Is GOD or DOG To Be Blamed? (Part 2)

The Scarab Beetle appeared in The Mirror of Self-Appraisal. Other characters appeared too. Let us begin the man-made journey of self-recovery then.

The Great Political Transvestite looked emotionally browbeaten. For what purpose? The Non-Patriotic People (NPP) who were there witnessing the stream of conscious exchanges had no clue, neither were the Non-Decent Conservatives (NDC). On the contrary, the Conscientious Patriotic People (CPP) who had most of the answers were completely ignored. In fact, Nkrumah’s “democracy of conscience” had been turned into a “democracy of incompetence, insults and counter-insults, and kleptomania” by the political Dodoes and Tasmanian Devils in the NPP and NDC. The exchanges continued nonetheless. “What!”, screamed she-he. “Emptiness!”

“Yes.”

“Oh!”, she-he said. “After all, ‘money is the root of all evil,’ they say!”

“That is not true!,” The Scarab Beetle countered. “Rather it is spiritual and emotional emptiness which is the root of all evil.”

The Political Transvestite tried unsuccessfully to link the “roots” of the fallen Giant Iroko Tree to the chronic problem of greed in the world. Did uprooting The Giant Iroko Tree signal the demise of greed, corruption, and self-aggrandizement? Certainly not. Only Time appeared to have had the answer. But time was nowhere to be found. Certainly, it was part and parcel of the psycho-emotional infrastructure of The Mirror of Self-Appraisal, but only he needed to publicly say so and public consensus went ahead with it. Still, The Mirror of Self-Appraisal’s self-identification with issues relating to questions of moral economy had meant that the spiritual economy of “evil” would be punished and “good” rewarded. That, however, went beyond the narrow moral mathematics of the NPP and the NDC.

Ideally, The Scarab Beetle tried to explain the political dilemma Ghana faced to The Political Transvestite in the simplest of terms, yet the latter’s ear had lost its presence of mind and so completely ignored that aspect of their conversation. In truth, that manner of exterior thinking bored him, thus failing to even register on his already-bruised conscience, a crooked mindset of a greedy individual like The Great Political Transvestite. Other uncomfortable thoughts began to gnaw at his warped conscience! Could that have meant The Scarab Beetle had used him for free? Or there was a lesson he wanted to teach her-him? In a flash, she-he felt the temperature in her-his cranial-crater rising, rising, rising, slowly, to the mountainous pate of truthfulness, of honesty, of openness, of revelation!

Yet, the aura of The Scarab Beetle disgusted her-him, even threatening to jolt her-him out of the elitist exclusiveness of his attired ignorance, the cultural poncho of human relations. However, to avoid any un-pleasantries from cropping up she-he simply turned her-his nasal aloofness away from a likely collision with human simplicity and humility. Other related questions continued to bombard the concrete wall of her-his conscience, questions such as: Did The Scarab Beetle have to let her-him go through what Goliath and Sisyphus went through in order to teach her-him a simple lesson of life? What a life! She-he looked in the direction of The Scarab Beetle and posed the question: “Who really are you?”

“The Mirror of Self-Appraisal.”

“I don’t get it!”

“Call me GOD or DOG!”

“GOD or DOG?”

“You heard it right!”

“GOD?”

“Yes, Greedy Old Dog!”

“What?”

“Greedy Old Dog, I said!”

“What of DOG?”

“Deathtrap Or Graveyard!”

Simply, The Great Political Transvestite laughed, not believing the sharp evidence of her-his curious flappy ears. “What have these got to do with anything?”

“Human nature!”

“Human nature?”

“The soul of the Ghanaian politician has become a Greedy Old Dog, a Deathtrap Or Graveyard, if you will, waiting for him at the end of the tunnel. In other words, the nature of the Ghanaian politician has become a Greedy Old Dog. Unfortunately.”

“What?”

“GHANA is the major problem of Ghanaian politicians!”

“What is GHANA?”

“Greed Hormone Arrests National Advancement!”

“Oh!”

“What do we do then? The solution?”

“National Reckoning!”

“And what is that, if I may ask?”

“Firing squad!”

That was it! The two stepped out where 2000 great men and women of unrivaled marksmanship, spiritually muscular and emotionally sinewy, awaited their expectant arrival. Then, they quickly rushed to the side of The Great Political Transvestite, seized her-him, and tied her-him to a Giant Iroko Tree, after which each drilled 2000 bullets into her-his corruptibly-indurative body, one after the other, slowly, to the crater-surprise of cheering spectators—at the Teshie Military Range. The bullets, labeled EPA, otherwise named Europe Punishing Africa, did a perfect job. The Great Political Transvestite died a slothful death of spiritual and emotional emptiness. The people went home rejoicing thinking that greed, corruption, and un-patriotism had finally been silenced for good. Of course it did but only momentarily.

