When bad thinkers want to control our lives
In a letter to the editor in this paper last Sunday, ‘It’s Wrong to Compare God and Science’, one Stephen Semigabo engaged in some wild stone-throwing, which ordinarily would not deserve any attention.
However, even the most outlandish reasoning is sometimes spread to establish various forms of misrule and plain bad manners; from dictatorship to anti-social nightclub and church noise.
Citizens who think and reason badly can lure governments to follow their bad ideas.
Also, rulers who think badly can manipulate and infect society. Sometimes whole undesirable ‘traditions’ are established.
For instance, in early post-independence Uganda, two constitutional violators, Milton Obote and Idi Amin, started the habit of militarising our supposedly democratic processes; and the habit of dismantling whatever the new ruler finds in place; and the habit of gutter-level political intrigue; and the habit of criminalising political Opposition; and the habit of dying to die in office.
These habits grew out of bad ideas, but they are now so embedded in Uganda’s political story that they are virtually part of our ‘culture’. Hence, when a figure like Bobi Wine challenges President Museveni, many people ask whether he is dishonest enough; or has enough capacity for intrigue and violence to dislodge Museveni.
They expect Museveni to ‘win’ again, because (as he sometimes boasts) he controls the capacity for violence in the machinery of the State; and the money; and Parliament; and the Electoral Commission, which is expected to act dishonestly throughout the electoral process.
After the general election, Uganda will have a staggering 523 MPs, a mob of ministers, RDCs, presidential advisors and other dubiously titled officials; products of bad thinking.
So, like Obote and Amin, Museveni’s grotesque creations also invite a future ruler to dismantle them. When Sunday Monitor columnist Joseph Ochieno lamented last Sunday that his party, UPC, was suffering under its ‘president’, Jimmy Akena, Obote’s son, you instinctively reflected that even without Museveni, Akena could have picked some fascism from Obote’s very heartbeat.
Thinking badly is not restricted to politics. It often accompanies religiosity.
Returning briefly to Stephen Semigabo’s letter, if God is “the Father of all spirits”, then God may have some undesirable genes, or poor nurturing ways, having Fathered “the devil, the father of lies and rebellion against the living God”.
If Semigabo rises above such hogwash, all these spirits (including God) will look more like imaginary figures man created to account for our complex existence.
Asking science why chimpanzees did not evolve into modern humans is no smarter than asking why beetroots are not carrots.
Corona days have made some religious extremists restless. Apparently, seeing churches are closed, Semigabo cannot tolerate an environment where most governments and sensible people have placed more hope in scientific research and hygienic rituals than in traditional religious worship based on indemonstrable beliefs and unreliable ancient scriptures.
Because he thinks life and man are very special projects that only God could have magically created, and science is not allowing us to worship that God in the usual way, Semigabo lashes out against Charles Darwin as at an old enemy he assumes we all know, insolently referring to him as the “last fool who came up with the evolution theory…”
At bottom, in his crude reckless way, Semigabo wants governments to make anti-scientific political decisions based on his bad religious reasoning, regardless of the potential harm to the rest of us. It is often recommended that we let idiots be idiots, but why should we be forced to sink with them?
Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
[email protected]
