The stories of Machado de Assis let us imagine our way into familiar perspectives and situations from unexpected vantages that enlarge and transform our sense of what is and what can be in this life, and the next.

“We are living in calamity, a humanitarian crisis in Honduras. Today they left. Tomorrow they will leave.... Three hundred people leave Honduras every day.”

Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, a Catholic who campaigned to rid the nation of corruption, will take office Jan. 1 with a conservative moral agenda.

In the “current climate” it has evidently become much easier to hate. But it has also easy to feel self-satisfied about doing the smallest amount of good.

Many members of the caravan say that the generosity of Mexican citizens helps them keep moving to their destination, the U.S. border still some 1,500 miles to the north.

The real threat to the United States is not the unarmed migrants making a dangerous trek through Mexico, it is the fear and hate that sensationalized coverage of the caravan has fomented.