In a famous Sherlock Holmes story, the detective draws attention to a curious incident of a dog that didn’t bark at night. Sometimes, what we don’t hear is almost as important as what we hear. While we are bombarded with news about global warming, what is the media NOT barking about? 

There are a lot of environmental catastrophes that are simply ignored. Our food is full of plastics, chemicals and pesticides, rivers are overflowing with pharmaceutical compounds. But the media is mostly silent on this. Big Pharma and big corporations have big pockets.  

The long-term effects of mass migration are also hardly discussed, even when they had for now a much higher impact on society than so-called “climate change”. 

Now the media is stoking fear against any possible type reduction in migration, with Spain, Germany and other European countries having supposedly right-wing parties coming to power. 

I wouldn’t worry. Nothing will change. The Right is as useless as the Left. Or perhaps even worse. 

Just look at Italy, where a supposedly far-right Georgia Meloni was elected on the promise to reduce the number of illegal migrants coming in boats, and ended up triplicating it. Now she’s even saying that “Italy needs migrants” and is increasing legal migration channels from Africa and India. 

I don’t see much difference between legal and illegal migration, to be honest. Canada has mostly legal migration. In Germany, most of the refugees are legal. So what? The problem is not if it’s legal or illegal which is just a question of papers. The question is where they come from, and how many. 

If Italy really needs migrants, which I doubt, what they could easily do is to bring more Italian descendants. Currently the process to obtain Italian citizenship by “jus sanguinis” (proving you have Italian ancestors) is very long and arduous. It may take years, sometimes even a decade. Why not bring immediately those people, who at least has some Italian ancestry, instead of random non-Italian foreigners? 

Even when authorities act against migration, it’s in stupid ways. For instance, now in Germany a Vietnamese family who lived legally in the country for 30 years and has no criminal record is to be deported on a technicality. I don’t know the details, but I am sure there is a long list of convicted criminals who could be given priority on deportation. But the deal seems to be that you have to keep the worst elements and expel the best.

It’s not just immigration. In all things, so-called conservatives do little more than complain while the changes keep happening. Because, what are conservatives conserving really? While the left acts and makes changes to society, those changes become part of the system, then conservatives try to defend what years ago they were fighting against. Many conservatives today defend gay marriage, for instance. And of course they are the first to be in favour of war, big corporations, Big Pharma, big everything.   

You may think this is something new, but already a 100 years ago, G. K. Chesterton wrote: 

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition.” 

So, don’t count on politicians to save us. We are alone. Well, perhaps that’s a liberation. It’s better to realize our situation than to cling to false hopes. Only the man who has nothing to lose is really free. And, as some seasoned politician is said to have told a newbie who had just come to Washington, D.C.: “If you want a friend in this town, buy a dog”.