COMMENT | The venomous attacks in social media against activist Maryam Lee for her stance that both sides of the political divide are not worth voting for reflects the high fever of our body politic.

It is deplorable that she had to be subjected to abuse and doctored sexual images, but that’s the way of the world now.

Social media is a double-edged sword. It links the whole world in a swift transmission of ideas, chat, zillions of pictures of yesterday’s meals, jokes, and sappy greetings.

But it also is a tool for lowlife to trade animal parts, drugs, child porn.

And it gives a voice to the scum of the earth.

When I was working in a web portal a few years ago, a large proportion of the daily thousands of readers’ comments had to be deleted because they were allegations stated as fact, racist rants or suggestions of unimaginative sexual acts.

There was a politician’s wife – the story didn’t have to be a substantive one, but just the use of a photo of her would be the start of a tsunami of comments touching a high five-figures by the time the night subs logged out after midnight.

The portal’s lack of bias in sparing the readers such trash was evident in bipolar mail, some saying comments were not posted because we were running dogs of the opposition, while others said we had Umno moles working in our midst.

There was one particular a******e – daily he persisted with dozens of foul-mouth comments (till we blocked him – twice; he was a persistent pest). After a long day of not seeing his filth on the site, he will fire a rocket, describing the sexual abuse that should be visited on the female members of our families.

He often ended with a challenge to show our testicular potency and post his latest comment.

Not only was he an a******e, he was a dumb a******e. After what he said about my mother? Delete.

What can one do with cretins like that? Try and ignore them.

Social media can’t be muzzled, though not from wanting to try by governments as soon as the internet was born.

Now the daily loudmouth trumpeting of “fake news” from Washington has been picked up by other governments, including Malaysia and Singapore, and brains are being brought together to find a vaccine to fight this new debilitating viral disease.

I would rather live with the democracy of the web, even though many of its inhabitants are barely evolved Neanderthals, than have the government deciding for me what is “true news.”

Imagine – news from Bernama reports and via official media and RTM – if that doesn’t make the emigration figures shoot up, I don’t know what will.

An untidy mess

Democracy is a grand idea, but it is an untidy mess in practice.

I am not talking about the many political philosophy schools of thought on the essence of democracy. It’s the essence of democracy, whatever form it takes – the participation of many in the governance of their country and lives.

The etymology of “democracy” is in the Greek words demos, “common people,” and kratos, “strength.”

The Greeks in Athens are credited with the first democracy just over 500 years before the birth of Christ.

All Athenians were members of a legislative assembly. A few were picked at random to fill government administrative and judicial posts.

The right to speak and vote excluded women, slaves, foreigners and men under 20. This was not indicative of sexist or xenophobic fears, but the belief that citizenship was linked with an obligation to defend the state in wars.

This was democracy in its purest manifestation. Though the citizens’ rights were not defined in the constitution (because Greek thought hadn’t evolved to that stage), the fact that all male adults could speak and vote in the assembly, the fact that they were not subject to the rule of any one person, but the decision of the majority, makes it the touchstone from which the concept has evolved since.

The messing about with democracy came with the Romans. The election of representatives to the Roman Senate and executive posts in the government was restricted to a minority of Romans.

The electoral process was made more restrictive when the powerful introduced what can be said to be the first form of gerrymandering. Their votes carried more weight… because of who they were.

So Rome became dominated by a few wealthy families.

Hmmm! Must find out how long the Roman Empire lasted before the “barbarians” were at the gates of Rome.

THOR KAH HOONG is a veteran journalist.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.