Zeng Guofan, the famed Qing scholar and general, said that only three basic precursors were needed for social chaos to reign supreme. The first is that it will no longer matter what is wrong or right; people won’t be able to tell black from white. Good people will become more humble and polite; useless people will become more arrogant and bolder in doing what they want. And, finally, after the problem reaches a critical level, everything will be rationalised and silently accepted. People will be indifferent and insincere responses that make no sense will be given to every issue.

Now, I need you to go through those three precursors and tell me that this doesn’t literally read like a handbook for the state of this country and the fatigue that everyone feels in the face of so many unresolved, tangled scandals.

Let’s take this week, for example. Eight years almost to the day after murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia first made a cryptic reference to 17 Black, a plethora of people including Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri, Yorgen Fenech, OEGP Ltd managing director Mario Pullicino, former Electrogas director Paul Apap Bologna, former partner Nexia BT Karl Cini and former Nexia BT owner Brian Tonna have finally been arraigned.

At this point, several of the people mentioned above might as well pitch a tent outside the law courts next to Caruana Galizia’s memorial and sleep there; however, we have yet to see any justice.

We have become so accustomed to the legal train barely squeaking along and nothing being resolved that this week’s news barely left a dent on social media. I speak to people constantly about current affairs and, after conversing with several of my friends about the subject, it became abundantly clear that no one really thinks anything will come out of this. It’s been too long; it’s gotten too convoluted; there’s been too much time to bury people and evidence and, worse of all, our institutions are too weak and slow to inspire confidence.

This country is a poorly written Kafka novel where the only ones who can see things clearly are driven mad by the complacency of everyone else. Nothing comes out of delaying justice other than allowing wickedness to thrive but we can barely agree on what evil is in this country.

And speaking of truth telling, is no one bothered and worried by the very obvious campaign being waged against lawyer Jason Azzopardi? Does no one see him being stalked and think of the last prominent person who was pursued, demonised and dehumanised in this country and how that ended? Or has it become okay and institutionalised to threaten and make unsafe anyone you disagree with? Clearly, we don’t learn.

We are living in a post-truth world where the idiots with the orangest tans and the biggest microphones keep being handed gold-plated soapboxes but, in the end, when the clown costumes come off, all you’re left with is the naked, ugly reality of things.

Our institutions can’t keep lagging for decades. The next time you feel tired and indifferent, ask yourself in whose interest it works that you are so exhausted. Ask yourself if this social chaos is what you want.

A country asleep is a country ripe for attack. And the worst attacks almost never come from the outside.