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A: 'Look at their faces, those All-Bloggers teamers.'

Neil: 'what about them?'

A: 'You see innocence, you see genuine social concern. You don't see calculativeness. You don't see the hooded and wild look of anarchists. I would say that of you too, Neil. You have the enviable addition that women would swoon over you. But you seem a trite too quiet and thoughtful an ascetic for someone cutting such a dashing figure.'

Neil: 'Shall i interest you in a vintage cuban cigar, A?'

A: 'Later, perhaps. For now i am just puzzled at one thing. When you meet one of them ministers or political party chieftains, they are no different from the corporate bigwigs down the road. So that the analysis of one can be applied to the other. A business CEO worth his salt doesn't just make it instantly; for him or her to be any good, there has to be a baptism of fire; you need that in order to create inner qualities that can equilibrate between contending forces that will emerge in every aspect of running an enterprise or building a business.

But what happens to make or break a really good CEO in the business world is whether or not they have sacrificed living by principles. This is important, Neil, because it is always so easy to fall prey to living by sheer self-delusion that one is right all the time. And principles are what foist power-holders to face up to checks-and-balances on their power-wielding.'

Neil: 'So what you are saying is that our politicians and ministers and what-not have lost their way in the running of this country because they have forfeited principles for the allure of power and personal gain cloaked as some pseudo-macho pragmatism?'

A: 'Neil, try not to complicate my life. In plain prose, they're just bullshitters and lipservicers.'

Neil: 'But they've also done some good, haven't they?'

A:'I can concede some, but i cannot concede they're so stupid that they didn't know how much they had been paying for those goods and services. Neither can anyone in his right sense believe that they didn't know what are the right things to do for progressing this nation and building real harmony between the races and religions, and what's wrong with themselves that they need to hold a 1-day brain-storming for over 700 people.

Man, how can you hold a brain-storming session over, say, six hours, when that translates to 30 seconds per person to speak?!

Furthermore, how can you call it a brain-storming session when there are no brains in the first place?!'

Neil: 'Now, A, that's a wee bit too harsh, don't you think so?'

A: 'Neil, i cannot believe that people in high places who have gone through real baptisms of fire in politics and civil service cannot face up to genuine criticism. Or for that matter, rubs up their pride. Unless you tell me nine out of nine of them are half-baked potatos pretending to leaders of the people.

If it comes to genuine and good service to citizen and country, bricks and bouquets go hand in hand. Don't you agree that comes with the territory?

If the thing is done right and done well, which citizen would be so nutty as to criticise and throw bricks? Bouquets from Holland will be ordered instead.

However, if the thing is continuously done badly, costly, evasively, stupidly and bullyingly, which citizen won't raise hell, since people will remember it is them who put those lipservicers and bullies there in the first place?'

Neil: 'So i take it you're also implying that this govt labelling bloggers as anti-establishment is just a ruse to get the non-bloggers to feel unsafe about bloggers, and therefore diminish their impact?'

A: 'Any govt wants uniformity for control to make its job easier. Instability breeds mayhem which may raise other problems which in turn calls for measures that may rankle stakeholders in today's shrinking and more globalized world.'

Neil:'i think it's a difference of scale and priority; some emerging countries don't have the luxury of abbreviating their momenta of economic progress congruent with national stabilization just so to allow unfettered individualism alloyed with elements that are anathema to their national ideologies; furthermore they're too big in size and spread that federalism is itself a challenge to maintain and exhausting of resources better redeployed, especially if the hoi-polloi can be incendiarised by new things.'

A:'yes, but we are different, we are just a small young country of 26 million that has been exposed enough to the rest of the world, and carrying a system that integrates in many aspects to those we have been traditionally interacting with.

Thus there should be more confidence that the peoples can think for themselves and be rational about what are the right things their govts should be doing.'

Neil: 'And you're saying bloggers reflect that calling for a transition?'

A:'Yes, something like that - to say it's a mental revolution would be too dramatic. I mean, if govt does the right thing, blogging will reduce to exchanging recipes, movie reviews and the sequel to kamasutra.'

Neil: 'And why is govt doing the wrong things over and over again, as well as not doing the right things?'

A: 'Because they didn't learn how to wean themselves from their own shallow thinking and juvenile pride. Just look, someone compares the March of September by saying there were only one thousand lawyers who can't be right because his govt represents one million voters who therefore can't be wrong.

Now that's specious, don't you think? Somehow i suspect that's how ALL of them think, if you can call that thinking and not flagellating of something of the lower torso.

In the first place, ninety nine percent of those one million voters didn't know things would come to this, and they remain unaware of the real cost of mis-governance and abuse of power and privileges.

What is more insidious that this nationally self-destroying system has become so entrenched that misgovernance of principles and services has degraded to outright daylight in-your-face robbery of peoples' funds and outright corruption of peoples' access to justice, whether social or legislative.

In other words, Neil, it has become a self-propagating virus.

Think Alien crustacean inside the stomach ready to burst out to take a nine-day all-expense tour for one thousand five hundred ringgit. Only.'

Neil: 'But those voters will continue to vote for the known against the unknown, isn't that apparent?'

A: 'They may, until their end cometh. But the matter is not whether those orificers (sorry, i meant officers) will use that to prop up their own juvenile pride. The matter is about national conscience and a return to the principles of good governance. Right now, bloggers are driving that message home. In the past, you hold a kenduri or ceramah and talk a bit, then call the kids over for a black-and-white movie of tarzan and the apes. Today, tarzan has left for tinseltown to beat inflation, leaving only the apes behind to perform the circus of malaysian politics.

After all, when we think about it, we will all meet the Maker and that's where the final reckoning takes place. "You knew about those five thousand ringgit car-jacks? Ok, sentence is car-mechanic of protons, for the next five thousand years."

That's why it is so important to have a credible balance in the way this country is to be governed right. Now whether that means labelling people who fight for so as anti-establishment or opposition must be seen as only a ruse and low-down cheap trick by the incumbent. So what's the substance?

Right is right because enough is enough.

And if they want to debate on what's right, let them eat the five years of bloggers' comments from all the bloggers of this land. All of them. And the many discussions, articles, videos and so on.

The bile has turned rancid from the alkali that has corroded the guts of this nation.'

Neil: ' So we go on?'

A: 'Yes, we only live twice, Neil, and one is a dream. The bromide is none of those bloggers look or stand to gain anything for themselves. It's just all about doing the right thing for the future of everyone. Now can i have that cigar?'

David Sasaki is spot on Fear Factor indeed.
Then,
Bloggers Fear Factor.
Now,
Whistle blower Fear Factor.