Liz Cheney – a woman showing up our leading men in Guyana

Aug 23, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

U.S. Congresswoman Liz Cheney is down.  Barring some miracle, the Wyoming Republican’s political career may also be over; done and gone.  I think Liz Cheney knew that, despite her hard rock Republican pedigree, she is out for the count, given the pathological fanaticisms of tens of millions of Americans for the bizarre one, who occupied the White House.  Yet, she was willing to lay all-political future, personal aspirations, possible positive contributions-on the line in what was clearly losing effort, a suicidal mission.  She lost.  I laud this woman, I admire a rare great American, when great Americans are endangered.  I salute this Spartan warrior returning home on her shield.  As I absorb her courage under fire, her political integrity for speaking raw truths, I think of Guyana, and regret the loss of character and the self-respecting like a Liz Cheney in our national politics.

I recognise partisan politics in her supporting the former President in 2016.  It was a low moment, a casualty of tactical cohesion and her times.  She could have stayed with the crowd, and walk dishonourably.  She didn’t.  It was too much, for some, certain lines are not crossed, matters never taken that far.  She would have ensured that she endured, it was guaranteed.  With this in mind, I think of national stalwarts here who are as erratic as they come, Nero and Caligula to the core, with a blood brother equivalent to the former White House occupant.  I ask where are the male and female Liz Cheney(s) in Guyana?  The man or woman of courage, of honour, of ethics, who stands up and stands for something, other than the sordid, the self-perpetuating, the cultish, regardless how roguish.

There are those pretending at legal eagles, but are very much at home with the buzzards where backbone is concerned.  Out of sympathy, I do not twist the stiletto, and point to the missing fearlessness that should be present amidst corruptions, failures.  Stand for something, other than bellowing blusters and barrels echoing hollowly -nothing inside.  Challenge domestic gods for weakness, illness, dreadfulness, smallness.  Be men, not chowmein.  I note scholars.  When I look at how kowtowing in obsequious deference, I prefer to be unlettered, unscholarly in my illiteracy.  What office, what prestige, what mountain of money could compel such abandonment of intellect, character, one’s soul?  There is none of any of those that are sufficient to intrigue, to diminish.  I sense not men of high learning, but of unequalled yearning.  How is it that neither lawmen nor book-wise men can see no wrong in all the leadership debaucheries, skullduggeries, the alleged financial improprieties?  Why are they ecstatic to remain imperiously impervious to all that saturates atmosphere, consciousness, consciences?  Whither either of the latter two?  I don’t need PhDs to discern follies.

Still, I see some rare light; not bright ray, but piercing enough.  Every man has his Achilles heel, his price, his yearning, which prompts a lifetime of crawling weakness, that imbecilic subservience, craving dependency.  I should look at the official big man, the number one in a blind man’s no man’s land, but he himself is best left unaddressed in the honours department for that is such an alien commodity.  Another dreadful loss in the price of the pyrrhic political victories that this country ekes out, this hardscrabble society lives with, must endure.

I would do this effort injustice, if I were to ignore the women in this pantheon of the rankest partisans -all for one, and one for all, come what may.  No matter how dastardly, how ugly, how costly to this woeful nation.  Regrettably, the United States Ambassador has completed her last Florence Nightingale round in the salvaging ward that is Guyana. Specifically, I think of the lady, the medicine woman with the compassionate portfolio.  And I ask what about thee too, how about thee, in this nasty, sickly, brew that poisons party, people, and the possible prosperities of our times; I add the properties still residual in our besmirched souls.  Somebody has to raise their hands.  Some man, some woman, and say: enough is enough.  It is time to separate, to go against the tide, in what is sure to be hard fall in a lost cause.  But when all is done, when all is remembered and written after the scattered shards have been collected somehow and put together somehow, then there will be awe and admiration that Guyana had someone as graceful and filled with grandeur like Liz Cheney.  Yes, the devil himself sometimes must be fought in hell.  Even when there is no hope of winning at all. Where are our guardians, warriors, tribunes?

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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