just minishorts.

I was reading Che Det's opinions on the racism-card and as always, damn-it, I'm bloody impressed. That man, the dear Tun has his way with words and the fact that he's nearing his 90s makes it all the more fantastic. My feelings and opinion of the man who was Prime Minister of my country for almost my entire life fluctuate between love and hate all the time, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I'll be quite devastated when he leaves this world eventually, although a good percentage of my thinking brain also hates the guy for his brand of top-down, save-my-ass politics.

The other percentage of my mind who is willing to forgive the Tun for his misgivings and disastrous mistakes keeps telling me also, that no one is ultimately innocent in the unmaking of Malaysia. Although I try hard not to generalize the entire human race as a scheming set of selfish idiots bent on surviving the Great Disaster, its hard (at least for me) to be optimistic all the time.

We may hate to admit the truth, but its true, we all suffer from the 'Save-My-Ass Complex', and the disgusting thing is, none of us are willing to face up to this, so we liberally label others as racist, judgemental, selfish, fundamental, greedy, evil, prideful, conceited, etc., while hardly reserving any space for personal improvement on our part.

Now I'm not saying that Tun is not racist in his views, but my perception of our ex-Prime Minister as a racist person doesn't come from anger and hatred… rather its because I look at him as just another person in this country who is just as racially-bigoted as you or me. What I'm saying is that not everyone of us who keeps fighting for 'equality' is willing to admit that he is not exactly keen on acquiring equality. This, possibly, is due to the damned 'save'my'ass complex' we all suffer from, we're just unwilling to be responsible and take ownership of that degrading label we so liberally dose upon the poor old man.

For God's sake, show me a 90-year-old man who is NOT racist, not even a bit. My granddad used to tell us that Tun Tan Siew Sin caused this entire MCA nonsense of submitting to the ketuanan Melayu issue, and the history books (or the writing of our History books) tell us that we're all keen on self-preservation, except very few of us are willing to admit that. In fact, the entire system of disequality has been hardwired so deeply into our souls its hard to shake it off ourselves within just a few months. The very fact that the Chinese insist that they must speak Chinese to remain Chinese, and the Indians wants their rights preserved in this country, or that concept of Ketuanan Melayu (what Ketuanan, the world's going to end one day and we're talking about KETUANAN? Sheesh), or even the fact that the 'true-Malaysians' born of mixed marriages can't help gushing about how mixed and truly Malaysian they are compared to the rest of us, tells us we're all eager to finish top in this crazy race of who's a better and more deserving Malaysian than the other.

Moving on to the issue of saving the environment. It's almost rubbish, the entire, concept, if you ask me. The problem is we keep kidding ourselves that we love the earth so much that we shouldn't let it go to waste… but the issue of a dying earth keeps staying because ultimate when it comes to choices, money is Lord of all things and decisions. I don't think it is possible to keep fighting for cheap goods and proclaim that we're keen on saving the world, because the facts remain that cleaning up the mess we have left behind costs tonnes of cash. We spoke about installing solar panels for the church building the other day (so that we can cut down on burning energy), but how many of us have actually done some research into what goes on in factories that build solar panels? Who's kidding us? Some part of my logic tells me that this race to save the world from greenhouse gases isn't about the environment, it's really about all of us, and how we MUST make sure that our asses don't get killed in the process of development. But people don't want to look at it that way. The problem is we are all so afraid to put our 'reputations' on the line and at least admit that we're all terrified of dying to failure, and we will continue to defend our right to be known as tree-huggers and earth lovers, when honestly it isn't about the environment, its really about our selves and our asses.

I wanna blame it on the advertisers and the marketeers, the people who call themselves communicators (people like yours truly), because we're all keen on painting a bright and lovely picture (of ourselves, damn it), even in the light of impending doom. So we blame other people for being racist, we blame industries for greenhouse gases, we blame governments for lousy governance, we blame employers for lousy managing, we blame boyfriends for lousy sex perhaps, all in a futile attempt to keep saving our asses in no-matter-what-situation.

So in the process, we forget, we voted for the dude and put him in power for 23 damned years, we bring our children up to remember that that guy is Chinese, and you are Malay, we teach our kids that non-Christians will go to hell, we complain when blackouts happen in the middle of the night (and that my aircond can't work so my kid can't go to bed), we forget we spend office hours deliberating on what to blog instead of doing work, we dress lousily and give our boyfriends lousy blowjobs (or not give them at all), and we keep asking that petrol subsidies and gas subsidies stay so that we can keep our costs low. We bloody complain when the government places a restraining order on foreign cars from buying petrol, but we also bloody complain that Singaporeans come in and take advantage of tax-funded petrol subsidies.

And on top of that, we conveniently say things like, 'all these price hikes, it's going to hurt the poor ones', but when some beggar comes to your table asking for just two dollars so that he can buy his lunch, we pretend he's not there and continue to yak away about how terrible the politicians are for not walking the talk.

I don't think the Tun is more evil than you or me. Instead, I want to give him credit for being so openly racist in his opinions. That guy has got the guts, although I suspect that he rattles off his opinions at that rate because he really has got nothing to lose anymore. But the 'save-my-ass' complex, we're all suffering from this, and hence we're not above him in our moral values. What if, we recognize he is wrong because he is a direct reflection of who we all are, deep inside, and it scares the shit out of us? How should we really react to that?