It is not dictatorship that brings out the worst in our people. It is freedom

Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria at Milimani Law Court on April 13, 2017 during the hearing of an incitement to violence case filed against him. PHOTO | PAUL WAWERU | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • At a deeper level, what we are witnessing is a severe deterioration in public manners.

  • Post-adolescents who talk trash at public forums are calling attention to a defect they have.

  • The conceit that the new constitution would tame our communal hatreds has turned out to be just that – a conceit.

There are standpoints decent people must take that should not be glibly judged according to political leanings. For they touch on common decency. And decent people have a duty to speak out.

In Anglo-Saxon, and more so American mores, the term son-of-a-bitch is a fairly common form of abuse which is not taken too seriously.

Donald Trump no doubt uses it every day on those who irritate him. However, it is a totally different thing in African cultures, where mothers are held to be absolutely off-limits to any calumny.

Their honour is inviolate. They are the objects of our highest respect, the nurturers of our lives. Sons, especially, will go bananas – and rightly so – when their mothers’ names are dragged through the mud for whatever reason.

A bitch, as we all know, is a female dog, usually a sexually lewd one. Even among native English speakers, to call a woman a bitch is to be unforgivably rude.

MORAL DEPRAVITY

The smear has a worse sting than referring to a disagreeable man as a SoB. The equivalence being insinuated by some with calling a public figure mkora, or mchawi, or mganga, or mwenda wazimu, or kifaranga cha komputa, is simply off the mark.

We are on a different level of moral depravity altogether when we slur a respectable old mother as a stray dog. It becomes even more reprehensible when the target is somebody who never involves herself in the public political sphere.

Mark you, this is not just politics. It is not just about criminality either, which we leave to the courts to judge upon. It is about a fatal moral debit in our society.

The transference of immature campus hooliganism to mainstream politics is one problem. Yet at a deeper level, what we are witnessing is a severe deterioration in public manners.

SELF RESPECT

This also points to a dereliction in parenting. Self-respect, moderation, and correct adult guidance are virtues that no longer apply.

Post-adolescents who talk trash at public forums are calling attention to a defect they have. It could most likely be in their upbringing and socialisation. Or it could even be psychological. It is difficult to conclude otherwise when, most incredibly, you demand apologies from the same people you have infuriated with your utterances.

Double standards? I don’t think so. MP Moses Kuria already faces several court cases of hate speech. So do other political figures from across the political divide.

The conceit that the new constitution would tame our communal hatreds has turned out to be just that – a conceit. If anything, these hatreds have only become more toxic.

DICTATORSHIP

When you think of it, it is not dictatorship that brings out the worst in us. It is freedom. Don’t get me wrong; freedom is a beautiful thing. Unfortunately, simpletons are easily overwhelmed by the vibes as to become a threat to themselves and to society.

George Bush Senior once said the one person he will never forgive is conservative Washington Post columnist George F. Will, who had likened him to a lapdog. Bush has kept his vow.

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Hugh Hefner, the founding publisher of Playboy magazine who died on Wednesday aged 91, was not merely a pornographer in the strict sense of the word.

FIDEL CASTRO

Turn aside the centre-spread where those timeless nudes were displayed; the other pages contained some of the most sublime literary articles in world journalism.

My best was an earth-shaking 1980s interview with Fidel Castro which left me convinced the Cuban leader understood American society with a knowledge many Americans themselves did not have.

Playboy’s first cover girl in 1953 was Marilyn Monroe, considered up to this day the essence of American femininity and beauty. Along the way Hefner helped to nudge on the 1960s sexual revolution and the women’s cultural emancipation movement in the West.

He leaves a far greater, if controversial, legacy than his celebrated centrefolds.

Warigi is a socio-political commentator [email protected]