Contrary to what everyone has come to accept, democracy in its purest form wasn’t meant for everyone. Only educated men over 18 whose parents were both citizens could vote, and you’d have to be a male over 30 to be a juror. Slaves and women were completely disregarded because, well, not only were they seen as inferior beings, but more importantly, they hadn’t received an education. No Ancient Greek would have dreamt of giving a 16-year-old a vote, and who can blame them?

My main preoccupations when I was 16 were boy troubles, alcohol, partying, worrying about passing exams and hair dye (not necessarily in that order). My world view was only just opening, and I could barely decide what to eat at McDonalds, let alone make big decisions that would affect the rest of my life.

In 2018, we unanimously passed a law for 16-year-olds to vote, despite the fact that they are considered to be too young to drink, smoke, drive or enter most contracts. And indeed, why wouldn’t we, given how much weight we give to the superficial trappings of democracy while disregarding everything that should go with it?

Responsibility, a desire for a common good independent of self-interest, an unbiased view of those contesting based on critical thinking, real information rather than skewed fodder fed by the ever present, ever looming party machines are all things needed for a democracy to work effectively, and yet all of these and much more seem to have been woefully misplaced in our tiny kingdom.

We gnash our teeth and constantly invoke freedom of speech while many still condone the macabre murder of a journalist

Armed with next to no thinking skills, an aversion to asking questions that count, and an education which many times has not helped to penetrate the layers and layers of ignorance abundantly supplied by our close-knit families, many people here resort to saying whatever they fancy, completely disregarding the inconsistencies and the potholes in their thought processes.

We claim to be Catholic, yet we allow people to die at sea without so much as batting an eyelid, and justify ourselves unabashedly by sharing far-right-wing videos that would make Hitler blush.

We gnash our teeth and constantly invoke freedom of speech while many still condone the macabre murder of a journalist. We keep building on virgin land and demolishing our houses to make more room for flats yet we put up pictures of us eating a kisra hobż biz-żejt next to a dead tree in a car park, like we were in some Frans Sammut novel from the 1970s.

At no point does anyone seem to question the contradictory nature of their beliefs and actions or words. To the ordered mind, this constant contrariness spells out absolute chaos and disbelief, yet everyone else seems to get it like they are in some strange cult that you need a secret key to join. If you call anyone out on their hogwash (of which there is plenty), you’re labelled a traitor, and that’s pretty much the end of that.

I’d like to say that things will change, but when you have someone arguing with you that the Birdlife sanctuary should be opened to hunters it becomes harder and harder to keep the faith. Few, too few are shouting in the desert about the need for us to open our minds, and most of them are swiftly targeted and loaded with hatred.

We have been taught the hard way what it means to have a voice in our society: ugly enough in a male, unthinkable in a female. History will not remember us kindly, but it’s okay; many of us won’t be reading those books anyway.