Donald Trump and Brutus in Essequibo today

Dec 18, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I heard and read so much criticism of Donald Trump that it is growing out of my ear. And in each instance, I wondered why Trump was so demeaned by global society when past and present history is the story of the Donald Trumps of this world. In Essequibo today as you read this column, Trump will be garlanded and crowds will swarm around him to have their photo moment.
But the real Trump moment in Essequibo will be when he walks on the pulpit. Then the vocabulary of the demagogue will flow, and nicely too. But there will be nothing nice about those who will listen with absorbing attention. The ugliness of Hitler’s rise, the repugnance of Donald Trump’s election victory, the nastiness of Benazir Bhutto’s success and many more instances that resemble these three events mentioned here will all converge on that podium where Bharrat Jagdeo will stand with a portrait in his hands of the deformed country that a 19-month-old government has reduced Guyana to.
But inside this phantasmagoria that Jagdeo will drive into the minds of his listeners is the story of Brutus, a tale that exists inside the soul of the human species referred to as Homo sapiens. One of the mysteries that will never be answered is if after Hitler had lost the war and Germany was not prosecuted as a defeated power, he (Hitler) would have won a post-war general election. Could one definitely say no? Isn’t the mind so infinitely limited that it cannot and will not absorb the painful, tragic lessons of the past?
There is a potent philosophical episode in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that each human should internalize as they sit down in their chair to listen to Bharrat Jagdeo as he addresses them at the PPP Congress today;

“And we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates;
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars.
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

The underlings are the people that endanger civilization. They always do. They always will. They will so today at that congress. They will clap, cheer on, and dance as their failed masters lead them on. Their fault is that they are underlings. And underlings will give the world more Donald Trumps and Bharrat Jagdeos. These underlings today will masochistically embrace the rivers and oceans of fiction as if their minds are like a sponge that sucks in the dirty water that the cleaner mops up. Do they believe that a 19-month-old government has endangered the sugar industry? Were they living in Guyana when under Mr. Jagdeo’s presidency Skeldon never achieved its production targets?
Were they living in Guyana when their children entered the University of Guyana and the science and technology labs were as empty as the shelves of a store after Black Friday shoppers grabbed up the latest running shoes? Is it the 19-month-old government that we have today that is responsible for the darkness of the roads at Mahaica and Mahaicony and the uncivilized appearance of Black Bush Polder? Do the congress attendees know that Mr. Jagdeo spent twelve years as president and handpicked his successor and spent three more years as the king during the tenure of Donald Ramotar?
Do the congress delegates know that right in Essequibo where they are currently gathered, passport applications had to be done in Georgetown? Was it the 19-month-old government we have today that did that? Surely when they reflect on why they had to travel to Georgetown to get a birth certificate, their mind must wander around and wonder at those fifteen years of Jagdeo’s control of Guyana.
The lowest point in Guyana’s civilization will occur when, with garlands swinging wildly from their necks the leaders hold each other’s hand and declare that the PPP will be back in power in 2020. The resulting emotions from the floor will be so nuclear that the windows of the building will shatter. And Guyanese are still thinking of how the US can elect a man like Donald Trump.
How did we elect such a bunch like the Jagdeo cabal? This cabal wants to be returned to power. Did the people of Essequibo know that amidst the poverty we live with in Guyana, the very man that they will embrace today, built a Marriott Hotel while the nation’s education structure was falling down? Do they know about Pradoville 2? Do they want to re-elect a party that will create ten more Pradovilles? But I guess they do, because we are all underlings.