We are not powerless

We are not powerless. Unless, of course, we choose to be.

This topic and the debates around it are likely to assume even greater importance in 2026, given the current sorry state of Malta and, more importantly the even sorrier state of the wider world.

We enter this new year with widespread feelings of pessimism and even despair. On most of the big-ticket issues, locally and internationally, we are clearly not making the needed progress; in fact the opposite is frequently true. On so many fundamental issues – democracy, human rights, climate and human development - we are going backwards.

In this context, the dominant sentiment appears to be that there is little or nothing we can do. We feel powerless, defeated before we even start. That pessimistic disposition is widespread here in Xaghra, in Gozo, across the water in Malta and, most especially in the wider world beyond.

But are we really powerless? So we have no agency or capability in these matters? Are we just pawns in others’ agendas? Do we have no role to play, and is this the message we want to pass on to our kids and grandkids?

For example, we constantly complain about the cranes, the concrete, the corruption and the construction mayhem that currently blights every corner of these islands. We complain about the “tycoons” who orchestrate the madness and about the politicians who fully facilitate them. We bemoan the inevitable consequences of Malta’s “overdevelopment miracle”. We throw our arms in the air insisting we are powerless.

And then we robotically go and vote for them (in large numbers), do unquestioned business with them, use their restaurants and hotels, fete them in our villages and feasts and all too often fawn over them. Watching the demeanour of many of my fellow Gozitans when in their presence is dispiriting to say the least.

In short, we conspire to make ourselves powerless individually and collectively. When confronted by their greed, their manipulations and their lies we shrivel.

And they know it and relentlessly abuse the social license we so carelessly give them.

To take another example – the agendas, behaviours and values being peddled by the Trump-led gang, their enablers and apologists. Most of us recognise what is underway – the modernisation of in-your-face, old-style robber imperialism and the promotion of mafia politics and crude ugliness.

We know the beast, as we have been in its company before, many times.

If asked, most of us would deem ourselves powerless in the face of this beast. But are we? Is there nothing we can do to assert our disgust and our rejection of them, their racism and their crude violence and the associated deaths?

By pandering to them, by cooperating with them, by grovelling in front of them, by praising them and by massaging their inflated egos, we again actively disempower ourselves. (I won’t be so rude as to mention that national embarrassment of the Nobel nomination, a whole new level of national embarrassment).

If we agree that the issue is not just the individual activities (albeit violent, criminal and illegal) of the Trump gang and its enforcers but amounts to something bigger - a major shift away from socially agreed core values and legal norms and a crude agenda to force others to conform. If we agree that every time these agreed core values and legal norms are ignored, ridiculed or diminished, so too are we, our principles and our social cohesion.

By refusing to ally ourselves with these attacks and with the asocial mores they represent and to do so publicly is to resist and to reject powerlessness and acquiescence. Becoming a fellow traveller with a Trump inspired agenda is to collude in our own powerlessness.

By contrast, insisting on the importance and relevance of key values (and practices) e.g. democracy, human rights, the rule of law, equality, diversity (and yes, inclusion) is to assert our own agency in the face of aggression and intimidation.

To insist on human dignity, respect, responsibility and solidarity (especially with those who are marginalised and disadvantaged) is not a sign of weakness but of its opposite.

To assert, for example, that multilateralism (with all its failings and flaws) as embodied in the UN Charter is the only realistic and practical disposition for inhabitants of one of the world’s tiniest nations is to declare agency. It is a statement of clarity and moral strength, not one of weakness and powerlessness.

Adding our voice to that of others publicly resisting autocracy whether from Putin, Netanyahu or Trump is to again assert agency.

If the current agenda of “might is always right” and superpower aggression is not challenged and rejected at every level of society, then the fabric of our societies unravels. To assert powerlessness in the face of aggression (or to attempt to match it in how ever miniscule a scale) is to invite lawlessness, chaos and conflict.

Surely one of the key lessons of history is that if there is no pushback, no resistance and, most importantly of all, no alternative to insatiable demands for more power and wealth from the already wealthy and powerful, the results will be devastating for all of us.

The vital necessity of rejecting this “powerlessness” trope could not be clearer as illustrated by the latest Trump interview asserting “I don’t need international law” and that the only limit on his power is “his own morality”.

We are only powerless if we believe ourselves to be, whether here in Malta or in that wider world.