Frankly, some people just don’t give a damn
The Malta Independent reported some days ago a speech given by Joseph Muscat. Don’t ask me which one – it’s not safe to open a newspaper these days.
By 2013 he’ll have bored the pants off us.
I kept this choice quote on file: “The Labour Party will be holding its annual general conference, which will focus on innovative ways of portraying thought, Dr Muscat said.”
Maybe it’s because I know something of him, but I can see the hand of Bearded Intellectual Guru Mario Vella at work here. New ways of portraying thought? I’ll ring for a taxi right now.
What Joseph Muscat and the Labour Party need is not new ways of portraying thought, but some new thoughts. That’s going to be tough, what with all those old fossils like Anglu Farrugia, Toni Abela and Alex Sceberras Trigona wrapped round their neck.
‘New ways of portraying thought’
Muscat, or so the report in The Malta Independent told me, is going to adopt these new ways of portraying thought because he believes that lots of people do not feel they belong to any political party and are not interested in politics because there are “no personal benefits”.
It’s strange that with his army of brilliant and expensive advisers, he hasn’t worked out the connection between the two. People who are not interested in politics because there are no “personal benefits” are not going to work up any enthusiasm for a political party unless that political party promises them “personal benefits”.
He should have worked out, too, that the sort of people who are only interested in you when you can give them something are not going to change and suddenly become expansive, engaged, responsible and altruistic. They will remain exactly as they are.
They will vote for the person or the party who will give them something specific, even if they can’t see further than their noses and that vote will send other, non-specific areas of their life up in smoke.
I am surprised at Muscat’s deployment of the term “personal benefits”, because he uses it, clearly, to mean a cross between the special favours borne of patronage and the ‘something in it for me and who cares about everyone and everything else’ mentality which makes vast numbers of people vote (or not) the way they do.
This is why so many people in the Sliema district didn’t vote in the last general election. Because of construction work in their backyard they were actually prepared to hand the country over to Alfred Sant for five years.
They didn’t go out and vote for him, which allowed them to do a Pilate and brush off responsibility for any consequences, but they knew that not voting for his opponent would have a similar effect. And still they did it, because of their backyard.
Another example is all those people who put a rocket under the prospect of joining the EU when they voted specifically to end VAT in 1996 and couldn’t see beyond that.
Only a personality transplant will change people who think like this. The last thing they need is encouragement in their belief that their warped and egocentric thinking is justified. Well-adjusted people do not interpret “personal benefits” in the way that Joseph Muscat and the sort he refers to do.
They look at what’s best for the country in general, because they know that what’s best for the country will be best for them and theirs in the long-term. This is precisely why people whose businesses were bound to take a severe knock from EU membership (and they did) voted Yes in the referendum and some of them even put their names and faces to the campaign to bring others on board.
The temptation among politicians, and in this Joseph Muscat is not alone, is to imagine that when electors are disengaged, the fault lies with political parties or political discourse. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If they were to talk more with such people, as I do, they would find that they are disengaged from practically every other aspect of life except for their own narrow and humdrum quotidian concerns. They are able to discuss little or nothing, and not just politics.
Politicians should always be suspicious of the person who says “Make me interested in politics”. Interest in politics stems from something that is impossible to create once a person reaches adulthood: a childhood environment in which public affairs and current events are discussed.
Even if they are discussed at a less-than-rational level, the important thing is that they are discussed at all.
I think Joseph Muscat will find that people who are disengaged from current events and politics grew up in homes where such matters were never talked about or worse, dismissed out of hand. The adult who is interested in politics without having grown up in a home where the parents would talk about politics in front of the children, and later on with them, is a rare bird indeed.
An interest in politics stems from engagement with the world beyond our immediate horizons. It comes from an interest in life. When people don’t care, you can’t make them care, even with the best of good will and no matter how many cunning schemes or new ways of portraying thought that you might come up with.
This applies to politics just as it applies to any other form of human interaction. Some people just don’t give a damn, and nothing will make them do so.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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Plus ca change, plus ce le meme chose.
People don’t care about politicians just as much as politicians don’t care about the people. Why do you think in Europe politicians are having trouble convincing people to go out and vote. Becuase people in Eu have realized the politicians are just a front, doing the dirty work of business enterprises and they don’t really care about the people just as long as they get a comfortable paycheck for themselves the politicians would betray anyone including their own people.
Daphne, a change of subject if I may. This is from Maltarightnow today. ‘Il-Qorti tal-Appell Kriminal ordnat lill-Qorti tal-maġistrati biex terġa’ tisma’ il-każ kontra Edwin Bartolo u Salvatore Mifsud li flimkien kienu akkużati b’diversi reati marbuta mal-inċidenti li allegatament seħħew fiż-Żejtun fil-jum tal-Elezzjoni għall-Parlament Ewropew, fejn fost l-oħrajn ġew aggrediti membri tal-Kumitat Sezzjonali tal-partit Nazzjonalista fiż-Żejtun.
Kif jider mis-seduta tat-23 ta’ Gunju 2009, id-Deputat Mexxej tal-Partit Laburista Anġlu Farruġia kien qiegħed jidher għal Edwin Bartolo magħruf bħala il-qaħbu u Salvatore Mifsud, flimkien ma avukati oħra fl-uffiċċju tal-istess Deputat Mexxej Laburista.’
