The Political Putrescence
The decay of democratic institutions in Kenya manifests as a form of political putrescence, a rotting from within that infects the entire body politic. When Head of State declares that police should "shoot their legs" to incapacitate protesters, he signals not just tactical brutality but the complete abandonment of democratic norms. This descent into state-sanctioned violence cultivates societal nihilism, where citizens lose faith in peaceful change and institutions decay from within, creating a feedback loop of moral bankruptcy that transforms the social contract itself.
The Moral Turpitude of Political Accountability
The political moral turpitude that characterizes Kenya's current crisis obliterates any meaningful demand for public accountability. Words are events, they do things, change things, transform both speaker and hearer. When government officials issue shoot-to-kill orders with casual brutality, these words become lethal instruments that feed violence back and forth, amplifying state terror. The declaration that police should "shoot their legs" is not mere rhetoric but a speech act that transforms the social contract, converting citizens into targets and officers into executioners.
The corruption of public discourse has reached unprecedented depths with political figures deploying sexually explicit and indecent utterances on national television platforms. Some of the utterances are inappropriate for our children's ears. This represents not merely poor judgment but a systematic degradation of democratic discourse itself. When political leaders transform public communication into crude performance art, they corrupt the very medium through which democratic society must function, turning the public sphere into a space of moral contamination where serious political engagement becomes impossible.
When Interior Cabinet Secretary faces backlash for endorsing lethal force against protesters, we witness how words feed energy back and forth between state and society. His violent rhetoric amplifies the state's authoritarian impulse while simultaneously energizing popular resistance. This moral bankruptcy manifests in the transformation of public criticism into a criminal act, where dissent becomes grounds for state violence rather than democratic engagement. The very act of speaking truth to power now carries the literal risk of death, as words that challenge authority are met with bullets that silence forever.
The parallel deployment of sexual and vulgar language by political figures functions as another form of violence against democratic discourse. When political leaders engage in sexually explicit utterances on public platforms, they assault the dignity of public conversation itself. This linguistic violence transforms the public sphere into a contaminated space where serious political engagement becomes impossible, as citizens must navigate not only the risk of physical violence but also the degradation of the communicative medium through which democracy must function. The crude sexualization of political discourse serves to alienate citizens from political engagement, particularly women and youth, while providing cover for substantive policy failures.
The silencing of criticism through violence creates a feedback loop of recidivism, a return to authoritarian patterns that many assumed Kenya had outgrown. This descent into state-sanctioned violence cultivates societal nihilism, where citizens lose faith in peaceful change and institutions decay from within which is a process of political putrescence that infects the entire body politic.
From Crisis to Polycrisis to Permacrisis: The Sunk Cost Fallacy of Failed Governance
Kenya's trajectory from manageable crisis to polycrisis (multiple interconnected crises occurring simultaneously), reflects a fundamental failure to address root causes. The escalation of state violence represents the culmination of this trajectory, where what began as economic grievances has morphed into a multifaceted crisis encompassing governance, human rights, democratic legitimacy, and social cohesion.
The current moment reveals a permacrisis in formation: a state of perpetual instability where each attempted solution generates new problems. The government's response to protests with increased violence exemplifies this dynamic. Rather than addressing the underlying issues that drive demonstrations, authorities have chosen escalation, creating a cycle where each round of violence necessitates further violence to maintain control.
This pattern mirrors the sunk cost fallacy in business circles, where decision-makers continue investing in failing strategies because they have already invested so much. The political class, having invested heavily in maintaining the current system through dialogue and managed dissent, now doubles down with violence rather than acknowledging the fundamental bankruptcy of their approach. The louder the protestations about maintaining a "stiff upper lip" and adhering to the "grundnorm" of constitutional order, the more obvious it becomes that these institutions have lost their legitimacy.
The putrescence spreads through the system like gangrene, infecting every attempt at reform or reconciliation. What begins as isolated incidents of violence becomes normalized, then institutionalized, until the entire apparatus of governance reeks of moral decay. The constitutional order itself becomes a corpse animated by violence, its democratic features preserved only in form while its substance rots away.
The Revolutionary Imperative in the Face of State Violence
The political turn of events leads into observation that "only radicals are capable of revolution" striking at the heart of Kenya's political paralysis, taking on new urgency in the face of state violence. Words are events that transform both speaker and hearer thus the continuous cycle of dialogue, handshakes, and consensus-building represents a systematic deployment of language to avoid the radical transformation that Kenya's inequalities demand. Each dialogue process feeds energy back and forth between elites and masses, amplifying the illusion of democratic participation while ensuring that fundamental structures remain intact.