On the other hand, that was not be, for the EPA did not get to the soul of The Mirror of Self-Appraisal, the mindset of spiritual and emotional emptiness. The next day The Great Political Transvestite returned to the people as a deranged phantom of Wunderland, behaving fiercer and fiercer than before, to haunt them, to eat them up, to corrupt them, to… That fierce immortal ghost was nicknamed “The Bug of Corruption!” What had since become of they, that is, “you,” “we,” and “I,” as far as curtailing or extirpating corruption went? What did the people do when The Giant Iroko Tree re-grew in the Amazon Forest, The Mirror of Self-Appraisal, the mindset of spiritual and emotional emptiness? What happened to the “roots” of the fallen Giant Iroko Tree?

A political immunologist had said they had all contracted “The Bug of Corruption.” If so, what would become of “The Bug of Corruption? In fact, she-he took on a new name “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” and simultaneously became Ghana’s President and Member of Parliament. What? Who buried her-him? GOD or GOD? Your answer is as good as ours. Is it not a shameful irony that the great Kwame Nkrumah, the CIA, and MONEY still live in public consciousness while Akwasi Afrifa and Linguist Baffour Akoto have disappeared from the good books of human decency? Is it not a shameful irony that the world only remembers Afrifa’s feline moustache and Hitler’s Hitlerite moustache, the sexy playgrounds of Political Holocaust!

By the way, at the Afrifa International Airport, located in Kumasi, the Asante Region, the National Liberation Movement burial grounds of Akwasi Afrifa, KA Busia, Obetsebi Lamptey, and JB Danquah, an inscription on the headstone of The Political Transvestite, otherwise called Akwasi Afrifa, read in part:

“Why Blame The Post-Nkrumah Backwardness Of Ghana And Afrifa On The Devil When You Can Blame It On Us?”

The Scarab Beetle: Please read the inscription on the headstone again.

The Political Transvestite: Why?

The Scarab Beetle: There is something weird or worrisome about the inscription.

The Political Transvestite reread the inscription and still noticed nothing amiss. He harrumphed momentarily, displaying an overt caricature of himself.

The Political Transvestite: What is weird about the inscription?

The Scarab Beetle: Is the correct word not supposed to be Africa on the headstone?

The Political Transvestite: Does it matter?

The Scarab Beetle: Of course it should.

The Political Transvestite: Let’s be frank with ourselves, am I not backwardness? Is it not also true that my head is merely a dead block of stone rather than of neurons of brains?

That was indeed true. The likes of The Political Transvestite, in other words, the foolhardy feudal warlord mistakenly addressed as General Akwasi Afrifa, a corporate prostitute, usurped the critical thinking of the people which Kwame Nkrumah was gradually inculcating in the good people of Ghana and Africa and replaced it with parboiled chitterlings.

The Scarab Beetle: That said, what is General Akwasi Afrifa’s enduring legacy?

The Political Transvestite: A Headstone of Blockheadism! And Ghana’s And Africa’s Uncritical Thinking Day Of Shame!

The Scarab Beetle: Who placed a taxidermy dog on Akwasi Afrifa’s ramshackle and neglected headstone?

The Political Transvestite: Why are you talking about me as if I don’t exist? I hate to be described in the offensive language of Ellisonian invisibility.

The Scarab Beetle: Do you really believe you exist?

The Political Transvestite: Yes.

The Scarab Beetle: The CIA forgot about you a long time ago.

The Political Beetle: How?

The Scarab Beetle: Did the CIA come to your aid when you faced The People’s Firing Squad, the same place you shot Lt. Moses and Lt. Samuel Arthur to death, merely for singing the beautiful, soulful, and romantic track “Guitar Boy,” a tune by the Nigerian musician Victor Uwaifo? Were you able to finish spending all the CIA MONEY, the assassination money, before you faced The People’s Firing Squad?

The Political Transvestite: Why are you bringing back painful old memories?

The Scarab Beetle: Haven’t you figured that out already?

The Political Transvestite: What do you mean? In other words, how can a dolt like me do that?

The Scarab Beetle: It is called The Law of Karma. The classical physicist Isaac Newton referred to it as Newton’s Third Law of Motion. Linguist Baffour Akoto, JB Danquah, and KA Busia called it Sankofa. It is your belated reward, your comeuppance, for the unpardonable crime you committed against the good people of Ghana and Africa by overthrowing Kwame Nkrumah, the Greatest African and the 2000 Personality of the Century.”

The Political Transvestite: What about me? No recognition for me?

The Scarab Beetle: Who placed a taxidermy dog on your ramshackle and neglected headstone?

The Political Transvestite: The CIA!

The Scarab Beetle: Do you have any idea why a taxidermy GOD sits on Kwame Nkrumah’s head? The word “GOD” here referred to Afrifa’s tightfisted, backward God of wickedness, not the generous, innovative God of African spirituality, of human community, and of human liberation from the tightening straitjacket of intellectual and developmental deceleration.

The Political Transvestite: His natural and sense of goodness, humility, moral greatness, and love for humanity, his people!

The Scarab Beetle: Do you know what CIA stands for?

The Political Transvestite: No.

The Scarab Beetle: See Inside America!

Au revoir!