I miss Malaysia Chronicle of yore, pre the new comment system through Facebook.
Then, it was the place to be if you wanted to give vent or just have your say and anonymously too, if you wanted.
There was hardly, if any, moderating or censoring of the comments posted.
Anything went - and I mean anything - including a lot of horrendously bad English.
But the comments posted were often intense and animated, and quite often silly too.
And quite a lot of racist, defamatory and incendiary ones.
But nobody got hurt, unless you allowed yourselves to.
And nobody got killed for sure.
Quite unlike what is happening when you allow Umno's inimical survivalist politics of race, religion and monarchy to influence you.
Then, you jump up and down like agitated monkeys on hot tin roof at the slightest perception of insult to your beliefs or practices and bray? for blood, not yours, the other's.
Umno's self-serving politics has led to the selective abuse of the law to further the political elites' interests and much put paid to the rule of the law.
Witness the Alvivi case.
Much worse seditious remarks and/or actions there had been which had gone un-dealt or unpunished with, like Perkasa's call for the burning of the Bible and the cow head incident in Shah Alam.
The Alvivi couple were perhaps just unwise publicity seekers who probably thought, rather mistakenly, that they were being cute.
But I digress.
Since the change to the Malaysia Chronicle's comment system, the comments have become quite boring and tedious to read.
The number of comments posted has also gone down.
It used to be that whenever there was a post on Mahathir, there would routinely be hundreds of comments castigating the former Pm.
Now, even on a post on Mahathir, you will be hard put to it to see past 50 comments.
And we are also bombarded with Facebook icons that we rather not be distracted with.
Ah, for those days...
We need another on line news portal that would give readers complete freedom and space to air their views, however provocative or even allegedly seditious or incendiary.
Nobody can kill us with words, unless we allow ourselves to.
It is how we hold ourselves, whether we want to be offended or provoked or be self righteous or be influenced by Umno's bad boy survivalist politics.
Umno's politics doesn't serve anyone, except the Umno elites.
And Umno's elites' interests are not the nation's interests or ours.
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