Armchair Generals…

…and politics
It’s true your Eyewitness taps out these pieces from a keyboard. But he also has a life away from it, where he’s on the ground. And, trust him, dear reader, he finds out every day that only when thoughts are translated into action you know whether you’ve just been masturbating mentally, or whether you can achieve the changes that’s been roiling around in your head! Even old man Marx had pointed out that the task is to change the world, not just interpret it every which way – and then some!!
Trouble is, nowadays, with social media, it seems like every person with two thumbs and a smartphone has the answer to whatever bedevils Guyana – and they make sure they let every Tom, Dick and Eyewitness know about it!! Damned if he knows how they got his number, but nowadays his phone keeps pinging away at all hours of the day – and night – seemingly whenever these armchair generals have a thought floating around their empty craniums!!
Your Eyewitness hasn’t removed himself from one of these WhatsApp chat threads, ‘cause he wants to find out what makes these persons tick. Right off the bat, he can see that most of the denizens are older folks, with the median age above 50. He can easily tell from their allusions and phrasings. Now, the thing is, these armchair generals – most of whom are evidently overseas, with time on their hands – seem very well intentioned. But they’re so far off base it’s not funny!!
Your Eyewitness calls what they’re doing “pretend politics”, as opposed to “real politics” that involves ensuring on the ground that your party gets to determine who gets what, when, and how. Not understanding the difference, most of the keyboard warriors “call names” and cuss out their “opponents” to such an extent your Eyewitness could be excused for thinking he’s in the middle of a school playground at recess!!
It’s not that these folks don’t always understand what the issues in Guyana’s politics are all about, but in confining their actions to the discursive realm, they cannot ever initiate any real, meaningful political action. They’re all about inventing and deploying fancy rhetoric that will never actually challenge institutional power! So, we just get a whole bunch of noisy jumping up and down and virtue signalling about personal opinions on false equivalence between PPP and PNC, rather than breaching the walls of the PNC oppression.
The armchair warriors convince themselves they’re doing “their bit” when they know “their bit” surely isn’t enough. But rather than conceding the weakness of their strategies, they invariably turn around and blame those in the trenches for not effectuating changes.
Mental masturbation redux!!

…not defending Gerry Gouveia
Your Eyewitness notes the deafening silence of armchair generals on Govt GECOM Commissioner Desmond Trotman’s nasty attack on the head of the PSC, Gerry Gouveia, by playing the race card to answer the latter’s censure of CEO Lowenfield. He compared Gouveia to “a white slave owner who, in the presence of his overseers, is penalising a delinquent slave for failing to carry out the instructions of “massa””; but Booker T. Washington described folks like Trotman well: “There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays.
“Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

…and US visas
The number of non-immigrant visas issued by the US Embassy keeps falling precipitously, from an average of 33,000 annually to a low of just over 4000 last year.
Ah, well…guess this means there won’t be too many folks abroad for the Sept 18 elections!!