‘God is on the PN’s side?’ That explains a heck of a lot…

Call me a Doubting Thomas as much as you like (I’ve always considered that to be a compliment, myself)… but I wouldn’t have believed it for half a moment, had I not ‘heard it with my own ears’.

But yes: it turns out that Claudette Buttigieg really did become the latest Nationalist Party spokesperson to loudly proclaim that… drums rolling… “Alla Magħna!” [‘God is with us!’]: in what seems to have been the starter-pistol, for the PN’s entire electoral campaign.

Oh, OK: I am well aware that she was only quoting the (somewhat ossified) official PN anthem, which goes something like: “Ejjew Nazzjonalisti! Ejjew bl-eluf minn tagħkom! Ejjew għax Alla magħna, ejjew ħa nirbħu żġur…”

But to properly reflect both the meaning of those words, as well as their tone and overall cultural resonance… the English translation would have to sound like something out of the King James Bible (1611 edition):

“O Come, All Ye [Nationalist] Faithful! Come forth in your untold multitudes! For verily I say unto thee: the Lord is With Us! Arise! For the hour of our final victory is now at hand!” (All sung, by the way, to a tune that sounds suspiciously similar to Romina Power’s 1982 disco-classic, ‘Il Ballo Di Qua[ck] Qua[ck]’…)

Honestly though: don’t these people even realise how hopelessly out of touch with reality they appear… by clinging to such absurdly anachronistic, proto-Fascist, and (quite frankly) embarrassing views of themselves?

And do they not even pause to consider how those words may actually sound: not just to the ears of self-avowed secularists such as myself – who, though we be a small minority, actually have more claim to God’s support, than the PN itself [For as I recall, God Himself did once argue – and I think, rightly – that we should “Give Unto Caesar, That Which Is Caesar’s…”]

… but even to the ears of those Nationalists who actually DO believe that ‘God is (or should be) on their side’: but who then turn around, only to see stark evidence of the contrary, almost everywhere they look?

Nonetheless, I will concede that – ‘ancient’ and ‘mouldy’ though that vision may seem, in the 21st century – it remains the rough equivalent of simply ‘throwing in a Biblical quote’, for dramatic effect…

All the same: it is still how Claudette Buttigieg consciously chose to end that rousing speech of hers… in a thunderous crescendo, that got her audience cheering on their feet. And she even preceded it with that other archaic Nationalist Party battle-cry, ‘Is-Sewwa Jirbah Zgur!’ [‘Truth (or Righteousness) Will Prevail!’]…

… you know: just to leave us in no doubt whatsoever, that the Nationalist Party really does ‘believe’ – to some degree, at least – that it is:

a) aligned with the ‘forces of Good’;

b) pitched in an all-out, Armageddon-style, ‘Final Battle against Evil’, and (more bizarrely still);

c) pre-ordained, by Divine Decree, to actually emerge triumphant [!!!]… even as St Michael is destined to finally crush Satan underfoot, on the Day of Final Judgment itself (as foretold in The Apocalypse, etc.)

Well, what can I say? Psychiatry has come a good long way since the Middle Ages, you know. There is now clinically-approved medication that can be prescribed, for people suffering from such glaring, psychotic delusions…

But if I find all this surprising (and verily, I do)… it is not so much because the PN still clearly believes – in spite of everything – that what it is actually rehearsing for, is not an ‘election’ at all… but rather, a historical re-enactment of the flipping Crusades… a ‘Holy War’ against the ‘Accursed Infidel’… or yet another remake of Ridley Scott’s ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ (‘The Divine Cut’, this time…)

No, what astonishes me more, is that… erm… really, Claudette? ‘God is on the PN’s side’? Erm… since when, exactly? And what makes you so certain, anyway? Reason I ask is that… from where I’m sitting right now, it sure doesn’t look that way, to me.

But let’s take a step back, and examine that quote in its wider context. A few seconds earlier, Claudette Buttigieg had also invited us to ‘open up the newspapers’ – presumably, a reference to our poll last Sunday – and digest the revelation that: yes, actually. The Nationalist Party has managed to claw back around 10,000, of the 46,000 votes it needs to just draw level with the Labour Party (let alone to defeat it outright, in a ‘Battle to End All Battles’…)

But let’s be honest: if that’s the best that the Nationalist Party could achieve, in the near-decade that it has been trying to reduce that deficit – and with ‘God on its side’, no less! – well, it doesn’t exactly say very much for God’s capabilities as a political canvasser, does it?

