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| No place for a Palin in S'pore Can we see unity in diversity? Lessons from the US election: America is divided - by the same forces of globalisation straining at the fabric of Singapore society. -TNP By Ng Tze Yong FOUR years ago, I bundled into my winter jacket, hopped into my beat-up 1987 Cadillac, and drove across the entire length of the US. I was months away from graduation. The one-month trip was my last hoorah. From the lights of New York down to Pennsylvania's Amish country, along the Mississippi, across Texas' ranches, up the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, through the Native American deserts of the Grand Canyon and finally, arriving in Hollywood, I drove and I drove and I drove. America, I realised with a gulp, is BIG. Duh, you think? Any idiot with a map can tell you that. Driving from town to city, freeway to backcountry lanes, and taverns to bistros, night after night, gives you a sense of size you can't get from looking at a map. You talk to the people, see their different lives. You see their futures and their pasts, sometimes coming from, and heading in, opposite directions. Contrary to its name, the United States of America is a diverse, divided country. Indeed, it is several countries, even different worlds, squeezed into one, sandwiched between two oceans, banded under one artificially-conceived Stars and Stripes banner. In a country this big, each man lives his own history. How then does a people from this land choose one leader? How does one man lead this country? But America is not just big. Now, it is also divided - by the same forces of globalisation straining at the fabric of Singapore society. The income divide. And the identity divide (the born-and-bred versus migrants). Americans experience these in their own way. We experience them in our own. After all, whatever that happens in America is diffused. Whatever happens on this island is amplified. But one things is clear: We are feeling the same way Americans are feeling now - vulnerable. And when we feel vulnerable, we close in. We cling to the things dearest - and most familiar - to us. It is in such an environment that a politician like Sarah Palin thrives. Folksy, myopic but 'far-sighted' enough to see Russia from her lawn, she stands in the face of everything globalisation stands for. She speaks about hockey mums and Joe Six-Pack. These are words foreign to us but incredibly comforting to small-town America grappling with the world suddenly arriving at its white picket fence. They hear her and, suddenly, the bewilderment and pain of an inevitably globalising world recedes. Craving comfort It is this same comfort that many Singaporeans are craving now, with price hikes, a whole slew of glitzy developments and encroaching foreign worker dorms. But comfort is something that even a world-class government cannot provide as well as Sarah Palin. That's why there will come a day when we see a Palin in Singapore. And when she comes, what will she say? How will she connect with the Singapore versions of the rednecks, the hockey mums and the Joe Six-Packs? How will she speak to their gut, their self-interest? And appeal to their myopia? The irony is this: Palin will come. But she will get nowhere. Palin works on a combination of fear and rootedness in the US. We have only fear. We are a young nation without a strong identity. Palin likes to use the word 'America'. It has a magical ring to it. It sends jingoism rushing through the veins. Say 'Singapore'. The syllabus do not inspire. It does not bring you to a larger plane - not yet, anyway. For the young, especially, it brings only a vague sense of national unity founded on Singlish and good food. If things get too crowded, too alien, the young Singaporean of today is likely to think of getting on the first Qantas flight out of Changi. In the bewilderment of globalisation, we will have no long and rich past which we can draw comfort from, for better or for worse. Palin will come. But here, she will gain no traction because we have no six-pack pride she can exploit. There is only our poverty of spirit. For that, we will need time, perserverance and a powerful unifying force that lets us see beyond our door. This article was first published in The New Paper on Nov 6, 2008. |
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