More frequently these days, the thinking is that America is too convulsed to straighten up, too far gone to turn back. I am glad to be given a sliver or two of rich developments that insist how wrong I am. There’s the saga of Jimmy Kimmel. More commentator than comedian; but a speaker that draws his share of listeners, believers, followers.
Kimmel was made to go. Now, he is back. He has to recognize the temper of the times, temper his language. There’s no surrendering of rights, simply the recognition his voice has reach, and that it can provoke controversy, laughter. He should stick to the trade in which he has done well. To add the hostile (or what’s construed as such) into the already volatile can make the fragile rivets that hold things together snap at the seams. Like the jesters of old, his first call is to make the princes of the realm laugh through their discomfort. Their subjects and courts are watching. What was ennobling for me was that when Jimmy Kimmel was struck, so many stood up for not so much what he said, but his right to say so. A few pointed to the primacy of that amendment that is the first one, and the reason that it is. Freedom of speech is that sacrosanct in America.
I am delighted by this easing from the battering winds that Kimmel had to endure. There is even greater delight that those who stood up for his right to sacred expression hailed from so many different corners of America, including those who have no use for him and his kind. The comedy cast was expected to be mostly in Jimmy Kimmel’s corner. They were. So, too, the entertainment crowd, which got in its share of words, uttered its warnings. No surprises there. The surprises came from the Republican Quarter. Republican Senators Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rand Paul (Kentucky) took objection to what the U.S. Constitution said shouldn’t be, and what their consciences, notwithstanding their politics, said is wrong, could lead for the unending carousel of tit-for-tat up the road. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska courageously broke ranks and had his say. It is the American Way. No matter how unpleasant, obnoxious, the utterance, so long as no law is violated, then retaliation and restriction just cannot be supported.
What can we here in Guyana, a baby democracy at best, learn from developments in America as they related to the Jimmy Kimmel points of contentiousness? First, it is the easiest thing in the world to stay within the tribe, follow the crowd. The flip side of that is that it reduces those who manage themselves in such ways, to the servile. To zombies without mental capacity. Second, there are those occasions where independence of thought, and the liberation of conscience, are so treasured, that there is not an iota of patience, nor of sufferance, for what is wrong, hence highly unacceptable, in its appearance, and in its substance. If I can’t be of that, then of what am I about? Third, when national leaders are so feared, or so blindly and cravenly worshipped, then only willful blindness and deafness and speechlessness will be the dominant features in one’s existence. It could be me. The odds are overwhelmingly higher that it will be other Guyanese, and not me. Not when the need is for someone, just one, to stand up, and say it is dark around here. Let there be light. Any little light that can and must shine. One flickering candle can lead to another, then another. Look at what Guyanese had.
Mon Repos Market barrage, and a tsunami of denunciation followed. Righteous wrath rising to its fullest height. Regardless of the underpinnings and mystery lapses, it is the way it should be. But where were the outraged voices, the choking passions, when a bus stopped in the middle of the wilds, and its occupants were hustled out? Whenever there are two standards of right, then one is sure to be wrong. The U.S. has its problems with WIN’s Mohamed. Adjustment has since made its way into the news. Do Guyanese-be they public or private institutions, political partisan or regular civilian-dare to attempt any adjustment of their own? I assert that with or without national independence, there is independence of individual thought, independence of expression. What happened to that mentality, that condition without US input? Does it still exist? Where did it go? I shouldn’t look to leaders for answers. The first glance, then stare, must be at myself. When I am trapped by mental slavery, then PhDs, JDs, and DDs mock. The mentally enslaved is a slave. Cruz, Paul, and Bacon inspire the American inside. Some Guyanese of similar strength could make better Guyanese of others, maybe many.
