Anger is an energy

You will probably recognise the chorus of Public Image Ltd’s 1986 hit single, ‘Rise’, sung by John Lydon. (If not, well, look it up on Youtube. It’s worth another listen all these years later.)

Formerly known as ‘Johnny Rotten’, Lydon was the lead singer of arguably the angriest manifestation of modern music the world has ever seen: The Sex Pistols, who in many ways came to define the in-your-face, anti-establishment defiance of the 1970s Punk movement.

But that was in the 1970s. Today, the word ‘punk’ has clearly changed meaning. Recently I heard it used to describe a bunch of innocuous looking children wearing beanies, loose-fitting hooded jackets, tracksuit trousers (what an American might call ‘slacks’) and unlaced Converse trainers. They were taking turns to perform skateboard stunts at the Msida skate park/roundabout, to the music of Green Day (or was it The Dandy Warhols? Can’t remember now...)

Naturally, I have no intention of embroiling myself in the bloody turf-battles of today’s teenage mutant turtle warriors. If that’s what they like to think of as ‘Punk’ these days, so be it. Who am I to argue? 

But you can’t really fail to notice how, in image and behaviour, what passes for modern ‘punk’ is not merely ‘different’ from the hey-day of that movement in the 1970s; it is almost completely the opposite. 

The classic, old-school ‘punk’ look of The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Clash, etc., had nothing ‘loose-fitting’ about it at all. Everything was tight: tight jeans, tight T-shirts, tight chokers, tight (and often studded or spiked) dog-collars... and if jackets were worn, they were of black leather and invariably a few sizes too small. 

Other indicators of punk-hood might include multi-coloured Mohawks, spiked hair, body-piercing and all manner of self-mutilation. A good example (of both look and attitude) would be the album-cover of our very own BNI’s ‘Native Tongue/Ilsien Pajjizi’: a close-up of a protruding tongue, impaled on a giant safety-pin. 

As for behaviour: what I saw that day was actually a bunch of nice little well-groomed kids, pursuing nice, harmless little outdoor activities (in a place nicely designed for precisely that sort of thing)... without actually vandalising anything, or even playing their music too loud. Not, mind you, that I’m complaining about the lack of violence and anti-social delinquency. Not all changes are necessarily for the worse.

But clearly, the ‘punk’ attitude is no longer there. The Sex Pistols were never much into skateboards, as I recall. And if they ever did handle one of those contraptions, it would more likely have been to smash a shop-window than to actually skate.

Which brings me back to the song written by John Lydon in his post-punk phase. The evolution I outlined above – from angry young men wreaking havoc, to perfectly harmless children enjoying socially-approved pastimes without bothering a soul – suggests that Lydon was onto something with that lyric. 

If anger really is an energy... then the law of Entropy would decree that it must dissipate over time. Energy cannot be created or destroyed... but it can and must be transformed. Even the experience of daily life confirms this: a fit of temper, by its very nature, cannot be permanent. Anger erupts... but then it cools, subsides, and eventually turns into something else.

Well, that is how it works in all spheres of human existence except one: politics. For some reason, political anger defies the known laws of physics in various ways. It never dissipates... on the contrary, it always intensifies over time. And unlike any other reactive force known to science, political anger does not rely on the cause/effect paradigm. If politics unfolds in a context of permanent, irrational anger... it is not because of some extraneous factor which stokes the fires of rage; it is only because ‘anger’ has become a self-serving cause in its own right. It is the fuel that keeps the entire motor running.

The phase Malta is going through right now is a perfect example of this bizarre paradox. Just look how ‘angry’ Maltese politics has become of late. Parliamentary debates and social media discussions have degenerated into unsightly slanging matches: ‘Ignorant asshole’; ‘Lying bitch’; ‘Buffu’; ‘Pulcinell’; ‘Hamallu’... such is the rabid anger of our politicians that it has even affected their imagination. They sound like a bunch of five-year old children suffering from Tourette’s syndrome.

But hang on, I hear you say. They are right to be angry, because it is part of a politician’s job to voice the sentiments of the population at large. ‘The people’, we are told, ‘are angry’... so their representatives in parliament must be angrier still, just to make a public show of how firmly in tune they are with the national pulse.

