Dear Natascha,
Lately, you seem to be ready to go away from Singapore for the summer holidays. You might want to come to stay with me in London, so that I can preach you more on how to handle our Enemy. From your last email, I believed that you have everything in control from the internet to defending the Minister from the uproar of the bloggers about his incompetence.
After all, why should we fire a minister and the director of Internal Security Act for such a small mistake? We need both of them to help those poor peasants to craft the necessary policies against religious fundamentalism. When I hear about all those silly bloggers asking for political freedom of the press and advocating the minister to get a pay cut, I laughed and mused to myself, "These peasants can only make noise and everything stays the same after that. It's because even among the bloggers themselves are spineless." That article from the ex-CEO of NTUC Income just made me laughed. He reminded me of that old civil servant who retired and now started to make raving criticisms against those who took over from them. These old men, like Tan Kin Lian and Ngiam Tong How should realize that they could have done something when they are in power. Looks like they never learned from the person they revered most, our Old Man in forever power. Now, they can only sit out and whinge like a disgruntled Liverpool fan who keeps bemoaning why they have not won the Premiere League for 18 years and still counting.
This whole discussion on high cost of living and equating competence with the high pay of minister's is just illogical without proper inferences, if not ridiculous. In fact, I read about people questioning how reserves should be spent. Even if we are evil, we have assigned the best and the brightest, indoctrinated from the Ivy League schools to look after them. Their helicopter vision and lack of empathy towards the poor and destitute have done us well. Why should we care whether the old are cleaning toilets out there? They need to work and they should be not given the welfare system which have caused the government in Westminster to be forever indebted and give out payouts to bribe the electorate.
You indicated your worries about the Internet being an amplifier but I can assure you that the 2008 General Election in Malaysia is an anomaly. There are a few reasons why I am not worried that bloggers are a threat. First of all, they spent their time on writing silly policy paper and not being on the ground. Second, we have bloggers who are sympathizers to the minions we appointed on the ground. For example, we see smart Ivy League graduates or perhaps former or present civil servants dressing up as a heartlander blogger, like this one here, named Kway Teow Man or some dumb peasant named Lucky Tan.
Their styles are different. Lucky Tan demonstrates the truth about Singaporeans out there, who want the government to do more for them. After all, our minions receive high pay to ensure that every Singaporean must have a home and material wealth, devoid of clear thinking and desensitized from politics. He gave us the parody that would be acknowledged by the cab driver who would be forever in PMS (Women's thing) that the Singapore government are making their lives difficult.
If Kway Teow Man is the finance minister, I might be the Minister Mentor. In fact, you should position more of these people in the blogosphere. You can always create similar variants of these faked heartlander pseudonyms (but they are actually well-paid civil servants/politicians or ex-civil servants), for example, the Mee Pok Man, the Keropok Man, the Chicken Rice Stall Seller and the Mee Siam mai hum Man. Kway Teow Man is the type who will claim that his logic about economics and insurance is right and will call everyone stupid if they don't comprehend his train of thought from his higher than thou Ivy League education. After all, he has explained to us why we should let a few men to manage the few hundred billion dollars with no accountability required and why we should not regulate the industry even if people are suffering from faulty financial instruments.
Of course, we need people like him to be around because he represents the "Colonel Jessop" from the movie "A Few Good Men". Here is what he will say if he comes out in real life. Remember the "You can't handle the truth" moment from the movie, "A Few Good Men":
"You can't handle the truth... Son, we live in a world that needs to survived with foreign investments and those investments need to be guarded by men with intelligence. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Catherine Lim, Mr Wang, The Online Citizen or Yawning Bread? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for the old people who are cleaning toilets and sleeping in the void decks and curse the Singapore government; you have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that the incompetence about bad GIC investments and Mas Selamat's escape, while tragic, probably saved lives and that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.
You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want us the PAP to stay in power, you need us to stay in power. We use words like "let's move on", "competent leadership by smart people", "safeguard our reserves", "high pay for us", "foreign talent". We use then as the backbone of a life trying to defend something. Those stupid bloggers use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the Progress packages, free education till 18 and GST offsets I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you," and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest that you be a quitter and get out of my elite uncaring face. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to."
It's evident that the Singaporeans can't handle the truth. Hence I am not so worried about the coming elections. Meanwhile, smell the roses in the Singapore Flyer and let the foreigners come and steal jobs from our peasants.
Hate in the Time of Malaria,
Uncle Screwtape
