Being born in the 1980s and growing up in the 1990s means I was lucky. While economies went up and down, as they are prone to do, still things were looking up. The Berlin Wall was down, and Europe was moving towards a more guaranteed state of peace.

Eastern Europeans were making their mark on the world, and their countries were finally making that slow journey to prosperity that Western Europe had made a few decades before.

Malta was making similar progress. Politics aside, the quality of life here improved, and opportunities began to multiply. We joined the EU and suddenly all doors were open to us. Many took advantage of these opportunities, and today we are making use of that experience to further improve our country and the world too.

Yes, over the past three decades our corner of the world has seen an overall increase in quality of life and opportunities. It was during this time of constant progression that the EU expanded, and the values of Europe were understood and maintained.

Then disaster struck.

In 2008, banks and business started to fail. The very foundation of many countries collapsed and people were left homeless, in mountains of debt and panic gripped our part of the world.

It is in times of difficulty that we tend to fall back on our underlying value system. This may not be the one we project outwardly during times of prosperity, but it is one that we secretly harbour when things are going well.

Martin Luther King once said: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

If this is true of people, it can be true of countries too. And if that is the case, what does that say about the countries in our part of the world?

We have been faced with difficulties we never thought would come our way. We have seen the rise in the profile of the far right, and a regression into right wing political posturing and rhetoric. Our countries are now full of voters who feel ‘left behind’, or ‘disenfranchised’.

Change is not always good, the majority is not always right

Times have become hard and the real character of our population is coming out. We can now safely say that our part of the world, that has for so long preached the values of human rights, equality, and respect towards others, may not actually be that at its core. This is all so very disappointing.

There is nothing worse than thinking you are a good person, only to find out that beneath it all you aren’t as good as you thought.

At the moment, many countries are in political upheaval. We all seemed to be faced with two rather extreme choices; the one that promises to continue promoting the value system we enjoyed for so long, and the one that wants to take us all back to a time that was unpleasant for women, LGBT citizens, and ethnic and social minorities. The people voting for the latter claim to be ‘tired’ of the same. Tired of what exactly?

The truth is that for the most part, these are people whose opinion has become unacceptable, and are tired of losing the argument in the political arena. They are tired of being forced to be nice to homosexuals, or to those of different races/religious beliefs. They claim they are tired of all this “PC gone mad”.

As someone who has spent over 10 years teaching English to foreigners and, therefore, spent a huge percentage of my life around very different people, I can tell you that it is not difficult to be what people call ‘PC’.

The general rule is this: do not be unkind. However, that is not enough.

We are surrounded by people who are tired of being forced to think in a different way, people who are no longer allowed to pass jokes about ‘Bongobongoland’, or ‘batty boys’. Should a country view these opinions with the same eyes as other, more advanced ones? I think not.

Germany has, recently, reaffirmed its promise to help refugees. This is in light of the recent attacks in Germany carried out by Daesh supporters.

The UK, on the other hand, has given in to the right wing propaganda and scored one of the biggest own goals in history and buckled under the demand to stop any migrants from going to the UK.

If we were to use Luther King’s measure of a person, it would not be difficult to conclude that Germany has proved to be the better of the two.

Canada elected one of the most progressive leaders it has ever seen. Yes, there is much PR carving out his image as a young and progressive leader, but he seems true to his word.

The US, on the other hand, may well elect Donald Trump.

Perhaps the choice to elect Hillary Clinton as the democratic candidate is a sign that most Americans are not prepared to go the whole nine yards, or maybe Bernard ‘Bernie’ Sanders was too far removed from what the Americans are able to handle in terms of radical change that they needed someone a little bit more moderate.

Either way, the identity of the whole country hinges on this presidential election. It is very much the Brexit of the US. The geopolitical position of countries today seems to be shifting and moving around much like the tectonic plates their physical counterparts sit on.

We wait to see where the UK will end up. In the meantime, we should watch and learn that change is not always good, that the majority is not always right and that, if we really want to be what we think we are, then we have to put our vote where our mouth is.

Edward Caruana Galizia is an actor and studied psycho-social studies at Birkbeck University of London.