The national interest, and all that

It's been an interesting summer so far. The new government has been in place for less than six months, and already the entire national attitude towards Joseph Muscat and his progressive band of merry moderates has changed beyond recognition.

With few exceptions - and these few exceptions tend to be pathological basket cases anyway - virtually all the people who had previously declared war on the man (and by extension, on everyone who failed to share in or appreciate their own pathetic subservience to the moribund PN) are now singing a completely different tune.

Just like Winston Smith at the end of 1984, they, too, have come round to 'loving Big Brother': only for reasons that I suspect are slightly different from Winston's.

Either way, surely you will have noticed how certain bloggers - with the abovementioned pathological exceptions - simply no longer attack Labour at all. And this is not exactly surprising. After all, how can they possibly keep up their former strategy of tearing into everything the Labour leader says or does... when the same Labour leader is now the Prime Minister, and they themselves are still plugged into that national life support machine that keeps dishing out perks and bonuses in exchange for faithful service to the powers that be? (Please note: the powers that 'BE'. Not 'have been'...)

Anyway: as it happens - and this may surprise some people out there - I don't actually begrudge these people their opportunism, or even their barefaced hypocrisy. Nor am I particularly incensed at the cavalier way in which they simply traded one political master for another, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

In a perverse kind of way, they are actually being consistent here: their job has always been to defend the status quo, because it always paid them to do so. Well, Muscat has very cleverly ensured that it continues to pay them to do... et voila'! If I may risk an early prediction - my gut feeling tells me these same people will fight with just as much commitment to retain a Labour government in five years' time, as they did to retain GonziPN.

On a separate note this same pattern also illustrates precisely how and why mediocrity always becomes the norm in this country. If support for one party over another ultimately hinges on how much the party will pay you for that support, in cash or in kind... well, what room is there actually left for principles, ideology, capability, vision, drive, energy, and any of the rest of the stuff that is also supposed to come with the package called 'politics'?

None at all. And this in turn explains so much about how things work in this country. People support political parties, not on the strength of anything they might represent (how can they, when the parties don't actually represent anything?) but on the basis of what they can offer to themselves and to their extended family clan. Jobs, security, hand-outs, permits... call it what you will, it's all money by another name.

And money doesn't change colour, simply because the government dishing it out suddenly goes from blue to red.

***

OK, I apologise if all of the above comes across as rather obvious to many of you out there. But there is another side to this equation that is slightly less obvious.

One thing that has emerged in recent weeks is that the same basic pattern outlined above - the one where people suddenly start praising the person (or party) they themselves had defecated upon only yesterday - began manifesting itself in other people, too... people who do not seem to be plugged into the same government goodie-dispensing machine (or at least, not to my knowledge).

Here is a small example. In the weeks and months before the last election I did not exactly make a secret of my personal view (now shared by many more people, or so it seems) that Lawrence Gonzi was in fact a hopeless prime minister who had lost control of both his government and his party, and stolidly refused to acknowledge the existence of a problem, still less do anything to solve it.

Naturally, I received my fair share of opprobrium for stating these views, not least from those who - for all the above reasons - wanted to retain the status quo. But I got some stick from others whose support for Gonzi - inexplicable though it seemed (and still seems) to me - was genuine.

On two separate occasions I was accosted by people who accused me very publicly - one at a party in front of dozens of people, and another on Facebook (i.e., in front of even more people) - of 'performing the equivalent of fellatio' on Joseph Muscat... when presumably I should have been 'performing the equivalent of fellatio' on their own beloved Gonzi instead.

Of course they didn't use those exact words, preferring to stick to the more commonly-heard monosyllabic version (the one that starts with 'suck' and ends with 'cock', if you know what I mean). Yes, such is the charming level of discourse that one comes to expect from a country in which political fellatio has been a national sport for decades. But let's fast-forward to the interesting part. In the last couple of weeks or so, I have taken to criticising Muscat's recent outbursts on immigration - namely, the populist, irresponsible rubbish he took to spouting, when faced with what was only a first, minor test on the issue - and lo and behold! The same people who almost physically accosted me for 'praising Joseph Muscat' before the election, are among the people to now round on me savagely for failing to support the prime minister in his immigration efforts.

