Inquisited.com

Sarah Palin’s gaffe about the vice president’s putative role of being “in charge” of the US senate incited a substantial degree of indignity (largely among the senators themselves). But it does raise an interesting question: who’s “in charge” of the country as a whole anyway? Its easy to pin it all on the man in the oval office: the grey-haired middle aged man of impeccable moral standing Americans call president. He’s the man who directs national policies. He’s the man who raises or lower taxes. He’s the man who conducts diplomacy and wages war.

But personally I find such a view to be overly simplistic. The nature of American politics, much like God, works in mysterious ways. Former president Gerald Ford once put forward a theory called the “imperilled presidency” where he argued that the president is not granted nearly enough executive power to effectively push policies in office. According to Ford:

[A] principal weakness in the presidency is the inability of the White House to maintain control over the large federal bureaucracy. There is nothing more frustrating for a President than to issue an order to a Cabinet officer, and then find that, when the order gets out in the field, it is totally mutilated.

Historically, the president of the USA has acted as the commander in chief of the armed forces. But since the 1970s, there has been increasing limitations on his control over foreign policy. On paper, the president handles explicit diplomatic dealings with other heads of states, but there is much that he can’t control. For instance, when the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, China officials offered sharp rebukes and warned of serious rammifications to relationships between the two countries (which did pan out in the form of cancelled trade and military agreements).

Did George W. Bush have any control over this matter? I think not. Yes, he was present at the medal presentation ceremony. Yes, he personally congratulated the Dalai Lama. But ultimately it was congress that collectively decided to hand out the award, and this was something G.W could not veto. The same applies to arms sales. Its congress and the senate (which is, in turn, hugely influenced by lobbyists, think tanks and industrial connections), not the president that calls the shots. And this seems to be something that authoritarian countries with centralized governments don’t understand, and much to their empty frustration at the incumbent president comes to naught.

In domestic policy, the president is again constricted by the legislative branches of the government, and especially so if an opposing party is in control - like what Bill Clinton faced in the 90s with an uncooperative republican senate. Here again, a complex interwoven conglomerate of interest groups vie for control, and president himself is obliged to act long party and voter lines, and not what is necessarily in the best interests of the country as a whole.

Rarely have American presidents been representations of anything other than the prevailing socio-political zeitgist (A select few who dared to challenge the status-quo such as Abraham Lincoln stand as notable and noble exceptions.) In other words, the American president is more an avatar and symbol of America, rather than a real agent of change. No doubt he may try to steer jauggernaut that is the USA, but there is much less than he can do than is generally assumed.

The book “Liar’s Poker” offers an insider’s (and often, unflattering) portrayal of Wall Street culture: It describes a community rampant with unscrupulous greed, and lifestyles so hedonistic it would make even Caligula envious. As a testament to their gargantuan egos, the investment and trading moguls of Wall Street style themselves as “Big Swinging Dicks” or “Masters of the Universe”.

According to Michael Lewis, there is great scorn and contempt for any job that earns anything less than a king’s ransom. Success on the street is determined much less by one’s finesse in advanced financial knowledge than the ability to manipulate, exploit, coerce and spend long hours under high-pressure situations screaming orders.

Obviously, I am no Warren Buffet. But even before the current financial crisis I found myself wondering how much of the (then) phenomenal profit accrued in investment banking could be attributed to financial virtuosity, and how much of it to creative accounting. After all, with the banks as powerful as they are, they can essentially write themselves blank checks: they persuade investors to throw in their entire life’s savings to purchase financial instruments that are incredibly risky and overvalued at best (and next to worthless at worst), charge exorbitant management fees, and then buy each others stocks and debts in a way that connects every single financial entity on the street like a giant chain letter to cover their collective backs. If one of them goes down, the entire financial market is fucked.

When the bubble inevitably bursts, the engineers of this financial house of cards walk away scott free with their obscenely generous severance packages, leaving the central banks, taxpayers and investors the foot the bill - the most prominent and recent example being the fall of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. Because of all the complex trades it had entered into with all the major banks on Wall Street, chaos would have resulted if the fund was allowed to fail. In the end, the Fed stepped in and brokered a deal between several major banks to bail out the ailing firm.

