The left-leaning fellows are in blue, the “conservatives” in red. The former are shown as donkeys by cartoonists, the others as elephants. Towards each other they display an unequalled political ferocity.
In the US, donkeys and elephants do not yield an inch to each other, on no front and you might say in no scenario. Perhaps the last (was it the only?) time when a truly national sense of unity emerged was after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001. There was no other occasion.
In recent years, Donald Trump appeared to be ramping up the political discord. But he did so more on a rhetorical level than by making more confrontational moves than is usual in American politics.
Despite this state of affairs, frequently the two sides arrive “together” at an agreement by which they take crucial decisions to cope with arising crises. The reason is that the Amercian federal system run by an executive presidency obliges them to agree, unless they all want to risk being discredited with the electorate. At the same time, the system allows for everyone involved in an agreement to get “something” from it. It’s not a winner takes all situation.
There’s another difference between political polarisation in the US and ours in Malta: a large proportion of the citizens there show no interest at all in politics, even at election time.
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DIGITAL STRATEGY
The European Union is doing the right thing by promoting its so called digital strategy – an effort to assemble and energize all the relevant social and economic aspects that are being deeply affected by the ongoing advances in the ways by which and for which computers are getting deployed.
The effort is moreover intended to press for added breakthroughs by which on a wide digital front, the EU could strengthen its potential and stay at the forefront of an ever widening developmental front.
From the European Parliament I get to follow this approach basically from the perspective of how it relates to the financial and banking sectors. For instance, one challenge that cannot be downplayed relates to the systems necessary to safeguard computer systems from all forms of sabotage. It’s not easy. To the same extent that we and the generations that will be succeeding us get more and more dependent on the electronic machines that will dominate our existence, we will also become vulnerable to attempts to corrupt the procedures by which the digital tools we use do function.
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BOOKS
At a time when books are in the limelight, the question still keeps coming up – have books become obsolete as a product?
The question hardly troubles someone like myself who has been a hardened book collector for long years. People in the educational and cultural sectors however who recognize that reading books helps in the development of citizens’ life skills and their quality of life, understandably worry about how electronic means of communication have continued to reduce among the Maltese, any appetite for reading books – it always was quite weak.
Yet, truth to say, reading has not decreased in past years – it has actually increased. Where before, many hours were “wasted” on in interminable phone calls, now the same time and more gets expended to send and above all to read ... electronic messages, not books...