SEPTEMBER 23 — A popular meme on the internet shows a cartoon dog, sitting in a room where everything is on fire.
The dog, instead of attempting escape, calmly says, “It is fine.”
Nothing is “fine” in the world right now. I had to explain to someone that outside our borders, there is much uncertainty and chaos.
The US election is happening soon and whatever the polls might say, there is still a very big chance that Trump will win re-election because if someone that unqualified could win in the first place, he could just as easily win re-election.
There is a lot of saber rattling right now — the US being extremely belligerent in its dealings with China and Iran while China is making threatening gestures at Taiwan.
Then there’s that pandemic happening with our neighbours, the Philippines and Indonesia, currently with the highest number of cases and highest death toll in South-east Asia respectively.
Yet with all that I am hearing from some Malaysians, of all people, that Covid-19 is “just a flu.”
I’m pretty sure the flu doesn’t give people in their 20s heart attacks or permanent lung damage.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has a global dashboard where you can actually see the cumulative total of cases as well as deaths from Covid-19.
Experts are predicting that the coming of Fall and Winter will exacerbate the situation leading to not just second waves, but third waves of the pandemic.
All things considered, Malaysia’s death toll is fairly low at 130 so far but cases are rising again in some countries and the US and India seem to be no closer to getting the disease under control.
Yet there are more protests happening against Covid-19 measures, arguments that lockdowns are an overreach and that being made to wear masks is somehow infringing on personal freedoms.
I think the world is just going mad and unfortunately it’s the kind of insanity that is catching.
With the threat of the virus and possible economic turmoil, it is still rather disappointing that there are not enough measures to remedy difficult situations for the poor in Malaysia.
The shopping carnivals and “Buy Malaysia” first campaign would have made sense... in a time where people were less wary about leaving their homes or not afraid of losing their income.
Penjana might have been a welcome small injection for business owners but RM50 seemed like a small, sad afterthought.
I am still waiting for an answer to that question I asked a while back — where will money come from for those who need it?
In pressing times like these, I am still aggrieved that resources were spent on firing and hiring people for various GLC posts and that ridiculous MERDEKA SMS service.
Getting noxious texts with patriotic messages multiple times a day made me glad Merdeka and Malaysia Day are done with but I have a feeling now that the government has learned to spam SMS, we might be in for more suffering.
What I’d like to see is a concrete plan that goes beyond having our prime minister go on TV and having people with fathers of their own calling him daddy.
Yet I do not see that plan or path to navigate us through this new landscape; instead I see grown men fumbling with their speeches and making enemies of budding university students.
I am tired of politics. I am weary of performative religious grandstanding. I am rather sick of the current affairs circus in Malaysia.
What I’d like to see, as will many Malaysians, is a clear demonstration of leadership, not disastrous ideas (a fee on online purchases is punitive and predatory) or showboating.
We’re waiting for Moses but alas, it looks like we’re just going to have to keep wandering the desert for now — at least until the next election.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
