I Think We Need an Enemy

Ever wonder what we can do to forge a national identity?

Lets look and learn from the countries who actually have a history they can speak off. 1819 and Raffles does not a history make. Nor is 40 years of developing ourselves into a nation. History is created by events like William of Orange, the Boston Tea Party, the French Revolution. In short, strife seems to make countries forge an identity. That is something we as Singaporeans lack. We have led a relatively sheltered existence, save the Japanese Occupation. But then again, the ones in-charge of our defence was not even us, but rather the British. Hence it’s more like part of their history. Proof? Till this day, speak to the old Britons and they would still have colonialist memories of defending Fortress Gibraltar and Singapore. Heck, we don’t even one a piece of Old Changi Prison and instead are giving parts of it to ex-POWs and museums in Britain!

Well, nothing can change the things that happened in the past. So lets look to solutions. Watching Keith Floyd’s cooking show on the television last night gave me inspiration. He said, “I’m not crazy. Can’t be, I’m British.” It reminded me of the Nationalistic pride that all Brits had. Speak to them about the French, and the reaction you usually get is, “The French? Poof. Bah. Onion eating smelly farkers.” This is especially obvious during football season. In fact, the Brits have little regard for most other Continental European countries. Spain? Bah. We paid for most of their public work projects by way of EU taxes! Germany? Bah. Bloody Nazis who need our Sterling to pay for their Eastern history. Italy? Bah. The only thing BLUE about their football team is their balls. The list goes on.

I say. To unite Singapore, to forge a national identity, we need a common enemy. Nationalistic pride always makes for good citizen bonding. Americans have ‘invisible’ terrorists, the Chinese and S. Koreans now have Japan, Iran has the Big Satan et cetera. So what can our ‘enemy’ be? It seems obvious, but to say it, I risk the Internal Security Dept opening a can of whoop-ass on me. Haha.

What do you think?

P.S. Its sad when on Discovery Channel 16, Megan was at some international fair in Dubai and the Singapore store was selling framed long swords. It gets worse. The frames had Product of Singapore engraved in Chinese. WTF? How can that be a Singapore Product? We really need an identity, need to have a culture that we can call our own. Soon.