Friday, August 12, 2011

After winning for too long, you keep losing

Sigh, writing about politics this early in the morning is not my cup of tea. There is a lesson here that I want to record. When you keep winning and you know you cannot go on winning forever (in fact a law in navimap thinking), beyond some point you start losing and cannot figure how to defeat your opponent. This is true for nearly everything. Scarily, it would be true for fighting dengue too. It is also the reason why for years until our society become more open and liberal, we have always allowed a limited red light district to operate.

The government dominated the mainstream media with practically no room for the alternative. It then used lawsuits to make the foreign media toe the line; but they couldn't anticipate the Internet and the rest is history.


So much online activities against Tony Tan just like it was for the PAP during the GE. Fortunately for Tony at this rate this page isn't going to achieve 10,000 likes anytime soon.


How quickly they organize themselves for the most independent candidate credentials wise. 

The internet based alternative media doesn't care very much for funding. They are used to operating on a shoestring and many enthusiastic volunteers. The mainstream media live by advertising support. The alternative media do as it feel right; the mainstream media is constantly looking across the fence to match the alternative so that it would continue to be credible. They have a responsibility to be comprehensive, if not inclusive in their reporting. Consequently erstwhile strength has turned into weakness for the government. The mainstream media ought not to care as long as they please their shareholders and continue to pursue their relevance and interest to its customers. 

The PAP too used to winning so many battles are caught flat footed when the rules of the game change. They saw it coming but failed to respond appropriately. If this is not evidence of their complacency and clay feet, what is? I fear the affliction might not be confined to politicking but go beyond into policy making too. Typically it is very hard to tell until they are tested, as in the last few months. Perversely, policies can be wrong for a long time before they fail and collapse suddenly. Leaders and voters often are no wiser. Scary. 

This is a huge lesson not confined to politics. It has been seen many times in business, which move faster and provide endless examples for us to learn from. It is even true for the religions, which have enough recorded history for us to examine. Seems it is like a law of life. The only escape is to eat your own lunch before others become an irresistible juggernaut coming at you. At least you can lose on your own terms and be a phoenix rising from the ashes you had caused. The only time self defeat beats any other defeats. Oblivious to even America herself, that is what they are experiencing now. 


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