There are better ways to KO a perceived adversary

Nov 13, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – I am awestruck by the limitations of Guyanese in the public scheme. They can babble from Matthew to Machiavelli to Marx, and from Shakespeare to Cicero to King Khalil, and yet for all their quoting and pontificating, they are nothing but yapping, yelping, yowling whelps where classy and expansive expression of the Mother Tongue is concerned. The fine art of the insult, the studied putdown, is conspicuously lacking in the lexicon of Guyanese, making it one dimensional, to wit, he is a PNC or PPP man, and nothing else. It is, at once, the predictability and poverty of Guyanese intellectual flights, the dull descending arcs of their drollness.

There are better ways to KO a perceived adversary. Labeling him a PNC or PPP man is pathetic, the only refuge of a vagabond run to ground; one exposed for lacking depth, resoundness or sagaciousness. First, it is wiser to address as ‘honourable’ since everyone knows that the opposite is more accurate, and finds a ready attachment to the object of such dubious distinction. Next, do not address by name, which reduces to a nonperson, one not worthy of the dignity of human species classification, no standing. It is more than making that party an outcast, and for the simple reason that he doesn’t belong to any caste, since none would accept; not even the lowest castes. It is the equivalent of condemning the object of clinical scorn into a state of nonexistence, not even that of rodent or roach.

Another way that works well is to talk over their heads (or down to them, as if to a retarded being), and dare them to admit to the sorry state of their rancid nature, and wallow in the political pigsty they have made their cherished home. It is called the first sanctuary of scoundrels: Facebook or other social media platforms. It should be noticed that I now refuse to be drawn into verbal or epistolary engagements with others. I prefer not to join in arguments with fools, and have others wonder which one is the fool, for allowing himself to be sucked into the quicksand that is always looking for new dingbats.

But the best insult of all is this one that I got from the Romans and which I use sparingly. It goes like this: de mortuis nil nisi bonum discendum est, which translates to: speak nothing but good of the dead. This cuts several ways. In the first place, silence is golden, and allows the dumb to believe that they got the upper hand. Secondly, speaking to the good of the undeserving living dead is taking duty to courtesy to unscaled heights, which only makes the recipient into a bigger laughingstock. And last, the actual rare surgical use of such a phrase puts everyone in their place, and everything into perspective. In sum, it is the truth where all know that they have been subjected to public comedy, which is the biggest insult there is.

Sincerely,

GHK Lall