I think that there are moments in the recent history of the Western world where everyone remembers where they were when they happened.

In 1997, when we got fragments of the news that Diana Princess of Wales had died, I was in Xlendi playing outside with my sister while my mother washed my grandmother’s old, brown Cortina.

Summer was coming to its lazy close and the air was thick with heat and dust much like it is on the day I’m writing this. No one on earth could have guessed that the most photographed woman in the world was going to meet such an untimely and horrific demise so far away from home.

My mother, happily washing the car, had no idea that her father was terminally ill and that it would be the last summer she would share with him. I think it was James Joyce who wrote that people can die, even on Tuesdays.

Three years later, we watched in horror as the Twin Towers were reduced to a pile of metallic rubble and smoke. Sitting on the purple, red and blue sofa of a beloved family friend who was keeping an eye on my sisters and I over summer, we sat in numb horror, transfixed, unable to change the channel. Unable to look away. I felt scared for what this would mean for the world but most of all, I was confused, confused that anyone could do something like this to people they had never seen, never met, never spoken to.

This week, I was gripped by a similar horror, albeit on a smaller scale, as I watched the Amazon burn. It’s strange to feel sorrow for a place you have never known, yet for me, the Amazon forest was always one of those places which felt vast, indomitable and, well, eternal. The obvious knee jerk reaction was: why isn’t anything been done to quash the fires?

And then the rage began, a rage I still haven’t been able to control. A rage from the realisation that President Jair Bolsonaro was not only doing nothing to help the situation but that it was his plan all along to play the fiddle while his country’s forests burned.

While all of us were scrambling to raise awareness and donate whatever extra cents we could spare, this rude little man was refusing G7 assistance and claiming that he was doing so because he was expecting an apology from French President Emmanuel Macron for his ‘colonialist’ mindset. Less than 24 hours ago, reports confirmed that he of the equally fragile ego, President Donald Trump, also did not agree to the G7 Aid package. Maybe he was still miffed that he couldn’t buy Greenland.

All we need is Boris Johnson casually taking a photo toasting marshmallows at the edge of the disaster for this unholy trifecta to be complete. Pity neither Trump or Bolsonaro are probably going to be around to see the full results of the carnage they have not only allowed on their watch but condoned.

My message to everyone else today is a simple one: stop voting for corrupt, greedy and downright stupid people. If you’re too ignorant to be able to tell the difference between a valid candidate and a fool in an ill-fitting suit, educate yourselves.

Whatever you choose, your children will pay the price.