Habouring a grudge has become instinctive.  A person quickly assumes a personal grudge, for the slightest of rebukes or difference of opinion.  Most words, no matter how graciously spoken or well-intended are swiftly categorized as supporting one’s status and rights or opposing it.

The influence to react in this way comes from a time when Malta was driven to hate the intellectual class, to disdain it and to demonise it.  In the 1980s, when the University was stripped and reduced to a tool of a labour market, rife with divisions and antagonistic positions that clearly marked out those who stood for the professional class as enemies of the working class.

One might say that Daphne Caruana Galizia had been used to symbolize all of the reasons why the establishment was a legitimate target for attack.  

The harbouring of this grudge was made personal under Mintoff, went into limbo for some time under the Nationalist governments and then resurrected like a dormant virus emerging from melting ice, to become institutionalized under Joseph Muscat’s Labour and continues to thrive under Robert Abela.

This week, the deep disdain for intellectuals gave us the cheap and shoddy attack on journalists and newsrooms, with their spoof sites and dis-information campaign.  The reason that it felt personal and caused deep concern was precisely because it was. 

They could no longer blame the Church.  They could no longer turn against the University and education.  So, they turned against the continuation of good journalism and the re-generation of an intellectual class. 

With today’s technology, social media and easy access to popularity, people do not tolerate truth if it goes against their opinion and choices.  They disassociate themselves from analysis, from thought and understanding.  Most of all they have disassociated themselves from empathy and kindness.  The ability to hold a discussion, change your opinion or hold it whilst tolerating some else’s right to disagree is virtually gone, perhaps a victim of the Xarabank staged era.

The primal instinct is well and thriving.  Survival of the self.  Eliminating threats to one’s security and property. It has become a motor not just for the economy but for the purpose of blocking out any responsibility towards the community and society, other than for your own home and job.

The mention of corruption and the genesis of it, how it is all around us and how it actually has become a threat to the well-being of the individual and the whole country, is ignored.  Anyone who highlights it as a danger, or risk or who asks for justice is mobbed and spoofed and discredited.

In the same way as the Israelites demanded a God in the desert, whilst waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain, the people worship their figures made of gold and bronze.  We know who they are.  Their names are mentioned in the media and through the courts on a regular basis.  Others are now in the minor category but are still able to influence grudges. 

Those who speak out against corruption are demonized as traitors.  They are thrown to the crowd and their cries are made a spectacle of.  Prejudice as a symbol of loyalty.

All of this happens on an everyday level now amongst the ordinary citizens of Malta and Gozo. From activism to simple efforts to bring order to some dis-order even in civic affairs, are received with bile and righteousness which really goes back to the Mintoffian era.

At that time, you could not say that you were a reader of The Times or of The Nazzjon.  You had to keep silent and not speak in English.  Your wealth, however small, was treated as a mis-appropriation from the mouths of the poor. 

Whatever good was done under Mintoff in defending the working class and bringing new opportunity to them, was at the cost of sowing hate and division amongst the country.

As the working classes, according to Ian Borg, now need a marina to park their boat or yacht, the mention of conservatism is in the same pile as the mention of corruption.

Grey-listing and the talk of it and what it means to Malta and to investments and honour, is simply a personal attack, an offence on the good people who earn their daily living in the shadow of the carved bull with gold earrings.

The total eradication of civil mindedness has made any cause and discourse futile. 

In a political dialect it has been described as the Gahan (village sod). 

Some, more faithful, took offence at being called such.  In general, though, the person who was responsible for this jargon, still remains in his place as Minister.  Others make a T-shirt and flag of it and wave it around proudly, as though they belong to a group of renegades who freed the country from oppression from the intellectual class.

Until such time that people begin to have an honest sense of their own worth, show some humility in front of admitting that they have been done by corruption and begin to fight for unity and justice, together with a sense of shame over the killing of a journalist and the climate of institutionalized lies that brought it about, we cannot move towards real change. 

This requires a conversation, debate, honest talk and is precisely what has been stifled and deliberately shunned and disdained.  Not just the political station of One TV but also the national TVM have systematically been instrumental in keeping the people from knowing the truth and believing it.  The spoofs confirm it.

The tribal mentality of politics, on a really primitive level, keeps the phones ringing and the promise of favour bubbling away on the stove.  It takes people away from reality and into the world of “It’s all about money”.  On some level there is a shift to rejection of this system. 

This week, too, a man from Valletta was brazen and volatile in his outspoken video against the latest platform-building in Merchants Street.  He, alone or with others, from Valletta and from other towns and villages, is ready to confront the Council and the authorities in a protest against the complete absence of regard for the citizens of Valletta and the over-commercialisation of their home city. 

This, clearly, is coming from the roots of the country, far from the intellectual platforms of journalists and civic NGOs and protest groups.

The large presence of people from not just Marsascala but also other parts of the island, across all social divides, in the protest against the building a marina there, also struck a new chord of anger and refusal to accept the fabrication of lies and cover-ups in order to benefit the few who are protected by those who take offence at any argument.

The time for a new social order, where everyone is really equal and confident in their value and ability to contribute to the good of not just their families but also their country is waiting to happen.  The intellectuals have done their part and even been killed for it.  It is now up to the ordinary man, woman and child to reject lies and deceit and stand up with courage against a demeaning and unsustainable way of life.