In Continuum.

2008 seems to be a year that is rather popular with presidential elections all around the world. With the lesser known elections happening in the African countries, there is the elections in Malaysia just across the causeway, the big one happening in America at the end of the year, and the one that I am the most concerned about: the Taiwanese presidential election. It is still a small countries on the edge of the Pacific ocean, but it is still the place where I was born, and a place which I care about despite being away from it most of the time. What amused me recently was the speech of a young politician who was elected into the parliament recently, and I thought it was rather naive of him despite me, being just a twenty-one year old who has had nothing to do with politics in my life. 

He is a young politician not because of his age, but because of the fact that he was a veteran singer in Taiwan before he decided to step into the world of politics. It is this strange dream of a lot of veteran entertainers out there, somehow, to think that they can accomplish anything with their fame and fortune. So they have sold a few albums, they go to work in the movie business. From there, they move on to hosting television shows, then to opening restaurants around the country just to find out how much they suck at money management. He probably woke up one day thinking that there is something really wrong with the country, and thought that he could do something about it. He was probably elected into office only because a lot of the old-timers in Taiwan loved his old Hokkien songs, and probably couldn't care less if he doesn't half the brain to even make his dysfunctional family work. Anyway, he made a speech about a current presidential candidate, and was in turn sued by the electoral campaign for the manipulation of the truth, or something like that. So he was being interviewed on the news a few days ago, and said something about why is it that other politicians could say the same things and get away with it, but he couldn't. He also commented how dark politics is, something which I find to be absolutely amateurish. 

Clean politics doesn't exist, everybody knows that. Even the righteous things done in human history in the name of fairness and justice were never fair and just in the first place. When it comes to politics, nothing is ever clean enough to be laid out under the scrutiny of the public, and to hear a sixty year old man talk about his enlightened view of the politics in Taiwan is just rather amusing. Seriously, you didn't know that? Even a primary school child is going to tell you that the politicians in the daily evening news are not the best people in charge to run the country, everybody can see that. Like I said, clean politics doesn't exist anywhere in the world. Everybody is selfish in politics, everybody wants a piece of the cake once they get that money and power. It is human nature, it is this incurable human condition. Politicians are like that, and it is just sad that in this time and age, we are not trying to pick who is the better presidential candidate, but who is less screwed up out of them all.

It is the same throughout the world these days, when it comes to presidential elections. We see the candidates trying to pry out the dirtiest little secrets in their histories, trying to reveal the most horrible secrets of their past even if they are just fabricated truths. It doesn't matter these days if your accusations are going to be based on facts or not, because people are stupid enough to swallow anything that you say, anyway. Anything can become something to point fingers at, and your family members are not going to be spared - not even the dead ones. They say that a man can never outrun his past, but I think that quote should be edited to include the fact that a man can never outrun the past of his dead relatives either. It is no longer about what "I" can do, but what "He" has done before that makes me a more worthy candidate for president, and that is the case even in America as well.

It is interesting how the more heated battle is not between the parties, but between the two candidates within the same party in America. Obama and Hilary, we have heard the drama too many times over the news and even in the classrooms, for my case. Both of them resorting to various dirty tactics to make themselves look better than their opponents, even if these so-called tactics are supposed to be underhand methods condemned by the public if made known. It is getting more and more difficult for those in the grey area to decide who to root for, because it is just difficult for them to decide, especially when the dissatisfactions you have in candidate A is probably going to be the sam as the ones you have for candidate B. They are really just mirror images of one another, one trying to outdo the other by being louder in an argument. They are just as ugly as each other, worst than a pot calling a kettle black. It'd be like a black man calling a white man racist for no apparent reason, when the statement itself makes himself a racist. Elections these days have been reduced to silly banters with more fancy vocabularies and wider media coverage as compared to two grade school kids fighting over a toy truck next door. In essence, they are no different really. 

George Carlin got it right about politicians though, they are the result of selfish and ignorant citizens. The quality of our politicians is the direct reflection of the quality of the citizens, it is the age old philosophy that goes "garbage in, garbage out". We have produced these substandard politicians because our society allows them to exist, so many it isn't really the issue with the politicians but with the public now. We are what we eat, and our children are brought up the way their parents decide to bring them up. The people who voted them into power hardly has any right to complain about anything in truth, because they brought it upon themselves. The group of people, I think, who has the power to bitch about politicians are those who doesn't give a shit about politics at all. It is those people who sit at home on election day and read the newspaper, drink coffee and watch television who can complain about the rest of the world going into the gutter by every electoral vote counted. 

Anyway, yes the elections. In a way I cannot care more, but I cannot care less about it either. It is a strange dilemma, to want to switch channels and yet be updated about the situation. Perhaps it is that little guilty pleasure everybody has when we are watching a reality show, to know which person gets to be the winner at the end despite all the ugly antics throughout the season. We all hated Richard in the first Survivor, but we all wanted to see how he won the million dollars. At the end of the day, the lesser of the two evils get into power, screws up the government and we all suffer and bitch about him when we really should be looking into the mirror for the main culprit. Politics, it never fails to make anything messed up and dirty, and to push the blame to the citizens at the very end. That's why they also say, that politicians are like diapers. They get changed all the time, and they are all full of shit.