Bob Dylan warned on “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, “Don’t follow leaders and watch your parking meters,” and while watching from the sidelines at everything happening- and not happening- here tonight, I see a lost city coming apart at the seams and an extremely unhealthy haze of confusion and anxiety gripping Hong Kong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP4XP8CaX7k
The last time there was a feeling in Hong Kong as uneasy and tense as this was when Chinese tanks rolled into the city the day of The Handover in 1997 and when the British returned Hong Kong to its rulers.
The other time Hong Kong felt this uneasy was when watching the events of Tiananmen Square unfold on television.
Tonight, my twitter account had a number of Klout Moments as those who have never ever been to Hong Kong felt they know more about what’s happening in Hong Kong than people actually living here do by following what passes off as the news. Mercifully, I don’t have Facebook to see the rubbish being posted up there.
Apparently, the internet is down- orders from the government, said one tweet. Huh? Someone else tweeted how “even if the West wished to help fight for democracy, they couldn’t.”
Wait, wait, the last thing Hong Kong needs right now is “the West” fighting our battles- especially for democracy- when we see the mess Western countries are in. History has proven that Hong Kong has been taken for a ride by allowing in too many opportunists from “the West” and contributed nothing.
Let’s also not forget that Hong Kong was under British rule until 1997 and much of what this city is going through is the long hangover from the pukka pre-Handover days of corrupt civil servants, expat packages and bent coppers like Peter Godber.
More than anything else, where it’s gone wrong- very wrong- are through the naive politics of wannabe leaders without plans who have been elevated into a perception of power by a dumbed down local media when they have none, but which has attracted those too young and way too idealistic to join whatever good fight is meant to be going on without realising just how dangerous this fight can be and with no light at the end of a very long tunnel.
Hong Kong is a city that was once a barren rock which carved a future for itself through hard work and provided shelter from the storm for many. It was not a city built on Rock and Roll nor was it ever guided and manipulated by half-cocked politics, misguided student leaders and rabble rousers orchestrating things from the sidelines.
Hong Kong- the basic framework and personality of the city- was moulded by entrepreneurs who became big business that has morphed into a generation of get-rich quick schemes that has led to corruption in every aspect of Hong Kong life and created a great divide between the Haves and the Have-nots.
It was allowed to happen through the poor management of Hong Kong going back to those colonial days of taipans and the most ignoble Noble Houses born out of The Opium Wars that James Clavell wrote about.
Whether bad managers or not, what made things work, or appear to work, was knowing there was someone managing the store and that tomorrow would be another day and how even dodgy was fine.
Today, not only do we not know who’s in charge and who’s wearing the white hats, we don’t seem to know what there is to manage.
The genie has been let out of the bottle and the word “democracy” is being bandied about to pay for a thousand other sins.
Will Hong Kong ever be happy even if it had a hundred different choices to vote for as its next Chief Executive?
How can it when we are witnessing such a disparate group of individuals shouting over each other in an embarrassing exhibition of grandstanding and personal and third party agendas.
Shut the fuck up, Bennie Tai, you shaman who came up with a “brand” called Occupy Central, but not a Movement and is now looking like a lost and hypocritical Pied Piper of Hamlyn who is more of a faked out snake charmer than some Chinoise Che Guevara.
As for legislative councillor Emily Lau who’ll turn up for even the opening of an envelope, for fuck’s sake, woman, shut up, shut up, shut up, and stop being the living embodiment and proof that only the most empty of vessels makes the loudest noise.
“Longhair”, Sideburns”, or whatever your real name is, do something useful and get a damn haircut and have a shower while one has to wonder what poison is in Jimmy Lai’s shiny Apple and what might be Next in his personal agenda.
Right now, there are so many different factions of what was once meant to be one unified protest movement.
With no General Rommel to strategise next steps, it’s been reduced to a laughable sack race where everyone has been painted into a corner with no way out.
And like an animal that finds itself painted into a corner and the spotlight shone on them, they trash about looking for a way to get loose.
This is when they are the most vulnerable as all common sense and logic is lost.
This is also when the other side sees that in its panic, the only humane thing to do is put it out of its misery, and which then signals that A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.
Hans Ebert Chairman and CEO We-Enhance Inc and Fast Track Global Ltd www.fasttrack.hk
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