Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1011650
25 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 AUGUST 2018 OPINION make sense against the backdrop of that grotesquely anachronism, which holds that one side is by defini- tion 'morally superior' to the other. I mean... do I even need to spell out the danger in that sort of reasoning? The same blind faith, coupled with the same self-righteousness, has been responsible for the some of the greatest and most reprehensible evils ever perpetrated in human history. It reminds me of the atti- tude of the Spanish conquis- tadores in South America during the 16th century: who baptised natives before slaughtering them, to as- suage their conscience that the ghastly atrocities they were committing somehow enjoyed the blessing and ap- proval of God himself. Not to play the part of spokesman for God Al- mighty, or anything – it's a bit difficult, when you don't actually believe in his exist- ence – but I somehow doubt an all-loving, all-merciful deity would have shared their violent enthusiasm for torture and murder. Especially when you consider that the Aztecs themselves had used much the same reasoning to justify their own appalling appetite for human sacrifice; and, indeed, when every other atrocity ever committed in the name of religion, any- where in the world, always came complete with the same proviso: i.e., it was the 'will of God', performed by the ruthless, homicidal arm of a bunch of cut-throat brigands. Such, I fear, is the conse- quence of simply assuming that you are always right, where others are always wrong. It leads to the automatic justification of any amount of crime or wrong-doing... on the basis that, in the big- ger picture, the 'end' always justifies the 'means'. Applied to this scenario, and... well, I suppose it all depends on how much 'benefit of the doubt' you are still willing to bestow upon a discredited political party. Did the PN genuinely believe the truth in the Egrant al- legation, when it so unwisely hitched its entire fate to that one issue? (And if so: on what basis, exactly? Proof? There wasn't any.) Or did it just shrug its shoulders and say: "Who the heck even cares if it's true or not? The only important thing is that the 'forces of good' – i.e., us – overthrow the 'forces of evil' – i.e., them – in a final, Armagge- don-style confrontation"? Now that the dust from that conflagration is begin- ning to settle, we can all see that it doesn't really matter which interpretation you choose. Both, in the end, are under- pinned by the same delusion: if you are firmly, unwaver- ingly convinced that you are performing God's will on earth, you will always find an excuse – no matter how preposterous – to justify the evil that you do. The only difference made by the enquiry inquiry is that we can all now see – or at least, those of us who take their blinkers off for long enough to actually look – that it is, in fact, a delusion. The 'good versus evil' motif had been stretched far, far beyond the strain it could possibly ever hope to bear... and two weeks ago, it finally snapped. It's like the stroke of midnight in the garden of good and evil: that fleeting moment in time, where both those incompatible forces somehow manage to briefly co-exist. Before that mo- ment, it might even have made a certain sense to align oneself with 'good' against an imaginary 'evil'. Afterwards, however, to continue clinging to that delusion becomes a self- defeating absurdity. If what we were fighting all along really was a 'battle between good and evil'... and if, as Eddie's mantra reminds us, 'the truth will always prevail'... well, who can now claim to have been on the side of 'good', and who on the side of 'evil'? Luckily for the people who would likely be too 'ashamed' to answer that today: don't worry, you don't have to. Egrant answered it for us all: the stark truth is that neither side can ever claim to occupy the moral high ground again. It's like the stroke of midnight in the garden of good and evil: that f leeting moment in time, where both those incompatible forces somehow manage to brief ly co- exist evil