Who’s the silly billy?
THESE days less than complimentary words like silly, stupid, moronic, dumb, idiotic, etc are being bandied around liberally on social media. Perhaps with good reason, because everyday less than intelligent people who somehow occupy the corridors of power are making not too clever remarks in the public domain.
It was Mark Twain who said, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
Well, now we doubt no more. There are indeed many silly and some outright stupid people around. The worrying thing is that some of them occupy positions of power.
In some ways I do empathise with these public figures. They feel obliged because of their position to air their views on many issues.
They have been put on the pedestal (or they put themselves on the pedestal) by virtue of the fact they managed to garner more X's on the little pieces of paper in the great exercise called the elections.
Sometimes we forget that they are ordinary men and women. Like all common mortals they do sometimes get it wrong. It is okay by me if some people want to air their silliness in public.
It is really none of our business. However, it becomes decidedly our business when the silliness is coupled with power.
Let me illustrate it with a story. I actually got it from a video clip I saw recently. It depicts a group of soldiers in some jungle setting.
They were bored and one of them, not the brightest spark in the group, thought it was a good idea to hand his submachine gun to their pet chimpanzee.
The others realised the danger but too late. The chimp gleefully grabbed hold of the AK47 and did what one would do with a gun – started to spray bullets around.
It was quite a sight to see tough macho men diving for cover and fleeing for their lives. Of course, the chimp, being a less evolved primate, was stupid (at least compared to man).
However, he had in his hands a weapon that was capable of spitting death, an epitome of power. Stupidity and absolute power in their respective selves is bad enough but combining them into one is a very lethal concoction.
Our beloved country is now going through very dark days. We are living at a time when reasonable questioning can be classified as treasonous. Who determines what is treasonous and what is patriotic? It is the people who vested in themselves absolute powers. People whose forte is definitely not fairness and reasonableness.
The chimpanzee's action in the video was conditioned by its less evolved brain. However, at the moment we are living in the shadow of men who are driven not just by their silliness but also by the added toxic combination of greed and arrogance.
They have accumulated in their hands all the powers of the nation. It appears that they can at a whim remove our reputation, our livelihoods and our freedom.
It is as if we are living with the sword of Damocles hanging over us. Now we question in whispers, we speak in innuendo. It seems woe betide those who would call a spade a spade.
How did we get ourselves into this mess? Some in desperation blame the politicians. In fact in the vocabulary of many, the word ‘politician' is a swear word.
Last week I saw a poster with a picture of a rather unpleasant looking person and the caption read: “Dumb politicians are not the problem, the problem is the dumb people who keep voting for them.”
So who hung the sword of Damocles over our heads? Who is the silly billy in the aforementioned video clip? Was it the monkey or the man who gave the gun to the monkey?
There is a sense of anticipation in Sarawak at the moment – sweet words abound; promises are littered like confetti at a lavish wedding party; hopefuls and wannabes jostle with each other to get their faces in the media; the beleaguered big Kahuna from across the sea is fuelling up his jet for the whirlwind trips to our normally backwater state. Yes, it is the advent of the ‘silly season' when ordinary people are wooed like princesses.