Excuse me, folks, but... are you referring to the same Joseph Muscat you accused me of 'sucking up to' (well, slightly more than that, but let's keep this all family friendly) just six months ago? And if so: well... who, exactly, is 'sucking up to' Joseph Muscat now? Me, or you?

***

OK, I will leave those two twits - and others who think likewise - to come up with a reply in their own good time. I'm not going anywhere, and neither, it seems, is irregular immigration. So you have all the time in the world to rerhearse your earth-shattering repartee.

Now let's consider the real issue at hand... which has nothing to do with the hypocrisy and barefaced double standards employed by such people, and everything to do with the so-called 'national interest'; which the same people ( and everyone else) seems to think is their own private monopoly.

Well, sorry to shatter your illusions, but... there it is no one person, nor even one group of people, no matter how large, foulmouthed or violent, that gets to decide what the national interest is. And one reality that most people in this country either cannot or will not see is that it is Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, and not his critics, who has undermined the national interest when talking about immigration. And this he did on two very specific grounds.

First, he acted directly against the national interest by trying (successfully) to instil a sensation of panic in the country regarding immigration. Like Russian premier Vladimir Putin did with homophobia these past few weeks - though to give Muscat the benefit of the doubt, probably unintentionally, and not with the same cynical disregard for consequences - he fanned the flames of racism, in a country where NGOs and journalists have already faced violent repercussions for - quite rightly - speaking out in favour of human rights.

And I mean violent repercussions: attacks on property, person and family. Houses set on fire, cars vandalised, people made to live in fear.

Muscat clearly did not stop to think of his responsibilities in this regard until the country was already in the full grip of naked, undisguised racist sentiment. It was only when faced with calls for anti-immigration rallies that he suddenly and clumsily tried to moderate his own tone by talking about integration... but the damage had already been done, and is quite frankly still being felt in full force today.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister must be made aware that if anybody else is violently attacked on xenophobic grounds in this country in the near future, he will have to assume his responsibility for his own role in whipping up anti-immigration fervour, thus creating fertile ground for precisely such attacks to repeat themselves.

I need hardly add that this does not and cannot constitute the 'national interest'. Unless you belong to the faction that regards beating up vulnerable people and burning their homes as an act of patriotism.

***

Having said this, the real reason the present government has undermined the national interest is quite another. Far from adopting a 'progressive' stance, the Labour administration has actually taken us all the way back to pre-Independence years.

Remember all the fuss kicked up by Joseph Muscat to the effect that Malta is 'too small' to cope with the problem? And above all, that the EU should immediately step in and solve it for us? Ultimately this means one thing, and one thing only. Almost 50 years since Independence, Malta evidently still considers herself a protectorate under the wing of a larger foreign entity. Only this time, it's no longer Great Britain that doubles up as our surrogate parent. It is the European Union.

The implications are very distressing - at least, they should be to people who actually value independence and don't want to turn the clock back to colonialism. But the reality is this: in all our dealing with foreign countries - countries we are supposed to sit around a table with as equals - we still insist on demeaning our own nation by making great big public displays of how ill-equipped or unprepared we are to deal with any given problem. We still wail and moan - publicly, for all to see and hear - that the realities of nationhood are simply too great for us to actually handle... which raises the question of why we even bothered becoming an independent State to begin with.

In fact I am beginning to wonder how many among us actually know what the words 'independence' and 'sovereignty' even mean.... let alone what constitutes the 'national interest'.

Independent, sovereign States do not rely on foreign countries to clean up their messes for them. Independent, sovereign States generally roll up their sleeves and deal with their own problems as they arise, with their own resources... and would usually consider any foreign intervention in this regard as a declaration of war.

So next time a government representative goes rushing to Brussels with his begging bowl in hand, crying and moaning (in your name) that we're too small, too disorganised, too useless and too under-developed to get on with the business of being an independent country, ask yourself the following question.

Does this behaviour serve 'the national interest'? And if the answer is no... why are you applauding?