8/18/2024

Pink IC means Singaporean is a reckless and dangerous concept

 Citizenship is an identity of a nation state. The people of a nation is identified by its citizens. Originally, citizens of a nation state are quite uniform, homogenous and easily identifiable. The state is identified by its people. The people identified themselves as citizens of a state, pledge loyalty to the state, to defend the state and tie their survival and existence to a state.

When migration becomes freer, by choice of a state or by choice of an individual, citizenship becomes complcx. An individual no longer be easily be identified as citizen of a state by his physical appearance.  An Indian can be an American citizen. An American can be an Italian citizen, a rojak person can be a citizen of any state. But all has to pledge loyalty and to defend the state they belong to as citizens of the respective states.

In theory, an Indian who is a citizen of UK can be fighting an Englishman who is a citizen of India in a war between the two states. The conflicting forces of ethnic identity and citizenship would come to play in such a situation. This was most pronounce in WW2 between Japan and the USA. The Americans resorted to throw every Japanese looking American citizen into prison to protect themselves from harm and danger posed by the Japanese American citizens.

Today, the Americans are suffering from Islamophobia and Sinophobia and taking very crude and abusive executive actions, state persecutions against American citizens from the Islamic world and China and many others. Citizenship is no longer a criteria to be taken for granted in trusting an individual's loyalty to his adopted state of choice. The fear of the pull of racial, cultural, religious forces cannot be underestimated when national interests are at stake, when existential risks are involved. Only fools and idiots would brush away these primordial forces as unimportant, that the individual can be trusted for his words when he pledged verbally to be loyal to the new state.

In America, the so called free society, this problem of trust and loyalty is more pronounced given its diversed population from all over the world. This same problem is also increasing in the European states when reversed colonisation is taking place, when the subjects of the Empires, the colonised people, are flooding into the European states in masses and would soon be a majority in many of these ex Empire states. The issue of conflicting loyalties would become a major problem to the American and European states. American Exceptionalism would not exempt them from this problem either. 

The only state that would not be affected by conflicting loyalties is likely to be Singapore. Singapore is an Exceptional State that believed that all the new citizens would be loyal to Singapore and would not betrayed Singapore. This can be seen by the numerous appointments of foreigners, ie new citizens into top positions, sensitive positions, political appointments, with no fear of being supplanted by the trusted new citizens. The great trust of the loyalty of new citizens is also manifested in the lower rung of society where foreign workers, the illiterate workers from third world crime infested countries, brought in by the millions but behaving very well, very decent, never commit crimes like they did back home...turning themselves into very loving pets to be cuddled by the always trusting Singaporeans.

This is Singapore Exceptionalism as its best. Everyone arriving in Singapore, whether in suits and ties or wildlife, would quickly transformed into law abiding and meek Singaporeans. A testament to the low crime rate in Singapore. And these foreigners would be the basic pieces to build the Singaporean core. It is an amazing Singapore miracle, that wildlife and crime prone individuals would automatically turn themselves into law abiding citizens to keep Singapore as the safest city state in the world. I am also puzzled but impressed by this strange and wonderful social experiment.

Once a foreigner is given a pink IC, instantly he/she will become a Singaporean, act and behave like a Singaporean with complete loyalty to Singapore, will not betray Singapore or cheat on Singapore. Yes, too good to believe. But this is Singapore Exceptionalism, unquestionable trust in the loyalty of new citizens.

2 comments:

  1. Singapore is not a country, the ruler only aspire to be one. It is just a city or rather a hotel. Only those having private properties will fight to defend it. The rest of the population who rented(leased) hdb flat do not need to die for it. So whether the IC is pink or blue doesn't matter.

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  2. The choice of need or no need to fight is beyond us to choose. If that is so, no one wants to die for it. It is not that simple.

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