Sent in by someone known to me.

Sitting in an airport on my way to Malta I noticed one thing in my recent weeks of travel.

We are so poor, we are such a poor country, and it has nothing to do with wealth, it has nothing to do with the money we have in our pocket or the massive surplus that our country is making or isn’t making. We suffer poverty of an entirely different nature. We are told repeatedly that our culture is one of acceptance and inclusion, accepting all those who come to live with us and being a hospitable nation.

We are always told that the Maltese “Għandhom qalbhom kbira” yet when it comes to practice this just means that we are happy to have our photo taken with the President during the mutated and twisted holiday fundraising for those who need better treatment, those who need to be sent abroad for medical attention, towards those who need help to live a decent life. We are told we are a fantastic nation and then for the rest of the year, we do our best to steal from, to take from and to destroy each other.

Having spent time abroad, I notice the volunteers on a Sunday walking the street with their kids collecting trash, feeding the homeless, caring for their parks. Simply people being a community, not individuals posting about their Sunday lunch with their perfect family, in their perfect life, on their perfectly curated social media timeline.

I noticed that people do not have to have a car to live a comfortable life, because the road is made and tailored for cyclists, for pedestrians. I noticed that traffic jams are a once in a while thing, not an every hour issue. People do not believe that they have the right of the road, but rather the privilege of using the road. People understand that they must share the space with many others.

So yes, we are a poor country because all we care about is how “my” life can be better, and how “I” can have a better standard of living and how “I” can evade the law.

We are poor because we no longer have a sense of community, we do not believe a community should be a multicultural, multiethnic, multifaceted society. Rather we believe that everyone should think and act as we do, and we expect the worst out of everyone rather than the best out of everyone. We have become a country that glorifies those that have managed to obtain the ultimate levels of mutated sense of self. Those who steal from us our future, our taxes, and our livelihood. While telling us that it is our fault that we are not enjoying the Golden age that has come to Malta. The golden age that does not exist for those who are not able to keep their head down, and not complain.

So dear activist, our leaders tell us it is our fault that we are in such a country with a collapsing economy, a collapsing sense of society and a collapsing sense of right and wrong.