“The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.”

— Harlan Ellison

“In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that He did not also limit his stupidity.”<$>

— Konrad Adenauer<$>W<$>HEN it comes to their always shifting positions on the issues, politicians the world over are renowned for tailoring ethics and principles to suit whatever happens to be in fashion this year. Bermudian politicians, though, have a unique capacity to radically tailor their memories as well. They can even remember things that never happened if maintaining the Party Line necessitates the official version of events be amended. Or even completely rewritten.

The results can be baffling for those of us who are not schooled in such self-deluding historical revisionism. Baffling and, at times, downright terrifying. Indeed, now not only is dirt being swept under the official red carpet laid out in the Cabinet Office but whole swathes of objective reality are disappearing beneath its threadbare nape as well.

Recently a Government flack came out with a self-congratulatory piece of propaganda so very disorienting and dishonest it was reminiscent of the false news manufactured by ruling cliques in Stalinist societies to buffer their populations from real news that would only further depress and antagonise them.

Instead of some incredible but non-existent missile test or production target, he extolled the incredible but non-existent benefits of a Hotel Concessions Act midwived by David Allen which has added not one new room to Bermuda’s diminished stock but which has allowed for the construction of hundreds of executive condominiums on land once earmarked exclusively for tourism.

Tellingly, tourism’s recent, very real successes under Dr. Ewart Brown went entirely unmentioned, suggesting — again in small-scale Stalinist style — the Minister’s deviationist tendencies from what are deemed to be the Progressive Labour Party norm still make him a figure of both envy and fear in the inner circle; his deviations, of course, largely take the form of a polished, business-like approach to public affairs, an approach that only serves to highlight the inadequacies of his colleagues. Jealousy rather than differing philosophies most likely led to Dr. Brown being deemed a non-person in this latest propaganda screed.

Similarly, while falsely claiming credit for drawing new re/insurance start-ups to the island (Osama Bin Laden and Hurricane Katrina actually deserve the dubious credit for causing the seismic 2001 and 2005 spikes in off-shore sector activity), the Government’s unofficial press agent goes on to blame an influx of new International Business employees for derailing its housing policies.

Never mind that his shrilly xenophobic and chauvinistic tone actually contradicts the claim that his is a business-friendly Government. The fact is that an ongoing private sector construction boom is putting roofs over the heads of these well-paid newcomers. The public sector, by way of contrast, has been negligent to the point of criminality when it comes to addressing the housing needs of underprivileged Bermudians. For most Bermudians the extent of this Government’s concern with affordable housing began and ended with the looting of the Bermuda Housing Corporation coffers.

But despite what you might think you remember about the BHC debacle that unsavoury episode never happened either, according to the Government’s rewrite man.

According to him, the Government received a clean bill of health after both the Police and Director of Public Prosecutions reviewed all of the evidence. Not so. The affair was deemed unethical rather than illegal only because those who drafted Bermuda’s antiquated corruption laws never anticipated wholesale pillaging of public funds on the scale involved in the BHC affair.

Perhaps aware that early 21st-century Bermuda is increasingly seen as a place where corruption, lawlessness and taxpayer-subsidised self-indulgence are drinking companions — and trust in public institutions is becoming as very scarce as surrey-fringed taxis — the politicians who presided over this precipitous decline have decided if they simply deny what’s occurred then it will be as if none of it ever happened.

That’s not true, of course. Perhaps this tinkering with the historical record has some therapeutic value for the politicians. Maybe it’s a perverse type of negative reinforcement that boosts their confidence by removing all of the missteps and misdeeds from the chronology of events. But<$> attempting to write certain events out of the history books isn’t the same thing as eliminating them from history. And while the politicians can deny events from even the very recent past without compunction or conscience, it’s difficult for voters to overlook the sometimes monumental consequences of their inaction and, in some cases, inadequacy.It’s not just that the current Government has made a lot of mistakes during its eight years of on-the-job training. Mistakes are an occupational hazard in politics but lessons can be learned from them by even the most incorrigible hacks if they don’t want to be pink slipped at the next election.

No, it’s the fact this Government has made a lot mistakes but stubbornly insists they never, ever happened. If they deny reality enough, they seem to think, that will somehow make things right. But given this Government is led by a Premier who has always believed a half-truth is better than no truth at all, perhaps this ongoing retreat into imagination should have been anticipated.

Attempting to repudiate unhappy realities by engaging in compensatory fantasies is a hardly a potent formula for good and stable governance. Reality, as some wise soul said, is that which, even when you don’t believe in it, refuses to go away.Certainly<$> some troubling social realities are now encroaching on this Government’s delusional comfort zone. Housing and all manner of associated woes stemming from the ever widening gulf between Bermuda’s privileged and underprivileged need to be addressed with pragmatic policies, not blame-evading, truth-denying. propaganda. Yet high-octane propaganda is all this Government seems capable of producing.One of the chief qualifications for success in politics is said to be the ability to foretell what will happen tomorrow, next month, and next year —- and then to explain afterwards why it didn’t happen. Bermuda’s leadership, by way of contrast, thinks it can brazen its way through by claiming everything it foretold did in fact come to pass even when that manifestly was not the case.

Illusions commend themselves to us, someone said, because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. So we must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed all to hell. The Bermuda’s Government’s multiple illusions are even now on an unalterable collision course with just such a jagged outcrop of reality.

Tim Hodgson