>'we built this with nothing but our bare hands' is more than just propaganda. It really isn't. The port gave the city a much greater head-start than PAP have

>'we built this with nothing but our bare hands' is more than just propaganda. It really isn't. The port gave the city a much greater head-start than PAP have ever given it credit for. This intentional misdirection is used to give credence to the idea that it was Lee Kuan Yew's genius and the sweat and tears of ordinary Singaporeans that grew the country out of nothing. Which isn't to say that the country wasn't reasonably well run. It's just saying that it just wasn't sheer genius or some kind of cultural superiority that pulled them out of poverty. The truth is much more mundane than that.