Road bully lifts the lid on a cold-hearted nation
A FEW weeks ago, a 72-year-old man named M. Edward was assaulted by a road bully. He was driving his daughter home and was near Da-mansara Damai when the attack occurred.
By Marc Lourdes
A van cut into his lane without signalling. Edward honked his horn at the driver, who slowed down and kept swerving to prevent him from overtaking before stopping and getting out of the van.
Edward got out of his car as well. The man walked over to him and began punching him. Edward, a small-sized pensioner, was struck several times in the face, head and body before his assailant, whom he described as a huge man in his 30s, got into his van and drove off with a parting challenge for Edward to report the incident to the police.
The matter would have ended there, if not for a daily reporting it soon after. The news was then picked up by a few blogs, which asked their readers to keep an eye out for the Toyota Avanza Edward's assailant was driving.
Naturally, as in the case of any widely-read blog, there were numerous responses to the posting. Some expressed outrage at the incident. Others warned against attempting any vigilante justice against an obviously dangerous individual. Yet more wondered aloud how the road bully could be so unafraid of the police.
And then there were comments which, to put it mildly, added insult to Edwards injury. Shocking and disgusting, the people (or person; it could have been the same lunatic over and over) cloaked themselves with the anonymity afforded by the World Wide Web to pour bile and scorn on Edward.
The level of hatred and venom shown towards senior citizens was unbelievable. They called Edward horrible names like "dumb old donkey"; they claimed he embellished his story and said he deserved the beating.
These fine, upstanding citizens then went on to say that older people should be banned from driving and that they are pests and nuisances to other road users.
There was also another group of commentators who seemed more interested in the race of the road bully than the altercation and outcome itself.
These things just beggar belief. What's happened to us? Have we become such a cold-hearted and callous nation? Have we become so stuck in our racist and communal beliefs that even the nature of a crime is affected by the colour of the criminal's skin? Would a punch in the face be less painful if our assailant was the same race as us?
And what's happened to our wonderful Asian culture of respecting and honouring our elders? When did that get thrown out the window? What happened to believing that our senior citizens are our treasures; their wisdom and experience a compass for us younger people as we blunder our way through life?
It's tempting to shrug off this incident as merely a byproduct of the ease of invisibility available on the Internet. After all, if no naming and shaming or pointing of fingers is possible, then all sorts of crazies will crawl out of the woodwork, right? And hey, this is all freedom of speech!
And of course, everybody's heard that old story about how an opinion is like a certain body part, in that everybody has one.
Maybe it is all about freedom of speech. Maybe it is all about cowards misusing the freedom of speech. Maybe it is all about the blessed, cursed murkiness of the Internet. I don't know.
All I know is, something's wrong with this picture. While the politicians are making their power grabs and party hops, while the police are gunning down machete-armed criminals who always seem to want to attack gun-toting cops, and while the common man is tightening his belt in a time of economic recession, somewhere there's a road bully at large, laughing at Edward, old people and the police.
And some of us are cheering him on.
