I don’t know how many of you have read John Milton’s Paradise Lost but there is a particular line in it about when the Devil falls from grace where he boldly states: “Evil be thou my Good.”

 I often think of this specific line when I read about the latest state of affairs on the island. It’s like we are all expected to accept the newest scandal or issue and pretend that it’s not happening, like being asked to smile and fake enjoyment while in an awful situation. Failure to do so gets you branded as negative, or, as we saw this week, extremist.

The rape of our island is very well-catalogued: there are photos, articles, permit approvals that should have never taken place and, yet, despite what is literally staring us in the face and choking our lungs, we keep being invited to look away.

Moviment Graffitti goes to Comino and removes deckchairs off public land; we discover days later who those deckchairs belong to; none of us is shocked; nothing happens. A few days after, reports are published that a Gozitan developer has made another ODZ land grab: none of us is shocked; nothing happens. It’s a rinse and repeat process that happens every few days and, then, some people have the audacity to call those who refuse to look away “extremists”.

We might as well have ‘Conform or die’ added to our flag instead of the George Cross- Anna Marie Galea

So, pray, tell, what is the alternative? Are we meant just to sit around and let more and more of our land be exploited while smiling serenely? Am I meant not to point a bloodied finger in the direction where this is taking place? What’s the plan here? I’m honestly interested to know. Then again, inconvenient people have never really been welcomed by our society.

We might as well have ‘Conform or die’ added to our flag instead of the George Cross. We could even change our national anthem to some kind of techno version of “If you can’t beat them, join them” and play it instead of ‘Sweet Caroline’ at weddings. The sky is the limit when you have a job you’re in no way qualified for and no one will report you for not doing it.

We have dialogued and dialogued and dialogued and it has gotten us precisely nowhere. Truly, what is there left to discuss when even the authorities assigned to protect us seem to be doing the opposite? Ultimately, all dialogue does in this country is put a target on your back that the vast majority will gladly shoot arrows at. Everyone needs a scapegoat, after all.

It remains a source of bafflement to me, though, how people can be so openly complacent about the very powerful continuing to rob them. I suppose the real question I should be asking is: what are they getting out of it?

On and on, the list of transgressions against our land goes. How do people not blame the politicians on both sides of the House that have allowed this to happen repeatedly? And, instead of everyone taking to the streets, they march on as if they were asleep.

Talk is cheap when your actions don’t match your words. No, no, better to leave this earth labelled a negative extremist by those who refuse to see beyond the ends of their noses than live a comfortable life knowing that I was quietly complicit in the destruction of my home.