Let’s not forget… fathers

Yesterday being “Father’s Day”, your Eyewitness received two bottles of his favourite vino – which of course, he had to immediately test for quality control! He remembered during his schooldays, being forced to plough through DH Lawrence’s “Sons and lovers” and quickly realized it could’ve well been named, “Sons, mothers and fathers”. What with Paul’s intense relationship with his mother – which supposedly prevented him from ever “committing” to his girlfriend!
Your Eyewitness had a blast regurgitating Freud’s “Oedipus Complex” theory and nodding knowingly!! Even though he thought the supposed desire to kill one’s father ridiculous – and Freud a loony!! And his mind kept wandering over the supposedly seminal relationships in his life. Note that we dub these “seminal” rather than “germinal”. You didn’t get that? “Seminal” from dad’s “semen” – male and authoritatively assumed to be the “foundational” element in life while the female “germ” needs to be “seeded” to produce anything!!
In Guyana, life is only now progressing beyond Hobbes’ “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” life that was slavery and indentureship – which emasculated the male. Our independence was supposed to change all of that but actually made it worse with the hunger, homelessness and nakedness Burnham delivered!! Fathers became more frustrated. If kids didn’t do their chores with alacrity they earned some (well-deserved) slaps behind their ears! Your Eyewitness suspects that the new “woke” insistence on denouncing those blows as “child abuse” – things are different for fathers? The present generation ain’t experiencing Freudian turmoils that make them hate their fathers because they’re “competitors for their mothers’ love”? Yes, your Eyewitness always found Freud to be a fraud!
But seriously folks, aren’t the “hands that rock the cradle” supposed to “rule the world”? Meaning if mothers’ rear children, aren’t they the ones who can have the greatest influence on how they behave later in life? Even if we concede that nature (inheritance) also plays a role…surely fathers’ influence is quite diffuse. Will he go back to the cave-man days and start bopping folks over their heads with clubs!? And maybe this is what is going on with all the wife abuse, choppings and beheadings going on?
So how exactly does Father’s Day improve relations within the typical Guyanese family – when fathers are still absent or deadbeats? How different are these husband-wife dynamic from the ones in “Sons and Lovers”? Like Mrs Morel, do Guyanese wives have real respect for their husbands – who’re forced to demean themselves in their everyday lives to cope with the “big ones” in society?
Well, with all the development the government’s delivering, fathers can deliver a better life with savoir faire. And if they do, respect will follow!!

…Enmore
As your Eyewitness predicted, not much attention was paid to the Enmore Martyrs this year. Some will say sugar is gone from Enmore – and ain’t doing so well elsewhere – but that completely misses the point, innit?? Cuffy fought those Dutchmen 261 years ago in the Canje coffee plantations but we still commemorate his feat annually at his monument, don’t we? What’s the connection, you ask, dear reader? Well, even though the rebellion was defeated – and we don’t grow that much coffee any longer – they set an example for us through the ages that we should stand up for our freedom.
And isn’t this what was done at Enmore? The workers there were standing up against the sugar barons – who were the power behind the Guyanese colonial state. By taking that stance – even though they knew they were gonna be shot – they forced Britain to send the Waddington Commission that eventually led not just to improvement in sugar workers’ living conditions, but to the universal franchise and our independence!!
Let us all now praise Enmore!!

…Lebanon
If Iran found a new leverage to project itself among the world’s power elite – and bring the US to the table to sign a favourable MOU – well so has its arch-enemy Israel,
They’ve just torpedoed the MOU by bombing Lebanon!!