"Oh Granny, what big teeth you have!"

-Little Red Riding Hood

ACCORDING to Royal Gazette Editor Bill Zuill, in his Monday editorial, "written efforts by supporters of Premier Dr. Ewart Brown to shore up his position may have the opposite effect ¿because they suggest that his position is weaker than may have been supposed."

Not so fast, Bill. This sounds a bit too much like wishful thinking.

If it is being suggested (and this is not entirely clear) that my three-part series on Dr. Brown are a part of some coordinated campaign sought and/or controlled by the Premier or anybody ¿other than myself- within the PLP, that would be false.

It is also false to say, as does Mr. Zuill further, that in writing this series I am essentially and only "trying to warn people off from challenging Dr. Brown."

Not quite, Bill.

I have argued that that the PLP should beware of the consequences of a premature and unjustified abandonment of the Party Leader on the basis of a long-winded and seemingly endless press campaign whose sole objective ¿it seems to me- is to alienate the Party's core supporters from Dr. Brown.

Mr.. Zuill's commentary, which he dubbed "The Politics of Division", ended with an invitation to the PLP to consider "just where the party would be if it had someone else as leader who was eager to bring people together rather than keep them apart." Again I have to call for evidence: where is the evidence that Dr. Brown is anywhere near as divisive in his intent as, let's say, The Royal Gazette editorial board itself.

I have not been "trying to warn people off from challenging Dr. Brown." My argument has been "don't try to displace Premier Brown unless you know that you can do better. For Bermuda and Bermudians first; and for the Party second."

At no time whatsoever have I perceived any need to "shore up Dr. Brown's position". I know that many will hate to hear this; but I strongly feel that Dr. Brown's "position" ¿at least as far as he is concerned -is just fine, thank you very much.

He will remain Premier until he is no longer wanted or until he feels that he has successfully laid the foundation for change at this critical juncture in our history; whichever is the earlier. It's really that simple. All of which explains why so many of those burdened by their own insecurities and those exasperated by the failure of their own strategies (tactics, really) to bear fruit in the form of breaking this man's spirit, choose to call our Premier "arrogant" and "elitist". They just don't get it.

First, a little confession.

While I hope that at least some of you will have actually read these columns in full (and I can think of a variety of reasons why you may not want to; it won't hurt my feelings) I should let you know that I am primarily writing for another audience.

The unborn student.

I am writing in hopes that some future scholar of political science, constitutional law, sociology or social psychology ¿perhaps as far away as 40 years from now- may find these pieces of some use in researching "Bermuda at the turn of the 21st Century."

Perhaps to help in answering the question "What went wrong?"

Or maybe, if we are lucky (and we would have to be extremely lucky, I think) , "How did it all work out so well?"

Ultimately, Bermuda is little more that a tiny archipelago of islands, initially settled by the accident of hurricane and, now as the result of human-generated climate change, arguably no more than a Category 4 or 5 hurricane away from extinction. You would have thought that that prospect by itself would bring us, as a people, closer together. Unfortunately, not yet.

More likely, however, if and/or when we do perish, it will be at our own hand.

National self-dismemberment ¿suicide if you will- will be the most likely cause of Bermuda's demise, I think. The possibilities seem endless.

Social unrest in Bermuda, if we continue to feed and nurture it by continuing to turn a blind eye to the realities of institutional racism, and economic disparity and inequality, is not likely next time to manifest itself in the traditional Bermuda way with angry mobs of young (and not so young) blacks burning down only their own neighbourhoods. Lest I be accused of incitement (and that is manifestly not my purpose) I will not expand on that here, save to say that "The Man" is no longer the man he once was.

Our young, black and white, are our most serious problem. We are failing them.

And what is failing them the most is the same "politics of division" which everybody is accusing everybody else of practicing.

Our working masses, by which I mean those who constitute the very foundation of this society, who put out the most energy in exchange for the least reward, continue to feel like foreigners in their own land. We still have a housing crisis; and it is not just a crisis for the Government to resolve.

The Bermudian political machine has now become a hate factory.

Those who lead this country, journalists and Opposition included, would do well to appreciate how grimly our young people, increasingly alienated from the Bermudian equivalent of "the American Dream", now view their future prospects. Attendance at the Westgate Correctional Facility is now increasingly a necessary rite of passage, and a badge of pride for too many of our young men.

Our angry young black men.

We now live in a day and age when it is no longer as simple as ' "us" versus "them", when it could all be left to trade union leaders and the more militant rank and file to apply the weapon of strategic industrial action in order to gain important concessions from the monied class. Whatever happened to "the Forty Thieves" anyway? Where and when did they go? When, exactly, did those nameless faces in the international business world become our new masters, assuming that is what they have become? They may jut be temporary guests; they may all leave at once ¿at least temporarily solving the housing crisis.

These apparent prophecies of doom are really not exaggerations. Put as simply as possible, as a country we have really been screwing up for some time. Without immediate, carefully-considered remedial action to reverse the effects of our blind arrogance, our intolerance, our self-imposed ignorance, and our refusal to sit together at the table to work it all out together, we and our childr..en will be in deep deep trouble or worse.

The socioeconomic entity that we and others have long called the "miracle" of Bermuda has evolved into a Trojan horse supplied by the Prince of Darkness himself.

While what is happening, rapidly, to Bermuda today mirrors to a great extent what is happening throughout the world, there is in that no excuse for our continuing to do nothing.

And, just for the record, our habit of ignoring our duty to do for ourselves while at the same time carping, nitpicking and blaming "the leadership" did not begin in the era of Ewart Brown.

This is meant to be the third, and final, installment of my three-parter on "the Enigmatic Dr. Ewart Brown". But, as to Dr. Brown himself, I think I have said all I planned to say.

As is now clear, it was not my intention to join the bandwagon by rendering some premature eulogy of Dr.. Brown or composing my version of the obituary of his administration. We really should beware anyway the misguided propaganda suggesting that the time has come for either. Those who are hell bent on bringing Brown down will probably find, sooner or later, that they are just that: hell bent. No leader can successfully lead without the support of followers. The fleet is only as fast as the slowest ship.

As there is only so much that any Premier of Bermuda can accomplish under the current political model, we would do well to pivot from the apparent enigma of Ewart Brown to the more meaningful discussion of how and why Bermuda's greatest threats are (i) its own political system and (ii) Bermudians.

I will, if permitted, devote my next few columns on precisely these matters in hopes that maybe just this once, we can stimulate informed and constructive discussion without rancor or namecalling. A tall order, I know, but the stakes are very high.

In that context, we would do well to consider carefully what I suggest are a few important home truths.

First, the colonial system under which we are socially, politically and constitutionally organised is designed to fail us and to subordinate our best interests to those who colonise and control us.

Second, under the current political model, no one actually either "runs the Government" or is "in charge".

Likewise, third, none of us has a monopoly on wisdom.

Fourth, we have all but completely rejected centuries of Christian nurturing by erasing from our consciousness the simple fact that of faith, hope and love, the greatest of these is love.