Years ago, in my early political life, I learnt of the Phoenician street game. There would be actors dazzling the crowds with magical tricks while pickpockets were busy swiping purses and valuable belongings from the gathered crowds. Naturally, this sounds unreal or remote, but what if it isn’t? What if this were a characterisation of what happens in everyday life, but we are unaware?

Here is the danger of populism and charismatic leaders that can dazzle the crowds of believers who are being told open lies.

America is in debt up to its ears, and to service that debt requires more commitment and burdens on the taxpayer. While that’s a reality, the concomitant reality is that the very wealthy, whose wealth is now transnational, don’t want to pay any of their due, so they hire a magician to convince the public they are in good shape. They, the public, can have their problems solved by placing tariffs on the rest of the world. The lie is that the American consumer will pay the cost. The Government will raise trillions of dollars towards its coffers, all paid for by the American consumer. Only a magician can cause people to believe this lie.

The wealthy are unscathed; they are global, and America is just one consumer base to which they have no real affinity except what can be extracted. The American pie has been handed to them on a silver platter, thanks to the magician.

The United States of America has run its course as an exploitive capitalist and systemically has become unsustainable as a global hegemon while in inevitable decline. It’s no fault of Donald Trump; he has a role to play in hoping to bluff the American people into believing that things are getting better when they aren't — and, worse, they can’t.

The US Government will be gutted under the guise of efficiency, millions will face layoffs, and services will be cut, including healthcare and rural hospitals. The people will pay more and get less. But it will be OK — because they won’t feel the emptiness of their pockets at political rallies, the blame will be passed on to the past presidents who “left a mess”.

Bermuda is another world, a once prosperous but decadent society stymied by racism that passed the baton on to a new generation of leaders. Men and women who once roamed about as though they were still in a chicken coop for a couple of terms until they discovered they had wings.

Yes, chickens have wings, but they are not birds in the ordinary sense.

During the premiership of Ewart Brown, they discovered their wings and determined they could fly. Fly they did, so far away from their coop and built nests anywhere because they determined they were no longer chickens. Their flock are still chickens, but the leaders are now birds. They have established a trend where they can serve a short term and then fly away to a lush retirement.

They, too, have lied. When you look at everything, hardly without exception, it is near ruin — roads, parks, schools, public buildings and hospitals are worse today than 30 years ago. The only measurable improvement is that persons who were once in rags are now leaders sitting among the wealthy. They lied, saying they were there to lift the people, but instead they let the people down while they lifted themselves and promised that with good behaviour and loyalty there would be a trickle-down.

It’s the same Phoenician street game of a magician performing a fantastic act that captures attention while the audience is being robbed. They tell the audience, don't believe what you see plainly; things are getting better, they say.

The world awaits a generation and a leadership that calls a spade a spade. But that does not happen quickly; human society evolves very slowly, and traditions and attachments linger far past their useful life. Ignorance is a cofactor in life and, unfortunately, some protagonists rely on ignorance to achieve power.

Over the past 60 years, the Progressive Labour Party has championed the destruction of the Black economy, uprooting 350 years of accrued history, but wants to be applauded for those same destructive efforts.

The issue for our times is discernment, and the bedrock of human survival is culture and morality. In that regard, whether it is Judeo/Christianity, Islam or Chinese, it is those values that are thousands of years of recorded history that will prevail. This PLP saga will pass and one day people will return to their senses and morality will reign.

Sixty per cent of Americans have less than a fifth-grade education. Bermuda shuns statistics such as those, yet we know civics was removed from education in the early 1960s. Media play a huge role, but here, too, there are taboos and the popularised term “fake news”. It was once a thought that the written word was treated as gospel, but that no longer holds because as conspiracy theory, artificial intelligence and all sorts of information and misinformation have become routine.

This is where our deliberate miseducation has led to a class conflict. The population has voluntarily walked back the clock to the days of segregation; however, the new conflict is not race, it's now privilege. The new divide is not just race, but civil servants, parliamentarians and party folk against the rest.