This is where Malta’s lack of education and general ignorance really show through

In a properly educated society, talk by governments and politicians of moving farmers around as though they are inconvenient pieces of furniture rather than human beings with rights and ties to the land they work on would have created uproar.

It would have created uproar because it evokes the way peasants and tenant farmers were evicted and dispersed when they became inconvenient in feudal south and central America not too long ago, and in neighbouring feudal Sicily well into the 20th century.

It chimes into the way Stalin moved peasants off their land and into collective farms; the way Chairman Mao saw farmers as tools that could be moved around with complete disregard, leading to the mass famine that caused the death of millions and to the starving eating each other.

That is not going to happen here, you say. Of course it is not. But the thinking and attitudes behind all of this are identical, and that is what is so worrying.

Malta’s tragedy is that people are so ignorant, even when they have received a formal education. They cannot cross-reference information from many sources, across the world and from history and psychology, because they have made a point of not acquiring any of that information and nothing in Maltese homes, Maltese schools or even Malta’s tertiary education has helped them acquire it. They also lack the initiative to do so of their own accord.

Bad things keep happening to Malta because Maltese adults have the mentality and the education level of teenagers.

Talking about turfing farmers off their land and saying that it doesn’t matter because they’re thinking about giving them some other land somewhere is no different to talking about turfing you out of your home and then demanding to know why you’re complaining because the government is going to give you another place to live of its own choice.