Ja: Airing out the laundry

WE HAVE previously commented on the tentacles of criminality in the Jamaican society and now feel obliged to comment also on the tentacles of decadence which are even more deadly. Criminality is rooted in greed. Decadence is rooted in evil and feeds upon itself. Criminality short-circuits legitimacy, sometimes with panache, even genius; decadence eats away the very foundation of morality, slowly and seductively.

The reek of decadence is in the air when school children in buses with dark, tinted windows are able to view blue movies on their way to school and to engage in sexual experimentation, the very recounting of the details of which would be itself pornographic. A foul smell lingers over the body of a 15-year-old student of Anchovy High School raped and killed, her body left on the doorstep of her home, her suspected attacker hacked to death by vigilantes. Something contaminates the air in a community where a pregnant 13-year-old gets into a fight with her 19-year-old boy friend and stabs him to death, the relationship one which relatives and neighbours accepted without qualms until tragedy struck.