Here is proof if any were needed that the PL has not changed one bit. You would have thought that idiot Anglu Farrugia would distance himself from these thugs on a point of principle. Not a bit of it. What does this tell labour thugs?
I’d have to qualify ‘interest in politics’. Mine isn’t particularly great nowadays – I’ll always vote if possible and I’ve always voted primarily for the Nationalist Party (with the odd Nbr 2 to AD) by default, since the MLP/PL has never deserved a vote. I was much more interested in the 70s and 80s – doing my damndest to rid Malta of the MLP plague. Apart from the fact that I’ve moved to Vienna, I stopped any form of political activity after 1996 – no membership, no meetings. I may get drawn into an argument but I’m not really bothered. To a broad extent, I feel that Maltese politicians have failed the people. The MLP practically destroyed the country and the Nats have patched up most of it, though inefficiently and at enormous expense whilst pandering to big business – car importers and developers in particular and the blue-eyed ubiquitous consultants.
Yes, I will retain an interest in politics, but I find footie a lot more interesting nowadays.
New ways of portraying thought? In their case it sounds like transforming hot air into a windbag.
This reminds me of a wonderful line in The Simpsons where Bart is complaining to his Dad that he doesn’t understand. Homer’s response was “It’s not that I don’t understand. It’s just that I don’t care”
‘Muscat, or so the report in The Malta Independent told me, is going to adopt these new ways of portraying thought because he believes that lots of people do not feel they belong to any political party and are not interested in politics because there are “no personal benefits”.’
What an odd conclusion of Muscat’s. There must be others like me who keep their ears to the ground, observe dispassionately and reach their own conclusions as to who has done a better job of running the country. It doesn’t follow that I ‘belong’ to either party.
As for personal benefits, I can only speak for myself (although again, l don’t believe I’m the only one), but what drives me to vote one way and not the other is fear. Fear of intimidation, fear of the university courses shrivelling back down into 7 or 8 degrees, fear of trucks bearing pipe and chain wielding thugs, fear of bulk buying, fear of wage freezes, fear of strikes, fear of class hatred actively incited. . .
If the MLP can guarantee that these horrors will not repeat themselves that will be enough ‘personal benefit’ for me.
I have a question to which I’d like an informed answer. Should the MLP win power and the thugs-on-trucks show up again, will our EU membership protect us in any way?
P Zahra, the thugs on trucks are almost guaranteed come 2013, since the MLP/PL still clearly have il-Qahbu and his ilk close to their hearts. That PN clubs will be smashed up is more than likely. Hopefully it’ll result in another 20 years of peace after 2018.
Yes Tim they will be out again in 2013. I saw a few of the “celebrations” after the European parliament elections and I have no doubt in my mind the thugs will vent their hatred again.
You’ve often commented on Joseph Muscat’s facial hair – here’s another take on the subject: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article7002189.ece
Perhaps his power plays are an early mid-life crisis?
Tim Ripard and Rover, isn’t there any EU organ that would step in if (when) an MLP government unleashes them on us again?
Or will I have to point them out to my son and say ‘see honey, this is what I was talking about’? Like a sort of ultimate Show and Tell.
I wonder sometimes whether Joseph Muscat, being so young, even knows they exist, or whether he thinks they’re a figment of the imagination of the Nasty Nats. I wonder also whether he can rein them in. I fear that they answer only to their old masters. My friends, who were more in the know than I, used to say that the thugs were actually different gangs and each answered to a different master. For instance, they immediately knew who had sent the bunch to the University to beat us up. Poor Joseph Muscat, I can’t help but picture him as a chubby, cherry-cheeked Little Red Riding Hood, utterly unaware of the slavering wolves prowling behind him.
There are no ‘organs’ in the EU that will ‘screw’ with the thugs.
Harry, are you serious? Is it possible that these thugs can attack civilians, as they used to do in the past, and the EU will just stand by?
I suspect that I am coming across as somewhat hysterical, but when I was a child the two sons of our neighbours were left alone at home. They filled a couple of balloons with water and decided to lob them across the road at a poster of an MLP politician. It was target practice pure and simple, they were too young to have any ulterior motives. Anyway, some Labour supporter (I suppose) happened to notice them and called our local branch of the MLP who turned up en masse with a truck laden with empty soft drink bottles and proceeded to wreck the facade of the house. Not a window was left unbroken. Then they threw the front door in and went in to get them. Luckily the boys escaped over the roofs and were taken in by a neighbour whose roof door, thank God, was a stout sheet of iron. A lot of attention is paid to the attack on Eddie’s house and to the attacks on the Curia, the law courts and the Times’ offices but I have seen and heard them (and the noise is nightmarish) attack children. I was nine or ten at the time, the same age as those two boys. I cannot forget the hysterical screams of the women trying to stop those madmen, pleading with them that they were only children. My own mother weeping and saying ‘Madonna se joqtluhom’ over and over again.
And if this happens again will no one step in?
[Daphne – I confirm your story. I remember it too.]
Thank you Daphne.
How on earth do people forget these things? True, we have had many years of peace but the nightmarish memories are there to stay. Unless the MLP accept that these things really happened and guarantee that there will not be a repetition, they can waffle on about ‘modes of thought’ till the cows come home. I, for one, will not trust them again. Ever.
The MLP seems unable to understand that what people feel is that, for them, winning an election is payback time. Our experience with them in government was that the Prime Minister and his ministers literally waged a personal war on the man in the street who dared to disagree.