Something wonderful is now taking place in today’s Bahamas.

That something-wonderful-thing has to do with how it now arises that there are so very many Bahamians [especially women] who are braving the elements, brooking no tear and saying that they are sick and tired of the abuse being meted out to some of their children in distress.

And so, today [and at long last] there is an emergent sense that – for whatever reason – Bahamians are finding their tongues and they are saying it loud:- Enough of the violence!

But while this is well and good, we are also minded to let these same people know that, we are not impressed when some of these same people would live off the proceeds of crime committed by their errant sons and daughters.

And so and yet again, we decry cloaking of wrongdoing and crime by any and all who would live parasitically off their fellow-Bahamian or who would [if given the chance] do so off the tourist unlucky enough to cross paths with that brute.

But even as we take note of this emergent good news, we are constrained to report that there are other trends tending towards havoc; this so, because of the fact that things are tough; that they are also rough and that there is currently few signs that they will get better any time soon.

Like other right-thinking people around the world, the vast majority of the Bahamian people crave commodious lives for themselves and their loved ones – ways of living that allow them and their brood to aspire and achieve some of their goals.

There is today any number of men [yes, Bahamian fathers, no less] who also bear their own crosses as they find themselves quite unable to feed or care for their children, there we have it: – one generation bequeathing a poisoned chalice to another!

In neither case are we referencing some fantasy or the other.

To the contrary, we are noting the agonies currently being experienced by both men and women and their children as they feel the hammer-blows of what is euphemistically described as ‘the rising cost of living’.

The facts are clear:- They show that poverty is on the march in this place; that children are feeling its brunt and that some of them dare not cry out in these last and evil days.

This phenomenon is nothing more and nothing less than a type of social death on the installment plan where — day by dreadful day — more and more of our people find themselves reduced, diminished and humiliated.

It is perhaps this factor – among others such – that might explain some of the rage that currently saturates social life in not only today’s Bahamas, but that of any number of other societies in our region where hundreds of thousands of our people now live in conditions that are perfectly unfit for beings made in the image of the Almighty.

It is also widely known [and agreed], tens of thousands of our people are also up to their gills in debt; with many of them obliged to witness their lives being upended by loss of their jobs, mortgage foreclosures and a myriad of other troubles.

And so, there it goes rich, poor and those in the middle are in the same boat!

Indeed, one of the more interesting facts of life in today’s Bahamas has to do with the painful reality that there are so very many Bahamians who do not have a clue concerning the extent to which they are complicit in fomenting and fermenting discord, distress and perhaps even an early death for their children.

Here we need only cite the fact that on any given day right outside practically any public school you find vendors and other such market-ladies selling all manner of greasy goo and all manner of sweets and all manner of drinks which – when taken all together – serve as precursors to diabetes, cancer, morbid obesity and a host of other chronic non-communicable diseases.

In short, these children are being abused.

And in short, this is happening as practically everyone in a position to make a difference – inclusive of the Ministers of Health, Education and Social Welfare – do little more than chat and prattle about the extent to which child abuse is on the rise.

There remains that vexing issue concerning the public’s barbaric acceptance and approval of corporal punishment as a means of so-called discipline when it is nothing short of torture.

And here is no doubting the fact that many who would torture and degrade do so because they were once upon a dread time so victimized.

Somehow or the other, this dread cycle must be arrested.