I always marvel at people who say they’re “not into politics” because it suggests that they’re unaware that life is inherently political. Your race, your gender, your religion, your sexual orientation, your socioeconomic situation, the effects these things have on your life are all decided by and impacted by the politics of the land in which you live. For example, to be a black woman in T&T is a very different thing from being a black woman in, say, Ghana. To be an LGBTQI+ person many places in the world right now is a very different thing than to have been one at a time before the colonisers spread their religious ideology across the globe.

What I’m saying is, we’re all political, whether we know it or not. To exist in society is to be political, even if you do your damnedest to pretend otherwise. I know this and act accordingly. What I generally don’t do is pay any attention to what politicians say. Long before Trump was regularly flying in the face of common sense from one podium or another, I knew that a politician’s raison d’être is talking nonsense. It’s how they keep us distracted so they can freely profit from the power we grant them and make sure their friends, family and financiers do too. “Bread and circuses” is the name of the game because if they keep us fed just enough to get to work the next day (but not enough to allow us to slow down and take a look around) and entertained enough to maintain the barest will to live (again, so we can keep shelling out those tax dollars), then their business is FIXED.

Knowing all of that, I can’t see why I should care what nonsense any of them spout from the pulpits of their respective political forums. All the racist dog-whistling and classist gibberish aren’t for me, anyway. They’re for their diehard fans, the ones who will support literally anything they say if it means they’ll have a shot at digging out each other’s eye over the scraps that fall from their favourite politician’s table.

To each his own.

Lately, though, it seems like the politicians are firing shots at their own people—scoring own goals, if you will—and I’ve begun to wonder who they’re actually speaking to.

The beneficiary of public benevolence tasting the sole of their (no doubt expensive) footwear today is none other than our Honourable Minister of Sport.

Witness this stunning (in the literal sense), performance:

“Everyone wants eve­ry­thing for nothing and we all want the good life right now, but people right now don’t even have proper savings for themselves and far less for their children, but why is it so hard to sacrifice?” she asked rhetorically.

Gyasi Gonzales, “SHAMFA CRIES SHAME“, The Trinidad Express

Imagine standing before a nation of people whose taxes fund a lifestyle for you that many of them will never attain and fixing your lips to tell them that they failed to secure a future for themselves and their children. Imagine asking them why it’s so hard to sacrifice mere days after your government revealed a budget that mandates their sacrifice and almost three years into a pandemic your government is passionately pretending is over.

As if the people most likely to be hurt by the budget weren’t already sacrificing long before the pandemic.

This is why I’m wondering WHO exactly these politicians are speaking to these days. One side of our depressing political spectrum makes it abundantly clear who they’re not addressing with the constant racist dogwhistling. They’re obviously not my cup of tea (cause it’s me they’re whistling about), but at least I know where I stand with them.

The other side, though… I have questions for them.

The percentage of our population living below the poverty line varies depending on who you ask, but according to the Commonwealth Foundation (a non-partisan think tank), it’s at about 20%. That’s nearly 280,000 people. In case you were wondering, the international poverty line is US$1.90 per day. Surely, the Honorable Minister wasn’t speaking to them because surely she doesn’t expect those people to have saved for the future on less than TT$13.00 a day. They can’t even get from Chaguanas to Port of Spain on that.

Perhaps she was talking about the minimum wage workers, but considering that $17.50 an hour works out to $2,800 per month if you work eight-hour days, five days a week, four weeks a month… I doubt she seriously thinks that segment of the population has healthy savings accounts either. Not in this economy.

Back in 2018, we knew that 77% of the population was earning less than $6,000 per month. I can’t imagine anyone in that large group has much to save after spending at least a third of it on rent alone.

So maybe she was speaking to the remaining 23% who are earning more than $6,000 per month. That includes everyone earning between $6,001 and tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars per month. Let’s assume that those on the lower end of that mind-boggling scale aren’t also struggling to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families in circumstances where everything but salaries is getting more expensive. I imagine they already have enough sense to figure out that their dollars (which are diminishing in value as the price of commodities increase) won’t stretch as far going forward. I doubt they need the Honourable Minister to point this out to them because they are full-grown adults who have been living in this increasingly ridiculous world for some time.

The bigger question, though, is whether those are the people raising the loudest alarm about the pain on the horizon. Are the people who know they can swallow the increases and still cover their bills the ones we need to worry about? Is Minister Cudjoe at all concerned about the people who don’t know how they’re going to make it to work when taxi fares inevitably increase while their paycheck remains the same?

It doesn’t seem that way.

Regardless of who these politicians think they’re actually speaking to, regardless of how loudly their dedicated (if severely misguided) cheer sections are screaming, I think it’s important that they remember that we all can hear them loud and clear.

And what we’re hearing? It eh sounding too good, nah. It eh sounding too good at all.