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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday March 30, 2011
It’s not all about the politicians
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR
People are supposed to get into politics to do something for us, the people who voted them in. It’s not at all about them and what they can get out of it.
I HAVE just returned from a holiday in the pristine Scottish countryside where my head and my lungs imbibed very clean air. Unfortunately, as soon as I got home and read a local newspaper, I felt polluted again.
How do we get away with printing these lurid stuff all over the front pages? Aren’t we concerned our children might read them?
I know we’ve been through this several times before, all of it more disgusting than the last, but I keep hoping that one day our newspapers might rise above the gutter. But what am I thinking? They never do!
What is worse for me this time is that there are three personalities trying to make themselves seem like paragons of morality. At the very least, the fact of revealing this horrible video taints them with the most muddied brush there is.
I make no judgments about the contents of the video or whoever is in it. But I do question the judgment of people, politicians or not, who feel they can get away with behaviour they’d happily pass laws against as long as it affects someone else.
I’m still waiting for a politician who will state, as part of his election campaign platform, that his party will get rid of all moral policing laws, for all communities.
If we put private behaviour where it belongs, behind closed doors, there will be no opportunity to try and blackmail anyone.
But then politics is all about hypocrisy, isn’t it? It’s not about making people’s lives better by passing laws and policies that actually benefit people.
Instead it has become all about proving that someone else is dirtier than you, and therefore, relatively speaking, you come out smelling slightly rosier. At least that’s what you hope.
The truth is, there isn’t much to differentiate between one and the other; all sides smell like excrement.
Is it any wonder that when I talk to young people, I find they are so turned off by politics? They have no role models in politics anymore because almost every single one is tainted in some way. Or if not tainted, so despicably boorish and hateful that they are just as unappealing.
I don’t recall fan pages being set up for people who make insulting remarks about women in Parliament, for example. Is there a single politician on the national stage that gives any young person hope at all?
I really wonder how some people want to be remembered in history. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be remembered for having elevated your own people, whether economically or intellectually, rather than for having dragged them straight into the gutter?
Wouldn’t it be better to get accolades for taking young people to a higher plane and exploiting their potential, than making them read pornography in the papers every day?
What is the point of constantly trying to censor the Internet, supposedly to protect our children, when they can read filth in every paper?
Have we forgotten that elsewhere in the world people are dying either from natural disasters or being shot at by their own rulers, and that there is an impending nuclear disaster hovering over us?
Who cares who’s sleeping with whom when we’re all going to be glowing from radioactive fallout.
Is it too much to hope for some civility to return to our political life, where people may disagree with one another but still respect each other, where private matters stay private because ultimately we all have to go before the one Judge in the end?
I may not personally like a public figure who betrays his wife with someone else, but when it comes to politics, it’s not about him, it’s about the rest of us (though of course I would doubt his ability to make women-friendly policies).
I think that’s what’s been forgotten. That people are supposed to get into politics to do something for us, the people who voted them in. That it’s not at all about them and what they can get out of it, but what we can get out of them.
Every five years or so, we march off to the polls to make an investment in our future, not theirs. Of course, if they do well for our future, theirs is assured, too. If not, then they should be booted out.
Right now, I wish all our politicians would realise that they are all found wanting in one way or another. I can’t really think of a single one I would be thrilled to sit next to at dinner and have a scintillating conversation with.
And if they bring up sex scandals, I swear I would just get up and leave. That’s all they deserve.
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
==================================
Wednesday March 30, 2011
It’s not all about the politicians
MUSINGS
By MARINA MAHATHIR
People are supposed to get into politics to do something for us, the people who voted them in. It’s not at all about them and what they can get out of it.
I HAVE just returned from a holiday in the pristine Scottish countryside where my head and my lungs imbibed very clean air. Unfortunately, as soon as I got home and read a local newspaper, I felt polluted again.
How do we get away with printing these lurid stuff all over the front pages? Aren’t we concerned our children might read them?
I know we’ve been through this several times before, all of it more disgusting than the last, but I keep hoping that one day our newspapers might rise above the gutter. But what am I thinking? They never do!
What is worse for me this time is that there are three personalities trying to make themselves seem like paragons of morality. At the very least, the fact of revealing this horrible video taints them with the most muddied brush there is.
I make no judgments about the contents of the video or whoever is in it. But I do question the judgment of people, politicians or not, who feel they can get away with behaviour they’d happily pass laws against as long as it affects someone else.
I’m still waiting for a politician who will state, as part of his election campaign platform, that his party will get rid of all moral policing laws, for all communities.
If we put private behaviour where it belongs, behind closed doors, there will be no opportunity to try and blackmail anyone.
But then politics is all about hypocrisy, isn’t it? It’s not about making people’s lives better by passing laws and policies that actually benefit people.
Instead it has become all about proving that someone else is dirtier than you, and therefore, relatively speaking, you come out smelling slightly rosier. At least that’s what you hope.
The truth is, there isn’t much to differentiate between one and the other; all sides smell like excrement.
Is it any wonder that when I talk to young people, I find they are so turned off by politics? They have no role models in politics anymore because almost every single one is tainted in some way. Or if not tainted, so despicably boorish and hateful that they are just as unappealing.
I don’t recall fan pages being set up for people who make insulting remarks about women in Parliament, for example. Is there a single politician on the national stage that gives any young person hope at all?
I really wonder how some people want to be remembered in history. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be remembered for having elevated your own people, whether economically or intellectually, rather than for having dragged them straight into the gutter?
Wouldn’t it be better to get accolades for taking young people to a higher plane and exploiting their potential, than making them read pornography in the papers every day?
What is the point of constantly trying to censor the Internet, supposedly to protect our children, when they can read filth in every paper?
Have we forgotten that elsewhere in the world people are dying either from natural disasters or being shot at by their own rulers, and that there is an impending nuclear disaster hovering over us?
Who cares who’s sleeping with whom when we’re all going to be glowing from radioactive fallout.
Is it too much to hope for some civility to return to our political life, where people may disagree with one another but still respect each other, where private matters stay private because ultimately we all have to go before the one Judge in the end?
I may not personally like a public figure who betrays his wife with someone else, but when it comes to politics, it’s not about him, it’s about the rest of us (though of course I would doubt his ability to make women-friendly policies).
I think that’s what’s been forgotten. That people are supposed to get into politics to do something for us, the people who voted them in. That it’s not at all about them and what they can get out of it, but what we can get out of them.
Every five years or so, we march off to the polls to make an investment in our future, not theirs. Of course, if they do well for our future, theirs is assured, too. If not, then they should be booted out.
Right now, I wish all our politicians would realise that they are all found wanting in one way or another. I can’t really think of a single one I would be thrilled to sit next to at dinner and have a scintillating conversation with.
And if they bring up sex scandals, I swear I would just get up and leave. That’s all they deserve.
