Politicians and the bipolar world they live in
Technorati tags: Marina Mahathir, Musings, Politicians, Bipolar Politics, Malaysia
Marina Mahathir, in her regular column Musings, doesn't pull back any punches in her latest installment.
Bersih 2.0 has been demonized before the event, and more so after. It's sometimes amusing to hear the kind of rancid tripe that come out the politicians' gullets, but that's just symptomatic of the bipolar world they seem to want to live in.
The more the anti-Bersih folks talk, the more stupid they make themselves sound, it seems. Bersih has been blamed on just about everything - the Jews, Christians, Communists, Socialists... you name it, someone somewhere has probably laid blame on it.
And yet, it's the elephant of an idea, standing stark naked in the middle of the discussion arena, that goes unnoticed - what Bersih is really about.
What's clipped here is merely an excerpt. Read the whole thing. Walski guarantees you it'll be worth your time.
The polarised world of politics
Musings
By Marina Mahathir
Politicians can’t seem to fathom anything but a bipolar world.
They can’t seem to get it into their heads that firstly, there may yet be a third (or fourth, fifth) way of looking at things, and secondly, that the ones with these different perspectives could conceivably be civilians.
Politicians of every stripe have two bad habits.
Firstly, they think those who don’t belong to any political party are incapable of having a single political thought.
They forget that every five years or so, it is they who insist that we think of politics when we go and vote.
Secondly, when non-politicians think of a good populist idea, politicians of all stripes rush to hijack it.
Non-politicians, otherwise known as civil society, then have to fight them off tooth and nail.
