If you’re reading this online, you know what Facebook is. You probably know what it is even if you don’t read me online, because involvement with FB has become pretty ubiquitous. In fact, if the general age and aspect of the people who are asking to be my friends is anything to go by, FB is becoming the refuge of the middle-aged and elderly.

That’s as may be and it’s not particularly germane to my point, which is that the population in general is declining into a largely unthinking homogenous blob that confuses twee slogans and desultory God-bothering with deep philosophy and a functioning set of critical faculties.

How else would you explain the plethora of saccharine images of - at least in our country - Catholic scenes (I’m pretty sure other cultures have similar annoyances) and the expressions of awed approval every time some plain and homely spinster puts up a picture of herself, plastered in gunk and wearing something hideous, heading off to some shindig or other?

There’s more, of course, such as the total failure to point out that some opera d’arte put up for the general edification of the viewing public is actually a load of tat that should be consigned to the nearest wastepaper basket. I suppose it’s a matter of not wanting to offend your ‘friend’, in the same way as some exclaim “wow, babe” at the sight of the aforementioned plain and homely spinster, lest they be thought to be uncaring and insensitive.

It’s not all doom, gloom and shallowness, there are those of us who use FB as it was intended to be used, namely for the purpose of making witty and trenchant political comments or having a rant about something or other.

On the other hand, there are those who use the perfidious construct without it even crossing their mind that all that appears there is not, actually, equivalent to something Moses had brought down from the mount, for all that it appears, usually, on a tablet. Where are those tablets, by the way, dear minister?

You see this happening all the time, every single conspiracy theory finds oxygen by the bottle-full on Facebook, every ludicrous cancer cure, every weird and whacky theory about which food is good for you or not and so on and so forth, it all finds itself reposted by the terminally-bewildered, when they’re not telling us what they had for breakfast or posting pictures of adorable (from their point of view) grandchildren or recently-departed ancestors.

We had an instance of this last week, when someone took it upon herself to repost a wild rant by an American conspiracist who apparently lives in Switzerland despite the land of milk and pointy chocolate being the home of the CIA, from whence said CIA arranges cataclysmic tragedies for reasons lost in the befuddled synapses of the mentioned American.

According to this nutter, there was to be an attack by ISIS on the Isle of MTV concert and the story sparked all the usual paranoiac responses, most prominent of which, it need hardly be said, was the one that goes: “well, with all these illegal immigrants among us, what do you expect, grunt, grunt?”

The paranoia was fuelled enormously later that same evening when a news portal on the ‘normal’ side of the spectrum “broke” (inverted commas deliberate) a story about an enhanced police presence in Floriana because of the fear of an attack.

Right on cue, the paranoids and conspiracists dissolved into a paroxysm of self-fulfilment, shrieking about “see, it was on Facebook, it’s true”, with assorted fearful parents expressing the hope that Little Johnny and his cousin, who were present at the event, would all be OK, “maaa, x’biża, x’inkwiet”.

Simply pretending to be liberal and freedom-loving does not actually make you that

And then we shake our heads in wonder how every time our government, bless it, comes up with something almost as ludicrous or full of hot air, everyone seems to suspend their critical faculties and stand up obediently to applaud.

We had an instance of this on Wednesday, when Owen Bonnici let it be known that the crime of vilifying religion was to be struck from the statute books while, at the same time, adults weren’t going to be told any longer what they could or could not gaze upon. There was wild applause and great glee from the cadre of ‘liberal free-thinkers’ that seems to lurk in the wings poised to sanctify with their breathless approbation anything the Labour government does.

I mean, seriously?

Fine, it was about time and bit for various primitive laws to be given the coup de grace but does anyone think that in this hypocritical Catholic land, where if you’re black you can be spat on and laughed at by segments of the population (but Minister Helena Dalli will lump us all into a single racist lump of scum and apologise for all of us, thank you very much) anyone at all was worried that it was a crime to “vilify religion”?

Has no-one ever listened to people talk, punctuating their every mindless utterance with graphic anatomical references to various symbols of faith? And what’s this about porn being legalised, pray tell?

I’m not sure if you know this, perhaps you’re one of the few people who doesn’t use the internet for the purpose for which it was actually invented, but you can, shock horror, access pretty much any image or output to which your perversions might attract you and you don’t need Bonnici’s permission to do so, either.

Instead of preening and posing, perhaps a session of navel-gazing and contemplation might behove our pseudo-liberal masters a touch more. If they did give some thought to serving the common good, they might come to the conclusion, for example, that structures such as that monstrosity that the Armed Forces of Malta have erected near the Excelsior should have been aborted the moment the moronic idea crossed what passes for the mind of whoever it was who thought it up.

Further such reflection might lead to the conclusion that instead of painting zebra crossings with (slippery) multi-coloured paint that turns grey after about a week, a bit more effort could be put into educating the cops to be more tolerant and less prone to arresting people who have just been spat on by a random racist.

Or less prone to wasting their mental faculties, such as they are, to dredging up arcane laws and then applying these laws to prosecute authors of tawdry works that, left alone, would waft steadily into oblivion, as opposed to becoming cult favourites because of the notoriety gained by the misconceived prosecution.

Get over yourselves, folks. Simply pretending to be liberal and freedom-loving does not actually make you that, especially if your are afflicted with a forma mentis that allows you to take people to court for calling you names.

imbocca@gmail.com

http://www.timesofmalta.com/blogs