouted down by the ignorant, or told that his or her ideas are too hard and will only lead to failure.
You see in our beloved land these days if you approach any problem in a rational coherent civilized way, without the use of a physical weapon, or the making of loud noises, or by coercion or intimidation you are deemed a weakling, not to be heard. However, if you act in a domineering manner inconsistent with civilized behavior, you are strong man, one to be admired and followed, even though your ideas and arguments are weak and on many occasion sinister in nature.
Where did we get this warped behavioral phenomenon from, I ask? I believe we got it because we allowed the very few thugs and ruffians who wrap themselves in jingoistic nationalism to take control of our society, where because of our belief that everyone must be heard we allowed them the soapbox, and they never got down. Where we left our society exposed only to their ignorant and incorrect arguments and ideas that soon permeated into our societies’ psyche and thinking. One followed the other on the soapbox until we end up with only these retarded ideas, that soon takeover.
It is hard to tell ourselves that we are at fault but we are. Yes my fellow citizens we allowed ourselves to remain silent such that the vacuum of our silence was filled by this bunch of dummies, who act like hooligans and bullies to the rest of us. Are we sheep?
You may be asking yourselves why this now Abdullillah? Why are you bringing this up now?
Well I have been reading lately from some of the best minds of our society, either in published works or news articles, of how issues related to the social, economic and political problems that are plaguing our society need to be dealt with and invariably in each essay or article I read the lines that says I have been preaching this for some-time now, but you all are not listening.
Now why is this the case? For the last few weeks I have read many articles and commentary by some of our best, who truly are looking for the best for our society and country, but I see little reaction. I see only the loud and obnoxious getting all the attention. Yes we humans are wired for bad news and are wired to be attracted to the ones who shout and scream like children and bullies. We love it, like we love the reality shows on TV and the unrealistic shoot-um up and karate them to death movies. It makes us look superior to the ones we deem intellectually inferior, only my friends these bunch of idiots are getting the last laugh. They are getting the masses’ ears and some are starting to follow, because they are controlling the streets and our airwaves, while we huddle behind closed doors watching shaking our heads, but keep silent.
Yet when we look around our homes we find that our children and youth are out on the streets listening and behaving just like these idiots, because they too want to be heard, only this is the example they have seen to follow and they do.
We just have to take back the soapbox, because in reality we outnumber them 1000000:1. They are really a few followed by the ignorant and the weak minded, they just scream louder. When they do we need to refute each and everyone one of their ignorant statements with facts and truths and make them public even if it means their embarrassment and shame. And if they fight back by trying to bully us we deal with them with the long arm of our law and institutions of justice.
So let me list some of the arguments by some of these pontificators and social polluters who have stated the following and my repudiation of what I deem to be falsehoods. Feel free to correct me or debate me or even point out your own.
1. Our universities are safe places, and hooliganism is not practiced.
Baloney; just read the papers and watch the news of the dummies that proceeded to kill each other in the south of our nation and how they were aided by other hooligans from the outside leaving dead and wounded, all while celebrating the universities 14th anniversary. Sad is it not that we have fallen this low? But did we actually blame them and those that afterwards threatened our own police forces and shut our public streets creating havoc and destruction? No let’s blame the president of the university. He is to blame for not controlling the situation.
Who is to blame: Our government, our administrators, or us? I can tell you if we all keep silent and this includes those who have the most at stake to lose to these criminal hooligans, that is the people living in these areas, yes you, who are sitting this one out need to react and react you must. You need to control your own destiny and clean your own house. We as a nation can help you, but you must do it by ridding yourselves of this scourge lest you and your loved ones get drug into this manure pile by force.
As for our government officials, get to it. Debate the issue if you must, but get the leaders of these areas together who desire co-existence without bloodshed between each other in brotherhood and citizenship and then clean out the idiots and leaders of this debacle. Then start educating and giving the community a stake in governance, and back them up with the force of our nation.
2. The country is not in debt, and we must not take away subsidies on some of the basic staples like fuel, electricity and wheat. We only need to clean out the corruption and all will be well again.
My friends, this is the biggest untruth ever told. We are in debt and we continue to borrow and beg from others, because we have no choice. We keep telling ourselves that we are not in debt and fuel prices are not rising and the cost of these staples such as wheat, which my friends we import over 80% from other countries and subsidize almost 80% of the cost just so we do not have to starve to death because we must have our bread.
