How can Guyana go anywhere?

Jun 29, 2019 Editorial

More and more, Guyana assumes the appearance and character of a thoroughly backward place. If that is considered too demeaning, then upside down is offered in efforts at soothing wounded national pride. Whatever remains of it.
Yet the facts on the ground, as substantiated by the thought patterns swirling and taking root in the head, the unmoving outlooks of an overwhelming majority of citizens confirm an established fact: in this society, and almost everywhere in between, the few that strive mightily to turn the tide find themselves under attack. Be it race or corruption or standards; police or elections.
In sum: once prized untouchability of character, of conduct, of a certain kind of rare code, has been made to transform into the most wicked of negativities. There is nothing honourable around here anymore; the definition of honourable itself is open to all manner of intellectual sword-fencing and shared hypocrisies.
There are very few who rise to the level of the virtuous here; the chronically unprincipled visualise only evil motives in the hearts of those seeking to walk along a straight and narrow line; a mined, treacherous undertaking for the hardy of soul, the steely of sinew. It can be discouraging to the few, who hold the bridge. Virtue is vice of the worst sort; unforgivable in the eyes of the thwarted and exposed.
The many made to look miserably small and the meanest of misfits retaliate. The powerful in Guyana are not deterred by any absence of basis. They manufacture; agents rush to prostitute themselves in obedience. Thus, the Guyanese day rains through unrelenting assault on the conscientious and honourable. A reckoning comes. Hard lessons delivered.
It is that solitary bridgebuilder ignored (even despised), that clean cop disdained (even ostracized), that upright public servant disbelieved (even ridiculed) the few unsung toilers and the fewer unscarred citizens, who struggle against the cesspools of naysayers and saboteurs to personify and deliver an immaculate sheet and unimpeachable record of servanthood that are made leprous and stigmatised.
Enormous swathes of this troubled, soulless society could be what Mark Twain once said of the jury system: it has placed “a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury.” Look closely. If that is not, to an overpowering degree, the Guyana of today, then what else is it? In all of its countless warts and scales and oozes?
As the Wall Street Journal once remarked on the cinematic version of that greatest (but misnamed) of American novels, The Great Gatsby: “it’s a spectacle in search of a soul.” To that, one could accurately add, a circus celebrating the macabre, piteous, foolishness of the treacherous and corrupted and utterly dirty desperately trying to prove that they are not what they appear to be. The mere trying only adds to the overwhelming deceptions and calumnies. The professional ranks, the commercial universes, and the sprawling political and social barracks are all addicted to devastating that which is clean, progressive, and ethical.
Damn any who dare to stand in their way. Get them. Taint them. Question them and implicate them from the shadows and through subtlety. Many are the droppings of malicious Harpies that spew forth.
The well-learned should recall one John Wilkes. He was an 18th century American politician and universal rake, who was quick and loud in appointing himself a champion of the people. Tellingly and now familiarly (to Guyanese) he succeeded in making a corrupt living through attacking corrupt activities in others. This is part of a growing trend domestically: wrap self in the silk of respectability of denouncing thievery as a camouflage for one’s own continuing roguery.
Clean living invariably leads to revilement and persecution; a steely few remain committed to serving through the discouraging; pyrrhic badges are earned in fields where honour matters not. The wiser shrink and flee from anything associated with public service or being near this society.

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