Have you ever wondered why left-wingers so openly despise successful people? Billionaires, wealthy business-owners, young entrepreneurs, competent politicians, charismatic leaders - basically anybody who believes that if you work hard and smart you can achieve anything in life?
Because they themselves can't. And instead of assuming responsibility for their lives they turn to blaming others for their unhappiness.
"Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole." - Thomas SowellKirsten Han was spotted making this ignorant comment (in the picture) about Singaporean transition of premiership, alluding that the process is somehow unfairly restricted to a narrow PAP elite.Of course what she failed to mention (or, perhaps, even notice) is that to join this elite you have to absolutely commit yourself to your education and subsequent career for 20 or 30 years, proving your competences along the way, before you are given more responsibility.It is no secret that PAP is taking recruitment very seriously and a political career in Singapore is typically something you dedicate your life to (or, at least, a very large portion of it). Out of a pool of prospective candidates, usually graduating from the world's best schools, candidates are selected at various levels in their careers to join party ranks as MPs. Later only a handful make their way up to secondary and primary tier political positions and ministerial portfolios.
By sheer design of the process, you're only going to end up with a very, very narrow group of people who are deemed competent and, in the process, experienced enough to one day compete for the premiership - which the ultimate candidate is expected to hold for at least 10 or 15 years.Of course the idea of proving your suitability over decades is something that "activists" and other wannabes are hostile to, because they have little to no competences to speak of themselves.What exactly can Kirsten Han do, what has she proved herself in, other than penning critiques of the system she, along millions of others, owes her comfortable life to?How much responsibility has she and her buddies ever held over anything? People's lives, jobs, well-being, safety? None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Naturally, to justify their vocal participation in the sociopolitical scene, criticising those who hold those responsibilities, they have to a priori reject the prerequisite of proficiency and experience. Otherwise they would have to fall silent and do something productive instead.This, mind you, is why left-wingers generally criticize any and everybody who has achieved something in life, as I said in the opening paragraph. Hence why capitalism is bad, billionaires are somehow abusing the masses (pardon, the working class) and the forever perpetuated myths that you can get ahead in life only if you were born in a wealthy family with good connections (what is patently false).It is also why they are saying that you can be a PM only if you belong to a PAP elite - while ignoring the years of effort that all its members have to commit in the first place, with only few rising to the top.What I don't quite understand is what do they exactly believe should an alternative process look like?
Could anybody be the Prime Minister? Can we pluck some guy from a different career and just place him on top of a random team of people who haven't worked with each other before?This is how some governments are, indeed, formed in the West - with results as mixed as we all might observe. Each and every country deemed "developed" today is worse than Singapore in virtually every measurable way - from finance to security. Would the country benefit from having its political scene occasionally blown up by a mercurial populist rising to power in a surprising swing of voter preferences? Is that the model Singapore should aspire to?
Or is it that the rest of the world should actually aspire to what Singapore has achieved? Political stability, predictability and international trust that it has built a reputation for over the past half a century? A class of political administrators carefully selected, groomed over many years and given more responsibility with time?By the time one of them rises to premiership he knows the administration inside out and has typically held a few ministerial portfolios.I would like to appeal to all activist wannabes out there: before you give in to your sense of entitlement to criticize anybody with far more experience in bearing responsibility for thousands or even millions of others, please reflect on your lives. What have you done so far? What is your experience? What have you distinguished yourselves at doing, to think you know better?Writing scathing articles? Holding slogans on a piece of cardboard? Whinging on Twitter or Youtube? Spending a decade writing a book few will ever want to read or a controversial academic paper that maybe a dozen people (mostly your buddies) will take a look at?If you're so clever that you think you know how the country should be run, what exactly can you show as proof?
