When presidents are tyrants, all of us lose. 

If there is a poem for this moment, it is surely W.B. Yeats' dark classic "The Second Coming."  Written in1919, it evokes the darkness and uncertainty of Europe in the aftermath of a horrific war.   "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold," Yeats writes.  "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/...The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity." 

It's hard to imagine a more eloquent description of our own vicious age in Guyana.  Narco-economics run the roost; a failing state has graduated into a criminalized state; the poor and working classes are squeezed; the rich are increasingly absenting themselves from the country's troubles; the political elites are putting their own boundary lines of power and influence called "Pradoville;"  the goon squads are hitting the road promoting "Apaan Jhaat" gambit, with newer, more intellectual and clever verbiage. 

The attacks on the opposition and dissidents will increase in volume, frequency, and audacity as elections day draws near.  Time is short, the stakes are high, and the pundits will pounce on their prey.  And the absurdity that follows will only impugn their integrity as political thinkers. 

On Sunday, October 09, President Bharrat Jagdeo singled out the Stabroek News, Kaieteur News, CNS Channel 6, and Demerara Waves as enemies of the state: "vultures and carrion crows" worthy of good jail time.  Which really means they have now been inaugurated into the president's sheet list. 

This is not the first time President Bharrat Jagdeo has taken crackpot shots at the media.  Or his critics. 

So what's his problem with these "vultures and carrion crows?"  It has come down to this.  They have come to assert and defend the right to do what journalists, and their readers, take for granted in the free world: report the news freely without government threat or interference.  In other words, they have become a rock blocking the road of a mad man. 

You have to think this guy's a nutcase.  So was Mussolini.  But one thing that cannot be argued is that President Bharrat Jagdeo happens to be brilliant at his primary responsibility... that, of course, being the perfect jerk.

President Jagdeo may not be medically crazy, not talking-to-himself-at-the-OP crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — balls out crazy in the sense that he's living completely inside his own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle he's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies. 

It's pathetic, isn't it?  The Guyana Chronicle, NCN TV, Guyana Times, The Mirror didn't dig despite all the scandals, corruption, violence, and controversies inside the OP and Freedom House.  These are the good guys - the custodians of the truth.  The Guyana Times, a "beacon of truth" headlined him as an "incomparable patriot." 

He is, to them, something of a deity.  A God-king.  They absolutely worship, trust and follow the president as god.  Don't believe?  Read up on the crap they write under the guise of news. 

The Kitty meeting rant made the president sounded as if being manic-depressive is hip, like taking uppers and downers.  By now we should all know that schizophrenia and psychosis are disorders that only mean the person in question is not tethered to reality.  Which That, ,ore or less, sounds like President Bharrat Jagdeo. 

The president's foaming-at-the-mouth tirade on Sunday is yet another revelation that this man has run out of ammo, ideas and leadership.  For a long time now, a political malignancy has been metastasizing from county to county as an alliance of complacent strongmen systematically props up this man's grip on power. 

But that's the easy part.  There is already buzz in the beehive that President Jagdeo's thunder is another dark, prophetic rendition that envisions the violent birth of a new age: the dawning of a media counterattack, so devastatingly characteristic of a fascist despot. 

President Jagdeo is not alone having trouble with the free press.  His phobia with independent inquiry, critical analysis and the dissemination of free thought is in line with tyrants all across the globe - historical and contemporary.  The recent example of Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa is an ideal juxtaposition. 

Now for the cringe factor.  President Jagdeo's aide, Gail Teixeira joined in the onslaught by pulling a Sarah Palin/Michelle Bachmann type hyperbole: a dangerous, intolerable, uncivilized outburst - an analogy in which she compared Rwanda's media and its role in the genocidal killings to the Guyana media, meaning the PPP's critics. 

Nothing goes with idiocy quite as well as paranoia, combined with a ruthless propensity for intriguing buffoonery stylized as political steroids.  A wing nut in her own right, Gail Teixeira is genuinely committed to knowing as little as possible when it comes to history.  No wonder, since her tenure as a worthless Minister of Home Affairs, many have been speculating about the mental health of this woman. 

The madness is just getting started.  As evidenced at the president's Appreciation Day and the Kitty rendezvous , the Rent-a-Crowd business is booming.  Utilizing brainy coercion, and sometimes hardcore extortion, seductive enticements, the crowds are herded into a glorious human stampede of adoration.   Read all about it in the Guyana Chronicle. 

