The term Russian roulette is the practice of loading a bullet into one chamber of a revolver, spinning the cylinder, and then pulling the trigger while pointing the gun at one’s own head. It goes without saying that it is a potentially lethal game of chance. If the loaded chamber in which the bullet was placed aligns with the barrel after cocking, within a single-action revolver, or is in the position which will be rotated to the barrel, upon pulling the trigger the weapon fires.
An early example of Russian roulette can be found in the short story The Fatalist within the 1840 novel A Hero of Our Time written by Russian poet and writer Mikhail Lermontov. In 2025, within the continental United States of America every citizen and every legal resident is poised with the precarious and the less lucrative prospects of writing accounts of their own lives, or that of their loved ones, every time that they venture out of their doors to engage in the normal routines of life, much more to step into an aircraft or onto a passenger ship, or to travel by private or public automobile across the northern or southern border of the country with every intention of returning to family and to the comforts of their homes.
And now we are all unwitting players in this new iteration of this deadly game of chance. How times have changed since I had arrived in this country several decades ago as a young man of college age. A brave new world in many respects.
A few weeks ago I telephoned my father, who resides in Jamaica, just to see how he was doing. He will turn 98 years old in less than a week from the time of penning these words. My father who, for some inexplicable reason, is a great admirer of the current American president, even of his immigration policies, wasted no time in expressing how alarmed he was at what he had been witnessing in the news, expressing great fear for both of his sons, who are no spring chickens — both in their 60s. One son is comfortably retired after a long and a distinguished career in aeronautical engineering, having received extensive training in this country, while the other is still slogging away in the trenches, assisting at-risk and financially vulnerable populations with childcare resources.
My father wanted his two sons and his daughters-in-law to make plans to pull up stakes here in America and to return home. After having seen him in January, when I was in Jamaica on business, accompanied by my brother, I had to wonder what had happened to one who was so rabid in support of the current president. My father, while he was in the service of the Jamaican Government, had worked closely and had become friends with some US Government officials. He has long loved America, but today it has become a stranger to him.
With US citizens — particularly those who are citizens by birth, along with legal residents who do not have a criminal record — being harassed, being rounded up, and being carted off to destinations unknown, without due process of law, everyone is on a very slippery slope, even people with blonde hair and blue eyes, especially if they had expressed their constitutional right of freedom of speech by voicing views which do not support the troublesome and often erratic policies and programmes of the current Administration.
In one moment, after extremely long and painstaking background checks, people who were once deemed to be lawful residents soon became — in another, on a whim, in a much shorter period of time, and without any verifiable evidence — illegal aliens and grave threats to national security. The immigration process, which is, undeniably, an indispensable part of this and of every other country in the world has devolved from the exercise of the principles of law to that of hate-filled, prejudicial quotas of whim. The law be damned, especially if it calls for the equitable treatment of all. The law be damned, if it is seen as too meddlesome, for any reason, even if it is stated in clear and unambiguous language within the US Constitution.
Many in society can no longer confidently appeal for redress using that document, based upon several rulings which were issued by the US Supreme Court which have had many legal scholars scratching their heads. And, what is the greatest tragedy of all? None else but society’s much-needed sense of sheer humanity.
When policies and practices look past the health of ailing people who have come into this country legally, for treatment, for example, but who are then swooped down upon on as criminals, who are then callously incarcerated, who are then coldly rejected, and who are then summarily ejected, because they are not seen as white enough and because their speech is as jangling discords of the English language, then one has to question the health of that system. When that system allows for the pardoning of violent, incorrigible criminals who are bent upon the destruction of society rather than upon the building of it for good, and who do not find themselves, out of plights of deep and chronic vulnerability, pleading for mere crumbs from off its prodigious table of tremendous prosperity, then one has to wonder if we are now living in a dystopian, apocalyptic society — near the end of the world. In the hands of some of our current Government officials, the following, much heralded words of the English playwright William Shakespeare suffer from a cynical and an insanely warped interpretation:
“The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God Himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.”
Good laws or good policies should never be sources of discouragement for doing what is right and for doing what is good. Our sense of empathy, of kindness, and of humanity, generally speaking, should never be impaired or should never be thwarted by them. But, sadly, in these uncertain and trying times they most certainly are. America seems to be on a fast and downward track to fulfilling Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Will to power”. If that is the case, then that would be a sad detour for a nation that has ever prided itself and that has ever aspired towards much higher ideals. It was the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said:
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anaemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
A very close friend who resides in Jamaica, who is as a sister to my wife, to my brother and I, lost her beloved father just a few days ago in Kingston. Even before my brother and I received the news of his passing, which, in turn, engendered discussions about who would go down to Jamaica to show support for our dear friend’s family should he have passed, my brother’s wife, months before, in light of the movements of the US Government through its ICE agents — those who often cover their faces with masks, who often do not identify themselves before arresting people, even in government buildings and outside of courtrooms — told him he was going nowhere, not even to visit his father this month with whom he shares a birthday.
My own wife, in recent times, has given me the same caution after I was detained in Miami, coming up from Jamaica with my brother in January, because I said that I had a loaf of bread in my suitcase — something that they already knew was in my suitcase due to the modern technological methods of scanning baggage that they possess. My brother, pretty much, had the same items in his, but they pulled me aside. He had no idea where and what was happening to me for quite some time. “Puss an dawg nuh have di same luck”, as they say in Jamaica. The excuse was a loaf of bread on that occasion; what other excuse will they give the next time around for detaining me?And so, as much as it pains us, my brother and I have decided to harken to the voices of our beloved spouses. Travelling to any destination outside of the United States at this time in history is like playing Russian roulette. A bullet is in the chamber, but nobody dares to pull the trigger — nobody.
