If I were to apply an extended metaphor to the way that much of the Maltese population appears to act, I’d describe them as rebellious teenagers who just want to bunk off school and get high at the swings. Our way of reacting to discipline, authority and rules is infantile; our excuses for not doing what has been amply proven as best for us (with good reason) sloppy and laden with unbridled, childish emotion.
Even while you’re reading the badly strung comments under articles, you can almost hear the stamping of feet and the sticking up of middle fingers. This week brought with it two prime examples of this which, to be honest, still have me completely confounded.
A couple of days ago, Floriana was awarded the local football championship cup by default. I don’t follow football, but from what I can gather this was a momentous event or at least I hope it was, since dozens of supporters decided to break the current regulations and gathered together in a sweaty crowd. It was incredible to behold fully-grown men jumping up and down on cars like something out of Jurassic Park.
It didn’t seem to occur to anyone there that their chosen mode of celebration could cost people lives. They wanted their party and they were going to be damned if such a small, insignificant thing like a global pandemic was going to stop them.
Truth, justice and rules are for losers and spoilsports who are out to steal our joy- Anna Marie Galea
To quote the golden lyric spoken by the teenagers of quite a few generations, it was their party and they were going to cry, and possibly die, if they wanted too. It’s been a few days and the rest of us are still waiting with not so bated breath for fines to be handed out and apologies to be made. Will we ever see them? Probably not.
The second incident stemmed from the first. An individual decided to make hay while the sun shone and put together a video of the Floriana celebrations with an unrelated video of a policewoman dancing in uniform to commemorate the fact that the police didn’t act on seeing the celebrations happen right under their noses.
The funny video was shared hundreds of times and the policewoman was rightfully called in by her superiors. However, as usual, people chose to disregard the very obvious issue that she was in uniform when she filmed the video and instead, started to go on and on about the fact that it was ridiculous that such a fuss was being made.
We can all agree that the police do have better things to pursue but since they don’t seem to be making much headway on the things which matter, they might as well have a serious conversation with someone about why what you do when you’re wearing a uniform is important.
Of course, as usual, all those involved in these incidents were made out to be latter-day social media martyrs.
In our little corner of the world, it doesn’t seem to matter which rules you break as long as you’re doing it in the name of having a good time or making people smile. Truth, justice and rules are for losers and spoilsports who are out to steal our joy.
Uniforms mean nothing and we have actually made it a point to eliminate them across board wherever possible.
Realism is for the negative. I thought that the promise of death would slow us down, sober us up, help us to grow into adults but, as usual, I underestimated my fellow countrymen. Let’s party till we drop.