Latest update December 17th, 2024 3:32 AM
The dangers of hostile remarks
Go back, lock her up, send her back or whatever the local equivalents are it does not matter who said what and where. Whether Guyana or the United States (or Europe and Australia), it does not matter. This is what matters: that is was said; that it was intended to humiliate.
Whether here or there, target audience or sound bite, dialing back or real politick, this is trouble. All of that, though understood to be a part of the political snakebites, come to represent so much more, more that is offensive, more that is dangerous.
Especially here in the cramped political villages, where 83,000 square miles suddenly feels like 83 centimeters. Too close for comfort; too overheated; too intolerable; too unwise; too thoughtless in the tone and temperature.
There was a time when racial slurs were par for the course; when every manner of scandal was fair game for dredging up and brandishing before all who would uncover eyes and unplug ears. That is, if their stomachs could stand the overpowering smell of who had tainted blood in their veins, who was a thief, who was a peccadillo, and who has prostitutes in their checkered, sordid histories.
Yet even in those celebrated times, when the political lunatics delivered tour de force performances for the receptive faithful, there were lines that were not crossed, but considered sacred.
Women and children and family were untouched. Motherhood was off-limits, by some strange, but warming chemistry. It was a corrosive environment. Words were weapons, ready to be unsheathed.
Today, lethal words are the weapons of choice. The man now waxing wickedly from inside the same house where Abraham (and John and James) lived has made that old saying come to the fullness of irrepressible truth: the pen is mightier than the sword.
Whether with spitting keystroke or slashing diatribe or venomous upraised finger pointed menacingly, more are felled with alarming frequency. It is the demagoguery of the piercing word, the chosen place, the partisan audience.
Might be a converted burial shrine in Berbice: Who is an infidel, an enemy? Who is to be damned and scorched in a flaming pyre of powerful phrases? Phrases that are sure to wound and to decimate, if not incinerate.
Recently, there was talk about readying for war. Bob Marley, it was not. Because war talk leads to war drums which, in turn, incentivizes war parties and further civil strife. History, both local and elsewhere, has graced with abundant evidence. People who know better are expected to do better, particularly during a season which tests and stretches a fragile democracy to breaking point even at this early stage. Guyana is far from a mature democracy, by any measurement.
Cannot be more invitations of: go ahead! Make my day! It as if there is baiting towards conflict. There are no beneficiaries from any local political fight. This much can be guaranteed: these unthinking examples of schoolboy recklessness will be exhumed to remind supporters as to where things stand and the existential perils faced. Good for rallying waverers.
For those who think otherwise, and would throw caution to the winds, recalling yesterday is recommended. It should be stark, as well as searing as to the horrors unleashed back then. There were previews of force and counterforce; extrajudicial and contesting phantoms running amok; hapless citizens hitting the ground in search of cover.
It is best refreshed by that now trusted and all-too-familiar Guyanese refrain: dis time nah lang time. To put differently, invitations toward civil strife and war begets same; in this small space: there are no winners, even those who believe they will overcome political adversaries; everybody is loaded, packing some heat. This time is different reverberates more strongly today.
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