Was talking to mum how dejected I felt about our society and me being upset that there is really nothing much I could do to change the tide. When you see governments practising social injustice as a norm and there are more than half of the nation supporting them; when you see politicians more interested in chomping through agendas to favour their friends and ideologies instead of for the society’s or nation’s benefit; when you saw good causes being radicalised and being used as a weapon back at themselves, you can’t help but wonder why is it so? Does my individual vote no longer matter anymore?
Then mum reminded me – I still have a voice. I still have an opinion. I still have a view. And I know how to articulate it. I said but nobody seems to be interested in reading my social political materials. Mum said, it is not about at one point anyone reading them, but about when they needs to be read, they are out there.
Mum and I did not agree on a lot of things social, cultural and political wise. We discussed and sometimes argued. However, one thing I learnt from her is she would never suppress my voice, no matter how mad it could get her. She would tried to win the argument, and so did I, but suppressing my views and my voice was never an option.
This leads me to think – is our current so called democracy a voice suppressing one? If a so called democracy’s agenda is to suppress voices, can we still call it a true democracy?
The fiasco of an election caused by an expired orange in the White House had demonstrated how fragile democracy is. To look at this at the very basic level, it is not a democracy when one party refused to accept the results unless it is the result they wanted. But what surprised me was that, the once self-proclaimed custodian and protector of democracy – the Republican Party – started to circulate the rhetoric of America never meant to be a democracy in order to justify their actions to suppress votes and baseless claims to stay in power. Although this is not wide spread yet, but the silent consent from most of the members of the party had reflected how far this once proud institution of democracy had fallen. And this was supposed to be the greatest democracy in the world. Power corrupts, and the Republican Party had certainly rotten inside out with nothing left but an empty husk.
Australia is not much better either. We have a current government whose head endeavours to be the long term laptop of the expired orange in the White House. Along the same line, he lied about being on holiday overseas while almost half of the country burned; he lied about cutting the independent national broadcaster’s budget because they did not report news he liked to hear; he cut the Federal Auditing Office budget because they were critical about a lot of their spending and processes, e.g. the Sports Rot Saga, the overpay compensation saga of the new airport, and the list goes on. They tried to win votes by disguising as the Electoral Office in their promotional materials and instruction to vote materials. They walked away and stopped showing up on panel programmes when tough questions were being asked. They refused to have a Federal Corruption watchdog set up and when pressured to do so, protect their own kind while subject everyone else to public scrutiny.
So what is left for us from a democracy?
Really not a lot – unless the voices to stop the tides of assault raise themselves in a sound and strategic way. It has to be so strategically used that it needs to be able to exploit the hostile landscape and environment to its advantage and let the hostility undermines itself.
From the lesson of the Hong Kong people, we learnt that just being consistently loud would not always take you where you need to get to. This is not a value judgement of the movement itself or the behaviour on either side, but a reference to how a voice, when being used out of place would lead to.
This is the same with the so called democracies in some parts of our world. One must understand that conservatives, no matter they are in power or not, will always be loud and forceful. This is because of their innate self-righteous nature in their own views and their determination to protect their voice, even at the expense of others. For a lot of them, freedom of speech is the freedom of their own view, because, like it or not, democracy or not, their view is the only view that should be allowed. Thus talking over other people’s voices is a common practice.
I personally had encountered lots of that in my career and my life – but when I relished most during these encounters were to bait them to demolish their own arguments, thus their own voices. This does not mean that I did that to everyone no matter what, but when I saw immense social and political injustice or lies were being propagated and being forced down my throat. Using their own voices to undermined and destroy themselves inside out is the only way to promote actual free speech and consolidate a multi-voiced society. There is no point arguing or debating with them as they will only see their lies and views as the only truth. For them, the strongest arguments are the talking points of convenience that suit their own world view. For me, induced self-reckoning is the only way to achieve a society that is free for all voices, as this could help shake these people to their own cores in an introspective way. Whether they would change is not my issue, but at least I made my voice heard.
I don’t know how many people will be reading this, or whether this matters anymore to anyone. But at least I used my voice. And that’s thank you my mum, who has a different voice but never shuts me down, but encourage me to use mine.
