By GHK Lall- A few months ago, I shared a platform with a fine Guyanese, Mr. Tim Jonas, SC. Yes, I know that I have delivered some shots in his direction, but he remains a fine republican. Mr. Jonas asserted that America has had centuries to find its footing, and it has learned many lessons along the way.
In my own words, it is how to keep its head afloat in the most trying times, even in what looks like revolution and Civil War. I didn’t receive that well. But now that that immaculate bastion of American journalism and ferocious guardian of the conservative flame, the Wall Street Journal came out swinging at the state of the American leadership, I had to pause. Counsel Jonas may have been on to something.
For the WSJ to go against a Republican White House, it means that too many bridges have been crossed. Say the word tariffs, and the WSJ editorial board saw red. Somebody should sue. No power, no tariffs; neither Mexico nor Canada.
It is illegal to circumvent the Congress, since tariffs are within its purview. The usually bland WSJ went on a rampage. Take a read. ‘Treating the North American economy as a personal plaything.’ And ‘presidential whim.’
And ‘dumbest tariff plunge’ and ‘the dumbest trade war in history.’ I had to read and reread those WSJ editorials, for they pulled no punches. In the good ole USA, when things are at their bleakest, there is usually a rescue operation underway, and from the unlikeliest of corners. The WSJ qualifies. It could not have been easy to trash a sitting US chief, and a Republican one at that, but the WSJ showed that its was up to the demands of the moment. I take my hat off to the people over there in Stars and Stripes country.
The situation has to be really, terribly bad for the WSJ to sound off in that uncharacteristic manner. In keeping with my longstanding commitment, I only pass along. I do not criticize; I do not condemn. But it does say something about the depth and standards of the United States that the WSJ could break ranks (so to speak) and rise to the occasion to make its voice heard. Because it is the Wall Street Journal, its voice has considerable carrying power. I use the WSJ developments to make a point or two in this Guyana now so beloved by locals and, well, just about everybody who could read a map, or a newspaper.
Guyanese have a rotten government in the PPP. But none, not one of the government’s people, has the courage and the gumption to say: hey, what’s going on? That can’t be right. See any of the PPP cognoscenti displaying that spherical object usually in the hands of bowlers and fielders in a cricket game? There is a running battle in the PPP Government among some senior ministers and others farther up the ladder than them for that much-coveted top prize.
Who is the biggest thief? Or, who is the broadest walking crime wave? Yet all of the PPP bright boys and girls, all of the government’s media superstars are suddenly busy with colonoscopies. To put more crudely, their guts have purged via some new form of suction. What Guyanese observers behold is an army of men now without brains and brawn, and without that other part of the anatomy that begins with the letter b. For those still in need of help, please refer to the cricket game just mentioned. Not the bat or wicket.
America has its Wall Street Journal. Guyana has its backstreet boys and girls. They call dumbness on themselves. Their minds and tongues have been sacrificed on the altars paying tribute to race and the supremacy of a certain kind of politics. Without any shame. Without a second thought.
I am all for supporting one’s own. But after the long roll calls of political calumnies, obscenities, and skullduggeries at elevated levels, and then in every nook and cranny across Guyana, somebody in the PPP has to have a conscience.
Somebody keeping the company of the top PPP dogs must have some values. All their education, all their man of the world self-promotions, and all they amount to is the hardheadedness of mules, and the fear of mice. When the PPP Government, when Guyana, needs men of bold ethical caliber, both have to settle for whimpering, scampering mice.
When America needs a Horatio to hold the bridge against the times, it finds a Wall Street Journal. When Guyana needs a man or woman to put a finger in the hole in the Seawall, it ends up with those who have holes in their heads. There are times when I don’t like where America is, what it has become. There are those other times, when I look at Guyana, and say a silent prayer for what could and should have been. It is why America is a country. It is why Guyana, for all its great wealth, remains a mental and spiritual ghetto. Thanks, Mr. Jonas, for believing, keeping the faith.
