Give us this day our daily emotions, Dear Intellectual!

Dear Mr/Ms Intellectual

While the rest of us held our breath and wiped tears  after watching Jolly Tumuhirwe thrust, whip and step on baby Arnella*, you were intellectualizing the incident. REASON and RATIONALE is what you subscribe to.

Which is Ok and it wasn’t a problem, until you criminalized our own reactions to the incident. You said we were being EMOTIONAL. And being emotional is a terrible thing, something common among the brainless, those without intellect.

You tried hard to convince us that maids like Jolly are treated so bad and paid so little by their bosses, the reason they batter children entrusted to them. And for that alone, you were ideally justifying and rationalizing what caused us goose bumps and nightmares.

We are also still trying to believe your arguments that if one pays a maid highly (up to how much, you don’t say) and treat them well (whatever that entails) they will automatically treat children better than Jolly did.  Jolly! What a waste of name!

Anyway, we of #TeamEmotional would like to inform you that so many maids are not Jolly. They didn’t emerge from hell and they, like us, shed tears when they watched the gory video. That makes them emotional, too I know, but why should we care?

Why should we buy into this, your reasoning, this ‘legal’ mind of yours that, even for the most obvious crime, insists on shouting that Jolly is innocent until proven guilty? Really? Who needs another dose of evidence other than the one we watched? To hell with your white-collar law!

We ceased fire when you insisted the 22-year-old could be mentally perturbed and when police declared she is of sound mind, you covered your face in shame.

That point lost, you turned your gun on mothers, telling them to stop relegating their duties to maids. So all mothers should stay home, look after their children and no Jolly shall befall them.

You don’t care that not all mothers can leave their jobs and stay home, that some mothers are actually sole bread winners for their children and families. No, to you, if we want to avoid a repeat of the Jolly madness, all working mothers must tender their resignations like yesterday.

We hear you, but is that really a solution? Since you reason with your head and us with our hearts and whichever feeble body part, we thought you would jot a line or two on having the wage bill in place and a policy or legislation that regulates the work and welfare of domestic workers.

We also waited for you to argue that this incident should make us mull over the need to take extra precaution – buy nanny cams if possible – and do more background check of house helps we employ.

We don’t know what your next line of rational thinking will be, but as we figure out whether Jolly and LRA’s Joseph Kony are related in some way, allow us express our distaste at this barbaric act and your twisted thinking.

And lest we forget, we are aware that you and your ilk usually argue that, oh police officers are paid so little, that’s why they are the most corrupt, teachers are paid so little, that’s why they don’t teach, midwives are paid so little, that’s why they strangle babies and slap mothers etc etc.

You forget to admit that all these people are not employed at gun point. And if indeed they are worth their name and professions, they would let their actions show for it.

This legalization of wrongs, advocated by you and your disciples, under the guise of being rational is just lame, it is shallow. It is this blatant disregard for emotions and conscience that your lot pick and plunder. Such acts like looting cash meant to lift up the poor and buy medicine for the sick don’t make you itch.

You are rational. We recognize that. But give us this day our daily emotions.