Is His Imperial Majesty plotting his return from exile?
Let’s pretend he succeeds.
Then, what?
Will he embark on his Hundred Days till he finds his Waterloo? To be then exiled to his St Helena?
I frankly don’t understand the reasoning of the rabble rousers who seem to want Muscat back. Let’s analyse this reasoning.
First, the children. Yes, I have pointed it out, others have pointed it out.
On 8 December 2019, I wrote, in this very paper: “My mother has drawn my attention to something I’d like to share. While staring at the chaotic scenes of Muscat’s prolonged fall on television like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific, she told me, ‘You know, I’m sorry for those two innocent girls.’ At first, my mother’s words had no effect on me. But then, upon further reflection, I realised that she was right, and I shared her pity and sympathy for those two innocent girls who, out of no fault of their own, are probably going through a lot. It is never fair – never ever – that children have to pay for the misdeeds of their parents.”
Like me, many others have felt sympathy for those children. Not now, but quite a while ago. We all feel that it’s unfair for the twins who are completely extraneous to their father’s shenanigans. Then again, if parents want to spare their children such painful woe, they should restrain themselves in the first place. In the long run, it’s wiser to behave than to be cunning.
But someone like Muscat who takes pride in how he fooled his schoolmaster many years ago when he didn’t have the right shirt to put on and asked a friend’s mother to give him a proper one, it must be really difficult to grasp the concept of good behaviour.
More importantly, however, all this hullaballoo about the children’s mobiles and school satchels… If the police were to start considering as out-of-bounds the belongings of children living under the same roof as suspects, then I think it’s obvious what would happen. All drug dealers, all fraudsters, all sorts of criminals would start using their children’s mobiles, satchels, lunchboxes, teddy bears and what not to cover up their sordid activities.
Second, intimating that the crowds should take to the streets to defend Muscat. Yes, and then what? Will Muscat topple the government and install a dictatorship? Or will he simply be the reason why a big number of people end up behind bars?
Muscat thinks he’s a reincarnation of Mintoff. What he doesn’t realise is that when Dom Mintoff used violence in the 1950s, the context was national independence not stench of corruption. Mintoff portrayed himself as a freedom fighter in an international narrative – sustained for different reasons by both US and USSR – that nations/peoples should attain their sovereignty. Mintoff knew that the British had to tread carefully, because though they no longer needed Malta as a base, they didn’t want to push Malta into the arms of the Soviets either. History teaches that Mintoff’s ploy might have paid off short-term; long-term, however, the USSR opened an embassy in Malta only in 1981 and the US, despite Mintoff’s repeated requests, never accepted to host him at the White House. So, even Mintoff, in a completely different, and quite probably “legitimate”, context, ended up paying a hefty reputational price for rabble-rousing.
Third, contesting the elections. Fine, and then what? If Muscat is elected, will he attempt a palace coup to take over the Party? If indeed in 2019 he was kicked out by his colleagues (as the newspapers reported), what’s different now? Is he expecting immunity from prosecution if he makes it back to Parliament? Is Muscat expecting to be elected with 14,000 first-count votes, calculating that 14,000 first-count votes would endow him with immunity from prosecution?
Whichever way you look at it, you have to ask, “… and then what?”
That “then what” seems to me to fail the test. Is Muscat going to organise huge demonstrations, like he hoped to do a couple of years back when he was then brought to his senses by his colleagues? What would he organise huge demonstrations for? And why should anybody be intimidated? Will he order his followers to commit acts of violence? Will he incite his street radicals to storm Castille, the Curia, the Opposition Leader’s residence, the Court archives, newspaper headquarters? Will he then crown himself Emperor of the Maltese For Life and wage all-out war against the civilised world and beyond? Will he set up a secret police force, under the command of Trusted Kon, to eliminate his enemies? Will he recruit Field Marshal Kasco to plan the new campaigns?
What exactly are these people thinking? Have they gone mad? Are these the last moments, when they take leave of their senses, before the final curtain?
If Muscat still has his wits about him, he’ll realise that he really has only two options: do like Bettino Craxi, and move to another country, or do like Silvio Berlusconi, and fight it out in court. But he’ll notice that neither option involves mobs terrorising an entire country. Not only is that senseless and puerile, it’s also (I think) a tiny bit illegal.
And one more thing. He should be repeating to himself, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”. He had the opportunity to serve the country as Prime Minister. Instead he dragged his own name and that of the country through the mud, causing untold damage.
