Idiocy Should be Seen Once and Never Heard of Again

In the span of less than a week, there were two furores over some things idiots said. A (now former) Young PAP member captioned a picture of some Malay kindergarteners on a bus as "young terrorist trainees" or something to that effect. Today, a police report was filed, under the Sedition Act, against someone posting an image with text featuring "strong anti-Islam sentiments".

My personal opinion (and this is really a matter of opinion) is that idiocy should be ignored and not spread. There is the perspective that strong reactions highlight what is acceptable to "us as a society". Then again there is the dynamic where unpopular views are retained but not expressed until an opportune moment with respect to the power balance. There are many ways to look at this.

To promote my view that I don't want to hear about these idiots, I'd like to say that (i) there will always be negative elements in society and life is too short to enumerate all of them, and (ii) if it was a case of "I wasn't thinking and did something stupid", I'd like us to forgive rather than embitter (in this case, I don't want additional "Muslims ruined my life" sentiments to form).

There are more important things facing our country than people saying stupid things. Long term economic viability, housing, immigration, governance, civil rights, the list goes on. I'd like to heard more debate on these from the media, mainstream or otherwise.