Samson Kasumba: Bobi Wine is not Besigye, lets learn to think critically!

When Uganda changed and they missed…

“But then, you may ask, why is it liberating to demand reasons before you are persuaded to adopt new beliefs?

Isn’t it less trouble to go through life unreflectively doing more or less as you please and not worrying too much about whether you have good reason to do or believe something beyond whether or not you want to?

Well, it may often be easier in the short run, but it might lead to a life dominated by bad decisions and discontentment.

Socrates, the Ancient Athenian philosopher famously argued that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’.

While this may or may not be true, the only way to find out is to approach the issue in  a critical and rational manner.

"Paying attention to arguments gets you (eventually) to the truth of a matter, thereby making the world and the people in it easier to comprehend and to deal with. I decided that it may be less likely that I shall be misunderstood or misconstrued when I begin with the things I read that get me to think the way I think."

Now that extract is out of a book I have read so often and I do that because it gets me to the place I want: that place where I don’t believe everything unquestioningly as if I have handed the responsibility of thinking for me to another.

In case you did not yet know, there is a very logical reason why everyone has a principal personal private brain.

Brains are not wired in series. They are personal so why do you think you have to be thought for by another? That is you not me and I have no apologies for thinking for myself.

There was a time when it made sense, sort of logical sense, to believe that bringing soldiers, mambas, etal on the streets would instil fear among the population and send a strong message to all and sundry that opposing government was risky business.

Now in those days it was Walk to Work of Dr Kizza Besigye a retired military officer and FDC life time presidential candidate also a known medical doctor.

Government must have felt that its method worked and had every right to chest thump over its successes after all KB never went to State House.

However we critical thinkers have been in the business of thinking and now we ask: if there was success in the method why and where did Robert Kyagulanyi and people power come from?

How come and how is it even remotely possible that what was done to Besigye did not stop People Power and Kyagulanyi from springing up?

Why did all that Kayihura brute force and broad day light beatings that the IGP explained away in front of cameras, why did this not deter these young people from also having a go after seeing all that force against Besigye?

Was the Brute force not brutal enough meaning we shall need more? Did Uganda change and the state failed to recognise?

What proof is there that after Kyagulanyi there won’t be another now that street force from the state is no longer a threat or an impediment to those that want to oppose the state?

We seem to have come to the days when state brutality is even needed imperative to start a very successful political career something the minister in charge of National Guidance Frank Tumwebaze has indeed admitted on live television here at Next Media’s Morning Breeze!

The state for which he works has still changed nothing and thinks it works… What options is the state left with?

Let me go back to where I began with an extract: “Isn’t it less trouble to go through life unreflectively doing more or less as you please and not worrying too much about whether you have good reason to do or believe something beyond whether or not you want to?”

May be this is what the state has restored to because it is less costly and more comforting because you do the same hoping it works ignoring the facts…

Yes the state seems to have chosen the view that believing that Bobi is a Besigye of neo-Besigye and therefore the Besigye and neo-Besigye methods will work to stop him.

I am here to argue that Bobi is anything but a Besigye this is why the new political Mecca is Magere not Kasangati! Fact!

He believes in elections and Besigye does not! What a stark contrast yet the state wants to use the same methods against two men that cannot be so far apart from each other.

It seems clear to me but to the state that Bobi learned from Besigye how to use the state’s Besigye methods in his favour and that is why when he needs to be arrested by the State he gets what he wants!

How else do you explain taking a man who spent his childhood in a ghetto to Luzira thinking you will break him with being jailed?

If you did not break his spirit with a near death experience post Arua how will Luzira break him? This boy lived off food thrown away by the rich and survived now this is just the other day!

How can you think that frustrating his income will break him…He does not live large so he knows how to survive small.

Unlike most of those thinking how to break Bobi. They erroneously think he is like them. He is not.

They fear their former “small” life yet Bobi has never left that small life so going back to it is not a big deal?

I think that those trying to stop Bobi Wine just don’t know how much Uganda has changed since Besigye and they are trying 2001 methods in 2019 thinking they will work! Uganda has changed so much even Kayihura is gone and so are age limits.

Let us see who wins: The old and tired Besigye methods or the new breed of Ugandans that don’t fear state violence that they have grown to get used to…I am sure I have not seen any critical thinker here to give very good reasons to argue that Bobi is a Besigye.

What I see is the thinking that anyone who challenges the old man with a heart and hat is a Besigye and so the Besigye methods shall suffice.

Now that’s very simplistic as is the idea that writing on will make more sense. That too is old.