I do not disagree with the subsidy on wheat, but must it be for fuel and electricity as well? And for how long? OK maybe in the short term we continue this subsidy, but is it rational that we allow it to keep on growing and do nothing about it? To hear some of the ignorant rants that state if only the corrupt would disappear, it will solve all our problems. I disagree! The corrupt are a problem but this is much bigger than a few or some of the corrupt. We will get them behind bars and we will take care of them, but can we take care of our appetites for more handouts? That is much harder isn’t it? Yes we will hunt every one of the corrupt down, but will we ever stop to listen to those who have been telling us for sometime now that we must have some way of changing our fuel and electric consumption to those practices that will enable us to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels and become more self sufficient? Or that we can start to use more potato flour or sorghum, bean, oat barley or rice flour than just wheat looking for the best market prices and using our agriculture fields wisely.
3. We do not have a water shortage or that our infrastructure is sound or that we cannot save lots of money on health and welfare, if we use the best prevention methods and get rid of cigarette smoking.
Another lie! We do not want to listen to the experts, who have been warning us for the last 20 years or more. We don’t see the advantage or a savings for taking care of these issues, because oh my God we must have our freedoms to do what we wish even if someone else is paying the way. We know better but we still listen to the naysayers who tell us that it will cost too much or we cannot afford it, and we can continue to die on our roads and our lands can get more polluted and country and future generations will continue to suffer.
Why? We know what’s right but we do not try to fix it, we would rather spend our time driving like idiots leaning on our horns, weaving between lanes, not dropping off our trash in waste bins, just to spend time watching the latest Turkish soap opera on TV or to lounge in our gardens drinking tea and shooting the bull.
4. We have sold our country’s industries to the thieves and outsiders instead of keeping it under government control.
This too, my friends, is an untruth. Yes we have had corrupt individuals who have taken advantage of our fledgling new economic methodology but they have been found, and will be prosecuted to the extent allowed by law. However; in reality making these industries all private instead of public has actually helped keep these industries become viable, especially during a time of world economic down turn.
No one is worse in running a corporation than the government and government civil servants that really have very little stake in its profit-making and are typically inefficient and wasteful. You really do need these industries and companies to be run by the private sector where the executives and managers of these firms are held responsible by their shareholders.
Do not get me wrong here, I am not advocating for complete independence without some oversight and regulation, only I do not wish my government to be in the business of business management. They are poor at this kind of work. They need to concentrate on the defense of our country and the safety and welfare of its people.
5. The country is being lead into a confederacy where outside powers are forcing us to act in ways that we deem inappropriate to our self-determination and nationhood and into wars.
Listen, how many times must we be told that no one is going to be allowed to push us where we do not want to go? How many times do we need to hear that no one is going to usurp our land from under us without us saying something to the contrary or fighting it? Where did we get the notion that outsiders are pushing us to do something that we do not wish to do?
Is it not reasonable to take care of our brothers and sisters who may be displaced until they can go back to their homes in safety, especially as the one who is displacing them does not care about human life and not a foreign hostile power, but one of us? Is it not our responsibility to take them in and help them? Or would we rather we see them die in the cold/hot desert begging outsiders for help and a place to stay?
Thank God and our leaders for doing the right thing. We are all aware how hard this is on us as a people and nation especially during these hard times, where we too need every resource we have just to keep ourselves afloat. However I for one also advocate that we not shirk this responsibility due to fear of poverty and being taken over by these masses, as we would never contemplate the killing of our own children or our brothers and sisters because of these fears.
Do we need to be vigilante and careful for any nefarious actors trying to take advantage of our friendship, hospitality and brotherhood? Yes; but let this not grip us with fear to act when we deem it necessary. We have a higher authority to answer to then a worldly one. Plus we have a good leadership and an elected body who love this nation as much as we do. They will do the right thing because they will ask us and we will tell them our thoughts and we will fight when it is necessary. We have to believe this my fellow citizens because it is the right thing to do. Not everyone is bad nor is everyone a thief who works for government; in fact it is the opposite. Most are good and honest. But like anyone of us they need prodding and reminding sometimes of what we would like to see being done.
6. We are a nation bound for failure.
You know how many times I have heard this nonsensical argument. How can we who love this land ever believe this stupidity. We may stumble, even fall sometimes but we will always pick ourselves back up and shake it off and we will not falter in this regard. We have been here for a while now and we will not disappear or fail. We 99.9% truly do love each other, even more than most people give us credit for. We feel it in our souls even when we leave our nation and people to work elsewhere. We want the best for it. We just need to act a bit sooner to get things squared away. We have slept a long night but daybreak is now here. Time to get to work!
God Bless Jordan and it People
comment replay 