The Cynically New Reframing and the Hypocritically Renaming of Ongoing Colonial and Neo- Colonial Rule

Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand.
George Santayana

You are free
You can rule yourself and your respective tropical Islands now
You are no longer colonies anymore
You can now both individually and collectively democratically decide your very own future in your own individual and collective best interests by ruling yourselves
You can hear the very same utterly cynical and totally disastrous myth tirelessly arrogantly being proclaimed by the French, the Dutch, the English as well as by the United States all across the restless Caribbean region on a regular basis nowadays
From the east to the west as well as from the north to the south and in-between constantly boldly being repeated now in English, in Dutch, in French and even in Spanish

As if the ongoing hypocritical repetition necessarily has anything whatsoever to do with the daily politically and economically imprisoning truth and with the concrete facts on the warm ground in the various larger and smaller Caribbean Islands spread out all across the always interesting and constantly challenging Caribbean archipelago
All the while they are at the very same time seemingly even unknowingly to themselves continually arrogantly and stupidly contradicting themselves by laconically telling you standing on your own warm Caribbean Island soil thousands and thousands of miles away from France that: “Ici c’est La France”*
You constantly simply have to wonder if they are even aware of the world map
But, then again, this is exactly what a longtime violently dominating and a contemptuously plundering history of colonialism and neo-colonialism over time does to a colonizing people

And, all of this now in a radically changing world socio-economic, military and political structure with the center of power and growing ideological, scientific and cultural multilayered influence increasingly shifting from the north and west to the east and the south every day more and more and more
In the process, necessitating this constant urgent cynically reframing and hypocritically renaming of ongoing colonial and neo-colonial rule in the consciously-constructed deeply fractured restless Caribbean region Leaving it as a result all up to the young restless middle-school, high school and junior college students on the small and costly-divided Caribbean Island to call on and to adamantly demand of their hyper-Eurocentric educated teachers and professors some of whom are even local to begin the process of teaching them much more about local and about Caribbean history as well as about the various Caribbean social sciences and also about Caribbean literature instead of only about European and North American academic subject matters in Dutch, in French and especially also in English
Simply because here is certainly not France or The Netherlands
No matter what anybody else may say or may even seem to want to claim otherwise

You are free
You can rule yourself and your respective tropical Islands now
You are no longer colonies anymore
You can now both individually and collectively democratically decide your very own future in your own individual and collective best interests by ruling yourselves
You can hear the very same utterly cynical and totally disastrous myth tirelessly arrogantly being proclaimed by the United States, by France, by the Dutch and the United Kingdom all across the restless Caribbean region on a regular basis nowadays
From the east to the west as well as from the north to the south and in-between constantly boldly being repeated now in English, in Dutch, in French and even in Spanish
All the while a new local colonial and neo-neo-colonial constitution largely written and mostly imagined in the north and west is imposed with the loyal help of the complicit, resistantly-unimaginative and ongoing corrupt and paid-for-political-class-by-the-very-same utterly cynical hypocritical colonial and neo-colonial north and west
Creating in the process this deepening new hyper-deceiving contradictory local political and constitutional situation of so-called local Caribbean Island “self-rule” and “internal domestic political control” that is paralyzing and completely unproductive

And, nearly all of these new legal and constantly updated administrative rules, regulations and policy directives being announced and subsequently published in French and in Dutch in an overwhelmingly local English speaking Caribbean Island thousands and thousands of miles from France and The Netherlands
In the very ongoing disastrous political and cultural process, constantly cynically and continually contemptuously contradicting fundamental international rules of legal and also of democratic transparency and accountability and directly and indirectly also contributing to an ever increasing sense of local cultural confusion and of local-identity alienation already equally being caused by too much northern and western tourism spreading with it an unending corrupting individualistic and materialistic “partying-culture” that is constantly severely infecting the small pointlessly-divided Caribbean Island situated nearly in the center of the wonderful Caribbean archipelago

While at the very same most of the important socio-economic, administrative, institutional, legal, judicial and political advisors and crucial civil service staff on the small and destructively divided Caribbean Island on both the French northern side and the Dutch southern side of the little Island still come from France and The Netherlands with no enabling local policies put in place to over time quickly try and train and replace them with talented educated young local people with their both feet strongly formed and planted in the warm local tropical soil
I do hope that by now you will have come to understand that the local-paid-for-untalented-and- uneducated-political-class do not want to run the risk of having to sit together with highly trained and talented and deeply committed local people giving them advice of how to do things in a much better way for all
They would constantly be politically afraid that maybe some of these very same highly talented and educated locals might then eventually consider running against them in the future
Ooh, no, no, No, nee, Nee, non, Non, naaaah….Naaaaah…not possible
As all of the central rules, regulations and directives constantly continue to come and to stream in from across the north and west and to be uncritically locally implemented by the local-paid-for-complicit-uneducated-unsophisticated-resistantly unimaginative-political class regularly nearly every week are flying back-and-forth between their various warm small tropical Caribbean Island territories only now in new and different ways suffering under this newly imposed colonial and neo-colonial paralyzing and highly-locally confusing form of internal insular “self-rule” and London, Paris, Den Haag (The Hague) and Washington, D.C. While they unbelievably also very proudly put pictures of themselves meeting with and taking orders and different policy ideas from their various northern and western political bosses including more and more the I.M.F.** and the World Bank nowadays also
Accompanied by other pictures of the various sights and sounds in Paris, in London, Den Haag (The Hague) and Washington, D.C. on their latest various multiplying social media websites and outlets for at least some of the folks back home to see

You are free
You can rule yourself and your respective Caribbean Islands now
You are no longer colonies anymore
Ooh, yeaaauh, yes, oui, ja, si…………….hi, hi, hi, hi……hahahaaaaaaaaaaaa Enfin,…………………..
Until one day they are all in the north and west once again completely surprised by the various local radical independence uprisings and ongoing liberatory revolts.

©Gregory Gilbert Gumbs

*“”Ici c’est La France” signifies in English: “Here is France.”
**I.M.F. is the International Monetary Fund, which is located in Washington, D.C.