Crowd making or staging a crowd is old school for dictators.  In this jamboree of manipulation manifested in the cowering of the masses, tyrants delude themselves into believing they are lovable.  At Kitty, the president and the PPP were experimenting with pushing the experience of a sense of euphoria further. 

And so the exhilaration of such a travesty fired up more madness in its boisterous ambience.  The lunacy is more brilliantly gripping and blatant than nuance or pedantic.  Dr. Emmanuel Cummings of the University of Guyana called on all his "African brothers and sisters" of region 4 (a PNC stronghold) to vote for the PPP/C. 

Why so?  Now get ready for some leg grabb'n, chair rocking, hard rolling laughter. Here's Dr. Cummings masterpiece comedy assault: the PPP is a multiracial party.  Huh!  For real?  Dr. Cummings, although he represents what the future of stand-up can be, is altogether a dilettante in the romance business of kissing-up.  No doubt, he has shut down his awareness of President Jagdeo's exposition of "Apaan Jhaat" at Baboo John. 

But Dr. Cummings is not the last comic standing.  Another evangelist who has gone coo-coo is Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon.  Already war-worn by the task of fending and defending the regime via, signature mis-directions, make-believe situations and a catalog of chimeras, the good physician proclaimed that the PPP performed "miracles" in Guyana.

What?  You heard it right.  This man's taste for comedy is nothing short of being caustic or sardonic.  Or simply self deprecating.  So 19 years of scams, corruption, violence, murders, Phantom Squads, nepotism, favoritism, skullduggery, squandermania, and fiasco amount to "miracles."  Is that so?   Really?  Hell, no. 

What Guyana has become is a sanctuary - a sort of Shutter Island, for insane thinking packaged as progressive, academic ideas.  Out of this refuge, quite often, is the epistles of the Goebbels type.   Take Dr. Prem Misir's letter of late in which he flaunts staggering intellectual jargon and a mish mash of sociological terminologies in a sort of tricky, notarized format. 

Tons of turd, resplendent with academic wit.  This fella is brilliant - but full of it. 

To understand Dr. Misir's gospel is to accept that the PPP has a private possession of the truth. 

The bottom line of his treaty is that all is well in Guyana under the PPP.  He insists that bad media and wicked politicians of the opposition kind are messing with people's perceptions by introducing them to a reality overflowing with untruths.  Blah, blah, blah. 

...And that the race issue is a problem within our heads.  OK, fine.  Tell that to President Bharrat Jagdeo who often gets high, and all pumped up with manic zeal when he gets in the East Indian villages of Berbice to extract applause and exaggerate certain fears by insinuating "dem people with guns" and other innuendos. 

Tell that to Dr. Ravi Dev and his heretic satellites who expound the mantra of "28 years of PNC."  Like President Bharrat Jagdeo, Dr. Ravi Dev may need his head checked too.  That's if they subscribe to Dr. Misir's wonderful piece of propaganda masquerading as science. 

The lunatic fringe does not come from academics alone. 

Now close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible Guyanese phenomenon named Donald Ramotar, do one more thing. Don't laugh. 

Of all the madness that has emanated lately, none is more complicated but easy to laugh at than what the PPP presidential hopeful is projecting.  Poster boy of GuySuCo's failure, Donald Ramotar has kept it on the low when it comes to being ditsy.  Of course, especially when smart folks come calling with question. 

That's why he remained numb (or dumb) even when Eusi Kwayana provoked him to "talk for heself" in the aftermath of the ban imposed on CNS TV.  He was bright enough to detect a trap.  The upside thing about Donald Ramotar's "self" is that he is not so dumb to know that he has no "self."  Mr. Ramotar has several "self."  One of which is President Bharrat Jagdeo. 

That explains why the campaign for Donald Ramotar's presidency is driven by Jagdeo.  Another upside of Mr. Ramotar is that he's being extremely careful these days for "heself" in regards to presidential debates.  It's an area of understandable embarrassment, serious jitters for any quack, but so far, Mr. Ramotar has successfully dodged this fora.         

This is the man, who would not stand up among men and give voice to his visions for Guyana and his platforms on matters of national interest.  No need to speculate.  Debates imply some level of scholarship, research, facts, history, intellectual acumen and astuteness to gain a competitive edge. 

Don't count on Mr. Donald Ramotar to deliver these goods in a forum of fierce rivals.  This is where the lunacy of the PPP shines.  Mr. Ramotar represents assured, guaranteed, indemnified and certified propaganda. 

To bask in the warmth and false confidence of propaganda, believing that it is debate is the path to criminal stupidity: madness.  One can only hope that Mr. Donald Ramotar can "talk for heself."   Soon.