Orville Taylor | Jamaica: Our bed of roses

One of the stupidest expressions used regularly is “Life is not a bed of roses” When our relatives and friends migrate north, they often say it in reference to ‘Farrin’.

Now, every Jamaican knows that whatever the country one emigrates to, only the US qualifies for that nomenclature. While it can be understood as to what the speakers typically mean, it is a saying steeped deeply in ignorance, bordering on idiocy. Certainly not a Jamaican expression by origin, it gained popularity in the 1960s, when Lynn Anderson chimed, “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.”

But anyone with the least acquaintance with roses would know that a rose garden or bed of roses has more thorns than roses. In order to prune, weed, or do any basic care in this horticultural enterprise, one is going to get more pricks than one is willing to admit he or she has felt. A rose plant has endless ‘macca’ on its stems. And underlying its beauty is the harsh reality that a rose garden is absolutely not a place of beauty without massive discomfort.

Therefore, as with the other stupid expressions such as drinking like a fish, sweating like a pig, and eating like a bird, people simply do not look past their noses. Consequently, the ignorance becomes the narrative and the truth. We call those things ‘simulacrum’, pluralised as simulacra; images that are caricatures of reality, which we accept as factual.

An example of a simulacrum is the American alligator being presented on posters as green despite there being no such creature of that colour, they being grey to blackish in pigmentation.

America is a great country in many ways, and not just because it has, perhaps, the most equipped military in the world. However, while we hold our breaths for World War III, as it fights too many friend and foes all at once, we need to look at ourselves and appreciate the wonderful democracy that we have here.

No doubt, America is the land of opportunity. Especially when it comes to educational access, just imagine how many Jamaicans who failed Common Entrance, went to junior secondary school, and eventually made it to doctoral studies in America. With just a handful of university spaces, our system has essentially reinforced the stratification patterns from the plantation era.

Working in the US is likely to allow a young person, who is working at a fast-food franchise, to purchase a car and finance her education even with an oppressive student loan. Sanitation workers are generally well paid, and domestics can make ends meet if they are frugal.

But be not fooled. There are many things in our own country, which are of a higher standard. Smarting from multiple auditor general reports and the impasse between the prime minister and the Integrity Commission (IC), we jump on ourselves and speak of the level of corruption and abuse of power in this place.

But one might be rudely awakened if one realised just how much control and oversight surround the people who run and police this country. For example, inasmuch as it is American law and thus the desire of those citizens; did you know that once a person declares bankruptcy, he can never hold public office here?

To be a janitor in central or local government, one has to pass a fit and proper test. Believe me. So if a former owner of a community bar, that has run into hard times and closed due to insolvency, filed for bankruptcy, he cannot become a public officer.

This is the same for our elected officials. True, there is the dissonant situation of ex-convicts being eligible to be legislators while their subordinate civil servants cannot. However, that is a quirk whose wisdom lies somewhere beyond my intellect but certainly has a very good justification.

As we watch President Donald Trump wave his finger and make power move after power move, we recognise that no Commonwealth Caribbean leader has any such authority. Indeed, I dare any CARICOM leader, including our own prime minister, to order that an investigation by the police begin. This includes both the Constabulary’s Counter-Terrorism and Organised Crime Investigation Branch and the independent Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency . Worse, he would not even think of publicly telling a police constable to end an investigation or not to pursue charges. The American president legally can.

Our prime minister is fighting the IC in court as anyone who disagrees with its actions has a right to. Yet, unlike the American president, he can be charged while sitting in office.

One of my personal boasts is that the US gained universal adult suffrage only in 1965, a full 21 years after us. Believe it, having chosen governments seamlessly since 1944, we are the oldest democracy in the hemisphere. Never a coup and never an assassination.

Kudos to our judiciary, who misunderstood my reading of the findings of Transparency International a decade ago, where six per cent of respondents said that they, or someone they know, have paid a bribe to a judge. Numbers for the US were 15 per cent and for the United Kingdom 21.

We pride ourselves on the political neutrality of the judiciary. American judges in more than half of the jurisdictions get directly elected via campaigning. Just imagine if our parish court judges were known Labourites or Comrades.

And as we speak of judges, we have had a female chief justice, president of the Court of Appeal , director of public prosecutions, head of Customs, prisons, and of course, prime minister.

We can speak of other rights such as freedom of the press and the status of women in media.

But next time ... Jamaica, land we love.

Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.