Singapore

Reading about the Singapore elections, from far away and after the fact. Is it apathy? I can't quite say. I've always been someone apolitical, because I had never cared. I don't know if it is the cycnic in me that views it all as a strange bizarre showcase that ultimately jsut rings empty. You know, the case of: the same differences? Singaporeans are celebrating, and rightly so, for more voices in the parliament. Maybe this is what the rootlessness my sister talks about comes in. I don't have a home, and I don't care about governments. It doesn't matter where, I just can't get riled up, I don't get excited.

Again, I wish I was in the midst of all that excitement, I wish I cared more. In the duration of the few weeks leading up to the election, I received an email from an acquintance asking me, nay, beckoning me to take a stand. Not that she was insincere in anyway, she was in fact truly and deeply involved in what she believes in and asks of me to do the same. Then the question sets in, what do I believe in? I believe in lots of things, but politics is not one of them.

It has always struck me as strangely pretentious, all this talk about politics, building a better future and all that stuff--it feels like a show. You gain people's favor and then you do whatever the fuck you want once in power. I feel that the whole idea of democracy is pretty much a pretty lie. People believe they have a say, but really you give them a choice between shit sandwich A and shit sandwich B, and they are happy to pick one. They are happy just to have a say. Perhaps, it is reassuring to know that the country is going to hell, and one is partly responsible for the shape it takes.

I know how this post is coming off--strangely bitter and cynical--but I don't believe that anything true that one can believe in can be made public like that(in the case of politics) and still remain sincere. When one person does something because she believes in the justification of that act, it is drastically different than one person broadcasting what she believes should be done and asking others to follow her.

Perhaps, in this sense, I am truly anti-authoritarian. It is the classic case of don't tell me what to do, and what future I should be building. But when it comes to things I truly believe in, they are not quite so tangible and they don't take the shape of a seeable vision of the future through someone else's eyes. It is purely private and within that space, I struggle daily to find the right words for all these things I believe in. And it can't be captured in catch phrases and castles in the air of something big promised. Nothing is promised, it is worked for day after day. And I can get angered by all the false political slogans and dirty political scandals, but at the end of the day, I don't believe that politics is the way to freedom--whatever the hell this word is really suppose to mean.