Man may just be within reach of establishing a foothold on Mars and has connected the whole of humanity via the electronic phenomena with ever so minute gadgetry, but it still is a strange old world that we live in. So many contrasting scenarios and so many contradictory situations continue to develop within our planetary existence that it makes one wonder whether we are really going forward or backwards.
While the general feeling is that a Third World War is now raging, whether we recognise it or not, different nations and political figures have helped make this delicate situation worse by being absurdly and deviously forthright with their thoughts and proposals. Anyone who has read a little history will remember how the most vicious of regimes grew out of social, military and political chaos. It is how fascism and Nazism in Europe grew into monstrous machines aimed at eliminating all who stood before them, regardless of rights, conditions, freedoms and aspirations, from democrats, socialists, communists and trade-unionists to the handicapped, homosexuals, writers, artists and, to a horrifying degree, Jews.
Seventy years later, we have the French neo-fascists on the brink of attaining major political power by exploiting the current and real threat from Islamic terrorism. Theirs is a political movement that is bound to grow into an appalling European reality.
In the world's only super power, the United States, very often victim of its own actions worldwide, the same ideological harvesting machine is at work, garnering people's minds by totally ignoring both human and traditional values. It sends a shiver down one's spine just listening to what a top contender for the American presidency, the heinous Donald Trump, has to say on such issues as world terrorism, Mexicans, women and even his country's own military veterans.
His latest suggestion that Muslims should be banned from entering the US (would it also apply to head-chop-happy Saudi allies?), "so it doesn't end up with radicalised no-go areas where police fear for their lives like London and Paris", though quickly condemned by level-headed people everywhere, still got him the continued support of millions of Americans with a vote. It is no surprise, therefore, to see the comparison being made in the social media between Trump's popularity and the rise of Adolph Hitler in pre-WWII Germany. There are just too many common factors: Hitler was anti-Jew, Trump is anti-Muslim. Hitler used racism to rise to power, Trump seeks to do the same; and it goes on like this in other aspects such as the proposal of mass deportations, the wearing of special IDs, making the country "great again", and blaming Jews/Muslims for the country's problems.
One could relegate these statements to the status of fodder for sick minds, but in truth it is normal men and women who gave them and will give them votes, as we have seen happening just days ago in France, no matter how often - and ironically - the revolutionary Marseillaise has blasted on in recent weeks.
Within the same American Republican mindset, it is not just Trump honing away at the hearts of terrified, self-centred Americans. A Nevada Republican (Assemblywoman of the Fourth District, whatever that means), Michele Fiore, who has sent Christmas cards featuring armed toddlers, said during a Las Vegas radio show that she refused to sign a statement by her own party opposing the resettlement of Syrian refugees because it didn't go far enough. Her exact quote: "What - are you kidding me? I'm about to fly to Paris and shoot 'em in the head myself! I am not OK with Syrian refugees. I'm not OK with terrorists. I'm OK with putting them down, blacking them out, just put a piece of brass in their ocular cavity and end their miserable life. I'm good with that."
With political cheerleaders like her, Fiore, whose surname certainly suggests she is herself of immigrant extraction, who needs peace? Me back to pacifist mode, I guess.
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Academic retribution
While the world hovers, twists and shouts, the academic sector also dances to the music. In this case it takes the form of amusing, albeit contrasting, retribution.
At Yale University, a lecturer had to resign from her teaching post after causing a storm of protests for stating last month that students should be free to push the boundaries with their Halloween costumes. That was considered, I assume, too liberal and politically incorrect.
The lecturer, Erika Christakis, came under attack after she wrote an email to students living in residence hall Silliman College, where she was an administrator, saying they should be able to wear any costume they want. The message was in response to a request from the Intercultural Affairs Committee that students should avoid wearing racially insensitive costumes, including Native American headgear, turbans or "blackface".
Reminds you a bit of the priest costume at a recent Maltese carnival. Christakis has been quoted as saying she has great respect and affection for her students, but she worries that the current climate at Yale - and the rest of the world? - "is not conducive to the civil dialogue and open inquiry to solve our urgent societal problems".
Elsewhere in the academic world, at London's Brunel University, students staged a mass walkout during a speech by controversial right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins. The debate, held to mark the university's 50th anniversary, had been due to discuss whether or not the welfare state still had a place in Britain. Brunel Students' Union President Ali Milani called Hopkins the "physical manifestation of online trolls" who offered no "valuable intellectual insight" to the discussion.
Unlike Trump in the US, I don't think Hopkins has, at least as yet, aspirations to become Prime Minister of Britain. In one of her most controversial recent tirades, she was roundly criticized for calling refugees "cockroaches". Some of her other "hits" include proposing that the House of Lords be gassed, that holidaymakers stranded in Egypt following the Sinai air crash were "betting their family's lives on cheap tan" and suggesting "euthanasia vans" might be the answer to Britain's ageing population.
Strange old world here too...
In the best Maltese fashion, we have also held tightly on to that strange old minuscule world of ours. While the Trumps and the Le Pens inject the globe with their Hiterlite hatred and madness, we make national issues of the uncertain future of the Maltese language and the driver of the Opposition leader's official car!
At a time when we all agree that something needs to be seriously done to help the national language survive the new century, the usual division and derision occur, much of which smells of the usual political bias that permeates our society. Rather than uniting to find, and fight, the enemy within, we seem to be more intent on making more enemies by creating situations and making interpretations that shift the focus from the real issue to matters of pure conjecture.
On the other "national" issue - can't we give Dr Busuttil's driver an electric car?
Happy Republic Day.