But the story has an unsatisfying epilogue. The founder LTCM, John Meriwether, walked away with a huge retirement package, and promptly raised $250 million of fresh capital to set up a new fund within a year of the collapse of LTCM. Wall Street financers, it appears, suffer from a serious case of investment amnesia. It seems we never learn and as a result pay, quite literally, for our ignorance.

Its one day after Singapore’s 43rd national day, and I thought I’d spare a minute to reflect on the issue of national solidarity. Recently, I polled a small group of friends who had spent time abroad on whether they took pride on being Singaporean. The consensus was a resounding “not really”. I suspect they’re not alone in their views, given the nation’s strong Europhillic disposition.

This sentiment seems most pronounced among the nation’s intelligentsia (or at least those who consider themselves such), a good proportion of which have, or are considering moving overseas. Having actually lived abroad for more than half my life, I can say with some certainty that the grass is indeed greener on the other side. But the issue remains: A great deal of Singaporeans don’t identify with the country. Why might this be the case?

Part of the problem might have to do with the country’s colonial legacy, but the other part I think, is caused by the government’s incessant harping on how Singapore should always imitate that other country. How Singapore should be like the Swiss in banking, imitate the oh-so-refined accents of the Brits, the Brazilians in their swanky football skills or whatever. With annoying regularity, politicians beat on this to death at every chance they get. Its kind of like how your parents used to compare you to the geekiest kid in grade school: “why can’t you be more like perfect peter or smarty sandy?”. Remember how irritating that was? The other thing that was ever good for was deflating a kid’s confidence, or in this case, national pride.

Of course, the government’s line might be a natural consequence of Singapore’s collective low self-esteem, rather than the cause of it. But that’s still no excuse for the lack of inspiring leadership. A lot of government-sanctioned events and cultural festivities seem incredibly contrived and passé. Combined with the constant nagging on how the other kid’s always better and you have the perfect recipe for an insecure and outward-looking citizenry. One might argue that a national identity can only arise from acts of self-expression that are unrestrained from moralizing or politicizing. Only then will you have identifiable traits of true “Singaporean” culture that people can identify with and feel proud of.

Incidentally, this is reminiscent of a scene from the movie “Cool Runnings”, an inspiring flick about the first Jamaican Bobsled team to take part in the winter olympics. The captain of Jamaican team realizes that the swiss team is really good. In fact, he admires them so much that he tries to get his teammates to imitate the swiss in every single aspect of bobsledding. The idea, of course, is that if they all act swiss they’ll be just as successful. Needless to say, his fellow bobsledders don’t appreciate the posing and the team doesn’t get very far.

One of his teammates finally speaks up.

“All I’m saying, man, is if we walk Jamaican, talk Jamaican, and is Jamaican, then we sure as hell better bobsled Jamaican.”

And that is the crux of the issue. Just like it can with a bobsled team, morale and make or break a nation. Recognizing and appreciating culture has a lot to do with this. Since no two countries will ever develop in the exact same way, trying to imitate another blindly would be a lot like the Jamaican bobsled team counting down in German. Let a thousand flowers boom and have faith that Singapore will forge its own way guided by its own culture. The Swiss will tread their own path. The British will tread their own path. The Jamaicans will tread their own path.

So must Singaporeans.

So a lot has happened over the course of the past few months. Events that transpired included (but were by no means limited to): insomnia, heartbreak, insomnia, taking the GRE immediately after insomnia, getting drunk, and writing a song. Yes, in that order. Believe it or not, there actually is a name for the malady that I was afflicted with: oneitis.

Oneitis is something that happens when you meet someone you’re hopelessly attracted to. Somehow, you are certain that said person is “the one” (hence the origin of the term) and would do virtually anything to win him or her over. The subject of your affections becomes the focal point of your life: you lose your wit in front of her, you get jittery when she doesn’t reply to your messages, you feel compelled to check her facebook profile several times a day, ambiguous statements are taken as massive hints of her desire to be with you and so on. Because this is a one-way energy transfer, oneitis is both emotionally and mentally draining. Needless to say, it sucks.