The current economic crisis, exemplified by the Gen Z protests and widespread dissatisfaction with taxation and governance, creates objective conditions for revolutionary change. The state's violent response reveals both the system's vulnerability and its determination to preserve itself through force. When protesters chant "Ruto must go," these words become revolutionary acts that transform both speaker and hearer, feeding understanding back and forth about the system's illegitimacy and amplifying collective resistance.
The escalation to state violence represents both a sign of systemic weakness and a fundamental transformation in the nature of political struggle. When governments resort to shooting protesters, their words of justification transform the social contract, feeding violence back and forth between state and society. The fact that at a contested number of people have died in recent protests, with hundreds more injured, demonstrates that the cost of maintaining the status quo has escalated beyond symbolic politics to literal bloodshed. These deaths speak louder than any dialogue but they are events that transform national consciousness and amplify the understanding that the current system cannot be reformed, only replaced.
The revolutionary imperative emerges not from ideological preference but from the recognition that the system has become so putrid that reform only serves to spread the infection. Like a gangrenous limb that threatens the entire body, the current political order must be amputated before it kills the patient entirely. The violence emanating from state institutions proves that these institutions have already died democratically; they continue to function only through the application of force, making them zombie institutions that threaten the living body of society.
Beyond the Theatre of Dialogue in an Age of State Violence
Raila's call for another national conclave represents dangerous continuity rather than change, a return to the same mechanisms that have consistently failed to address Kenya's structural problems, now offered as a solution to state violence itself. Words are events that do things, change things, transform both speaker and hearer. The pattern of crisis, dialogue, temporary stability, and renewed crisis has escalated to include systematic state violence, suggesting that the problem lies not in the absence of conversation but in the nature of the conversation itself and the willingness of the state to kill to maintain control.
The current moment represents a fundamental shift in Kenyan politics. When the Head of State orders police to shoot protesters, his words function as performative speech acts that transform the social contract, feeding violence back and forth between state and society and amplifying the authoritarian impulse. The state's resort to violence reveals the bankruptcy of consensus-based solutions and the urgent need for approaches that acknowledge the irreconcilable nature of class interests in deeply unequal societies.
The fantasy of peaceful dialogue becomes obscene when offered in the aftermath of state violence. These words, "dialogue," "consensus," "national unity", no longer feed understanding back and forth but amplify deception, transforming citizens into passive participants in their own oppression. True progress requires moving beyond the comfortable fiction that Kenya's problems can be solved through elite consensus, especially when that elite has demonstrated its willingness to kill to maintain power.
The sunk cost fallacy that drives continued investment in failed governance strategies now includes the cost of human lives. The stiff upper lip and adherence to constitutional grundnorms ring hollow when the state itself has abandoned constitutional restraints on violence. These words have lost their transformative power, becoming empty signifiers that amplify despair rather than hope.
Conclusion: The Necessity of Radical Surgery
Until Kenya's political discourse moves beyond the theatre of dialogue toward honest confrontation with both structural inequalities and state violence, the country will remain trapped in cycles of crisis and temporary reconciliation. The time for dialogue has passed; the time for fundamental transformation has arrived, with or without elite consent. The words that will matter now are those that feed revolutionary energy back and forth, amplifying the collective understanding that change must come from below, not from the bloodstained chambers of power.
The putrescence will continue to spread until the entire system collapses under the weight of its own contradictions, or until the people themselves perform the necessary surgery to excise the infected tissue and allow healthy democratic organs to regenerate. The choice is between managed decomposition through endless dialogue and revolutionary regeneration through radical transformation. The smell of decay suggests that time is running out for the former option.
The Path to Discursive Healing
The current crisis of Kenyan democracy demands an urgent restoration of discursive unity that transcends the manufactured divisions exploited by political elites. This unity cannot be achieved through the superficial consensus-building exercises that have repeatedly failed, but through a fundamental commitment to elevating public discourse above the toxic combination of state violence, sexual vulgarity, and diversionary theatrics that currently characterize political communication. True discursive unity requires establishing shared standards of democratic engagement where words function as events that build rather than destroy, feeding constructive energy back and forth between citizens and leaders while amplifying collective understanding rather than sectarian division. This means rejecting both the bullets that silence dissent and the crude utterances that degrade public conversation, replacing them with a commitment to honest, dignified dialogue that acknowledges structural inequalities while maintaining the possibility of transformative change. Such unity must emerge from below, driven by citizens who refuse to accept either violent suppression or pornographic distraction as legitimate forms of political discourse, and who instead demand that public communication serve the democratic imperative of collective problem-solving rather than elite manipulation. Only through this restoration of discursive dignity can Kenya move beyond the current cycle of crisis and pseudo-reconciliation toward genuine democratic transformation that serves the interests of all citizens rather than the preservation of predatory elites.
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