The country’s per capita fear index has soared

Fear of the unknown coupled with uncertainty is fertile ground for multiple media speculation which contributes to a vicious “loop” connecting to superabundance of pathological suspicion.

People, as they grow less prosperous while a few indulge in what the historical hyperactive NRM ideologues referred to as “primitive accumulation”, the wretched of this country grow justifiably suspicious of literally everything.

When greedy political entrepreneurs, flamboyant adventurists, live-wire extremists, sensational jokers Katikkiro Peter Charles Mayiga calls “Muloddokaayi Nkuuwe”  tout irresponsible speculation as “news” there’s a problem. The contagion of sosolomidiya seems to have spread everywhere.

Citizens have been duped into suspecting whatever seems probable by believing even what appears incredible. A thing isn’t necessarily true, correct or legitimate because people seem to die of or for it.  

In a loopy world, irrationally held truths elicited from half-truths and touted as credible, so called counterfactuals are more harmful than reasoned errors. Some things are strange but surprisingly true.

Truth is always strange; sometimes stranger than fiction. Suffice to understand that truth is never pure, and is rarely simple because it can never be told so as to be understood.

Huh, reminds me of the professor who was sacked for telling his students that “professors aren’t meant to be understood”! Anyhow, that we devote ourselves to God is seen in living as though there were no God! But with the recent spike in speculation if God didn’t exist it would be necessary to invent Him!

The country’s per capita fear index has soared. These times try people’s souls but like superstition, suspicion seems to’ve tragically become the religion of feeble minds.

One of the most universally shared vice is gossip. It’s vicariously enjoyed and fortified by the fact that nothing amongst mankind is swifter than rumour.

Funky entrepreneurs have commercialised it and some people have bought it. Housewives used to spread it over the hedge. Today, everybody indulges in the “vice” over smart phones while at work, in a taxi, over beer in their favourite watering holes [pubs].

On our shores, where the sublime and the ridiculous are so nearly related, ordinary folks have turned themselves into self-appointed current affairs and even security experts.

The problem is; talking and eloquence aren’t the same. To speak and speak well are two different things. Words once spoken or, as public editor Mr Charles  Bichachi tells us, uploaded onto the internet can’t be recalled because they leave “footprints”.

Unfortunately, the most not widely shared commodity is commonsense yet every one of us is convinced they’re well supplied with it! Isn’t oppression feared more than tigers? Who’s feared is hated; who’s loved is usually maligned.

Patriotism? My foot! “To love your country, thy country ought to be lovely”. In labouring to be brief , I become obscure.

 Allow me quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “I am reminded of four definitions; a radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air; a conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk; a reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards; a liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest of his head”

! If it’s reorganization the Party Retreats are seeking, the novice MPs oughtn’t embellish Benjamin Disraeli’s doctrine too strictly.

“Damn your principles! Stick to your party. You’re in Parliament because of the support the party gave you”; is one way of ensuring oneself a single term in Parliament these days.

The “tragedy” of creation which stretches up to our times is that the highest civility has never loved the torrid zones in which we are domiciled. In the temperate zones though, wherever snow falls there’s civil freedom; but where the banana grows man is cruelly sensual.

As long as our civilization is essentially of primitive accumulation, exclusive fences, rumour-mongering instead of work, it’ll be mocked by delusions.

Mr Baligidde is a former diplomat.