We’re wasting so much national time on this narcissist who is mired in allegations of corruption, instead of focussing on issues that matter.
To mention one such matter, which elicits far less drama but is probably more dramatic. Consider the ubiquitous presence of sugar and salt in foodstuffs we buy (now more dearly) at the supermarket. Most, if not all, products contain sugar and/or salt, whether you like it or not.
Now that’s something which, all said and done, makes a real difference in our lives. Not whether the Muscat twins’ mobiles and satchels were searched by the police. (If human rights have been violated, let Muscat take the matter to court and request a ruling. If he takes no legal action, all this talk is just a waste of national time.)
Why are we so thrilled by a pampered narcissist’s political drama? Why do we waste time on discussing “responsible” pot-smoking, abortion, euthanasia, prostitution-regulation, femicide…? When we should be piling pressure on the authorities to tackle head-on issues that really matter but happen not to be on the narcissists’ hobbyhorse list?
Why don’t we – “we” includes the liberal tabloids like Malta Today and others – campaign to rid ourselves of contaminants that destroy our health? Medical literature is replete with solid facts about the damage caused by refined sugar and salt… diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, chronic inflammation, and all the other consequences that lead either to an early grave or to a pill-laden old age. The evidence is there for all to see.
We’re bombarded by the immature campaigns of narcissists who have never grown out of their adolescence, while being continuously polluted by refined sugar and salt. How many readers have high blood pressure and high sugar levels? Is it only because of a sedentary lifestyle? Is it only because of no time for exercise? Or is it also because foodstuffs are full of those substances? Can you find and afford foodstuffs that don’t have those substances?
No matter what you do, it seems it’s not possible to avoid sugar and salt. Can one stop buying processed foodstuffs? Impossible! We’re condemned to ingest what the food industry decides for us! So much for “my body, my choice”! It’s your body but the food industry decides for you!
Does anybody campaign for healthy foodstuffs with the same fervour shown in the campaigning for abortion, pot-smoking, prostitution-regulation and all the other items on the liberal agenda?
Some people are campaigning for the environment, and that’s excellent. Let’s support these people unconditionally. We need to save the countryside, not only because we still perceive it like the Romantics did, but also because we need a clean environment for our health, both psychological and physical. We need to save our cultural heritage from the onslaught of ugliness because beauty is vital for our psychological well-being.
But we also need to rein in the food industry. Between the right of a mother to kill her unborn child and the right of consumers not to eat processed foods that are packed with substances known to science for their deleterious effects on human health – what does Reason tell you to choose as priority? Killing unborn babies or keeping you, me, everyone healthy?
It’s high time we show the narcissist liberals how to prioritise! The energy and money that go into the radical liberal agenda can be used for real priorities.
It’s high time we tackle climate change. Because in a couple of decades these islands will be a desert.
It’s high time we tackle the destruction of our cultural heritage. Because in a couple of decades these islands will have no charm left to sell to tourists.
It’s high time we tackle disease-inducing ingredients in the foodstuffs we buy. Because diseases cost money, and lives.
And it’s high time we stop with the liberal nonsense.
Liberalism claims to descend from the Enlightenment, the 18th-century Europe-wide intellectual movement that promoted the idea that the People needed to see the light, to grow up, forsake the benighted immaturity of the Middle Ages and embrace Reason as their guiding light.
Well, it’s been a spectacular disaster. The Enlightenment agenda has been hijacked by the “enlightened” immaturity of libertine narcissists who mistook “liberty” for “free-for-all” and “rights” for “lack of obligations”.
By arguing that “if you must, you can”, Immanuel Kant – one of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers (or rationalisers) – grounded liberty (“can”) on obligation (“must”): if it’s the right thing, then you absolutely must do it, and if you must do it, then you absolutely can do it.
Slavoj ?i?ek – one of the greatest thinkers (or rationalisers) of our time – has argued that that maxim has been now turned on its head. Now: “if you can, you must” – liberty (“can”) has now been turned into an obligation (“must”). Now: if you can do it, then you must do it.
This is the contradiction of our times. In a world in which “rights” are absolute and therefore equal to “lack of obligations”, it’s an obligation to exercise your rights.
And all this cheering for a character like Muscat who has all the qualities of shadiness, is both a product of this contradiction as well as a contributing factor to its further propagation.