Ever since I was a child, my favourite folktale has been “The Emperor’s New Clothes“.

Initially, I found it funny to imagine an entire empire of adults (including the emperor himself) being fooled into praising invisible haberdashery, to the extent that only a single child was brave enough to state the obvious.

It became less amusing as I entered adulthood and realised that the story was less a comedy than a cautionary tale. These days, I often feel like that little kid: confused, looking on as adults around me pretend that the very obvious nonsense around us makes perfect sense.

And, on some level, I get it. Life is hard enough. Even if you work yourself half to death, the money you earn is worth less every day, even as your time never seems to become more valuable. The place is HOT. Traffic is STINK. Our roads? DEPLORABLE. On top of everything else, crime seems RAMPANT.

So, who has time to study what foolishness a government minister is on?

The thing is… the ministerial foolishness is why things are as bad as they are. The ministers (and, importantly, the people who fund them) have a vested interest in you not realising that.

So, they do nothing meaningful to address the inflation, the traffic, the roads, the crime, the healthcare, the education, etc. Because as long as you’re busy fighting up with the insanity of daily life, you doh have time to study WHY things are like this and whether they can change.

This is also why they periodically chook racist, sexist, classist, [insert other “ists” here] bacchanal. If we’re busy fighting each other over which instrument best represents our nation or whether certain people deserve to be shot dead by police, we’ll never notice that we share common interests that are being undermined by those we elect to serve them.

And then there’s the fact that many of us don’t really understand our relationship with our leaders. It’s understandable in a post-colonial nation (that isn’t really all that post colonialism). I mean, some of us are genuinely wishing to revert to colonial status as we speak (and calling for us to revere those who oppressed us), which says a lot about what our education system has taught us about that dark period.

Others haven’t quite made the mental transition from monarchy to democracy. So that, after we stain our fingers for a political party that has promised us the moon and stars, we can’t fathom holding them accountable when they refuse to deliver.

This last group is more insidious than they seem. They’re the ones who pop up anytime anyone dares to criticise the powers that be for failing in their mandates. “Allyuh wah de guavament tuh do everyting,” they grumble. “Allyuh too entitled and ungrateful,” they chastise, echoing the excuses of the same government that promised to do those very things in exchange for votes. If allowed, they’ll derail any conversation about change, digging their heels in on their stance that we as individuals have to fix the things that the government repeatedly claims it, with its billion dollar budgets, cannot do.

A subset of them will even admit that the government is failing while throwing up their hands and declaring that there’s nothing to be done about it because that’s the way it is.

Whichever way they swing, their message is essentially the same: There’s nothing to be done about these individuals to whom we hand power every five years. To attempt to hold them accountable is, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, bordering on high treason.

And round and round we go as things worsen.

The good news is that things can be improved and the first step is easier than you might think. Relatively speaking, anyway. You can do it from the comfort of your home using the very device on which you’re reading this post.

Talk.

Dassit.

I know what you’re thinking: Talk? What good would that do? Talk doh change nuttin.

Aaaaactually, talk changes a lot and your government knows it. That’s why they keep that suspiciously broad sedition law on the books.

Talk is how people come to realise that they’re not the only ones facing a particular struggle. It’s how they come to grasp that the things they’ve been told aren’t quite true. It’s how they come to envision that better is possible. And it’s how they begin to hold their leadership accountable for failing (or refusing) to strive for it.

And, again, your leadership knows this. That’s why you’ll notice that, the moment there’s enough talk, they begin deflecting, misdirecting, and shifting blame. And it often works. Especially with backup from the “Allyuh want de guavament tuh do everyting/dais de way it is” crew derailing every conversation.

When it doesn’t work, the government might actually swing into (limited) action. Not necessarily enough to address the overarching issue, but enough to pacify enough of the masses until they can fling the next bit of bacchanal bait into our midst to distract us.

And that’s effective too.

It’s worked for 62 years. Long enough for our hospitals to be a mess, our schools to become dilapidated, our roads to disintegrate, and our water and electrical infrastructure to become woefully outdated.

The question is, how long will it continue to work? Or, more importantly, how long will we continue to allow it to work?

How long will we continue to pretend to like the emperor’s new clothes?