At every end of year it is customary to remember the names of departed public figures and celebrities. But we should also spend a few minutes reflecting on the words and terms that have left us because, having spent years of public service clarifying the world for us, they have become so misused that they now mean everything and nothing.
On the international scene, one casualty has been the term ‘political responsibility’. In the UK, The Guardian newspaper has recently commented that the weakness of the Theresa May government has seen ministers who have become unsackable, despite having ministerial results (say, in transport), that would previously have seen them resign on their own accord if only as a matter of honour.
Meanwhile, an incompetent like Boris Johnson continued to serve out his term as Foreign Secretary – until he resigned at the moment of his choosing – despite speaking like a hooligan on several delicate issues.
In the US, a partial government shutdown – declared by politicians who cannot bring themselves to agree on certain key campaign issues – has meant that some government salaries will not be paid until the impasse is solved. This will affect, for example, employees of the Department of Homeland Security, who will in practice be ‘volunteers’ while working to protect the country.
Funnily enough, though, the same politicians who provoked the shutdown will still have their salaries paid.
Against the obvious narrow self-interests dominating the Brexit debate and US politics in the age of Trump, it will be difficult for the term ‘political responsibility’ to be used with a straight face in the new year. No such problem for Malta, given that the term has long been mummified.
The year has also seen the rise of secular fundamentalism across the political spectrum in Euro-America. Fundamentalism makes a fetish of the literal meaning of words – insisting on a single meaning for words that have various shades of significance. As a result, the meaning of words fades when their rich evocativeness dies.
On the political right, we have seen the term ‘nationalism’ and ‘national loyalty’ interpreted in the narrowest of senses, with the ironic result that people get called traitors if they refuse to equate a partisan interest, let alone a particular politician’s reputation, with the national interest.
But something similar has occurred on the liberal side of the spectrum, with an insistence on a particular definition of a term with a broader range of meanings.
In the US, for example, it is true that Trump promised a ‘wall’ on the country’s southern border; but it was fairly evident that what he meant was a secure physical barrier. Now, his adversaries in the media are saying that this was another of his lies – given that in some places it appears he will be building something that is more like a fence.
Now, it is true that Trump has a casual, quasi-accidental relationship with the truth. But, on this point, it sounds as though he is being criticised for having offered someone a bench to sit on when he had actually promised a chair.
The impact of such criticism can only benefit Trump. It’s his adversaries who will seem to be playing with words. And it suits Trump to have his adversaries seem not much better than him when it comes to being truthful in spirit.
The BBC has fallen into the same trap. There is much about the government of Victor Orban in Hungary that is unsavoury. But to accuse that government – as one BBC interviewer did – of being against ‘diversity’ because Orban declared that he is against ‘multiculturalism’ is to engage in verbicide.
Diversity is a value; multiculturalism is a policy meant to promote a particular kind of diversity
Diversity is a value; multiculturalism is a policy meant to promote a particular kind of diversity. Just as someone can be in favour of social equality without necessarily championing nationalisation of industry, it is possible to be in favour of diversity while championing a national charter of shared values instead of a multicultural policy as it has been practised in (say) the UK.
Once more, one of the first results of verbicide is ironic, for it permits Orban and his ministers to claim that their paranoid view of Europe is justified given that a major news organisation is trying to get the country to adopt a particular policy, instead of respecting a shared value.
Malta has seen its share of useful words fade away this year. One such word is ‘proof’.
Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri were found to have identified, through their financial adviser, a secret company, 17 Black, as an important source of income for their own respective secret Panama company.
But they and their apologists insist that this is not proof of corruption. Now, of course, only a court can decide if it constitutes court-grade proof that determines criminal responsibility. But it is proof of political irresponsibility – given all you need of that is the international public reaction to such news.
Instead, we are regaled with such gems as needing to see if such behaviour might have an alternative reasonable, honest explanation – without the slightest hint of what such an explanation could be.
If such an explanation were possible, then no verbicide would have taken place. But no explanation has in fact been offered. So ‘proof’ has been rendered meaningless.
Another word whose soul has faithfully departed is ‘private’. It was privacy that Joseph Muscat invoked when he said that he wasn’t going to comment on Neville Gafà’s Libyan adventure.
Now, privacy is an idea whose political meaning is that a government should not interfere in your private life. The Gafà adventure was the opposite: a private individual, employed as a public servant, interfered in the Maltese State’s foreign policy.
The Libyan government clearly believed his visit was official – so Gafà either misled the Libyans or the Maltese public. Either way, no privacy was involved – only meddling in official Maltese relations with an important neighbour, with possibly significant repercussions for Maltese national and commercial interests in that country.
If the meaning of the term ‘private’ is deadened, then of course so is that of its counterpart, ‘public’. No surprise that the public interest is often invoked when what is meant is, in fact, private commercial interests.
But all is not bleak. There is a time for dying and a time to be born. The shameless behaviour of many public servants may well have killed off a word like gravitas. But I, for one, see a bright future in 2019 for its adopted children – gravytas and gravitass.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece