Vexed Bermoothes

More infantile race baiting in Parliament on Friday night from Derrick Burgess during the Motion to Adjourn:

“Then you got Trevor Moniz over there asking what they did to George Scott. Come on, Trevor, you are the Portuguese consul and can’t speak a word of Portuguese — cut your nonsense out boy.  As Trevor Moniz calls it, ‘racist dribble’, every time somebody speaks about it, particularly when they look like us, they label it as racist. They don’t like to hear the truth. Get used to it.  You never thought that you would have to come to slaves’ children for an answer or a decision. That’s the problem: he doesn’t like that Mr. Speaker and he better get used to it.”

He was joined by Glenn Blakeney who called across at the UBP bench: “You are doing your master’s bidding — you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Our parliamentary discourse is in a pretty bad state.  They say the best defense is an outrageous offense.  The PLP seem to hurl the race epithets whenever someone asks questions or demands accountability hoping it will shut down the dialogue.  No wonder the country is in such a mess.

The PLP is fixated with point scoring and grinding away at 50 year old grudges.  The problem is that our customers see this behaviour and worry about the ongoing stability of Bermuda.  So, the PLP warhorses get to play the “big man” in an increasingly smaller country.  Smaller economy, smaller opportunity, and even smaller geographically for the teenage toughs who mimic this testosterone frenzy.

I think the Anglican Bishop, in his Hero’s Day sermon, hits the nail on the head:

“The question in my mind is whether this language, which was once the language of social justice and which has become the language of political rhetoric has now degenerated too often on the public level into the language of schoolyard belligerents.”