In my case, I couldn’t let her (lets just call her Layla) go for the longest time in spite of some rather glaring personality flaws. It didn’t matter, so long as she liked me I was willing to adapt and compromise. Some might call it unrequited love. Others, stupidity. There’s a thin line always. I can’t say exactly what it was that ultimately cured me of oneitis. There isn’t a definitive incident where I can point to with certainty and say “that’s what made me stop liking her”, but there were a series of events - inconsiderate decisions (understatement) on her part - that made me feel like shit. That was the dealbreaker.

Oneitis isn’t something that can be rationalized. You can have 5 buddies patting you on the shoulder over a jug of beer telling you how she isn’t worth it but it won’t do any good. You have to feel it.

And that’s the best advice I can give to people suffering from oneitis. You have to convince yourself emotionally that you’re better off without that person. Get out of the house and meet other human beings. Specifically, members of the opposite sex. Because after you met enough wonderful people you start wondering what was so special about that one unrequited love in the first place. A serious conversation with your oneitis goes a long way, too. Sometimes, “lets just be friends” won’t cut it. Because as long as there’s still a glimmer of hope there’s always the chance that your festering chronic oneitis will become a full-blown infection again. People generally don’t want to feel that they are “bad” because they rejected you, so you’ll just have to do the dirty work yourself. Let it go because its not going to happen.

Be a man. Do the right thing.

As for me, I’ve suffered from months of oneitis with nothing to show for it. Well, actually that isn’t true. I do have my cheesy oneitis/Layla-inspired love song. At least that’s one in the bank for the band to perform.

P.S. Now that I think about it, “So long, Layla” doesn’t sound like a bad title for a new song. Make that 2 originals.

So I’ve been doing a lot of travelling over the past week and something that’s caught my notice is that there is one face that’s virtually ubiquitous throughout China - that of Yao Ming’s. From various product endorsements to olympics averts, posters to Yao’s likeness can be found everwhere. In a way, he has become the unofficial mascot for China.

Humans always have an overwhelming need for figureheads, and my view is that as far as atheletes go, the Chinese couldn’t have hoped for a better representative on the world stage. As the first (significant) Chinese basketball player to enter the NBA, Yao Ming had to carry the hopes of 1.6 billion people in the face of adversity.

When he entered the league in 2001, there was an unprecedented level of nastiness directed at him. Americans, for the most part, saw him as an outsider, and an interesting experiment that somehow needed to fail. He didn’t. In a league well-known for narcissistic players, Yao never gave himself a nickname. He never gave himself excuses for bad games. Season after season he came through with the kind of class that few other players in the NBA could pull off. 

In China, Yao gave youngsters who’d never touched a basketball before a reason to play the game, much like how Michael Jordan inspired an entire generation in the 90s. Yao Ming lived and assimilated into America, but he never lost touch of his culture and always remained true to his roots.

That’s Yao Ming, a gentle giant of a man. His identity, his life, his burden.

In the 1970s, my grandfather was tortured by the Chinese communists for being a “Capitalist swine”. Not that they needed any hard proof to arrest anyone at the time, but the incriminating evidence was a picture of him at the age of 4 sweated on wooden toy horse wearing clothes that were evidently too western and too colorful for the tastes of the CCCP.

As I trodded down the crowded isle the central Wuhan train station yesterday, I couldn’t help but feel extremely… bourgeois, for the lack of a better word. The stark difference in dress attire certainly contributed to that effect. As did travelling to one of my dad’s clients factories in a rather large Audi. It certainly gives off evil-capitalist-oppressing-the-lowly-proletariat vibes. For those of you not in the know, I’m currently travelling in China with my family visiting relatives, friends, ancestral graves and all that good stuff. Its been about 5 years since I last visited China but I’m amazed at how much the country has changed - The Chinese can literally rebuild an entire city faster than it takes Singapore to build a basketball court.

