Dear Natascha,
I read your letter with full of glee and joy yesterday. You have reiterated that this whole fiasco from the newspaper on the leadership transition in Singapore is to change the subject in the country. After all, you have already utilized the old man to cover the Home Minister's ass for the moment. By turning the fault on the whole escape of the terrorist to the people, you have stopped the peasants in questioning why the members of parliament and top civil servants are drawing exorbitant salaries. Of course, do these dumb peasants know that only the most incompetent and talk only people can be in the high position jobs? Otherwise, why do people always say that the CEO is just a salesman, not a leader?
Yes, the real interesting issue is about the leadership succession. Your current chief executive, the prime minister, son of the Old Man, has once again come out to talk about what he wants in a leader for the next generation and the current brain drain situation. Of course, he must be crazy to divulge the real reasons on why there is so much political apathy in Singapore. First, his party has totally destroyed the credibility of crazy opposition leaders like JBJ and Chee and ostracized the moderate opposition party for holding a bicycle event. Second, his predecessor and a top civil servant by the name of Bhavani have thrown a heavy sledgehammer on Catherine Lim and Mr Brown. Third, their calibrated coercion approach have made smart people to give up on being part of politics. After all, with such good stability, I think that you should whisper to him that he and his party should continue to be complacent. If you keep spewing crap to the people by telling them "The PAP is the best political party to bring you jobs and stability", they would not need to worry that the recent Malaysian anomaly would affect them. In fact, coupled with those useless activists, he does not need to worry because they are still gutless to join politics, and if you want an example, check this one and that one out.
The last point is about why he should continue our doctrine of wanting people with good A level grades and not smart people to be in the next generation of Singapore leadership. First and foremost, we want to decide the fate of a Singaporean by their A levels, because they are at the age of being the most easily indoctrinated type. After all, once you feed them with a scholarship in a Ivy League university and a top notched civil service career, they would have no choice but to be our minions. After all, being a top student in A levels just tell us that these are students who have no chances of winning great accolades i.e. they lack innovation and smartness. If they are that smart, they would already be coming with fantastic political science theories that would rock Harvard or Yale or become fields medalists below 40. So, the only reason why we want high A level grade students are because they lack street smart and would become the type of people close to those dumb investment bankers who cook up a sham called the subprime mortgage crisis.
I am often afraid that our Enemy might engineer a few people with street smart and lower grades (with the tenacity and perseverance that will turn them to Steve Jobs or Ronald Reagan) to disrupt our system. The Old Man was once like these people on the other side, until his whole team was corrupted by us.
Ultimately, good grades in A levels just tell us that they are muggers and useless self-serving people who know nothing of the world. That's good enough for Singapore because the peasants are equally brainless with their 3rd world mentality of bad service and greed and first world infrastructure that serve the rich and famous.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions,
Uncle Screwtape
