I make no secret that I detest Donald Trump. I was instantly turned off when he started going on about Mexicans coming across the border being “rapist” and how there was a need to build a wall to prevent horrible people from Mexico coming across to steal jobs from innocent Americans (read – the White variety), I wanted to vomit because, well that’s not true. I hated it when I saw people lap it up and what was particularly distressing was when you had people of colour in Singapore think of this as “speaking the truth,” (read if only we Singapore Chinese had a champion like Trump).
I’m a “loser” of the open market system in as much as I had to take a blue-collar job in my late thirties so that I could pay my bill. My colleagues were predominantly Indian and Pilipino and I developed a good deal of affection for them.
Maybe it’s just me but I can’t understand this belief that your job is being stolen. Whenever I’d hear “my people” complain about dark skinned Asians stealing our jobs and how Trump was really a great guy for proposing what he did with regards to the Mexicans, I’d look at the Kitchen Thambis and Pinoy waiters and ask myself planet these people were living in. The Kitchen Thambis and Pinoy waiters were the guys who had my back and yet the so called “concerned citizens” were supporting the idea that these guys were somehow my enemy.”
Birthday with the Kitchen Thambis and Bruno’s Bistrot on
Telok Kurau Road.
The same transpired when in my insolvency work. I was involved
in a liquidation of a construction company. We had to sack or transfer over 30
workers who had not been paid. The receivables came in but somehow the bureaucracy
was all about being fair to all creditors including financial institutions and
so on (and to be fair to “my people,” the contact point in the financial
institution we were dealing with told me privately that whenever a company went
into liquidation, he’d always advise his side to write it off – his word were “You’ll
pay me 10 cents on the dollar at most. It’s money that can’t interest me – get it
to the people who need it the most). Somehow, paying the workers become less
and less of a priority.
In that time, I broke the “rules” of working for an
insolvency practitioner and extended money I didn’t exactly have to some of the
workers. I remember a colleague telling me that I was breaking the “rules” as
if this was the worst thing I could do. I was, as they say, “unprofessional.” It
was even explained to me that “Indian and Bangladeshi” workers cannot be
trusted.
I didn’t know how to explain to people who knew what I was
doing that this was the right thing to do. Firstly, I wasn’t giving a handout
but an advance on what they had claimed in their Proof of Debt form. Secondly,
I also reasoned that although it was money that I couldn’t afford to toss
about, it was money that I could make back by sitting in an airconditioned
office for a few hours a day while these guys had to slog it out in the sun for
the better part of a day so that they could provide “cheap” infrastructure to
people like me and profits to slave traders like some of the creditors in this
case.
Sure, I was open to accusations of being “unprofessional”
and acting against the rules. How do you explain to people that if it’s a choice
of being “human” or “professional,” its always better to be human?
I’m glad to say that when we did get round to distributing
the dividends, I got paid most of my money and got to see the gratitude on the
faces of these guys. One of them even felt that I was important enough to be
the first guy outside his family to know his wife was pregnant with twins. He
took me out for dinner the day he flew back to India.
Today, if you ask me about the moments, I feel most
successful, I will inevitably tell you its when one of these guys remembers me.
It makes my day when they send greeting cards or as one of them recently did,
called me from India just to wish me well.
So, I detest anti-immigrant populist because from what I’ve
experienced, they’re going after the people who I know to be for the most part,
hard working and decent. Its like this, when a group of skin heads walk around
town chanting “Jews will not replace us,” they make the case for why they need
t be replaced. When someone like Sebastian Gorka gets on TV and talks about how
the Proud Boys were started as a “Joke,” I’m tempted to think that Mr. Gorka should
be placed at the wrong end of the Proud Boys activities and let’s see how funny
he thinks it is.
Sure, I know these communities have their bad eggs but for
the most part they are comprised of hard-working people trying to make a living.
They are stealing jobs from the natives by doing the jobs that the natives won’t
do. Sure, I’m genuinely against the use
of violence, however, when it comes to the nut jobs who chant “Jews (or any
other ethnic group) will not replace us and think its OK to intimidate, I’m all
for using whatever means necessary to eliminate the problem.
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