The Great American Experiment 

Apr 13, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

 Kaieteur News- Oftentimes, but more frequently in recent times, I find myself thinking of what has been termed the Grand American Experiment.  At one time, the belief was that it can’t be thwarted, held back, pushed down, or diminished.  The flurry of recent developments has given pause.  Can this revolutionary idea that is America, one so rich in splendor and so open-ended with promise, still succeed and also flourish, notwithstanding its setbacks?  And amidst the mental upheavals, from war by other means, can this America stand?

I bring neither simple theory nor sophisticated concept.  But my belief is as firm as ever that the American Republic will be sustained.  Not in fragments, but not to the fullest stretch of its possibilities.  But it will survive.  From the recesses of real life, there are those hallowed moments that give hope and inspire faith, when both are at their lowest ebb.  I begin with the strange.

Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church, a sanctuary once considered among the most holy, went to the edge of the precipice, almost stumbled over death’s door.  And where is he today?  Back, though a little slower, a whole lot wobbly.  When it is dark, when all appears foregone, there is a spark that flutters into a flame.  Hope is renewed.  It is why there must be no giving up.  Not ever.  Not in America.  Not in Guyana, if I may squeeze this place in the presentation.  Men will be men, but there is that tide in their affairs that turn. The Great American Experiment will survive.  The truths that are self-evident, held inalienable, will be restored and will endure.

On more familiar (and more comfortable) ground for many, I look back to go forward.  For centuries, men and women toiled under the ovens of the American sun, and the harsh crash of the whip, those piercing spikes of the toe of the boot.  Only flesh and bone give in such situations.  Men enslaving men.  And who is the one who sets them free?  Out of all the groups possible, there emerged a Republican leader with that most applicable of names – Abraham Lincoln.  There was the Biblical Moses, the Liberator.  America gave its slaves (and the world) the Great Emancipator.  He took the chains off, and for that they took him out.  For good.

In the bittersweet American century following, there was Jim Crow and Ku Klux Klan, and White Citizens’ Councils; and some Deep South governors who blew smoke, ate fire which was washed down with firewater.  As circumstances would have it, another man from the American Deep South moseyed on over into the White House under the darkest of palls.  Even a smidgen of suspicion was cast upon him.  A Texan, whose handle was Lyndon B. Johnson, did his congressional acts and reconfigured history.  Out of the ashes of Reconstruction and its ugly aftermath, it took a Southerner to turn the tide.  Many Guyanese found a home in America, thanks to some embedded provisions, and the thankless toil of men like Martin Luther King, and a seamstress known to history as Rosa Parks.  When the hours were at their darkest, hope a forlorn undertaking, the Grand American Experiment found its footing again.

Before Lyndon Johnson, there was a character of venomously gleaming deviousness.  Joe McCarthy was his name, and being a snake of a senator was his game.  Did he bring down some honest, patriotic Americans, or did he?  But for every American destroyer that is a Joseph McCarthy, America always seems to discover a rescuer, such as Joseph N. Welch, army counsel, and one-time US Army private, believe it or not.  Indeed, the mighty can be laid low by the low, which is possible in America only.  “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”  Where and how does America, when in its deepest throes, succeed in finding people like Joseph Welch?

There was candidate George H.W. Bush of Willie Horton notoriety, who made it to President Bush the Elder.  Then there was George W. Bush, who was propelled into the White House by five out of nine US Supreme Court Justices.  And at that low point in American political and judicial history, Al Gore rose high and threw away his winning hand.  There has been a Barack Obama since, and even two women, one black and brown, who vied for America’s highest crown, only to fall short.  It is the America that is unbeatable, unimaginable, and at its best when unchained.  The Great American Experiment falters, turns a blind corner, but it somehow finds the wisdom and depth to continue its eternal quest for the impossible.

Today, there are earthquakes and seismic shocks originating in America that rattle the world to its foundations.  I foresee some stabilization in the near future.  Next, a way will be found to cope, and then how to carve a path out of the morass.  Someone will come out of the ether, a voice heard, a journey began.  Americans have this extraordinary skill of appearing out of nowhere and delivering.  Like Abraham, like Welch, like Martin, and like Lyndon Baines.  For every Roger Taney, there is a John Roberts.  And for every Donald Trump, there are trumpets that sound from a distance.

(The Great American Experiment)

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• American Republic, Grand American Experiment., Guyana, Joseph McCarthy, Ku Klux Klan

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