"Stupidity got us into this mess, and stupidity will get us out."

– Homer Simpson

COMMENT | Negri Sembilan Bersatu chief Rais Yatim's recent tweet that Malays should learn the lesson of accepting “other races” when dealing with the Rohingya has not gone well with certain quarters.

Rais (photo, above) should be learning from two-time former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, instead of blathering online.

You have got to give it to the stupidity of certain political operatives when they turn an issue which has broad-based “racial” support – which, granted, sometimes degenerates into populism and nativism – and turns it into a “ketuanan” spiel.

Such spiels usually are ahistorical and filled with the usual propaganda that has got the Malay political establishment into the messes they find themselves in.

The recent raid on undocumented immigrants and refugees is a strategy that could have been handled in a way which does not feed into narratives of oppression and heavy-handedness but, again, what can you expect from a kakistocracy?

If the idea was targeted testing, then these raids should not have been carried out. Instead, the main idea was intimidation and what this does is encourage...