The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

EVERY single day, our newspapers deliver the same gut-wrenching headlines. Murder. Rape. Child molestation. Armed robbery.

We turn the page and find stories of suicide, homelessness, and unemployment gnawing away at the soul of our nation. Our youth, our very own children, are crying out through these headlines, and yet, where is the uproar?

Where is the collective wail of a people who have had enough?

I will tell you where it is. It has been replaced by a terrifying, deafening numbness. We have become a society that can read about the brutal destruction of human life over our morning coffee, sigh, and then turn to the sports pages. The sheer volume of horror has exhausted our capacity to feel. Our alarm bells are broken. We are sleepwalking through a nightmare of our own making.

And then, there is the matter of the dogs.

Please, hear me clearly. I believe the cruel and senseless killing of an animal by law enforcement or the abuse bestowed on another in a washing machine is wrong. It is something that should stir our righteous anger.

But I must ask this painful question. Why does the brutal killing of a dog and the abuse of another ignite a firestorm of letters, opinions, and front-page outrage demanding “better protection,” while the systematic failure to protect an entire generation of Bahamian children is met with a collective shrug?

We muster passionate, organised compassion for voiceless animals. Still, our own voiceless children, failed by inadequate schools, empty bellies, unstable homes, and a future with no open doors, are reduced to grim statistics we have trained ourselves to ignore.

This is not because we love animals more than our children. It is because saving a dog feels like a problem we can solve. It is a clear, simple battle of good versus evil that doesn’t force us to look in the mirror. To truly sit with the horror of a child being violated or a young man gunned down is to confront a rotting in our own foundation. It forces us to ask terrifying questions such as who have we become? And what have we allowed our society to breed?

That level of soul-searching is terrifying, so we bury our grief and redirect our moral fury to a safer, less implicating target. It is a psychological escape hatch, and we are all fleeing through it while our nation burns.

We speak of failing our youth, but those words have become a polite, empty ritual. Let’s name the true violence. We are failing to provide adequate schools that inspire rather than warehouse. We are failing to ensure that a child can go to sleep without the gnawing pain of hunger. We are failing to provide housing that is a sanctuary, not a war zone. We are failing to build a bridge from graduation to a life of dignity and purpose.

And for those who fought hard and achieved a higher education? They are met with an economy that has no place for them, a bleak message that their ambition was a fool’s errand. This is a profound, systemic betrayal. It extinguishes the very hope a society needs to survive, and the silence that follows is not peace. It is the sound of a public spirit taking its last, rasping breath.

I refuse to believe we don’t care. I believe we are traumatised, overwhelmed, and lost in a fog of learned helplessness. We have been told, and have told ourselves, that nothing will change, so we have stopped shouting.

I am writing this letter with a heart so heavy I can barely hold my thoughts. I know I am not the only one who still feels a flicker of holy rage beneath the exhaustion. I know thousands of us are not fully numb, who are awake in this nightmare and desperate for the rest of the country to wake up with us.

The silence is not the answer. The misplaced outrage is not the answer. The answer is to feel the appropriate horror, to demand a reckoning, and to start treating the violent loss of our children’s futures as the crisis it truly is.

We must be brave enough to face the abyss, name it, and shout until our voices give out for the sake of our children, for our future, and for the soul of our Bahamas.

Respectfully and desperately, A Bahamian who refuses to look away.

BAZZAN JOHNSON

Freeport,

Grand Bahama

July 22, 2026.