Growing anger at Trump’s child separation policy

[UPDATE: It appears that Trump is going to sign an executive order to end the child separation policy. Given that he and attorney general Sessions, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephen Miller, and Kirstjen Nielsen have been saying for days that this was not their fault and that they were forced to adopt the cruel policy because it was the law that was enacted by the Democrats and that it was up to Congress to change the law, this action would reveal it for the lie that it always was. But being caught in obvious lies does not bother this crew nor their supporters. They have no shame.]

It looks like the Trump administration which, as a matter of policy, tries to ramp up the cruelty of its actions against immigrants of color because it plays well with its base, is surprised that the level of anger against its tactic of forcibly separating immigrant children from their parents is rising. Increasing numbers of Republican elected officials are distancing themselves from the policy and even Trump bootlickers like British prime minister Theresa May are voicing concerns. And how bad must it be when even French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, a Trump soul mate if there ever was one, says that she disagrees with the policy of separating children from parents?
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A former incel speaks out

The strange and disturbing world of the ‘incels’ (involuntary celibates) has come into the limelight following the violent acts by some of them. After the recent killings in Toronto by a self-proclaimed incel Alek Minassian who killed 10 people by mowing them down on the sidewalk with his vehicle, mostly targeting women pedestrians, Jack Peterson who had until then also identified as one, tried in interviews to defend the group, saying that they were not violent nor did they hate women but were adopting an ironic pose. The reaction from his fellow incels was not what he expected.
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Another charge of cheating in cricket

The second Test match between the West Indies and Sri Lanka that ended yesterday in a draw saw another charge of ball tampering. Readers may recall the outrage in March following the discovery that three Australian players, including the captain, had tried to secretly use sandpaper to roughen up one side of the ball, a clear violation of the rules. All three received various punishments (see here and here and here). The charge this time is against the Sri Lankan cricket captain Dinesh Chandimal who was accused of eating a ‘sweet’ (which is what a piece of hard candy is called by us cricket playing former colonials) and then using the sticky saliva to rub on the ball and thus change its condition. He has denied the charge and there will now be an inquiry.
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The durability of America’s false self-image

The forcible separation of children, even those who are toddlers, from their parents at the borders and putting them in cages seems to threaten the Trump administration with being a step too far. The photographs and videos of the grim sight and the newly released heartbreaking audio recordings by ProPublica of children sobbing uncontrollably and calling for their parents seems to be too much to stomach for even some of Trump’s most ardent supporters. Even the evangelical zealot, Trump fan boy, and outright bigot Franklin Graham who had hitherto not allowed any daylight between him and Trump said “It’s disgraceful, and it’s terrible to see families ripped apart, and I don’t support that one bit.” Laura Bush has also come out against it, as have some other conservatives. Big majorities oppose these actions, with the only demographic group supporting it being Republicans.
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When meanness becomes a goal in itself

It is tempting to think that the current Trump administration is uniquely bad. In reality, in many cases they have continued polices that liberals and Democrats tended to downplay when they were done by the Obama administration. The harsh treatment of undocumented immigrants, the wars, the bombings and drone killings are things that Trump did not initiate but continued and intensified. This is not to say that Trump is just the same as Obama. He is worse and I think that Kevin Drum has put his finger on one trait that clearly characterizes this administration and current Republicans.
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The Stanford prison experiment is not what it seemed

Many of you will have heard of the famous Stanford prison experiment in 1971 when Philip Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford University, randomly assigned one group of students to be inmates and the other group to be guards who had total power over the prisoners for two weeks. The setting was a mock prison (actually the basement of a university building). But after six days the experiment had to be called off because, as claimed by Zimbardo, the ‘guards’ used such sadistic methods against the ‘inmates’ that the latter were on the verge of breakdowns. The experiment has been cited numerous times to warn of the dangers of giving people unchecked power over others and the need for prison reform.
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Stephen M. Walt on US foreign policy

Here are some good quotes from an essay by Stephen M. Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University. He is by no means a progressive but belongs to the so-called ‘realist’ school of politics that says that the US should adopt policies that are in its own long-term interests and based on a rational weighing of evidence and not be driven by ideological motivations such as neo-conservatism or neoliberal interventionism that has got the US involved in so many unwinnable wars and locked into reflexive support for any and all of Israel’s awful polices.
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