NON_ice

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

   Fueling Asia-phobia of techno-insurrection, The Wash Post
   today offers opposing views of Singapore:

   "City of the Future: What American Can Learn form Post-
   Liberal Singapore;" and,

   "Big Brother's Hometown: The Country is a Model, All Right
   -- of Dressed-Up Dictatorship."

   The first sets out the virtues of paternalism, and quotes
   eminently powerful Lee Kuan Yew, "The ideas of individual
   supremacy and the right to free expression, when carried to
   excess, have not worked. They have made it difficult to
   keep American society cohesive. Asia can see it is not
   working. ... The top 3 to 5 percent of a society can handle
   this free-for-all, this clash of ideas. If you do this with
   the whole mass, you'll have a mess. In this vein, I say,
   let them have the Internet."

   In the second, Lee's own OCAF Agincourt Project is detailed,
   "I would isolate the leaders, the trouble-makers, get them
   exposed, cut them down to size, ridicule them, so that
   everybody understands that it's not such a clever thing to
   do. Governing does not mean just being pleasant. If you
   want a pleasant result, just as with children, you cannot
   just be pleasant and nice."


   Then there is "Angry, White Rebels are Homeless by Choice,"
   a Page One jaw-dropper about "gutter punks," scion Okies of
   all America's families:

      Their appearance and their life-style seem like a
      nightmare to many of their parents and much of society,
      as if all the promise of youth in America had been
      turned inside out, producing these nihilistic, angry,
      ironic spawn all dressed in black, the end result --
      perhaps a bill coming due -- of decades of family
      disintegration, suburban boredom and national cynicism.

      Filth has stitched the anarchist patch into the palm of
      his hand. "Crusty punks" never bathe and say the police
      cannot make an arrest because of body odor. "I'm a paint
      head," said Riff Raff, inhaling spray paint. Becca said,
      "People are afraid of us, but we're not the ones who are
      scary." 

   Only for the beyond-Singapore, truly loving parent.


   NON_ice (for all)