DE SNIJD / Armand Snijders
I have written about safety before and I mainly meant the personal safety of individual or even all Surinamese people. That we are safe from all brutal criminals in the country and from the sometimes erratic actions of politicians, for example. But this time I especially want to talk about the safety of the entire world and therefore of all earthlings.
I am usually always optimistic, but with unreasonable leaders in the White House, I see no other way than to raise this issue here. It is actually out of sheer frustration that I do this because I am increasingly concerned that crazy Donald is really on his way to dooming the world. While I and every other citizen of the world have to watch, completely helpless, as he manages to achieve this with his erratic, completely unpredictable behavior.
The world has never actually been a place where peace reigns everywhere. Traditionally, peoples have always attacked each other because of religion, race, power and also the urge for more wealth. We are used to conflicts here and there – whether permanent or temporary -. Unfortunately, that is part of life and is not surprising, given that the many billions of people, all with their own wishes, dreams and desires, are crammed together on one planet.
So Aunt Jenny: take your chance now to put the SLM out of its misery, without losing face.
But at the moment things are in danger of going very wrong. And all because of one weirdo in the person of Donald. Who, by the way, has found an ally in the now derailed Benjamin from Israel who also does not hesitate to kill thousands and thousands of innocent children, women and men. Donald also has no qualms about killing and creating chaos all over the world, all under the motto of making America great again. Nearly a century ago we had a certain Adolf who suffered from at least the same form of delusions of grandeur and the world knew where that led.
However, American overconfidence is doomed to failure, because the rest of the world is of course not backward either. At least, I hope so. Because there must come a time when this rest says: ‘and now that nonsense is over!’ The fact that the Americans do not or cannot do that says a lot about them. A president with so much power – who is also able to flout international laws and rules and murder with impunity – should of course not be in the White House, but in prison. This is how almost the entire world thinks about it, only in Yankee country entire tribes apparently don’t think so.
The recent misery in Iran is a fire that was started by Trump personally and that fire was partly stoked by the aforementioned genocide perpetrator Benjamin. It has far-reaching consequences for the rest of the world, including Suriname. Because the faltering oil and gas supply causes a lot of uncertainty and every day we notice it at the pump and in the prices in the shops – they take every opportunity to implement increases, but when oil prices fall, you as a consumer hardly notice anything.
Flying is also becoming increasingly expensive, which is not positive for the already ailing SLM. But perhaps this is the time to close down this bankrupt place and rebuild it from the ground up, as has been recommended for years. At least now they can do that with the excuse that the impending Third World War is the cause of this, not the mismanagement of successive governments. So Aunt Jenny: take your chance now to put the SLM out of its misery, without losing face.
I don’t think it will end well; and I don’t just mean with the SLM but especially with the world – at least as long as Donald can continue to act like a dictator who spares no one and nothing. Anyone who thinks that is out of the loop. The worst part is that all this mainly stems from egocentric self-interest, with Donald enriching himself at the expense of the rest of the world. He doesn’t care one bit about how the rest is affected. He is thus causing the decline of the United States – and ours too, if we are not careful.
The most drastic global economic crisis ever awaits us, including great chaos, bank runs, money, energy and food shortages, looting, stagflation, unrest and much violence. One day you wake up and nothing works anymore! Not even the coffee maker! A major hack or power outage brought everything to a standstill. If you have one of grandma’s old wooden manual coffee grinders somewhere, you will be fine. But if your coffee machine refuses, this also applies to pumping stations, production processes, ATMs, elevators, lighting, surveillance, alarms, garage doors, computers, televisions or water from the tap.
If you no longer have a connection with the rest of the world and cannot access anything, it becomes annoying. The chaos will be complete. The thought alone makes us very vulnerable. It is therefore time for the world to collectively distance itself from these policies. It is simply colonialism, which we as a country and people, together with so many others, have fought against for centuries.
What is happening here is not that bad compared to the rest of the world. So let’s cling to that – and laugh about it every now and then.
Fortunately, things are not that far yet and the above doomsday scenario is for now only a script for a very bad disaster film. There’s not much we can do to stop it from happening. We can only hope that in more than two years’ time – when there are another American presidential elections – the world will still be largely standing and that Donald’s successor will have everything in order.
Until then, I will mainly focus on the state of affairs in Suriname again. Also to prevent me from drawing you into the gloomy vision of the future that I occasionally have in mind. What is happening here is not that bad compared to the rest of the world. So let’s just cling to that – and laugh about it every now and then.
