EDITOR, The Tribune.

Picture this:

It’s 1980’s Bahamas. The Internet does not exist. Cable has not yet arrived.

Satellite television is too expensive for some. Cellular telecommunications is in its infancy, and the first functional cell phone is a five pound plastic brick that costs as much as a scooter and is affordable only to American corporate executives, the so-called “Yuppie” – young urban professional; smartphones, touchscreens, social media, and video conferencing are the stuff of Science Fiction that you’re more likely to find in a Philip K Dick novel than in real life.

Your only sources of communication are the three pillars of Media: Radio, Television, and Print – newspapers and magazines.

In this “ancient” Bahamas, electronic media is controlled by the government, and there is only one TV station and channel: ZNS TV 13.

As for radio, your only choices are Power 104.5 on FM, whereas on the AM dial, you have either Radio Bahamas 1540, or Inspiration 1240, for those of us who are Christians and want the Word of God, along with some good, old fashioned Gospel music.

And there you are, a five, six, or seven-year-old school boy or girl, rushing home from school to catch Sesame Street at 4pm, the time television signed on in the Bahamas back then.

As a young, impressionable, and naive Bahamian child, watching Sesame Street and all those great and wonderful TV shows that made life in the 1980’s enjoyable, you were led to believe that America was the greatest and most wonderful country in the whole wide world, far greater than your own little Bahamas.

A place of unlimited “awesome-ness”, where you can do anything and be anyone! You dreamed of visiting America – heck, you wanted to live in America! Visit Disneyland! Drive a Ferrari like Don Johnson or Magnum P.I! Become a soldier like G.I. Joe! Live in a big mansion and drink wine and eat caviar (whatever that was) like a certain Donald Trump! Visit New York City and gaze at skyscrapers! Wow! America! Land of the Free, and home of The Brave! There you were, standing at attention whenever the American national anthem played, despite being a Bahamian; why not pay respect to such a great and wonderful country?

Flash forward to today, and the adult you now realises how badly you have been scammed, bamboozled, hoodwinked, run amok, and lied to, by the carefully orchestrated propaganda machine that is American media.

The America that you fell in love with as a child does not exist; it had never dawned on you that your childhood heroes did not look like you, a young, Black, Bahamian child, and as the old saying warned us: “never meet your heroes.”

You have met your “hero”, only to be utterly disappointed, saddened, and disgusted to the point of nausea.

You are left crestfallen from seeing the “great” America not as the universal symbol of freedom, liberty, justice for all, and equality (it’s in the national anthem, for God’s sake!), but as a hypocritical country plagued with racism, hate, intolerance, violence, and inequality.

A country where Black people, people who look exactly like you and 90% of the Bahamian population, cannot even exist without being subjected to horrendous treatment.

Now that you have cable, Internet, and Social Media, you can see what has been hidden from you.

The hate crimes.

The police shootings. The subsequent riots and demonstrations.

The mass shootings. The same Donald J Trump you idolised as a youngster watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous on ZNS, becomes the President of the United States, a president who will go down in history as the worst ever, a president who, instead of uniting America, only succeeded in further dividing it, while shamelessly catering to and invigorating the right wing and their agenda of bigotry.

You see and hear about the killings of unarmed Black men, women, and children by the police, and how the officers responsible are never convicted, or receives a light sentence.

The shocking contrasts between make believe on TV, and reality, comes not only as a rude awakening, but as the absolute rudest awakening.

Only then do you realise how truly blessed you are to not live in such a place, and only then do you start to appreciate your own country, its history, culture, and national heroes and people.

THE TRUTH

Nassau,

April 15, 2021.