…in a Bizarro world
Then your Eyewitness was a callow youth, he confesses that he was addicted to comics. If the truth be told, even though he doesn’t flip through the “hard copies” any longer, he cannot miss their iterations on the big screen! (But Batman taking on Superman??!! C’mon now!!) Anyhow, there used to be a character “Bizarro” who lived in a world where everything was opposite to the reality on Earth.
On the first day after President Trump’s swearing-in, your Eyewitness thought he’d been transported to the world of Bizarro htraE (“Earth” spelt backwards!). After the White House announced that Trump’s crowd at his inauguration was BIGGER than Obama’s, the Press contradicted him with what they thought was incontrovertible evidence – pics of the two events. And suggested the Trump machinery was spreading “falsehoods and lies”. “Not so!!” insisted Trump’s spokesperson, they were just offering “alternative facts”!!
Imagine that!! Reality is whatever you chose to say it is!! We know in this ‘post-modern’ world, there’s no single truth, since this is always socially constructed. Truth is “relational” and “perspectival” and all that! But your poor Eyewitness thought those only referred to “social truths” – like whether “white is beautiful” and suchlike. But certainly not to the facticity of comparing crowd shots to judge their magnitude!
But on reflection, your Eyewitness should’ve seen this coming… even though it’s a few decades late, Orwell did predict this in his classic, “1984”. In this Brave New World, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery.” And most germanely, “ignorance is strength”!! But on this basis, let the word go forth – Guyana’s ahead of even the US in this new semantical twist of “Double Speak” in the Brave New World.
Weren’t we told, our treasury was too bare for a 10 per cent raise for Government workers, but not for a 50 per cent raise for Cabinet Ministers? The meaning of “bare” has to be parsed from your perspective! More recently we’ve seen the disjunctive “or” – up to now indicating a change or inflection point in what preceded it in a sentence – declared to be a “conjunctive” which simply adds more of the same to what precedes!! One wonders then as to why even use it?? Wouldn’t it have been simpler to simply state that only judges need apply for the GECOM job? But we have to remember we are now in the Brave New World of htraE!! Complex is simple!
So we shouldn’t quibble when Public Security Minister Ramjattan (the twice and future leader of the AFC) declares there’s no spike in crime, or Finance Minister Jordan insists there’s no foreign currency shortage.
They’re just offering “alternative facts”!!
…on Women’s March
Who woulda thought!! The Women’s protest to Donald Trump’s election turned out to be the BIGGEST ever in the history of the US!! Even the White House didn’t offer some “alternative facts”! All across the US the sea of pink hats made their point. But hold it. What was their point, again?
Well, there was the point made that America doesn’t really need a “Groper in Chief” right now! Or someone who delighted in grabbing women’s privates (we can’t be more graphic like the US and British papers – we’re still Victorian, thank you!) while sticking his tongue down their throats.
But broadly that Trump be used as a lightning rod for highlighting “women’s” issues. But who decides that? We can’t forget while Clinton beat Trump 54 to 42 per cent with women voters, Trump reversed the stats among WHITE women.
And in the three states that decided the election — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan — that margin was enough to send Trump to the White House.
Yep! Women do have power. But it ain’t monolithic!
…on Mexican rice markets
We’ll soon be coming on to two years since PM Nagamootoo, promised “massive” Mexican markets that were “keen for our rice”.
With not even a grain contracted, what are the “alternative facts” to “massive” and “keen”?
