IT was a workaday morning earlier this week in Kuching, if slightly wet. A motorcyclist was negotiating a pedestrian pathway outside some banks and sustained some scratches on the forearm.
A passerby saw this as he walked past and hurried into his house across the street, coming back with a bottle of antiseptic and helped clean up the motorcyclist’s wound.
They were obviously strangers and most likely Malaysians, if of different racial backgrounds. In the days before Aug 31, with flags aflutter in the buildings around, this scene was a heartwarming backdrop to our Merdeka month.
Patriotism can be rather empty without care and even love for our fellow Malaysians — whatever colour or creed — especially in times of personal distress when succour seems hard to come by.
I would like to think the act of kindness above happens across the nation more often than acts of careless disregard, which, unfortunately, happen as well.
It is rather unfortunate that in the run-up to this year’s National Day, the nation appears divided politically over some Jalur Gemilang flaps.
Malaysians seem divided over this matter. This piece will not add to anything said for or against one side or another.
Rather, I feel truly saddened over what I occasionally describe as the Malaysian tragedy: our collective inability to look beyond what our respective political standpoint dictates.
This is a generalised statement, of course. But yes, sadly, we easily get agitated over an opposing political stance.
And tragically, with exceptions (it must be added), such an over-riding political divide runs very much along racial lines rather than cutting across it. Each side either fails or simply refuses to concede the opposing camp has a point or two.
The nation, as usual, seems to be doing reasonably well overall, despite ever-present speed bumps and other hazards. But we are not immune from global travails; or at least in parts of the world where democratic norms prevail.
Where public perceptions detect economic headwinds which translate into some sense of personal insecurities, the right senses some opportunity to make political hay.
This must explain the remarkable phenomenon of President Donald Trump in the United States, for example.
Trump was not even a lifelong member of the Republican Party. But few can fault him for a keen sixth sense of which way public opinion and, therefore, the American political wind is blowing.
It can seem so deeply frustrating to his political opponents (and even much of the Republican Party) that his supporters (most not unthinking) appear immune to any opposing rationalisations.
To Trump supporters, the opposition is the problem; it can either accept this kernel of truth (or political reality) or shove it and, therefore, shove itself to the political wayside.
Until or unless the opposition in the US finds a way to capture anew the imagination of Trump supporters, the Trumpian reality may have some way to go yet.
American “exceptionalism” may loom large even in the Trump era, but it is, I think, a useful way to view political developments around the world from that prism, even those here in Malaysia.
It is incumbent upon all (and I mean all) from whichever side of the political divide to unrelentingly hunt for that perennially elusive Malaysian consensus.
No matter, we will nevertheless coast along and be largely none the worse, as always. The doomsday scenario is mostly only in the imagination of the extremes of the political divide.
* The writer views developments in the nation, region and the wider world from his vantage point in Kuching
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