H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – Paroxyms of Bile, the Apoplectic, the Hate-Filled

Aug 23, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – What is all the noise about?  What’s up with politicians tightening into coiled springs, poised to unload? I need help.  C’mon man, somebody help me, please.

I am trying to fathom the mysteries and the miracles.  Voices clamoring, torrents of words, and what emerges are these paroxysms.  Paroxysms of apoplexy.  Paroxysms of hysteria.  Paroxysms of paranoia.  From leaders trapped by their deceits, fearful of looking stupid, devious, and sinister; then actually proving all three.  Amid the thunder of how great Guyana is, there is this leadership horror that a whisper there, and a pen scratching away over here, could expose the porous coverups, snaky relationships, Faustian bargains, and sly foreign swindles.   A little ink that mutters about the suspect here, and a hole there, and the heavens fall.  Surely, people in power can’t be this insecure, so unsure of feet, rendered so vulnerable by their actions. Note: not a word about their motivations.  The mystery is that what upsets is not even a blot of ink on parchment, but a technological scrawl on glass.  It is like walking on water.

There is another mystery: in this democracy, free expression, free thinking, freedom from fear, are all figments.  This is so when 99.99% of the population decide that silence is the better part of a menacing existence, the guarantee of survival.  With so many shriveled into protective corners, there is no reason for any political leader to be so nervous, anxious, defensive?  How is it, and why is it, that those with all the power cower before one word, one writer, one speaker, one sliver of light from the few dismissed as rogues and renegades?  There is the spectacle of those crackling with fury, who back themselves into walls of their own making now reduced to slack-jawed, white-eyed frothing.  They spew and soil Guyana’s green earth.  With lies, I want to say, but will be courteous.  Deviousness is a start, followed by deception, and then with both wrapped in the fine tapestry of distraction.  In two words, media vigilantes.  Political leaders turned into media vigilantes.  Sic ‘em, get ‘em, gangsta!

No accusing finger is pointed at invaders (call them partners).  Better to focus on the brother who dips his hand in the same dish, then goes out into the darkness to destroy.  Darkness is thick at the heights, surrounds both the bald and the burly, the puny and the slippery.  This work is really the portfolio of the bishop.  Oh, but there is a conflict: the bishop has a date with business; it is the kind without records, no trails. When the rubber meets the road, when basic questions are asked, not tough ones, there is pretending, hiding, misdirecting, shouting, and raging.  Any trick employed to avoid truth telling.

Talk, or inquire, about these things, and paroxysms of acrimony, bile, and derangements takeover, twist into convulsions.  I remind all and sundry: there are visitors under the national roof. We all have to behave ourselves, manage our words, proceed delicately.  Rodney King of LA riots fame said it in plaintive Byronic cadences: can’t we all get along? I already had a head start with that, for even when I point to the Klansmen, and masters of (and in) the Guyanese universe, there is no malice, only toiling for goodwill and better for country.  I believe in the goodness of man, which is why some are named nowadays.  Before they didn’t exist, other than leprously and scandalously, definitely disastrously for Guyana.

If my sin is wanting goodwill and better for the poor, then I welcome hell as my home.  I know poor, I do poor, even as I winter here in these seasons of great discontents.  One old house, one old car, one old shoe; the search is ongoing for the other side.  Who else high up on the power ladder can honestly say so?  How many other Guyanese have even tried, know what it is to live like this?  That’s why some can dare to think, to share publicly.

Amidst the paroxysm of the powerful, there is this irony: I am that rarity -a friendly enemy; no ideas about any new party, no involvement with anybody, old or new.  See! I comfort foes. What is desperately needed in this era of Bonanza Guyana is less leadership lies, lashes, lectures.  How about some truth, folks?  Look, we all know when a man is about truth, then he is neither into Kathak dancing nor skipping rope.  Stand straight, speak straight, walk straight.  There is no call to foam and fulminate.  At perceived enemies.  At imagined subversives.  At malcontents, dissents, and those with suspected evil intents. I wish for a better Guyana: not a red one, nor a green one, but a purple one.

One man can make a difference, so can one voice and one pen.  Just revisit the history of that area they used to call the Levant, and look at how the world was changed.  And please don’t forget to remember that vital component.  It’s the first step, first handshake.  There is too much screaming, paroxysms of shouting from high places at high pitch.  Live straight, and all will be first rate.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, horror, poised, springs

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