The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

THE recent letter by Latrae Rahming in your daily on September 1, 2025, on the power of a nation’s internal dialogue presents a compelling, yet ultimately incomplete, argument. While the philosophical premise, that words shape reality has merit, it risks becoming a dangerous abstraction if divorced from concrete action and historical truth, especially when articulated by those in positions of persuasive power.

The central flaw in the argument is the confusion of correlation for causation. The examples of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Lee Kuan Yew are not proof that words alone alter destiny. They prove that words backed by decisive action and empowering policies create change. Churchill’s defiance was matched by the mobilisation of a military and a nation. Lee Kuan Yew’s rhetoric of discipline was enforced through sweeping economic and educational reforms. The words were the catalyst, but the action was the chemical reaction. Without the subsequent, tangible empowerment of the people, inspiring words are merely performance, no different from the empty promises of a motivational speaker. A nation cannot be spoken into greatness; it must be built, and its people must be given the genuine tools to participate in that building.

Furthermore, the call to reframe our struggle ignores the profound, unhealed wounds that form the true foundation of our national psyche. The “culture of endurance” rightly celebrated is only the outward story. The inward story is one of generational trauma from slavery and a colonialism that was not merely replaced but often reinvented. To speak of resilience without acknowledging this deep, painful inheritance is to build on unstable ground. A positive national dialogue cannot be a fantasy imposed from the top; it must be an honest conversation that confronts this painful past to truly understand our present challenges. We are where we are not because we lack positive thinking, but because we have too often been denied the unvarnished truth of our condition by leaders unwilling to trust us with it.

This leads to the most critical point: the source of the message. The call for a new national narrative rings hollow when it comes from the chief propagandist of a governing party. The role of a political communicator is, by definition, to shape perception and manage reality in favor of their administration. When that same person advises the populace that their perception of despair is a linguistic flaw, it feels less like empowerment and more like gaslighting—a dismissal of the very real experiences of the masses as a mere “misperception.” The people’s despair is not a vocabulary problem; it is a response to the observable realities of their lives. To ask them to change their words without first changing those realities is an insult to their intelligence and their struggle.

Therefore, the true battlefield is not solely in the Bahamian mind, but in the halls of power where actions are taken. The rhetorical questions posed, “How do you speak to yourself about your country?”, must first be answered by the leadership itself. Do they see the people as capable partners to be empowered, or as subjects to be managed? A leader’s words are not just declarations; they must be a pathway, a covenant of action for which they hold themselves accountable.

We await leaders who do not hide behind inspiring language but use it to launch a genuine break from the systems of the past. The very systems that maintain an underclass and perpetuate inequality. We await a leader who will not just borrow the language of hope, but who will enact a new social contract that truly allows the Bahamas to progress Forward, Onward, Upward, Together. This progress will be achieved not by obscuring reality with words, but by using honest words as a foundation for courageous action. Only then will our internal dialogue be one of authentic hope, born not of obligation but of observable, tangible change.

An advocate for true Bahamian Independence and a future we can believe in.

B AZZAN JOHNSON

Freeport, Grand Bahama

September 2, 2025.