By a proud sailor man
Chester Connell’s response to my piece was many things. Long. Loud. And laced with the kind of desperation that comes when a man realizes the pen alone cannot give him relevance.
Let us be honest, Chester. This was not about defending Travis Harry. This was about you trying to one-up a piece that struck a chord. My piece. You were not answering an argument. You were auditioning. For what, I do not know. But what spilled out was not clarity or critique. It was a heavy, sweaty effort to outwrite, outshine, and somehow outclass what was already done. And like all overreaches, it fell flat.
Now let us talk about Travis. Because in all your winding, wordy defense, you skipped the core issue. Travis Harry is a man who, with no record of governance, no experience in nation-building, has convinced himself that he is the brightest mind in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Not one of, but the. That, Chester, is delusion. And not the harmless kind. It is the kind that misleads, divides, and distracts when a country needs focus.
You called my words psychosis. That is your right. But let us not pretend that your certainty, your insistence that I must be Ralph Gonsalves using a pseudonym, is any less deluded. You took a guess and declared it truth. That is not logic. That is projection.
And since you are so sure I am Gonsalves, let us speak of him. Not the imagined author of your fantasies, but the man himself. Yes, Gonsalves is of Portuguese descent, a small minority within Caribbean society. But his record, unlike Travis’s, stands on its own. Roads. Housing. Education. Healthcare. Diplomacy. Disaster recovery. Name the area. You may disagree with him. But you cannot erase what has been built, what has been led, what has endured. That is governance. Not commentary. Not performance. Not self-promotion.
Now to the performance you gave us, Chester. There is a particular kind of voice in Caribbean society, not quite of the majority Black population, not quite aligned with the European-descended minority. The mulatto voice. One that often inserts itself as a bridge, a translator, a moderator. It is a voice that insists on being seen as balanced, as fair, as reasoned. But behind that feigned modesty is often something else, a need to assert, to lead, to lecture. Not because of merit, but because of a belief that their place is somehow in the middle and therefore above.
And you played that part perfectly. The interpreter. The savior. The man who must step forward and save the country, as if only you see the danger, only you possess the clarity, only you understand what is at stake. But let us be honest. This was never about the country. This was about ego. You believe I am Ralph Gonsalves, and that belief is what drew you in. You wanted to be seen fighting him. You wanted to stand toe to toe with a man whose name carries weight, whose pen you imagine you could match, if only someone would look.
In every sentence, we could feel the effort. The reach. The yearning. You wrote not to communicate but to impress. And it shows. The writing is burdensome. It is hard to read. It drags under the weight of its own performance. And here is the truth, Chester. When you write to impress, you fail to connect. Good writing is not dressed up. It is not trying to be beautiful. It simply is. It is clear. It is pure. And from that clarity, the beauty flows.
Yes, I wrote as a proud sailor man. But you wrote in a desperate attempt to seize the spotlight. To take over a conversation that was not about you. To attach yourself to a moment that was never yours. That, Chester, is what your piece revealed.
You drank from the cocktail too. But unlike Travis, who genuinely sees himself as the captain, you drank because you wanted to be noticed. You wanted to prove you still matter. That your pen still stirs. But stirring is not pouring. And not everyone who picks up a glass can handle the mix.
So sip carefully, Chester. The satire was not aimed at you. But if you saw yourself in it, perhaps that is the real revelation.
A proud sailor man
The views expressed are not those of Asberth News Network
