I don’t begrudge fans of the Labour Party a day and a half of celebrations. The coffins and the donkeys are silly but there’s nothing wrong with being silly once in a while.
God knows I was out there after the 1998 elections, and again in 2003. I was of that age when a street party in broad daylight was not something you passed. And if I may add something in indulgent self-justification, both those times I wasn’t just celebrating a political party winning. I really wanted Malta to join the EU and those two elections needed to happen to reach that ambition.
But there’s silly and there’s silly.
It is all fine to insist we should resist the temptation of being elitist. We are reminded not to look down on people we disagree with or call them names for taking a decision we would not have. Fine.
But I will look down on people who drive a truck into a carcade. Since this happened to one very specific truck and since the matter is being investigated by the police (I can only hope), I cannot infer the driver of the truck may have been unqualified, less than careful, or not altogether sober. Instead, we have to wonder if a pregnant woman in another car who may have had nothing to do with the celebrations should have rather stayed inside as the roads were taken over by inebriated thugs.
I will look down at people firing emergency flares in the air in built up areas because it’s fun, clearly oblivious of gravity. They damaged property and could have hurt people but they couldn’t care less.
I will look down at that particularly dull Cro-Magnon man who set fire to his wife and child when he fired a celebratory rocket in his car. What the fuck did he expect? That Robert Abela would make him invincible and his child immune to fire? Ġaħan had the intellectual consideration of harming himself rather than others with his pathological stupidity.
If I’m not made of better stuff than these particularly stupid eejits I couldn’t respect myself or trust myself bringing up children. There are times when it is entirely desirable to belong to an elite, an elite so exclusive as to include all those people celebrating Labour’s victory without setting their own children on fire.