Megatrends of madness, Part I

Azly Rahman
Malaysiakini
Apr 8, 2013

We are at a critical juncture – at a dangerous crossroad of either a peaceful transfer of power or a descent into utter chaos. These few weeks we will see more drama unfolding – the ultimate aim is to win and win and win and kill and kill and overkill our critical sensibility.

We have not recovered from the shock of a Sulu incursion and we are ill-prepared for a general election that is plagued with all kinds of issues from many angles and manifesting in all kinds of dimensions. This is our megatrend of madness.

Crossroads

We have perfected Machiavellianism that lives in our world of Oriental Despotism. We live in a mediated world – of truth no longer can be discerned, in a world of perception management wherein politics is so complex yet cannibalistic.

In our society lies Italy’s Mussolini and Germany’s Hitler and Japan’s Tojo; of hegemonisers, of annihilators, and Asian-looking imperators. In these three-in-one deadly concoction of cultural contradictions lies the icing of the one-dimensionality of Malaysiana and that sloganism of ‘Truly Asia’. The show goes on.

Who will win will be determined by the complexity of the game of deceit, the closer we are to the finishing line, the more complex the nature of deceit to even be displayed and rationalised.

We will arrive at our Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel of book burning and the end of reason) in which everything will be heating up, in flames, and explode – because our politics is a politics of plunder, pornography, and parasites behind a facade of rhetoric of morality and multiculturalism.

Our politics is now a politics of revenge, rape, and ravages run by despots that have designed dynasties amongst themselves in order to feed their desire to dominate, dictate, and dumb down the people ruled. That is what we are realising now after living in a dream world of “developmentalism” designed by those in love with laissez-faire Asian-styled – because they know not any other kind of love.

We could have been a greater nation had we utilised our years in-between elections to work on improving education and the soul of the nation as bi-partisans, in an evolving and meaningful way we teach about democracy, equality, equity, and personal and political integrity even if we still engage in a system of economy that prides itself in the triumph of the free-enterprise ideology.

Gangsta immigration policy

We have installed an instant institution of gangsta immigration policy. The Sulu incursion episode – still unfolding – is a testament of our urge to breed homegrown terrorism. But how do we ensure that those “instant citizens” will not become a threat to our society – that they are not criminals, some not hard core ones, swindlers, robbers, rapists, snatch thieves?

Because we do not have “background checks”, because we have a lousy “border control”, because we see treason as rational as deceitly winning an election? How do we make sense of this idea of making the country safe for us, our children in schools, when we have introduced a policy of “immigration with instant gratification”, based on the “rationalisation of treason”?

Do you see an introduction and injection of “decay”, a “noli me tangere/a social cancer as Jose Rizal would say” in society, out of immigration policy that ensures destruction of generations living in fear of their own safety, in a sovereign country they hoped to live in dignity?

Will our schools be plagued with “gangs” as the “fight or flight mentality of the gangsta Bronx, East Philadelphia, east Los Angeles-styled” children of this or that ethnicity take control of their “territories” as they learn to survive the aftermaths of our “gangsta immigration policy”?

Next: Megatrends of madness II