I was having a heated exchange with a friend the other day on the now ubiquitous subject of vaccines. We had been at it for a good 15 minutes when he said something that I have been thinking about ever since. In what was the heat of the moment, he told me that there is no such thing as the truth; only people’s opinions and thoughts.

It was a simple line, however, in its simplicity lies the current problem that we are facing with regard to everything from politics to climate change to embracing simple fact: if we have come to a point where we are unable to agree that the truth matters, or that the truth even exists, then how are we to progress as a race?

This week, the editors of the world-renowned journal Scientific American uploaded a statement online. For the first time in their 175-year-old history, they will be endorsing a presidential candidate and it’s not Donald Trump. They write: “The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the US and its people – because he rejects evidence and science.”

This is what it has come to: scientific journals now feel the need to come out and ask people to not vote for someone who has cost thousands of people their lives and who openly states that climate change is a hoax.

But why even go as far as the US? After we were told that “the waves are only in the sea”, our COVID-19 numbers have shot up to heights we couldn’t even perceive a few months ago.

The scientific advice had already been doled out when we kept inviting more people to our makeshift party island, yet the powers that be kept telling us that the war had been won and people chose to believe that over the truth. Why? Because it was more comfortable and convenient to do so.

Is it too much to ask the people we vote for to think of the future?- Anna Marie Galea

Even now, as more and more dirt comes out of the carpet with the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case and more and more evidence shows how people who occupied the highest positions in this country were implicated, many continue to say that it can’t be possible because the people they voted for aren’t liars. At this point, it would seem that it wouldn’t matter if Keith Schembri came out admitting that he had a hand in it while dancing the rumba in a banana skirt because there would still be a substantial amount of the population who would make excuses for him. How can that be right?

And as for rain and flash floods, don’t even get me started. I don’t know who advises our ministers, but maybe, just maybe, they can employ someone who sat through at least one geography lesson. Our land has long been sagging under the excessive weight of overbuilding and roads which are meant to control the flow of our ever-increasing traffic are continuously being built over fields and valleys with apparently little regard to what will happen once the rain starts. Is it too much to ask the people we vote for to think of the future rather than keeping voters happy until the next election?

Question things, trust your own judgement enough to accept what is happening in front of your own eyes instead of believing what you’ve been told by people with their own agendas. If something doesn’t make sense, ask yourself why it doesn’t. The truth matters and it should matter to you to find out what it is. Surely, we can agree on that. Or can we?