20091001

Ain't it cold enough today, so let it rain


I know I owe it to the National Day for the holiday I have today, but boy, how I wish for this 60th anniversary saga to be over. I’ve been sickened by the extensive media hype that has been going on in the last month or so. For this sort of propaganda which has been happening in China for 60 years to hit Hong Kong of this scale to be happening in Hong Kong whose media are supposed to have a free will is a perfect illustration of how the “One country two systems” pledge is working.

I always shudder at the patriotic sentiment that China is trying to instil in the people for a motive that is all too obvious, and I pity today’s generation of children in Hong Kong for having to be brainwashed like their counterparts in China. What is so ludicrous is that far from being foolproof, the messages being promoted are so often full of contradictions and fallacies. The only condition for such rubbish to work, and unfortunately it often seems to have worked in our culture, is that the lies have been told and repeated so often that eventually both the liars and the listeners become believers.

Nury Vittachi, my favourite newspaper columnist, asked the most fundamental question in his column yesterday: What exactly is being celebrated on October 1? This is a very thought-provoking question. To it I would add another two: Why should the day be celebrated? And why should it be celebrated the way they do?

As today’s Google logo shows, there will be fireworks displays. The last line of the song “He was me, he was you” springs to mind:

"Ain’t it cold enough today, so let it rain."

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