“The hijack was a hoax!” I hear somebody say over one of the countless end-of-year meals. I strain my neck to get a better look at the person on the next table, who’s a light blue, V-neck sweater with a tiny yellow pony, over a yellow polo shirt. His head is neatly kept, wearing a pair of frameless glasses.
“Mhux hekk!” another, similarly dressed, replies.
Yet another V-necked patron replies by saying something about Serie A, at which point I go back to dipping bread into my bowl of cozze.
A hoax. Heh. Would it be that far-fetched? There are no facts that support this claim but, if Kubric did shoot the landing on the moon, then couldn’t Ginger-Dome flex his cinematic muscles?
Kubric? Moon? – we’ve got another conspiracy nut!
Bear with me. People believed that aliens had landed on Earth while listening to Orson Wells narrate War of the Worlds. How unthinkable is it to believe that a superpower, during the height of the Cold War, would enlist one of its biggest propaganda machines, Hollywood, to churn out a landing scene, and then sell it to its already TV-gullible people?
Most likely the hijacking wasn’t a hoax, but it does say a lot about an electorate willing to entertain the idea.
On New Year’s Day, we gathered around a television set, all slightly worse for wear, and streamed Konrad, Simon and J. M.’s seasonal greetings. We were waiting for, with Stiltonned breath, the new Sherlock.
The Minister for Nothing sat in an armchair by a lit fireplace. One hand gripped to the armrest, the other casually floppy. Fiery red lips and rosy cheeked (the colour balance of the TV was off), he broke away from his laptop and began to plug the energy sector, as if it still fell under his ministry.
In Simon’s sits a man without character, inside his neatly curated house of character. After brewing a cup of tea, he makes his way to his sofa, he speaks, never sipping from his cup. By the end of it his tea is tepid, maybe that’s the way he likes it.
On to J. M.’s, we have become used to his promotional season’s greetings. Every year it starts with a rendition of the national anthem; in 2014 we had an orchestra in Castille’s courtyard, topped by an electric guitarist in a balcony; in 2015 we had a baby grand expensively placed upon a clifftop; this year we were treated to a sombre spoken/sung delivery of Dun Karm’s prayer. Full of plucked eye-browed performers, folding arm close-ups, chest tapping and another electric guitarist (who for a minute we all thought was Lou Bondi).
Most likely the hijacking wasn’t a hoax, but it does say a lot about an electorate willing to entertain the idea
I will not delve into what was said by the individual politicians. Because the truth of the matter is that I do not believe them. It is all seasonal fluff. And herein lies the problem. We live in a time and place where we cannot believe anything being told to us, be it spoken by a politician, reported by a news agency or published by an expert. The uncertainty it creates is frightening.
Should I believe Obama accusing the Russians of hacking the DNC and rigging the US election, when no evidence has yet been provided? Must we take his and his experts’ word for it? Like we did with Bush going on about Iraq’s WMDs… look where that led to.
It is important to question things but in a landscape where everything and everyone has become questionable, where does stability of certainty come from? I guess this could partly explain the comeback of the strongman politician. When dialogue is debatable, action creates the illusion of stability.
Agnotology, a term coined by Prof. Robert N. Proctor, is the study of wilful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favour. Agnotology now has a more palatable synonym, post-truth.
J. M. who seems to be a stellar student of the current strongmen in power, has taken to post-truth like a swine to mud. Then again, this isn’t anything new for a politician.
He says he isn’t establishment. If you have been around politics as long as he has, then you are establishment. He says (not in his words) he wants to ‘drain the swamp’. But he negotiates secret deals with private companies to build the new drains to remove the swamp, and in that fashion, the drains have already been clogged.
The problem here isn’t J. M., but the political landscape upon which people are collectively confused. If governments are going to continue to hide things from their people, then they are only going to fan the confusion, fostering an environment in which people are ready to believe that a sitting Prime Minister of a European nation would orchestrate a hijacking to improve his image.
Again, they are politicians, so who knows?
Yet the most pressing question on Maltese minds is what are Simon Busuttil’s New Year resolutions and why is he keeping them a secret.