I’ve just
finished my weekend Netflix binge, which was a series called “Anatomy of a
Scandal” staring Sienna Miller as the wife of a politician (or more
specifically the former Home Secretary in Her Majesty’s Government) who is
accused of rape by a staff member he was having an affair with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1UGGZnHyf8
What makes this
series so “bingeworthy” is the fact that it touches on one of the key hot topics
of the day – power imbalance between the elites and the rest of us. The
protagonist of the story (specifically Ms. Miller’s character and her husband)
are from an elite institution (Oxford University). He is a government minister
and his best friend is the Prime Minister. The only way they can be more elite is
to be born into royalty.
As the series
progresses, what becomes clear is that the couple are essentially living in a bubble.
As the series progresses, it becomes clear that people in this bubble believe
that there is a different set of rules for them. There’s a scene when the
husband is playing monopoly with his children, who accuse him cheating and then
descends into something playful.
While this
scene is innocent enough, the wife takes the kids to see his parents and the mother
tells her that her husband was “always cheating” at monopoly. When the
horrified wife ask how she could raise a son with such values, the reply is “it
was no big deal – it was just a game.”
This remark is
very telling. In the series, we see how the husband treats everything as “just a
game,” and basic morals don’t matter as long as he comes out on top. It’s not
that he’s intentionally evil but he’s so used to getting his way that he genuinely
cannot handle people saying no. In the series its very noticeable when it comes
to the rape accusations. He’s handsome, intelligent and successful. His wife confirms
he’s good in the sack. So, in his mind, there’s no way any woman can say no to
time. He insists that those accusing him of rape actually wanted it and when
his wife finally asks one of the women, he assaulted why she never made a police
report, her answer is – “Who could they have believed? I wouldn’t have stood a
chance.”
Unfortunately,
this mentality isn’t limited to drama series on Netflix. It happens in real
life, where people members of the one percent get caught being out of touch. You
get the examples of the world’s biggest causes of Covid Spread – Donald Trump
and Jair Bolsonaro, who used the defence of “You’re too ugly for me to rape”
when they’ve been accused of rape and sexual harassment. It’s worrying that
there is a large enough segment of the voting public that think this makes
these men viral because what they’re effectively endorsing is members of the
elite treating the lives of ordinary people like a game. A President of a
country is as powerful as it gets. When someone with that much power says “Your
too ugly for me to rape” he is effectively saying “You are a used doll for me
to play with.”
Mr. Trump and
Bolsonaro are the most extreme examples of members of the elite showing their “it’s
just a game” with the lives of ordinary people very obvious. The problem is not
limited to the West either.
In Singapore,
we’re more subtle about it. We won’t produce a Trump or Bolsonaro who like to
say and do awful things for media attention. However, what we have is a system
of people who genuinely believe that God really gave them the right to play
games with the lives of ordinary people. It’s not that they’re evil or
malicious people. They genuinely believe that their success in the system is
preordained and they cannot see the issues that the system has caused other
people because the problems ordinary folk have don’t exist in their universe.
One of the most
ridiculous examples of this comes in the shape of Mr. Calvin Cheng, a former
darling of the ruling party. One of Mr. Cheng’s greatest claims to fame was to
start a modelling agency that got finned for price fixing in 2011. Mr. Cheng came
up with the brilliant defence to state that he was merely fixing prices to
raise the wages of models. It should be noted that there is no evidence to
suggest that Mr. Cheng’s aims actually translated into higher wages for models.
Mr. Cheng gets
plenty of press coverage for saying all sorts of interesting things. One of the
most telling came on Linkedin link where he expressed rather interesting views
on what he thought ordinary Singaporeans were capable of:
Just think of
Ng Yat Chung the former CEO of Singapore Press Holdings as an example. Mr. Ng
was a government scholar who became Singapore’s top soldier at the age of 42 in
2003. Mr. Ng was what you’d call the typical scholar, who managed to rise from
recruit to three-star general in the space of 24-years (By way of comparison,
General Mark Miley the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs took 34-years to
make it to three-star general and 36 to be head of the US Military). Success came
so easily to Mr. Ng that when he moved from the military to the commercial
sector, he was simply unable to cope with having to earn his success. The shock
was so bad he actually took “umbrage” when asked questions that he was prepared
for at a press conference by a reporter.
The solution is
simple. We need to make people earn their spurs on the proverbial battle field.
Nothing wrong with giving generals commercial positions. However, they need to
earn it. Big companies need to run like actual businesses and face competition.
Look SIA as an
example. Our national carrier is widely acknowledged as one of the best in the
world. Several Air Force Chief’s have become board members but none were
parachuted into jobs they were no qualified to do. SIA actually has a pilot on
its management board. – The reason why SIA stands out, its because its in an industry
where government protection is pointless and it has to face competition from
the likes of Emirates and Qatar. It cannot afford to keep people who have never
faced competition. Surely, there’s a lesson for the rest of the economy here when
it comes to hiring people who will treat their jobs as more than just a game.
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