OPINION: 250 years: American ideals, American ignominies, American inspirations

Last Updated on Friday, 3 July 2026, 12:25 by Denis Chabrol

By GHK Lall

A country with a small population could unharness itself from the oppression of a superpower. American exceptionalism and ideals at its peak. Then, in the next exhalation of energy, insist that some humans must be reckoned only at the three-fifths mark. Liberty for one, slavery for another. The peculiar “odious institution” that is inseparably interwoven in the fabric of American Ugly and American ignominy. There could be an Abe Lincoln and the inspiration of Emancipation. Only for the dirty, greasy, rule of Jim Crow America to take hold after America’s costliest war. Costly in the blood of its children. Irreparable in the damage inflicted on the psyche of its offspring.

What to make of a country that’s generous with one hand, barbarous with the other? The Native Americans and their Trail of Tears, a president celebrated, and the ‘only good Indian is a dead Indian. From the removal of the yoke of taxation without representation to the usurpation of California, Arizona, and the Lone Star State from a neighbor. Sam Houston must have had an uncanny nose for oil. Beaumont, Spindletop and Permian; and the gushers that made America great. Emerged the Rockefeller Trust. Exxon should ring a bell. How to take measure of a country that can have sons like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. And in its 250 years of existence spawn a Rough Rider, a preacher, and a cinematic cowpuncher for its leaders. From the son of a bootlegger in the White House, to this day with a dealmaker and impersonator resident.

From Manifest Destiny to the glittering American Century. From the policeman of the world to a gamesmen and conmen for world leaders. From arsenal of democracy and the sacrifice of blood and treasure in 1914, to rising from a Day of Infamy and more sacrifices of blood and treasure two decades later. Want money, there’s the IMF and World Bank, with roots in a sleepy New Hampshire town. In need of correction, through a mailed fist, both barrels, there were the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Came the airborne incineration of North Korea that followed afterwards. When money is involved, business is in the forefront. Set people straight, reset the map. Guatemala. Guyana. Grenada. For a people that claims exceptional standing, there were the ancient wonders of the Shah of Persia and Forbes Burnham. The glitter of the medieval now replaced by modern marvels in the gaudiness of Irfaan Ali and before him Bharrat Jagdeo. Littered in the path of the 250 years have also been Marcos, Noreiga, and Pinochet. Brutal dictators coddled by boisterous champions of democracy.

Jimmy Carter came out of a nuclear sub, his peanut farm, and opened his Bible. Out came Pandora’s Box. The Moral Majority, the Christian Aryan Supremacists (hard right), and their cherished Big Baby Donny. What to think of a country that could be punctuated by the demagogue Huey Long, demagoguery writ rabid in Joe McCarthy and then DJ Trump? Thank God that in 250 years, the record is this scanty. Yet so revealing of the bright and dark sides of America. I cannot help but absorb the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde natures of the American character.

China lectured about human rights. All the American moralists and evangelists (and apologists) are better off first looking inside Fortress America struggling to be great again. Great again on whose backs? When the guts and sweat, the zeal and imagination, of the laborer is now degraded. Undesired intruders to be tolerated no more. Multiplying and expanding the American franchise have become cumbersome and troublesome, leading to the quarrelsome. Thus, the push for a shift to South Africa and Scandinavia. Rome decayed from a combination of the overstretch of external adventures and internal upheavals. The legions lost their mojo. The emperors and their Palace Guards lost the floor from under their feet, and the domes over their heads crashed down.

The old Roman warzone, the Middle East has become the Rubicon that America never should have crossed. Oil can be that irresistible, fatal, siren call. From the ghosts of Mossadegh to Sadat to Ghaddafi, and the millions displaced, come a haunting and reckoning. From the Golan to the Gaza, the piper remains unpaid. The Founding Fathers had warned about foreign entanglements. Pay no heed, pay the price.

America is clawing desperately to delay and disguise the onset of senility, trying in vain to hide the loss of potency. Many challenges rear up against success. A US$40 trillion bomb hangs over the head. When competitors control the debt lever, that has to be a grave condition, a frightening consideration. I take the good with the bad. Had my dip in the good times, paid dues. Endured the pain of losses. The tale is still untold. Today I tell the story of 250-year-old America from 35,000 feet and 4000 kilometers. It has been great, through smiles and sorrows. Then alternately grotesque, gigantic in its failures, false steps, and frail efforts at stabilizing itself. It has been my blessing to give a score, a ten, and of one more year to America. Often when I look inward, at how Guyana has been pulled and pushed and pulverized, then pronounced the perfect donut, I find myself wondering…. A mirage in that my mind plays tricks on me. Or my own special miracle, for which I shall be eternally grateful.