People who haven’t visited China in recent years would find it hard to picture the scale and scope of the transformation that is taking place - Massive highways spanning the lengths of an entire continent (or lets just say hundreds of Singapores in length), state-of-the-art airports, hospitals, skyscrapers, and shopping malls so massive you’d consider them engineering marvels by their own right have all popped up like mushrooms after a bout of rain.

Its messy at times, and the dichotomy between the have and have-nots is mind-boggling to say the least. At Wuhan train station, for instance, you see migrant workers from the poorest provinces of China, beggars, charlatans peddling snake oil, vagrants all crammed together in destitute conditions. Just a gated doorway a few meters away lies another world, the first class lounge where students from previleged families play with their unlocked iPhones, businessmen in snazzy suits and their IBMs, chic chicks with all the latest fashion apparel who wouldn’t at all be out of place in Tokyo or Paris.

In spite of these problems, you get the unmistakable impression that progress is both real and unstoppable. The number of cars on the streets are increasing exponentially, not just the cheapo plebian-mobiles, we’re talking about BMWs, Audis, Jaguars, and even Cadillacs. The Chinese have just discovered their purchasing power. Business is booming, and will continue to do so in the forseeable future. And it hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice that the world’s grandest display of a market economy in action is, ironically, taking place in what is technically still a communist country.

P.S. The good news is that China has free internet (Yes, for everyone). The bad news is that its dial-up. And the worse news is that Blogspot is on its banned list, which means I can’t access most of my friends’ blogs. Good thing I have my own domain, else I wouldn’t be able to blog on the fly either.

I was walking back home from work the other day and I saw yet another car on the streets with a big Decepticon decal plastered on the hood (for the cartoonistically-challenged amongst you, the “Decepticons” are the bad guys from the Transformers series, out to conquer the universe and all that good stuff). That makes 3 sightings in a span of 2 weeks. And that got me thinking: why is it that i’ve never seen a car here with an Autobot (the good guys from the series) logo on it?On some level, it must reflect the mentality of the drivers, who invariably own colorfully pimped-up coupes with modified body trims and massive, ugly spoilers that serve no functional purpose. The Deception logo is yet another piece in their facade with the implicit message ”look at me, I’m such a badass”.

My personal opinion is that If someone needs an 80s cartoon emblem to prove his machoism, he’s got some pretty serious credibility problems. But the other issue, though, is why is it so fashionable to be perceived as “bad” or dangerous? Our obsession with it is evident. Gangstas rap about drive-by shootings and slapping hos in the ‘hood, punks decorate themselves with piercings of all sorts, and Singaporean wannabes with their decepticon logos - all of which are essentially declarations of their ostensible “badness” (albeit to different degrees), and the rest of us (chicks especially) readily gobble it up as if it were so.

I can understand this from an evolutionary point of view. After all, 20,000 years ago the aggressive bad boys in our cavemen society were also the likely to be the ones in the ruling class running the show. If you were living back then, you wanted to ally yourself with the bat-swinging alpha male of the group, not the sensitive copper-age pansy painting on the cave walls. In that epoch, being an aggressive and dangerous in general conferred a certain amount of social and practical advantage. This tends not to be the case anymore, but the more primitive portions of our brains just hasn’t realized it yet.

Still, just because evolution has been slow to catch on doesn’t mean we have to be stuck in a paradigm that tens of thousands of years old. The pseudo-badboy image in particular is a cliche that’s been packaged, commercialized, and sold to unsuspecting wannabes in a fashion not dissimilar to emo rock. Admittedly, I may be overly optimistic about humanity’s prospects for change, but If humanity can get over major crises like the cold war and the backstreet boys, there may yet be hope that one day it could be cool and fashionable to be seen just a “nice guy”. Imagine that.

And to prove a point, I intend to buy a T-shirt featuring an Autobot logo the next time I come across one, just so people know which side of the fence I’m on.