If you’re raising your eyebrows because you’re seeing Daphne Caruana Galizia’s name again, you are just the person I have in mind right now. After a lifetime unearthing the layers of rot at the heart of this society, she revealed it most vividly with her death.
In these post-Daphne times, people are speaking of constitutional revolution, a wipe-out of dead wood, and the prosecution of the crimes she had exposed.
But if she were still alive, she would be telling us that we’re missing the point and ignoring the root causes of the malaise that brought about her end. While necessary, a re-write of the Constitution and a dismissal of clueless policemen and corrupt politicians will not begin to address what caused all this.
As ever, we refuse to believe our reflection in the mirror. We refuse to see our ugly side and pine for the picture postcard idyll that flatters us beyond what we deserve. The undisputed beauty of this country is not to our credit. That we are born to it is just an accident, and what remains of the environment around us is there in spite of us, not because of us. People mouth clichés about the thousands of years of Maltese heritage as if they have done anything to earn the right to assume its mantle.
We can only claim credit for what we achieve. For as long as we measure our achievements by the size of our pockets, the rest of the world will continue to wonder at the irreconcilable distance between the exquisiteness of the landscape and the avarice of those so lucky to be living in it.
The legendary stout and loyal islanders of history, who would rather survive on potato skins than surrender to the enemy, are being dishonoured by a generation who welcomes the enemy with open arms so long as they are armed with the shiny trinkets we covet.
The facile rhetorical response fed by the applause-seeking and mindlessly optimistic politicians is that we are great, that all is well, that we live in a panglossian state, shepherded by a great leader, and the evidence is in the cars and the cranes, the clubs and the wine.
But all is not well.
We remain tribal beyond redemption, dismissive of objectivity, embarrassed for the few who think critically, and isolationist to the point that the universe is bounded in our minds by the even horizon that surrounds us.
We remain colonised in our mind, assigning critical thinking to others. Ours is but to make the most of the way we look in our fortresses, chariots and armour.
We remain unable to distinguish between nation and State, religion and politics, party and government, power and greed, conviction and faith, policy and games.
We remain unable to take a detached perspective, to seek objective truth, to consider alternatives, to imagine a different tomorrow.
Our debate remains facile and predictable, a dialectic that seeks no synthesis, a logic beset by fallacies, a perennial need to personify a view and thereby dismiss it for belonging to another.
We justify our actions by their outcomes, not by their motivation and effects.
We can choose to do what she would not. Pretend there is nothing wrong… or we can choose to pursue and face the truth
We are prepared to lie to ourselves, and enthusiastically believe.
We have forgotten that politics exists to make our lives better, particularly the lives of those who would deride us and criticise us.
We write rules we never mean to obey and make promises we never mean to keep.
We bring up our children in a religion of the self where only their needs count, and everything and everyone else must wait.
We believe in an after-life to punish crimes beyond the reach of the present, but we seek all reward in the here and now.
We dust ourselves off when we fall, and grimace to cover the pain within us until we learn to ignore it even as poison courses our veins.
We failed to deal with the pain of political murder and discrimination; with victimisation and abuse. Instead, in pursuit of the quick-fix of reconciliation, we concocted corresponding crimes in order to justify the real ones.
We never came to terms with the systematic abuse of power of the 1970s and 1980s and we went about profusely apologising for the 1990s and the 2000s when there could be no comparison.
We forgave the lies and the slander of the people who campaigned against EU membership and allowed the chief liars to call the rest of us negative.
We confessed of powerful arrogance before people who would brand traitors those who would oppose them, and now call for mobs in the street to intimidate and harass those of different views.
We apologised for harsh language before those who would call us undemocratic for daring to voice disagreement with a democratically elected government. As if debate, dissent and polemic are not the tools of a functioning democracy.
In the intellectual snobbery of appearing above it all, we sought distance and confused the sharp-tongued sarcasm and acid irony of Daphne Caruana Galizia with the murderous, mindless hate of the little people who openly wished for her death. Until death came, and these petty, small-minded people felt as entitled to celebrate as if the death of a human being could be marked by behaviour akin to an election victory.
Her sadness was not for a party or a leader brought to their knees by defeat. Her sadness was for a country she loved, inhabited by people who would reward those who would rob them; for the embarrassment of sharing an island with such obtuseness, such wilful self-destruction, such gleeful self-hatred.
The call for national unity after her death is the ultimate insult. It is another characteristic attempt to plaster over the wounds she worked so hard to reveal, and for which she ended up giving her life. This is not the time to think like bees, circling inside a hive and controlled by a queen bee who would think for us all. This is the time to assert our individual personalities. A time to voice our fear, anger, hope and uniqueness to show the powerful that we can think for ourselves.
National unity that rests on forgiveness without truth, acceptance without confrontation, silence without thought, is nothing but submission to the intimidation that exploits our national weakness to perpetuate the power of those who would not give it up.
For there to be hope for this nation, a quick-fix constitutional change and the dismissal of some bureaucrats will not even begin to address the deep-set pain that now hurts too much to ignore. Weaning ourselves off the addictions that soothe us will be painful, but if we are to survive as a nation, we must start somewhere.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was not the type of journalist to be happy with just scratching the surface. She looked long and hard at the ugliness within, until she stumbled on the invisible mine that killed her. We can choose to do what she would not. Pretend there is nothing wrong; that politics is for politicians and the reproach of the corrupt must be balanced with the reproach of those who accuse them.
Or we can choose to pursue and face the truth, however unpleasant, and slowly but surely start to heal.