Pulling Vines and Election Politics

For no good reason other than it needed to be done, I spent a significant part of the day yesterday cleaning the yard - and in this yard, that means sometimes using the cutlass, sometimes pulling the weed roots out, and sometimes pulling vines. And the pulling of vines is an art.

The easy way to pull on vines is to not do it right - this is to simply rip off the weaker pieces and leave the rest. The best way to do it involves following the smaller sections to the bigger sections, following those sections to the even larger sections - continuing this process until you find a base of the vine sturdy enough to allow you to pull the vine off the trees and fences. If one is fortunate, the base will be found - and uprooting the vine in this manner is the most effective way of getting rid of the busy network of vines - a busy network of confused issues intermingled amongst things of value. To make matters worse, some issues have thorns that can damage the very things that they cling to as they are pulled away - and one's hand as well (I have evidence).

Pull the vine wrong, you lose some of the things of value.

Pull the vine right, you save the most of the value of the things they cling to.

There is no perfect way to pull the vine.

So it is with politics. There has been a lot of pulling and tugging on vines of late - I was subjected to paid jingles and advertisements on the radio last night, and most of the things said seemed like the cosmetic pulling of vines.

Some of the roots of the problems in Trinidad and Tobago politics are indeed thorny - so thorny, I suppose, that politicians fear to hurt themselves pulling on the vines. That is understandable. Some rip and tear at the vines, perhaps destroying some of the value in the name of killing vines.

At the end of the day, though, Trinidad and Tobago has plenty of thorny vines - and the best choice of gardener won't be those that allowed the vines to thrive unattended for so long that they choke the things of value. If they haven't learned in the past decades, they probably will not learn - and it has been suggested that they cultivate the vines to assure more gardening work. I do not know. What I do know is that if you want to clean your yard properly, you need to get to the root of problems, get your hands dirty and get a few thorns stuck in your hands.

Going into the National Election tomorrow, I wonder how people will want their yard kept. I have a feeling that they will get the gardeners who cultivate the vines because they have have never had a good gardener. Looking at the options, as Nicholas Laughlin quotes B.C. Pires (no citation):

It's entirely Trinidadian, as jokey as it is heartbreaking, that, with three political parties, instead of finding one to vote for, we should end up with two to vote against.

Sharp tongues do not pull vines - calloused hands do. Long ago, this was a country of calloused hands and sharp tongues. The sharp tongues remain, and the vines... the vines are an ignored reminder of the need for calloused hands.

As E. B. White wrote in 1944:

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.