JANUARY 7 — Not everything has gone wrong. Probably hard to believe reading the news today or yesterday, but they have not.

From the people I talk to and the postings on social media with their ensuing debates it appears the country has many people from all walks of life who want to improve things, even if developments bring dismay to optimists.

So it is heartening to know. That there are many willing fixers.

You are probably one of them.

(Small admission though, on a bad day I doubt most have their conscience within radar range even if they have figured out the cluster-mess we are in.)

What appears clearer by the day, while they are in their own ways and in their own stations reconstituting the Malaysian dream for themselves and others, they have no access to the national conversation, or that very conversation is lacking,

Because there are too many discussion points and when argued together or worse in parallel, we are all weighed down by complexity. Can't fix things if fixers have no clear idea of what matters and what needs to matter.

In that spirit, I want to attack one idea for now, or more accurately, a false notion. At least it can be a constructive guideline for those interested not to feel like crap when it comes to discussing the country.

The idea being, Malaysia and its government are a single entity, and not two different entities. Which then renders the act of demonising one as one that demolishes the other.

Which is untrue.

Malaysia will survive any government. Governments that seek to survive Malaysia are the real threats to our reality.

What is true then?

That a Malaysian and his country are indivisible. Equally true, he — and even the country — is not an extension of the government of the day.

Which is why there are no odes to the history and culture of Antartica as large and dwarfing it may be. And even the smallest nation states like Luxemburg or East Timor have equal stakes in the pride game because there are people who call themselves by the name of their country. In the same manner, why the German people are not crestfallen if those within or without cuss the Nazi government which ruled them for 12 years 70 years ago; because hitting out at a bully and vicious regime unfortunate enough to reign over the German people is not ridiculing the German people before the Nazis, after the Nazis and even during the Nazis.

That's the cue.

Being unreservedly proud of the country and called a Malaysian is not dependent on loving, defending or choosing the government of the day. Our patriotism, our natural smile when our dinner host in a far flung city mentions to us that another Malaysian is going to join the party later is down to the shared ownership of this land and not because all Malaysians are the extensions of the government of the day, even if that government has been the only government we have ever known.

This is not a wild swing at patriotism, some veiled attempt at Mein Kempf-ing myself and the rest from reality. There is always danger in utilising patriotism to undermine others, to feel good because we have managed to reduce others — as evidenced by all hues of people speaking coarsely to itinerant foreigners picking after us in food-courts and cinema halls. Here I want to celebrate our patriotism as a sign that the nation means enough to us to care. That it means.

I've always been critical of my government, but remember, I said mine not another's. In that concession I am agreeing to own the mistakes of my government, because it is my country, right or wrong. If foreign troops land in downtown KL and start to gun down people, they would not differentiate those who love their government from those who hate it. Love or hate, you remain a Malaysian, until you choose to move that decision matrix of loving or hating or something inbetween to another nation. As they are my mistakes, by me owning up for them, I wish to make fewer mistakes, and the only way to do so is to express my view and when I can affect the view.

Which is why Germans may distance themselves from the Nazi government that ruined them, they cannot distance themselves from the actions caused by Germans during the Second World War. German SS officers may be behind the decimation of cities and exterminations of peoples but it is a responsible citizenry that chooses to not argue itself out of complicity by establishing low causality, passing of time or present events overwhelming the present.

For relations between governments and their people will always be intricate, and the intricacy is prone to convenient exaggerations by the unscrupulous.

Governments decide specific policies to run government schools, citizens fund those schools with their tax ringgit. Even an oil economy is about oil revenue of the rakyat paying for those schools in this instance.

This is one of the most necessary conversation to be had by all folks with a general election due in two years. For the fixers, moving the debate to those who are unlikely to have that discourse would be an amazing contribution to the democratic dynamics of the country.

The language, venue, time and refreshments available do not matter. Fixers have to have them, and see the reaction in the long run.

January has just started. Let's stretch our legs, outside our neighbourhoods.

*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.