Every unnecessary law helps fashion the noose we will ultimately be hung by.
– A.E. Samaan, investigative historian
A salami attack, first coined in the 1940s by Hungarian politicians, imposes small, incremental changes to a system to steal small amounts of money or resources. The changes are often so small that they go unnoticed, but they add up to a significant amount when totalled. All insufferable governments engage in this stealth through unnecessary laws tacitly accepted by a complacent citizenry.
People eat salami in thin slices, and the person using the tactic takes thin slices off the other person, just asking for small concessions, one after another, and gradually, bit by bit, most of the value is taken off the other person. Government policies religiously follow this process.
Race and religion epitomise salami attacks that manifest as discriminatory imperatives. In the state of Victoria, Australia, gender equality is a typical salami attack. Male and female did God make in His image, but today almost every nation accepts the abomination called ‘gender equality’ which includes male, female and others who were allegedly born with different sexual inclinations and propensities. You face imprisonment if proven guilty of discrimination!
Race, religion, and region mean that equality is misquoted, misapplied, mistaken and misguided. Equity never works. Apathy reigns. Arrogance rules. The law-making organ of government is a non-stop machine conjuring deviations, disturbances, disruptions and distractions to an evolving class of sheeple who pine for the Pied Piper and his unnecessary laws.
As if the Rukun Negara doesn’t cut it, we now have another slice called Malaysia Madani. Slice by slice, we are given the basics of social engineering – good governance, honest services, eradication of corruption, tolerance, equality, national unity, prosperity, et al, like we need reminders as each new political regime comes into existence.
Customary (indigenous peoples’) land titles fell victim to the slicing machinations of elected de jure governments that appropriate native lands for territorial expansion in exchange for border security necessary to keep the bogeyman discouraged and disadvantaged. Another slice is put on the plate of written laws justifying all the slices required, needful and necessary to gradually tighten the noose. Not an unwinnable war.
Politics is a busy kitchen where salami attacks are designed and structured. The chefs use precision tools for slicing, dicing, and cutting. The master chef supplies the huge uncut slab of salami (democracy), and prepares the menu (constitution and laws) for the minions to follow orders – slice by slice.
Ethnic fragmentation is a significantly well-defined slice like inequality that stealthily encourages poverty. Ultimately when democracy is sliced and diced, authoritarianism is inevitable with one strong leader employing ideological control.
But politics is getting archaic and disgustingly predictable. Rhetoric, oratory, promises, delays and excuses are like chickens that have come home to roost. Patronage and cronyism continue unabated. Politics has become a battleground for ideologies to be weaponised to invariably becoming sharp slicing tools. Voting has become inherent human nature, not a bad habit that was shun and shed by civil disobedience movements.
James Madison said that no government would be necessary if men were angels. Arguendo, government has become necessary so that sophisticated non-angels could dictate terms to lesser enlightened non-angels. Salami attacks get stronger and stylised generation after generation. The citizenry is lulled into wanting more and more not realising that the noose is slowly tightening around the neck of fundamental rights.
It’s been said that limited government is crucial to unlimited liberty – reduce one, and you decrease the other. The salami slices are always equal in thickness, fondness, boldness, and madness. Man has chosen his bedlam, and he must forever lay upon it.
The future may bring promises to end these salami attacks. It is said that the reliable way to predict the future is to create it. And if you cannot think about your future, you cannot have it. The future will be bleak if we open a quarrel between the past and the future.
Wisdom beckons the youth today to become parents of the future. The youth of today must be ready and steady to realise that re-education has become necessary to unlearn the fraud that was thrust upon us by an uncaring generation of unsound leaders.
A brighter, bigger, and better future awaits those daring enough to derail, debunk, and overhaul the existing education ‘system’ from kindergarten to tertiary institutions. Globalisation has reached epic dimensions. Corporations and governments hold the slicing tools as if unstoppable.
The Age of Consequence is upon us.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
