Who Runs The World?

Brian Yap, September 8, 2007

English, Brian, Columns |

History, it seems, is often filled with some of the most despicable people. Those who lost are inevitably portrayed as more villainous that the victors, but even the heroes are rarely above some nasty behaviour. No matter how the world changes, it seems almost certain that it will be run by those we’d rather not have too close association with.I’d leave it to someone else to put it more colourfully: “Cunts are still running the world,” sang Jarvis Cocker, the former frontman of the now defunct British pop group Pulp. While looking debonair most of the time, Cocker also achieved infamy when he suddenly decided to crash Michael Jackson’s stage performance at the 1996 Brit Awards. Jackson’s portrayal of himself as a Christ-like figure healing children on stage was just too much for Cocker to take.

But pop trivia aside, Cocker is right—the world is still run by some of certified, um, not so nice individuals. The people whose opinion matters are rarely the Ralph Naders or the Noam Chomskys. They think too much about things and talk too much sense. The likes of George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, however, are the ones calling the shots. Much like how Osama Bin Laden, Kim Jong Il, Vladimir Putin and their hardened ilk are the ones running the world.

In any case, even if the objectives and aims are supposedly noble, it often seems as if you have to be Machiavellian to get things done. Hugo Chavez has some wonderful socialist ideas and policies in Venezuela, but he has to go about getting them done in a dictatorial manner. The late Deng Xiaoping, the man who many credits for making modern China the economic powerhouse it is today, is also the man who is responsible for the Tiananmen massacre.

Here in Malaysia, we also have our share of despicable people making the decisions. Too many strays? Let’s hold a dog catching competition with prize money, open to the public. Who cares if it’s dangerous, cruel and probably not very effective? I shudder to think if the same kind of attitude, if not the exact same competition, is used to deal with foreign workers.

In the cabinet, we have ministers who, among other things, have spouted some vehemently racist speeches, have alleged links to the triads, uses thugs to maintain his grip on power, and so on. And I haven’t even touched on the deputy ministers, senior civil servants, and the corporate figures whose influence reaches places we never knew. With the likes of some of these people running our world, it’s no wonder that some are looking to the royalty for hope.

So does that mean nice guys really don’t go anywhere? I have a suspicion that no, for the most part, they don’t. There are only so many Gandhis and Mandelas the world can take. It could also be argued that even those with the most magnanimous of intentions will have to be cruel to reach a position of influence and power. In other words, to paraphrase Cocker, there can only be room at the top for cunts.

So does that mean we can only sit back and let them run the world? Of course not. We can all give them hell. Look at the US President today. There is virtually no country in the world, save Borat’s “Kazakhstan” that he can visit without being welcomed by protesters. For us Malaysians who are tired of the antics of our government, we need to give the same kind of hell as well.

In a probably unrelated twist of fate, Michael Jackson’s career went downhill soon after the 1996 incident. Allegations of child molestation increasingly turned public opinion away from him, and it wasn’t long that the world’s biggest pop star became the world’s biggest freakshow. It’s a stretch to say the man who penned “Common People” and “Disco 2000″ had a hand in it, but the consolation is that everyone eventually gets their day in the court of public opinion. The same goes for politics, both global and national. Unfortunately, no sooner than one despot falls, so rises another, continuing to run the world.

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