America’s Jan. 6 hearings

Jul 12, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The January 6 hearings continue in the United States Congress, and there has been a slew of revelations on what goes on at the heights, in this instance as driven by the corrupt ambitions of former President, Donald Trump.

On a dazzling note, it is of how men and women, powerful in access to the then President, were handicapped in their efforts to get him to see some little ray of light that he had lost, and that he was going down a terrible road. And most importantly, it is revealing, and inspiring that some men and women stood up to their leader, insisted that he had it wrong, and that he must throw in the towel, and depart from his high office, with grace and dignity intact.

This is what it takes, as history has confirmed to us from time to time. When a few good ones draw the line and stand immovably on it, they know that they will pay a heavy price, but they still marshal the courage and the will to make the sacrifice, including the ultimate one. A few hundred Spartans did that at Thermopylae against an overwhelming force knowing that they were all going to go down. Their energy and their character, their whole upbringing and outlook on life, made it impossible for them to think of or go in any other direction.

It is of how some fight for what is ideal, what is right by their standard of justice, regardless of the odds. Mohandas Gandhi did that in colonial India and succeeded; so, too, did Martin Luther King in Jim Crow America; as well as Nelson Mandela in apartheid South Africa. We are all better for the superb examples of these superstars of struggle against forces that embodied the all-conquering, but who come out winning, nevertheless. For Trump’s own aides and trusted insiders to come out and speak out against him says so much about them, for what it meant was that their actions effectively sealed their fate. He was that kind of man, still remains that controlling for too much of his followers, from all walks of American life.

What has come out so far in the January 6 Congressional Hearings tells us much about human nature. This stretches from the power of cult leaders to inner circles committed to them, and then of something else. We are privy to observe those who were bold enough to break from the mould and hold of a deranged leader who insisted on piling wrongdoing upon wrongdoing, in illegality after illegality, and dragging them down with him. Some in the White House of Trump were not prepared to allow themselves to be flexible (compromised) to such extents, so they balked. It is why their testimony is so riveting, in that it is remarkably revealing. It is also restoring in that there could be, still is, this kind of human spirit, when it is most needed.

We continue to have our troubles with leaders in Guyana. Like Donald Trump, they demand absolute loyalty, regardless of cost to individual integrity, the assaults on personal standards. It is their way alone in Guyana, and this means total silence here. We are filled with all these lovely stories about the positives that will bring so much prosperity to Guyanese, but of the real stories of leadership failures and corruptions, those are wrapped in concrete and buried in steel.

Unlike Americans close to the seat of power (Brits, too), men and women in this country who are in similar positions clam up and cover-up to protect the wiles and guiles of leaders who make losers out of trusting Guyanese. On our richest prize, this oil of ours, those who speak out fearlessly about possible issues with the management of Guyana’s Oil Fund can be penalised for their honesty. But those who abuse it are exempt by law. Who can find favour with something like that, support such? What leader would think of that protective crookedness? What do we have here in Guyana for leaders, and those around them? It seems too many like that fatally flawed and now exposed former American leader, as resonates from the January 6 Hearings.