THE EDITOR: The national scorn heaped on MP for Laventille East/Morvant Fitzgerald Hinds for his recent Facebook post is completely unwarranted. Hinds is more sophisticated than his social media posts reveal.
Hinds's thoughts, words, deeds and the many things he has failed to do may be a source of great national irritation, but they give him a sense of personal pride. His utterances might normalise crime and criminality, but they increase his currency within the Cabinet where the ability to use abundant adjectives and perform circus tricks are more important than achievements.
Hinds is a distinguished member of an elite group within Cabinet of expert decoys. This group specialises in distracting the population with outrageous statements, acts and antics so that citizens do not focus on issues that matter to their lives and livelihoods.
Insensitive doggerel is a valuable tool in Hinds's trade - it is his raison d'être. He works assiduously to offend us daily but, he is also strategic - he crosses acceptable thresholds of decency and good taste every two years. In August 2020, Hinds wrote that, using his powers of observation, he needed to determine if a young man approaching him was a 'piper.'
Hinds is keenly aware that the outrage for an inevitable 600-plus murder toll is 'ole talk which will die down' after December 31. At the stroke of midnight, the slate will be wiped clean, the reset button pressed, and a new holocaust will begin. While citizens are dreading the final figure, Hinds will celebrate his name being cemented in history. He should be forgiven for confusing being famous with being infamous.
In other countries a per capita murder rate over 40 per 100,000 of the population would spark revolution and each victim's photograph would wrap around the front covers of leading newspapers. However, in TT crime and criminality are normalised at the institutional level, and in private spheres no one cares. Death becomes us!
Fed a constant stream of images of death, violence and mayhem, citizens do not realise they pay for crime in two ways - as victims and as taxpayers who fund crime-fighting. Citizens living in crime-scene communities which invariably are represented by Hinds and his party pay for crime in a third way - with their very lives. This is the ultimate price for blind political loyalty.
Trinidad's talking heads (paid and unpaid) have sadly not drawn a connection between high murder rates in PNM represented areas and their depopulation. If we can peer deeper into TT's future abyss, we may see ghost towns where crime hot spots exist today.
And what of the children who are masked-up and protected from a virus, but vulnerable to the plague of crime in their community? A decade from now they, like so many other children, may have to vie for jobs as grave diggers, morticians and funeral home operators in the only booming sector in the economy - the death industry.
Some believe Hinds lacks empathy, remorse and has a pre
