Deceivers, deniers, liars at the peaks -are they here?

Oct 19, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – He started out small – a teeny, bitty, little lie, from a young age, growing into it.  The results were so liked that a bigger, then a bigger lie started becoming an unshakeable part of the character, the makeup.  Not that any sustained effort was made to shake off the lies that were so reflexive, which clung so tenaciously.  The little lies are called white lies, and the usual reaction is laughter, a shrug.  What’s the harm, who has been fouled?  In the passage of time, the peculiar growth processes of some men, many, little lies transformed into half-truths.  The truth is either a truth, or it’s a lie.  There are no half or three-quarters truths, no such animal exists.  For whether by commission or omission, a half-truth is what amounts to a full out falsehood.  The man, a national leader no less of considerable following, who began with small lies soon delighted in chronic lies, and all the personal good that resulted from them.  The spaces created.  The doors that swung open.  The room to operate, at will.  The Germans discovered the extraordinary power of lies alongside how to make their fearsome, unanswerable V-1 and V-2 rockets that rained on Ipswich, Norwich, and Cheswick.  While Von Braun refined and perfected in his labs, Goebbels came to the realization that once a lie is launched, that rocket must continue flying.  With more lies.  Then more lies.  Crass and craven political leaders are like that: the more they lie, the more they like the results.  It is costless, isn’t it?  Where have the consequences been for those who represent strains of this in Guyana?

Who challenges them?  Who dares to go against them?  So little lies serve as the precedent for more of them.  A side street, a forgotten back alley, of deceptions that is way out of sight, soon becomes the long road of an expressway.  A highway of falsehoods.  A corridor to power, which, when the cunning make use of, empowers their unchecked ascendancy, save for an inconvenient bump or two along the way.  Lies are told without a second thought, without any stirring of conscience, without any regard for the blotches that accumulate on one’s record, one’s character.  Lies, as said, are small, then, massive, they are part of a consistent personal practice, with little regard for consequences.  Lies are presented in the reckless nonchalance of not caring whether there is discovery, followed by the horror of exposure.  Lies-partial falsehoods, repeated falsehoods, secret falsehoods, falsehoods detected-become the norm even after there is detection of what is going on.  What does that say about such a person?  What does that signify for a country and its citizens?  When that person holds himself or herself out as a leader, and then succeed in becoming a national one?

There are some in this world who are so chronically committed to deception, splitting hairs, deliberate dodging or submerging or twisting of the truth, that they simply can no longer tell the truth.  About anything.  They just don’t have truth in them.  Whether through burgeoning and barefaced exaggeration, or the more subtle kinds, they are just too prone to the practice of lying and lying and lying without interruption.  After an interval, such a modus operandi (the practice of lies) mutates into a modus vivendi (the way of life lived and loved).  In other words, lies become second nature for such people.  I table something for the first time before fellows: is it possible, do the circumstances and the environment confirm, that Guyana has a few such persons in positions of power and authority in this country?  More than a few, too many for the good of this country?

The irony of and danger of asking such a question, or any of similar strains, is that those who inquire about such a state in Guyana quickly degrade to a big problem.  Such human obstacles must not be allowed to stand, gather strength.  He or she must be crushed out of existence.  For like that story from Hans Chrisian Andersen, there is the leadership dread that someone-some bold child, or some inspired mature presence, or some uncorrupted spirit-that will be a revealer of the way that things are.   The king has no truth.  When observant, conscientious, people speak their minds, they represent the best attributes of citizenship.  They will speak against lies, whether they involve a one-dollar bill, or a billion, friend or foe, with the same vigor.  For their efforts, a barrage of lashes descends.

Now I try to center this offering involving lies. I present a man who is no longer on this earth but was laced through and through with lies.  He was not Guyanese.  He was American.  He started out with minor matters, then became a monster with lying.  He knew no other way, would try no other.  He was a US Congressman, a Senator, a Senate Majority Leader, Vice President (Speaker pro tempore), and at the end President of the United States of America.  His name was Lydon Baines Johnson.  He did much for Civil Rights; he also represented other things.  Lies do have a powerful arc, frightening reach.  They also have a limited life, one that is diseased from birth and grows worse, with each breath taken.  My last question should have been anticipated.  Are there Lyndon Johnson’s equivalents in Guyana?  If an American with a successful political pedigree as Lyndon B. Johnson, then why not a Guyanese, more than one of them, especially considering the controversies, clamors, clashes?   Who are they, as attested to by the records that they have compiled?  I think we know them.  They are too many to have passed unnoticed.  Guyanese must decide how much of a willing, colluding party they will be to liars and their lies.  Look where this society is.  My position has long roots, is well known.

(Deceivers, deniers, liars at the peaks -are they here?)

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

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• consequences, extraordinary, forgotten, Guyanese, makeup, persons

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