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Pemberton’s rant is classic Orwellian
Dear editor,
I will break my hiatus from public commentary in the local press by responding to T. Pemberton’s letter (Kaieteur News, October 21, 2010), captioned, “The missing boxers are not like us”. And I certainly do not intend this response to be mistaken to be an endorsement of the actions of the boxers.
What they did was wrong, regardless of the circumstances of economic and social coercions that might have impelled their decision. But to intimate that such actions or decisions sets them apart from thousands, maybe tens of thousands of other Guyanese, in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary, is absolutely ludicrous.
In the first place, the US immigration policy towards Guyana began adversely affecting sports and other artistic practitioners as a result of the rate of illegal immigration by Guyanese who were not involved in arenas of sports and entertainment. In addition, if these boxers are not like us, as Pemberton argues, then so are the thousands or tens of thousands of others who have been fleeing these shores illegally over the past four decades.
The actions of these boxers are no less illegal, or immoral, than their national peers who did, and continue to do the same thing, make the same decisions. The fatuous predisposition to thrust upon the their shoulders the responsibility for consequences that have long been the result of economic and social national maladministration, is just another example of the moral and ethical relativity with which opinions and conclusions are now being formulated by some. And I might add another example of the Orwellian hypocrisy that popularly inundates the reasoning of many in and from Guyana.
Every illegal immigrant to the US or elsewhere has to live with the consequences that will befall them, and life will not be glittery for them in times of recession, regardless of the circumstances of their entry into that country. It is absolutely ludicrous, and infantile, to attempt to represent what has happened as something unique to Guyana.
As referenced by another letter writer, when athletes were fleeing three decades ago those who label these boxers today as outcastes, villains, were stridently blaming the Government of the day for the conditions that coerced such actions. Today, in keeping with their Orwellian transformations and chameleon like perspective, they have redirected the accusative pointing finger. Go figure.
Robin Williams
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