There is a distance between our minds and the perception of reality when we choose to endorse unproven claims that cleverly mask the truth.

We are left looking around us, unable to tell the difference between the real world and the parallel one that we created in which many of us play make-believe, all too eager to pretend that the illusion that things are getting better is a reality.

Like the ostriches, too many of our heads are dug firmly in the sand. Too many of us still believe the same old lies that we have been told a thousand times over. And too many of us can no longer distinguish veracity from falsehood, until it gets to the point where we actually convince ourselves that those lies are the truth.

This government, much like the one before it, has a questionable relationship with truth. We were told that we won the war against COVID-19 but, thankfully, not all of us were taken in. Those who believed every word blinkered themselves to the several warnings from the medical professionals.

For behind the veil of the illusion of victory, lies the harsh reality that COVID-19 is very much alive and kicking. And tired of being derided and dismissed, those waves in the sea turned into strong tidal currents that washed ashore. A significant spike in new coronavirus cases happened in an alarmingly short time. Daily infections jumped from zero into double digits in the span of just a couple of weeks.

So much for the vaunted mechanisms that we were assured would be triggered into action!

Remarkably, it was also the time that our prime minister thought fit to head to the neighbouring island of Sicily with family in tow on his luxury motor yacht. The rest of us common mortals languished back home in the latest COVID-19 European hotspot. The timing was very telling though.

It gave new meaning to the political message of continuity on which the Prime Minister had based his bid for the leadership campaign. He dutifully followed in the footsteps of his disgraced predecessor who always seized every opportunity and made the most of it. He too was holidaying with family on a friend’s luxury boat and photographed with a glass or two of bubbly in the usual in-your-face style.

It requires a lot of effort and commitment to act as a responsible leader of a country. Both effort and commitment flopped when the Prime Minister took time off to go on holiday amid a major upsurge of COVID-19 cases. His popularity somewhat declined during the crisis and people started to question his dependability, disappointed, nay angered, by his incredibly shortsighted attitude.

We should be indignant at being constantly taken for a ride without so much as an apology, let alone a resignation. Take the incident of the alleged cocaine party that reportedly took place at the army barracks. An internal inquiry took off and the outcome was that the allegations were blown completely out of proportion. Eventually one soldier was sacked for refusing to take a urine test. Go figure!

And what is more, the chief civil servant’s brother, who was also Malta’s consul to Shanghai, was arrested and charged with money laundering. The chief civil servant washed his hands of the matter. He is not his brother’s keeper was his excuse and distanced himself completely from all that happened.

Soon after that, the exchange of messages between Dr Adrian Delia and alleged mastermind Yorgen Fenech on WhatsApp was leaked to the press. It was a tragic farce from the outset. Dr Delia changed his version of events several times. He even found a way to skirt around the truth, hoping to be completely absolved of any kind of accountability. His credibility has not fully recovered from this episode though.

And now, the latest revelations also implicate the sitting justice minister in an alleged, lengthy relationship on WhatsApp with Yorgen Fenech too. As the plot thickens, we become more disillusioned - whatever next? Too many of us still cling to the illusion that everything is hunkydory. They are in denial of facing reality. Conversely, the wise desperately seek to awaken from this terrible nightmare.

When COVID-19 sounded the final knell for public protests on the streets of Valletta, we retreated to the safety of our homes for fear of the contagion. The breathing space this gave the government was crucial. It gave them a chance to recharge their batteries that were almost drained of power following the momentous political events at the end of last year.

In a short time, we shifted from angry protests to passive acceptance and it seems like we had lost all sense of feeling. Perhaps we are not sensitive enough to injustice and our anger does not boil over like that of the citizens of Belarus, for example, who refuse to back down even in the face of the deadly coronavirus. On the other hand, considering the constant revelations emerging from the local courts of law, it may be the calm before the storm. But nobody is really holding their breath.

In the meantime, the most vociferous crowd are the keyboard warriors on social media who use their anonymity as a safety net while they hurl insults at anyone who dares to express a different opinion to theirs. The last thing we need are words of wisdom from armchair critics who foment political hate speech and contribute nothing but bad language to the political debate.

It seems like the only way the public conscience could manage the events that followed the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia was to anaesthetise itself. Indeed, we have become comfortably numb, as the song title of one of the British band Pink Floyd’s greatest hits suggests. Too many of us still pretend not to see the uncomfortable truth that has been staring us in the face.

When the mind is brainwashed into believing that we have no worthwhile thoughts of our own, we no longer speak for ourselves. We parrot what others want us to think and say. Meanwhile, the power elite expect us to tolerate the decisions they make without regard to right or wrong as they doggedly persist in their efforts to obscure the truth solely on the basis of political expediency.