TIME AND PERSPECTIVE

The confusion and political wrangling in Europe over migration stands in stark contrast to the faces of the migrants themselves. No intelligent human being could deny their suffering or needs. The shoreline of Libya is littered with washed-up corpses daily, due to the exploitation of traffickers. But migration is also being exploited by media with little intelligent commentary. The labor of the migrants may soon be exploited, once they find out that their European hosts will eventually require some form of payment for their initially sentimental generosity. 

Migration has slowed here in the U.S. with tougher border control. For example, U.S. Coast Guard, off the coast of Florida, has been vigilant. They announced that they have seized 30 tons of cocaine in their patrols. This means they have been doing their job and have most likely also been maintaining that coastal border against illegal migration. This has its domestic benefits. I speculate the decrease in migration in the U.S. and gains made in diminishing drug importation has allowed law enforcement to begin to look more scientifically at the massacre of American Black men in their own communities.

Being old does not automatically impart wisdom to a lazy brain. However, getting old with an open mind does. Bus loads of prosperous gray-hairs with purses and backpacks filled with pictures of their grandchildren wend their way around the planet constantly to the delight of the charter-tour industry. Yet the impact of all this wending and gawking on the state of humanity is minimal. Their cherished offspring are left with a planet diminished by those who brag about them.

Perhaps the person-to-person contact which is developing in Europe to deal with migrants will yield some results. Some Europeans are opening their homes to migrants. However, as reported this morning on BBC, some homeowners in Germany will profit handsomely. Officially stamped refugees will garner 400 Euros a month from the German government for monthly rent, even if that is rent is in a private home. Some in the German government are already doing the math and panicking. 400 Euros a month for 800,000 migrants would come to over $400,000,000,000 ($0.4 trillion) a month! Will Pope Francis being liquidating Vatican treasure to help pay for this? I doubt it. Will the Russian oligarchs and Arab oil magnates who are buoying the British economy contribute more to N.G.O.s or the EU? I doubt it. 

The consolation of being childless, old and non-religious is the knowledge that whatever develops from the mishandling of the problems of today will have limited repercussions on a life coming into its final days. I cannot imagine the internal suffering, conscious or subconscious, of those who are religious and responsible for multiple lives entering the inevitable epoch of planetary disaster to come. If they believe in an afterlife, it would seem that afterlife would entail horrible payment for what they have done or what they have failed to do.