One of the more bizarre Anguillian news events
of the past few weeks involved US President Donald Trump.
On 23 August, a well-known US journalist,
author, historian, and public speaker by the name of Paul
Street wrote a tongue in cheek
article on his Blog. The article is a satire
on Donald Trump’s style of international diplomacy by tweet. It is headlined, “Trump Threatens Anguilla
with Thermonuclear Liquidation.”
Some weeks earlier, a US
tourist in Anguilla was charged with the manslaughter of a local hotel
worker. The story made the TV news in
the USA. Paul Street imagines an angry
Trump tweeting in support of the US tourist, “They won’t be happy, The
Anguillians, when their little ‘nation’ gets turned into a steaming pile of
radioactive ash.”
He imagines Trump thinking “The
Aguinados or whatever the Hell they call themselves are not capable of holding
a fair trial for some rich white guy they probably hate just because he’s an
American who worked hard for his money.”
He then imagines Trump
warning, “If Agwala doesn’t drop this, a lot of people could die. What have they got on Agwano, 10,000 people or
something like that? . . . I don’t want to wipe out 10,000 people, even if they
don’t belong there in their first place. I really don’t. But I can do it and I will if I have to.”
Anguillians don’t do sarcasm,
or satire, very well. We sometimes fail
to appreciate literary allusions and figures of speech for what they are. No matter how preposterous, we think they are
factual pronouncements. As a result of this
trait, we are gullible to a fault, something our politicians use to their
advantage. Perhaps that is the reason most
of our poets’ work does not progress as it should. The poetic mind is foreign to Anguilla. Good Anguillian fiction is too often the
preserve of the non-natives among us. If
it is fiction, we may often assume that it must be worthless. This is an aspect of Anguillian culture that
needs explaining.
Literal interpretation of a satirical
essay may have its roots in Anguilla's history with the island’s Baptist Church
faith and tradition. The Anguillian
version of the Baptist religion is of the fundamentalist sort. Our Churchgoers belong to the US Bible-belt
variety of Christianity. We attend
churches with such titles as ‘Church of God’ and ‘Seventh Day Adventist.’ These are typical made-in-America devoted
evangelicals.
In the 1920s, unemployed
Anguillian men sought work among the US-owned sugar-cane plantations of Cuba
and the Dominican Republic. The plantation
owners mainly followed the Protestant Christian religions of the southern
states of the US where they came from.
The Anguillian workers brought their new-fangled religions back when
they returned home. The sleepy, old
Anglican and Methodist churches were pushed into second place. The shiny, new US Protestant fundamentalist
denominations caught root and flourished.
Since then, many Anguillians
are taught, from the time we can walk, that the Bible, particularly the Old
Testament, is literally true. When
Joshua commanded the sun to stand still so his forces could conquer Jericho,
that is historical truth being expounded.
Maybe, the argument goes, in those ancient days the sun really did go
around the earth.
God made the Earth on 14
October 4115 BC, or 6,119 years ago, according to the numbered dates in the
Biblical text. The fossil record is
evidence of the one great flood. When
Moses parted the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to escape from Pharaoh’s
forces, the sea really did stand still until they were all safe. There is, in the eyes of the Anguillian
pastors and their flocks, nothing but the literal truth in the story.
A people who literally
interpret all they read may understand Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”
to be a recommendation for cannibalism.
The decision to be a person of faith is deeply personal. Seeing biblical stories through the eyes of
faith is a time-honoured choice. But
this does not mean that all stories are literally true.
With a mindset narrowed and
constricted in this way, the average Anguillian could not reasonably be
expected to read Paul Street’s article other than as a factual narrative of
Donald Trump’s threats to Anguilla.
We fail to see any humour in
the piece about Trump’s style of government.
Comments posted at the foot of the article are mainly from Anguillians. High school teachers posted in the comments
section of Mr Street’s article emotional objections to Donald Trump’s threats
as relayed by him. One writes, “I
can’t believe the British Government will sit by and allow this fool to
threaten our beautiful island . . . I can’t express anymore the anger I am
feeling.”
A
prominent politician (and part-time Baptist preacher) spent nearly three hours live
on radio condemning Trump’s threats. He
asked the British government to position battleships around Anguilla if they
had any true commitment to the safety of the island’s people. Prayers for the island’s deliverance were
offered up at Sunday church services. We
all held our collective breath and waited for the bomb.