This, incidentally, also illustrates another aspect of the surreal hallucinations our political class seems to be experiencing. We are living at a time when everyone and his sausage dog (literally) feels automatically entitled to speak on behalf of the entire country. 

So if a single, solitary person feels irate – as many people seem predisposed to feel, when their preferred party is not in government – it follows that the whole population will naturally share in that individual’s sentiments. 

The problem, of course, becomes evident the moment you turn around and observe how the rest of this supposedly ‘infuriated’ country is actually going about the business of daily life... without displaying much anger at all. 

Consider a few examples. I am reluctant to keep citing Salvu Mallia, because I am beginning to perceive that he might really be suffering from some form of delusion or other. But a couple of weeks ago, he stood alone on the steps of St John’s Co-Cathedral, with a bunch of flowers in one hand, and a sandwich-board message purporting to voice the anger and resentment of an entire nation. 

Which of courses raises a tiny question. If this country is indeed as enraged as it is made out to be... why was Salvu Mallia protesting alone? Could it be that, like Abraham in the Old Testament (one of the few Biblical characters he hasn’t actually compared himself to of late)... he couldn’t find even one of the ‘10 angry men’ he had hoped to find? Could the answer simply be that it is HE, Salvu Mallia, who is the only really angry one here... and – just like any deluded nutcase, protesting on any street corner in any European capital, any day of the week – he has persuaded himself that his anger must perforce be universally shared by absolutely everyone (whether they realise it or not)?

And yet, instead of distancing themselves from this display of ‘The End is Nigh’-style paranoia... the party he represents is egging him on as we speak. Frank Psaila, the PN’s information secretary, wrote last Sunday that ‘Salvu Mallia represents many a disgruntled voter’[...] ‘Salvu Mallia speaks to the people. And the people are listening...’ PN leader Simon Busuttil went one step further: “His message is the same as mine, that we have a big challenge before us – to see how we can remove the most corrupt government in Maltese history.”

Erm... much as I hate to point this out, Salvu Mallia’s antics that day actually sent out the clean opposite message. We did NOT see the entire Nationalist Party protesting against corruption... still less the entire country. Nor did we see Simon Busuttil (or Frank Psaila, for that matter) standing foursquare behind the man they now describe as a mouthpiece of popular angst. 

No, we saw Salvu Mallia and ONLY Salvu Mallia: alone, isolated, abandoned by his party, and accompanied only by his ever-faithful dog. 

Where were the rest of these ‘disgruntled voters’ he was supposed to be representing? I don’t think we need to look very far for an answer. Just the other day, Eurobarometer published a survey which revealed that – contrary to the message imparted by Mallia, and (unwisely) appropriated by the Opposition leader – concern with politics in Malta is actually at an all-time low. 

It turns out that only 39% of Maltese people ever discuss politics among friends – that’s 16% lower than the European average – and a measly11% discuss such issues within the family. On the whole, that makes us the country that is arguably the least interested in politics in the entire EU at the moment. Funny, isn’t it, how an issue that is supposed to have us all foaming at the mouth, is hardly even discussed at all? You’d think we’d be talking about nothing else... all the time.

This impression, incidentally, is fully borne out by my own experiences (being one of the few exceptions who actually do talk about politics). Most people I know simply switch off whenever the subject is raised in conversation. I’ll admit I’m no expert in psychology, but the response I get is generally one of boredom more than rage. 

Please note that I am actually presenting this scenario as a cause for concern. It is worrying that people are choosing to disentangle themselves from the political situation. That only makes it easier for the present government – or any government, including a future Nationalist one – to carry on getting away with murder, as they have always done.

But I can’t say it surprises me, either.  Even if some people are indeed disillusioned by a Labour government that has disappointed on so many fronts... they cannot be blamed for being repulsed by the ever-dwindling standards of public debate. People are not as dim-witted as their political representatives seem to think they are: they can immediately sense when the ‘anger’ they are told to feel is in fact artificial... prompted only by naked power-hunger, which in turn serves only to boost one party at the expense of the other.

There is, of course, a reason for this growing detachment between political hysteria and the real mood of the people (which is very far from hysterical right now). John Lydon sang about it 20 years ago: ‘anger is an energy’. It cannot be sustained indefinitely; and for this reason alone, any attempt to keep it alive for purely party-political reasons is doomed to fail.