John Vassallo last week wrote here about Mussolini’s political philosophy, such as it is, that a chicken will not realise it is being plucked if you remove its feathers one at a time. That is quite obviously a metaphor for the gradual dismantling of rights and freedoms to the point where democracy crashes to loud and enthusiastic applause.

There’s another way to desensitise the chicken to its surroundings and that too is a metaphor for the reality around us. By folding in its habits and in its food ever increasing doses of medication, the chicken unknowingly needs more to have the same effect.

I feel this happens to us all who think we are exceptionally interested in the goings on that have gripped our country. Every time a new scandal is splashed on the front pages of the newspapers we think this must be the time that all the frustration is vindicated. We expect change to follow the shocking scandal as inevitably winter follows autumn. When nothing happens, our instinct to look ahead stops us from even trying to understand how the inevitable was avoided.

We turn our heads instead to a future where there will be harder hitting scandals and even darker secrets are revealed. Then things will be put right at last. There’s always a bigger story coming. True. But what gives us the right to expect the next story will have a different effect? Why should we think there is a tipping point when public opinion turns? Why should we think that shame grips the eternally shameless?

Like John Vassallo’s observations of the slippery slope we all seem to be happily sliding in the wrong direction, this addiction to ever harder fixes of scandal has a tragic futility about it. We collectively resign ourselves to hope, relishing our own helplessness, and investing in the actions of others the agency of change.

The shocking truth is there is more than enough scandal behind us to have brought political upheaval and change many times over. And there is an important lesson from the fact that upheaval never occurred that we are refusing to acknowledge, trapping us in this Groundhog Day.

Journalism cannot alone bring about political change. The facts are not enough to silence lies. Truth is not a devastating weapon that wipes out iniquity and plants the seeds of justice in its place. Whistle-blowers do not scare bosses. Consequence is not outside the control of the corrupt.

In other words history will not jump out of the front page of a newspaper and run through the corridors of power with a scythe.

A political criminal that suspends the morality that plagues the rest of us in order to commit wrongdoing for their own benefit, will not be conditioned by the symptoms of that plague: no shame will force them into hiding, no fear will get them to run, no guilt will bring about admission.

Corruption in politics is no doubt an ethical problem, but ethics alone will not solve it. Corruption in politics is a political problem and requires a political solution. Only politics can change politics and it will only do so if it feels the need to inconvenience itself into taking the risks that come with change.

The fact those risks often do not pay off is shown by the PN’s crushing defeat at the last election and the stunting of political careers of change-mongers, chief among them Simon Busuttil. “Harping on corruption does not win you elections”. That’s a cold shower when you’ve imbibed the maxim ‘do the right thing’.

Now here’s a challenge. For decades our nation watched politics like a spectator sport. Every serve matched by a backhand. Every charge parried. Every deep shot replied to with a counter-attack. Our job was limited to cheering, sometimes shouting angrily, sometimes looking away, like sports supporters from the hooligan, to the yearly subscriber, to the ‘volunteer jockstrap’. But the job of crafting the strategy and securing victory belonged to the professionals.

The ‘despair’ Daphne Caruana Galizia spoke of was the disappointment that the professionals now seem supremely unwilling or depressingly unqualified to drive political change in spite of themselves or each other.

Corruption in politics is a political problem and requires a political solution

She was not recommending we give in to despair. She was pointing it out to chickens used to being plucked one feather at a time distracted by the medication in their food. Relying on politics to solve itself shows us how placidly accepting we are of our fate. We must not be.

We need to stop thinking of the running of our community like a tennis game or a fencing bout where the solution is always and necessarily binary. The wait for the outcome of an election in a drugged hope that the outcome will be what we would expect is the lesser evil is an abdication of our defences as our rights continue to be eaten away between now and then.

In between the stories on today’s front pages of the newspapers and elections so many years away, there’s every day which we can choose to let run us by as immortals would, waiting for better days, or we wake up every morning to fight for better days within our short mortal lives.

History will not jump out of the newspapers into politics. And politics will not chase history if it is comfortable as it is. The conduit for change is civil society: the customer base of the political system. That’s you.

Civil society are the people who need to go to work every day; who are not professionals; who are not journalists; who are not politicians. But who are asked today to do more than watch and hope. They are asked to act to force change in the here and now.

The protesters and the activists that you see are few in number and the few are not obvious victors. But that’s because you’re still thinking in polarised terms. You’re still thinking it’s a confrontation between the few against the many.

Start thinking of this as a movement of change from within. It’s a march that starts with a few people keen to preserve democracy, not just for themselves, but for you who are still indifferent if not downright sceptical or cynical.

Civil society does not need to win elections. It is not encumbered by the horrific advice that moaning about corruption and wrongdoing would not win it an election. Civil society can continue to insist on distinguishing right from wrong, annoying as that may be for a chicken excited by its own nudity. Being ‘annoying’ for civil society is an achievement, it’s their good deed for the day.

Its job is to arrest the government’s encroachment on rights, pushing back on the onslaught. It may be armed with bows and arrows against lightning. But it is there and being there is the beginning.

Because, you see, what the political class has been waiting all this time is for civil society to give up and go away. The fact that it has not, has already started turning the tables.

You can see it in the eyes of the corrupt. It’s a familiar feeling. You know you’ve seen it before. They are desperate.