Still living next door to Alice...

Looks like Tonio Fenech was onto something after all, when he likened Labour’s energy plans to ‘Alice in Wonderland’ before the 2013 election. Only I reckon not even Lewis Carroll could possibly concoct something quite so bizarre and surreal.

OK: so yesterday, a tanker sailed into Marsaxlokk harbour. Yes, yes, I know that tankers put into Marsaxlokk harbour every other day of the week – and that there could be anywhere between 10 and 20 of them docked at the Freeport at any time, including right now. Judging by the way the entire country reacted to this particular specimen, one would think we had never actually seen a tanker before.  No, not even when the Copper Mountain (a considerably larger vessel than the rather piddly little thing we all saw arrive yesterday) was used to blockade the Grand Harbour in 1988.

What, therefore, is so special about the LNG tanker in Marsaxlokk? I am told there were journalists who went there to await its arrival at 5am. What were they expecting to see, exactly? If they like watching tankers so much... why don’t they take a boat out and visit Hurd’s Bank some five miles to sea? There are literally dozens of them permanently bunkered there, all within potential oil-spill distance of our shores...

I don’t know. Perhaps they mistook the LNG tanker for the last survivor of the Santa Marija convoy, delivering its vital supplies only 75 years late (for a very important date). Indeed, the fuss that surrounded its arrival can only be compared to the scene of the SS Ohio limping into the Grand Harbour in August 1942. And the two scenarios seem to echo each other in others way, too. 

Not unlike that LNG tanker, the Ohio likewise carried a precious cargo of fuel: aviation fuel, to be specific, without which Malta would not have had the aerial capability to defend itself from attack. That the convoy it formed part of also delivered food, at a time when the population was starving, was of course another good reason to cheer its arrival from the bastions.  But most historians would agree that it was the fuel, more than the food, that saved Malta from surrender to the Nazis.

Now THAT, all things considered, is a pretty valid reason to get excited about the arrival of a tanker in Malta. On all other occasions, however, ‘tankers putting into harbour’ – for the express purpose of delivering fuel to a power station - are a everyday occurrence of the most mundane and unexciting variety imaginable. Even I, who live nowhere near Marsaxlokk, hear their foghorns from my home all the time.  Just imagine how non-descript and entirely ordinary yesterday’s media event must have seemed to the local residents: who have lived in the shadow of fuel-carrying tankers all their lives.

But then, even I must concede that the LNG tanker currently berthed in Marsaxlokk is unlike any other specimen this country has ever seen. And here is where Lewis Carroll might have learnt a thing or two about the nature of the absurd.

Those of you who have read ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ will no doubt remember the crucial part played by physical dimensions in Carroll’s nonsense universe. From the moment she falls down the rabbit-hole, the very first thing Alice experiences is a loss of her own sense of physicality. She grows or shrinks depending on what she’s just eaten or drunk. And when asked (by the Caterpillar) that most philosophical of all questions: ‘Who are you?’ she finds herself unable to answer. 

Along with her physical dimensions, her sense of identity has been turned on its head. All that follows is rooted in that premise. This is what makes Alice such a frightening creation, to anyone who doesn’t take his own sanity for granted.  IT raises the question of how much of what we call ‘normality’ really is normal, when it takes such a small shift in perspective to alter the fabric of reality beyond recognition. 

I somehow suspect that Tonio Fenech wasn’t looking at Alice quite that way when he made the comparison in 2013. But just look how closely it matches up all this time later.

Speaking of physical dimensions and their correlation to reality: how big is the LNG tanker in Marsaxlokk, anyway?  Like the Caterpillar’s interrogative, the answer seems to depend on what you might have eaten or drunk. Ask a Nationalist, and that tanker will suddenly grow and grow and grow, until it fills the entire harbour and engulfs the whole south-eastern portion of the island. Hands down, it will become the single largest man-made vessel to ever float on the ocean wave... even though any old visiting cruise liner would be around double the size. 

One Nationalist MP even pointed out that the LNG tanker is larger than Siggiewi’ s main square. Erm, yes, and... so what? I reckon it probably won’t fit in Gala Supermarket either. Seeing as it was never intended to fit in either of those places to begin with... what do either of those observations actually add to the debate? Apart, of course, from a little Alice-inspired nonsense, to add to the rest?

Ask a Labourite, on the other hand, and the response is likely to be: ‘Tanker? What tanker? Oh that? Sorry, I mistook it for a rubber duck... good thing I’ve got my specs on, otherwise I might trodden on it by accident...”

Never mind, of course, that the actual dimensions of this ship – length, width, gross tonnage and all - are recorded and easily accessible online. When answering the question ‘how big is that tanker?’... the actual size of the thing is around the last thing that actually matters.  

The first and most pivotal consideration is: how big or small do you want it to be? If your political objective is to spread fear and panic over the possibility of an apocalyptic cataclysm... then its dimensions will adjust themselves accordingly as if by magic. If, on the other hand, you want to minimise that danger... you simply minimise the vessel’s size, regardless how big or small it is in reality. 

For we are no longer in reality, remember? The moment party politics touches any issue, no matter how remotely, another form of logic immediately takes the upper hand. Like Dorothy in Oz, we find we ‘are not in Kansas anymore’. Like Alice, we find ourselves instantly losing all sense of logic or reason.

And this is EXACTLY what another of Carroll’s disturbing characters tells Alice, this time in the sequel. Here we have it straight from the king’s horses’ mouths:

“'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'” (Lewis Carroll, ‘Alice Through The looking Glass’)

Oh, just look how seamlessly that logic fits in with the ongoing exchange of nonsense about the size of a tanker. The question is not, of course, how the same ship could be both large and small at the same time. The question is: what’s more important, reality or perception? Whose view should prevail: the truth, or our own political delusions?

Like Humpty-Dumpty, both Nationalists and Labour answer that question in the same way. The only important is that WE (and not THEM) are masters of the situation. To that end, all others matters – including that largely overrated consideration, ‘the truth’ – must be adjusted accordingly. 

As far as I can see, that tells you just about everything you need to know about the state of Maltese politics in its current, woeful state. Exactly how anyone can continue to take it seriously is beyond me.