In mid-June, some 630 men, women and children fleeing the misery of Middle East troubled nations drowned in Mediterranean Sea when their overloaded boat sunk. It’s a good bet that you – and many other readers of this blog – never heard about this disaster.
More recently, 41 migrants died in a shipwreck off the Italian island of Lampedusa. A group of four people who survived the disaster told rescuers that they were on a boat that had set off from Sfax in Tunisia and sank on its way to Italy.
Did you also realize that more than 1,800 people have lost their lives so far this year in the crossing from North Africa to Europe?
More likely you’re well aware of the fate of the Titan, a deep-sea submarine lost with five voyageurs, including four who paid S250,000 each for the vanity adventure. They were looking for the ruins of the Titanic, some 1200 feet (about 365.76 m) deep in the North Atlantic.
Readers of the New York Times might have seen the story of the deaths of these migrant families; it even appeared on the front page. The story, however, was focused on the rescue efforts performed by the captain and crew of a luxury yacht that was nearby. Apparently, the Times reporter and editors felt the most interesting part of the story was not the massive drownings, but that a rich man’s yacht was involved. (To his credit, the yacht’s captain said he felt he did nothing special in that he merely followed the traditions of the sea in that a ship must always go off its main course to help rescue a ship that was in distress.)
These episodes raise the question: Are the lives of these four wealthy persons and the pilot of the craft to be valued more than the lives of the migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean?
This question burned even more deeply into my thoughts recently when I participated in a golf tournament and my cart partner was a retired Air Force pilot. He told me he had something like 135 missions over Vietnam in which he dropped hundreds of pounds of bombs. “This was the best year of my life,” he told me.
“The best year” of his life was spent dropping bombs that no doubt killed or maimed Vietnamese, many of them surely innocent noncombatants. It is estimated that up to 65,000 North Vietnam citizens died in the U.S. bombings; another estimate places the number at 182,000 casualties during Operation Rolling Thunder.
Without denying the bravery required in piloting planes into anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighter plane opposition, my golfing partner’s comment nonetheless would appear to demean the value of life to the citizens below. True, he was “at war,” and we’ve always been propagandized into demonizing the enemy. No doubt in the heat of war, my pilot friend gave no thought to the lives he would be destroying.
These incidents dramatize how we value some lives and don’t value others. Judith Sunderland, of the Human Rights Watch, commented in a New York Times interview that when there’s talk about the treatment of migrants “we cannot avoid talking about racism and xenophobia.”
Donald Trump began his first presidential campaign in 2015 calling the folks who were seeking to enter the United States along our border with Mexico “undesirables.”
While riding down the escalator, he said famously: “When Mexico sends it people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
There’s a disturbing upward trend in this country of considering the life of white, Christian men as more valuable than the lives of any other persons. Any effort to bring about equality for people of color, for women, for members of the LGBTQ community is dismissed as “woke,” whatever that means. Such efforts are scorned as “political correctness,” as if such efforts are wrong and negative.
In “red” states, legislatures are seeking to enshrine the white Christian as a superior race. Texas may be among the worst as it seeks legislation to, among other things, require the posting of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. In arguing against the bill, Rep. James Talarico (D-Austin), a former schoolteacher and Christian seminary student, hit the nail on the head with this comment:
“This bill, to me, is not only unconstitutional, it’s not only un-American, I think it is also deeply un-Christian. And I say that because I believe this bill idolatrous . . . exclusionary . . . arrogant and those three things, in my reading of the Gospel, are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus.
“We both [Christians and Jews] follow a teacher, a rabbi, who said, ‘Don’t let the law get in the way of loving your neighbor.’ Loving your neighbor is the most important law. It is the summation of all the law and all the prophets. I would submit to you that our neighbor also includes the Hindu student who sits in a classroom, the Buddhist student and an atheist student.”
When we feel we are the smartest, the most moral of persons, perfect in any way, we become sinfully proud and arrogant, and we are violating the very basis of our Christianity. We are also violating the key principles of our American democracy.
Because I am a white, male American makes me no better than the black, Hispanic or Asian person seeking asylum in this country. And if you’re richer than me, your life is no more valuable than mine. Ken Germanson, Aug. 9, 2023
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