The politics of envy

A very disturbing development that has been steadily metastasising in our society exposed itself recently over the staging of the Appreciation Day for President Bharrat Jagdeo. One saw the symptoms in the vicious efforts of some to portray the day as an imitation of the Mass Games wherein attendance and homage to the dictator was compulsory. Ignoring it was totally voluntary in this instance. It was visible in the churlish denial of the premise of the day that improvement had been achieved in so many areas of national life during the stewardship of Jagdeo. But more so, it was there in the frenzied attempts to prevent people from attending the occasion by resorting in the press to false rumours of impending robberies and violence.

Some might want to say that this was mere politicking; but in each of the so numerous instances of negativity, there was an element of bitterness and hostility that took the condemnation to areas far beyond the pale of normal politics. What exactly was going on? In the beginning of this year, analysing another set of attacks on President Jadgeo, we introduced the Nietzschean notion of ressentiment, to which we return to shed some light on what is presently playing out in the political arena.

Avoiding the notoriously tortured prose of Nietzsche, we quoted from Wikipedia: “Ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration; that is, an assignment of blame for one’s frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the “cause” generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one’s frustration.” “Ressentiment is a reassignment of the pain that accompanies a sense of one’s own inferiority/ failure onto an external scapegoat. The ego creates the illusion of an enemy, a cause that can be “blamed” for one’s own inferiority/failure. Thus one was thwarted not by a failure in oneself, but rather by an external “evil.”

As Nietzsche originally theorised, the individuals who find themselves in a junior social position cannot accept the status quo because they believe they are the ones who should be on top – whether because of their education or prior status etc. All well and good so far, nothing wrong in anyone chafing at being in second place. What makes ressentiment perverse and dangerous is the second step they take. They denigrate the qualities of the superior individual or group as being “evil”, and promote their own qualities – which permitted them to be in the inferior position in the first place – as being “good” and worthy of emulation.

What we have here is a group of individuals who are consumed by their envy of Jagdeo, who they feel is occupying an office and enjoying a status they deserve. And what makes the ressentiment even more intense is that it is not just Jagdeo the individual who sticks in their craw; it is his entire background. The British had established the “proper” background for leadership – all exemplified by Burnham – never mind that he was a total failure in the end. He went to the “proper” school; spoke with the “proper” accent; swirled the “proper” brandy, and so on.

Jagdeo’s detractors all walked the path of Burnham. Look how many pursued law, even in their dotage. That Jagdeo did none of these things but had the temerity to succeed sticks in their craw, and invokes the full gamut of the negative effects of ressentiment – anger, rage, begrudging, rancour, spite, Schadenfreude, hatred, malice, the tendency to detract, jealousy, envy, resentment, and desire for revenge – that we saw on Appreciation Day.

What is dangerous is that those who deride Jagdeo would transvalue the latter’s decisiveness and strength of purpose – which has made Guyana move forward – as negative and substitute their weakness and vacillation as positive. Let us reject, as forcefully as we can, these “Mimic men” and their politics of envy.