Every so often, some childish fighter pilot climbs up in the sky and, instead of behaving according to the rulebooks, wastes time and energy drawing puerile, penile stuff in the sky for onlookers to gaze at and be impressed – and downright disgusted at such airborne porn.

Thankfully, this has never happened in Catholic Malta: we are much cleaner. We are, after all, the world’s number one Christian outfit and all sin is stamped out, even before it is thought of.

Usually, these naughty fighter pilots are then admonished, demoted or goodness only knows what. The authorities – ever serious and war-ready – need to show that pranks in the air must be stopped immediately. Because, let’s face it, these horrendous drawings of a penis in the sky can cause irreparable harm to us onlookers. Young children, teenagers or oldies could be looking up at the sky and this would cause mayhem all over town, village and/or metropolis.

Upon seeing a vision of an aerial penis, men will go about pillaging and women will engage in all sorts of lascivious things. The drawing of a penis is not just morally wrong, it is an act against nature.

This is a world that has truly gone insane. Sex is seen as wrong, dirty and shameful. In fact, you can hardly call it ‘sex’ because, as far as I know, no fighter-pilot has indulged in outright uncensored sexual relations while flying in mid-air, certainly not in open air. Mind you, having it off while flying outside the fighter cockpit would definitely earn a few extra awards in the mile-high club scene.

The irony of all this is so terrible that we sometimes miss the whole point. While sex, or the childish depiction of a genital, is sometimes regarded as wrong, the essence of why fighter pilots exist is seen as normal and acceptable in our society.

Isn’t war and anything connected to it – such as violence, dominance and subjugation – far worse than sex?

If I had a choice between having a sky full of sexual depictions and anything connected to war and destruction, I would choose the sex. War, and the devastation it brings with it, is accepted or regarded as a necessary evil. And in my condemnation of war – any war – I also include our callousness out at sea or on land when men, women and children are treated like animals.

Transported away from their land, away from the horrors of their home, they seek a better life in the west. And in the civilised west, men and women treat them like pawns and poor specimens of humanity: illegal, replaceable, easily discarded people who are left to drift away.

Isn’t this all worse, more despicable, than drawing the outline of a penis? Yet how many of us hear these stories and are truly moved? How many of us say it is not our problem that those people die or suffer on their ships or at home?

The fact that we blindly accept fighter planes flying in our skies is a horrible parable of our life. 

In the US, Donald Trump wins support and admiration because he is against abortion. Putting aside whether abortion is right or wrong, how can a war-monger, a racist, a misogynist and a callous fraud be seen as a defender of life in the womb?

It’s fine if he speaks of obliterating the whole of Iran as long as he is against the right of women to decide their own fate.

The world is crazy, becoming more twisted at every revolution. I dream of a time when all fighter pilots rise up and stop fighting wars, stop maiming children and stop thinking of belligerence.

That fighter pilot who drew his naughty picture in the sky is the world hero of the cockpit.