For as far as I can make out, the Supreme Deity we’re actually talking about here, is surely the same God Almighty who is also credited with (among other achievements) the, um, ‘Creation of Heaven and Earth’…

… and I can just stop there, really. Because pretty much any other ‘divine miracle’ that has ever been attributed to God Almighty – and there are thousands to choose from, in the Scriptures alone… which probably become millions, if you extend the definition of ‘God’ to also include other religions, and other belief-systems…

… all of it would be kind of pointless, really: without the existence of a Universe for them to actually happen in… and without any human beings, to actually believe in them all….

And what: are we to suddenly understand that the same God who created the entire Universe out of, quite literally, ‘Nothing’… not to mention having presumably first created that ‘Nothing’, from which He would later create all the… erm…

.. oh, you get what I mean. Are we to seriously believe that the Judeo-Christian God – whose ‘Infinite Power’ is so utterly unimaginable, that we cannot even begin to describe it in words… yeah, that’s the God I mean – is suddenly no longer capable of even convincing a measly 36,000 Nationalist Party voters, to just go out and… um… vote for their own party in an election?!

What can I say? Times must be hard indeed, if even the Lord of All Creation has been reduced to such a pitiful, powerless state…

But hey! Revelations like this also explain a heck of a lot, you know. For instance, we now know precisely WHY the Nationalist Party keeps finding it so utterly impossible, to ever revert to its pre-2013 electoral standing.

It is not – as I myself once erroneously believed – because of its own failure to ever really convince the electorate that it can still be trusted, as a serious, alternative government-in-waiting…

… oh, no: it’s all God’s fault, naturally! For let’s face it: according to that same anthem, it was clearly God Himself who once assured the Nationalists of their ‘certain victory’ (not just in this election, mind you… but presumably, in all of them since the 1930s). And, well, He hasn’t quite always kept that little ‘promise’ of His… has He now?

Then again, however: it was also the Nationalist Party which committed the original sin… I mean, ‘strategic decision’ to hire God Almighty as its campaign manager.

And if, for whatever reason, God Almighty fails to deliver the goods – be it because He has lost something of His ‘magic touch’, over the long millennia… or, who knows? Because He simply got tired of all the endless bickering… all the counter-productive in-fighting… all the missed opportunities, and all the wasted advice… and in the end, He simply threw up His Holy Arms, and stormed out of Dar Centrali in a Divine Huff…

But none of that really matters, because: just as the PN originally hired God for His services… well, they are still in time to just fire Him, and appoint someone else to take His place…

Hang on, wait. Hasn’t all this already happened? Wasn’t that the whole purpose of appointing another aspiring ‘supreme deity’ – Christian Peregin, this time – as chief Nationalist Party strategist… because he was clearly so much better qualified for that job, than even God Almighty in Person…?

But this only brings me to the most glaring Divine Mystery of them all. For that same argument – ‘Alla Magħna!’ – also explains something else about the PN’s current predicament.

It is not so much that the Nationalist Party is clearly failing to inspire even its own, hardcore grassroots, with all this ‘Jihadist’, ‘God-versus-Evil’ nonsense… it is actually that the PN is failing to inspire voters, precisely BECAUSE of all these same ‘Godly delusions’.

And NOT – lest I be misunderstood – because their own voters have in any way ‘forsaken God’, themselves: quite the other way round, in fact.

Conservative Nationalists may still place their full trust in God; but clearly, not so much in the PN anymore.

And as for the (much smaller) denomination of secularists in that party… well, they’re not exactly going to come flocking back to the fold – all dancing to the tune of ‘Il Ballo di Qua[ck] Qua[ck]’ – simply because ‘God told them to’… now are they?

And if that same old, tired ‘Alla Magħna!’ tune has now clearly started irritating both the ‘Faithful’, and the ‘Faithless’, in more or less equal measure…

I mean, do I honestly need to even continue? Clearly, the time has come to… erm… CHANGE THE FLIPPING TUNE! (There: and to think I could be earning an easy E60K a year, for all this advice I give out for absolutely free…)