The Trump victory, many revelations, many lessons

Nov 15, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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…Hard Truths 

By GHK Lall 

Kaieteur News-Though expected in this corner, Donald Trump resurrection and ascendancy has stirred, stunned, and seized global interest.  For the wrong reasons.  So much of what this man represents, so much that he has spoken and proven, have more applications and implications down here.  If only Guyanese knew….  A few echoes may clear the mind, help citizens look at themselves, then ask if they like what they see in the American now president again.

One that startled was that the old bottom house petitions and perversions wended their way into local letter columns, graced public postures, even flitted into international space.  Ah yuh waan dem kine ah peeple deh.  It is the creole version.  Also, the polite one that is stripped of color, masculinity.  Fears rekindled, sparks flying with many frightening meanings. Prejudices not so subtle, so raw as to be visible.  Especially when tied to local election rigging.  Since that is what simmers underground, festers in the heart, then I regret to say that President Ali’s One Guyana took on an added layer, a sinister one.

The One Guyana mirage, and what is more than a masquerade, is now infused with what possibilities.  Absorb something.  Trump succeeded in his push to Make America Great Again, i.e., an America for Americans only (the real ones, not even the native ones).  Why, therefore, not One Guyana with one kind of people mostly in mind.  In Guyana, the mindsets are even more passionate, more deep-seated, more plentiful in bigotries.  Whether the veiled messages and objectives of MAGA or One Guyana, there is a palpable monstrosity in the making.  Guyanese must see through the writings here coupled with the actions in New York, and interpret the true mindsets, the deep meanings.  Keep that woman out, by whatever means necessary.

Relative to mindsets, there is that historic notoriety of divide and rule in domestic quarters.  It was the house slave.  Today, the house slave presents different looks.  The house slave is more than physical, the house slave is more than local.  The house slave is multicolored, of the mental and psychological, and his or her kitchen is without door, fence, or border.  Now, there is something I must say.  Anyone can try criminalizing, and I will still shake his hand in genuine brotherhood.  But when he embodies threatening malignancies, uncontained virulence, I cannot eat at the table, or share the same space with him.  When I recoil from his unreconstructed nature, how can I endorse him, when he has proven publicly that he is a pathological racist.  How can any colored man vote for a man who detests him?  Notwithstanding the glaring, wasteful failures of the Democrats?   Consider something else.

It was long said that the most insidious, dangerous racists were not from the Deep South, the Gothic horrors of Georgia, Virginia, Alabama.  Civil rights leaders and sociologists found that out.  Their worst impediments, greatest underminers, came from the North.  Those who smiled in the face, but held poisoned daggers in their handshake.  Donald Trump is from the North; his daggers are the deadliest.  When the sickening toxins of candidate Trump can influence Guyanese minds here, and over there, then that’s stark, poignant testimony of how irreversible Guyana is today.  It is neither naïve nor innocent.  For a vote for Trump means more than victory for Trump.  The Republican triumph and the man that is now its soul, spine, scowl, and sordidness means a smoother passage for likeminded despots and demagogues here.  Gone is looking over shoulders at Justice or Treasury’s OFAC.  No longer would travel through JFK’s corridors degrade to such apprehensions that officials must leave incriminatory devices behind, and accompany themselves with diplomatic accessories, should heat intensify.  Summation: when a man is that corrupt, then he is sure as hell is not going to place any bounty on the heads of uneasy Guyanese in government or elsewhere.  Men of power and perched in the high offices of Guyana can breathe easier, travel unconcernedly.  These were among the reasons why some Guyanese were pulling for the return of Donald Trump.  Think wide, think deep, fellow citizens.  It was more than about an American election.  It is also about a Guyanese one.

Separately, the return of the new Guyanese hero signals a return to a hobbled US Environmental Protection Agency, the Dept of Justice’s Civil Rights Division marginalized, and the SEC minimized to a scarecrow.  Those are random snapshots of what reigned over four years ago.  What else could there be going forward, with a leader energized by votes, his own vitriol and viciousness.  I see his mirror images right here: dangerous talk and then destructive actions.  When America’s premier agencies are subject to such ill winds, then what pressure here for ours to function in sync with accepted international standards, best practices.  The Trump election has many Guyanese lessons, implications.  See them all, understand them all.  All should be wiser.

The Trump victory, many revelations, many lessons

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

(The Trump victory, many revelations, many lessons)

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• Donald Trump resurrection, Fears rekindled, frightening meanings, hard truths, wrong reasons

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