For fifteen minutes or so, at least.

Carola Rackete has been lauded as a heroine and decried as a criminal for helping asylum-seekers stranded in the Mediterranean Sea. What drives the 31-year-old German captain of the Sea-Watch rescue boat?

That’s easy. It’s the drug she’s taking: Guilt. Guilt gets people high. At least here in Germany it does. Guilt-induced moral intoxication turns its users from nobodies minding their own business into moral supermen saving the world. Those they claim to help are of secondary importance.

“I have decided to enter the port of Lampedusa. I know what I’m risking, but the 42 rescued people are exhausted. I’m taking them to safety now.”