By GHK Lall- Though expected here, Donald Trump resurrection and ascendancy has stirred, stunned, and seized global interest. For all the wrong reasons. So much of what this man represents, so much that he has spoken and proven, have more applications and implications down home here, that many Guyanese don’t even begin to know. If they only did…. A few echoes should help clear the mind, perhaps make citizens looks at themselves, and ask themselves if they like what they see.
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 and masculinity. Fears rekindled, sparks flying all over with so 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 was more than a masquerade, is now infused with what could be. Look at it this way: Trump succeeded in his call 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 nestled, more plentiful in bigotries, numbers. 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.
Relative to mindsets, there is that ancient horror, the odious 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 domestic plantation. The house slave is of the rainbow, is of the mental and psychological, and his or her workspace is without door, fence, or border. In this context, there is something I must say.
A man can revile me, and I will still shake his hand in genuine brotherhood. But when he persists with threatening malignancies, uncontained virulence, I cannot eat at the same table, or share the same space with him. When I abhor his unreconstructed nature, how can I endorse him, when he has proven before the widest public audience that he is an unreconstructed pathological racist.
It was long said that the most dangerous racists were not from the Deep South, the Gothic horrors of Georgia, Virginia, Alabama. Civil rights leaders and sociologists found that out the hard way. Their worst impediments, greatest underminers, came from the North. Those who smiled in the face, but held a poisoned dagger in their handshake. Donald Trump is from the North, and he doesn’t conceal his daggers. When the vicious, noxious toxins of a candidate like Donald Trump can influence minds here, and Guyanese living over there, then that stands as stark, poignant testimony of how irreversible Guyana is today.
It is by no means naïve nor innocent. For a vote for Trump means more than victory for Trump. The triumph of the Republicans and the man that is now its soul, spine, and sordidness means a smoother passage for likeminded despots and demagogues here. Gone is looking over shoulders at Justice or some Treasury subunit called OFAC. No longer would travel through the John F. Kennedy corridor degrade to such apprehensions that officials must leave incriminatory devices behind, and accompany themselves with diplomatic accessories, should things get warm.
Summation: when a man is that corrupt, then he is sure as hell is not going to place any premium (or 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 more 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, my expectations are that the return of the new Guyanese hero would signal a return to a hobbled Environmental Protection Agency, a Department of Justice Civil Rights Division pushed to being a backwater presence, and the Securities and Exchange Commission reduced to a shadow. Those constitute but the smallest snapshot of what had reigned over four years ago.
What else could there be going forward, with a leader energised 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, understand them all.