This Means You

Aviation disasters always strike a raw nerve with me. Perhaps it is having seen so many of my friends go in that direction. Perhaps it is having tried to hunt down the missing pilots and passengers in utter hopelessness and having no answer to give to grieving families. Perhaps it's because I am part of the aviation family still.

 

MH 17 was no accident. What it was I cannot say. Missile systems have many safeguards against striking civilian aviation targets, therefore as with the preceding air disaster of MH370, there is little explanation so far over the logic of this mishap. Unless and until someone coughs up an admission, we are far from the light yet. This latest blow upon our solar plexus drives home that we have to admit, we are no longer alone, no longer exempt from vulnerability. 

 

Whatever the tone of this post may be, let it not be misconstrued sacrilegiously that MH17 is in any way comeuppance for our domestic misdeeds. She wasn't. She has nothing to do with it. She was an innocent  bystander with no interest in the power games played by larger entities who will not sully their hands to pick up the charred pieces of lives lost without justification.

While it seems impossible that every passenger on board was in line for canonisation without so much as one jerk amongst them, I do not believe that any of them were enemies of any state nor were they deserving of what no man has  the right to serve upon another living being. Yet we have lost them all. What lives we have lost and the tears we have shed, we should never visit upon another, not even in a wish. We must resolve, that some lines we must not cross. Some things must remain sacred.

 

Herein lies the problem.

 

You may seek to smite your enemy, but he will remain intact to hurl his round of obscenities and other projectiles at you. Those who lose their lives, who are maimed and hurt are not your enemy, but the people who have no part in your fight. We have been so preoccupied with name-calling and injuring the religious and racial sensitivities of those whom we meet on the street, that we have forgotten that there is a larger world of evil to stand against. As in other battles that target the innocent to incur psychological and physical damage, all hell let loose from both warring parties do little to the rabid hounds of war themselves, buttressed in their forts while the peasantry bear the scars not of their asking.

 

This is the best we can come up with??

A lion keeps control over his pride by hanging the threat of slaying his cubs over the heads of his lionesses. Is this premise familiar? Is this the only means of strength we can muster? We have witnessed all manner of supremacy organisations manouvre unchecked, unchallenged and unrebuked by the law. We breed bigotry without batting an eyelid. We flog the consciousness of the rakyat with words and actions that hurt and humiliate, leaving the outcome to the tenacity of their resilience, gazing upon the unruptured social fabric as evidence that we can get away with anything as we prepare for a second volley since nobody flinched. If we are not careful, our governance will be that of abusive parents and jilted lovers, not more.

 

Make no mistake, that evil will fester in any place given half a chance, for that is its very nature. I realise that there is no promised land upon the face of this earth save for the one we build with our own hands. But evil that so much as appears to have gained the acquiescence of the state, rapidly erodes public confidence. 

 

We have lost credibility to insist on the truth because we are guilty of our own grandiose cover-ups. We lose the rallying voice against human rights abuse because amongst our elect are those who abuse power, abuse subordinates and abuse privileges entrusted unto them. Worse, these  drama queens ruin the efforts of those who genuinely struggle, out of the spotlight to make things work for the common good of the common man. So let's save the sweat of embassy gate protests till our hypocrisy beacon is replaced by the light of the virtues we preach. 

 



A soup kitchen line-up. Courtesy Malay Mail Online



In the face of the real horror we are up against as a member country amongst a community of nations, what strengths have you bred at home to help us pull together as one Malaysian mass?

 

The goodwill that we see, the street saviours of the downtrodden and the destitute, the caretakers of the marginalised, whatever labels you condemn them with, are here assembled but our gathering is of no credit to you. Whatever good you see is not yours to reap for these are not the seeds you have sown. You're lucky because we are Malaysian!!!

 

We won't begrudge you the victory claims accruing to you over the accidental triumphs that come your way. Along those very lines, though, let us suggest what we have been saying for ages. Come and stand beside us. We will find a better way.