Yesterday was Independence Day in Trinidad and Tobago, complete with parades and traffic schedules that go along with it. There wasn’t the usual amount of national colors, but when I got my eyes tested near the parade route, there were plenty of young men dressed as trees with automatic weapons stationed on corners. I even saw a truck filled with them, as if the Ministry of Agriculture had some greenification project going on.

I don’t know that celebrating independence is anything but a polite lie in any nation. The world is made up of co-dependent nations. I don’t think any nation is truly independent in the strictest sense of the word. I’m not even sure that it would pass a lazy inspection.

Where I live, the service elevator is down causing people to run into each other more. This is generally a good thing. A middle-aged woman asked me why the elevator was down, and I explained about a nearby lightning strike that seemed to have overloaded the circuit board in charge of the frequency of electricity that drives the motor. It’s something most people wouldn’t even know about. It allows the motor to slow without jolting, and since most people have never even imagined that jolting, it’s an ‘invisible’ feature’. Like living in a colony.

The man accompanying her said something in what sounded like a British accent, something about it taking a while to fix, and I said that the provider doesn’t keep those parts on hand. There’s just not enough of a market to bear that expense. I ended with, “Welcome to the Colonies” and a smile.

Indeed. Welcome to the colonies.

Today, I felt like having a Peanut Buster Parfait, so I drove down to the nearest Dairy Queen. They of course did not have the chili hot dog I was also thinking of. A Canadian guy was there – no, I imagine you’re picturing a white Canadian, but it wasn’t. He was getting exasperated himself, complaining McDonalds didn’t have this or that, that Dairy Queen didn’t have this or that, and telling me he would be taking the kids to Pizza Hut later. I told him I wished him luck.

He didn’t drop it, so I simply said, “Welcome to the Colonies.”

He didn’t get it. This is the experience of colonies. Sure, Trinidad and Tobago gained independence from the British Empire in the last century, but it seems it was a part of a larger cost reduction strategy of the British Empire. It’s a small market, run for decades by governments by governments whose level of corruption is a constant topic of discussion. There’s been no diversification of the economy, there’s been no worthwhile attempts to create new revenue streams.

The present government seems to be balancing between Chinese soft power, finding ways to work with Venezuela without irritating the U.S. over the sanctions, and gaming numbers to keep forms of assistance coming in. It’s an election year coming too, so that will be more interesting.

I was mildly surprised that the Dairy Queen didn’t have a cover for the Peanut Buster Parfait. Welcome to the Colonies.

Independence, as anywhere else, is an illusion.

As with any colony, wherever you live, it’s not too hard to find the colonial masters.