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A corollary to a politics of destabilized truth is a politics of destabilized empathy
A corollary to a politics of destabilized truth is a politics of destabilized empathy
“These child actors weeping and crying on all the other networks 24/7 right now; do not fall for it, Mr. President.”
Ann Coulter, on Sunday, was speaking to that famed audience of one—Donald Trump—in the language whose grammar and idioms both of them understand intuitively: that of the Fox News Channel. But the pundit wasn’t speaking to the world leader so much as she was warning him. And she was concerned, she suggested, not so much for the presidential mind as for the American soul. You may be tempted, she suggested to the president and the larger audience, to feel for the children who wail as they are torn away from their families at the American border; resist that temptation. Do not feel for them; they don’t deserve it. Because they’re faking it. As Coulter reiterated on Tuesday, in a follow-up interview with TMZ: “They are trying to wreck our country through a political stunt.”
The “they” in question is both unspecified and wincingly clear. And the “stunt” Coulter is referring to, of course, is the series of images and sounds and words that have been coming from America’s southern border, in a progression that has become steadily more urgent in recent weeks: images of children, separated from their families, their little fists clenched in fear. Reports of a woman whose infant was ripped from her body as she breastfed. Reports of a man who committed suicide after he was separated from his wife and son. Reports of kids taken from their parents to get “baths,” never to be returned. All those tiny people, caged like animals.
The images, moving and still, are searing, in part, precisely because they are images. They capture something in immediate and visceral and urgent terms that words, even at their frankest and most effective, cannot. The Getty photographer John Moore’s viral photograph of a 2-year-old girl sobbing as she watched her mother being frisked by an agent of the American government—the pink shirt, the matching shoes, the pudgy cheeks, frozen in an expression of despair and disbelief—is worth many more than a thousand words. The audio of children crying for parents who cannot come to comfort them—the recording a symbol of both human tragedy and governmental opacity—is wrenching, emotionally, precisely because it is, rationally, so raw and so real. And, therefore, so profoundly undeniable.
And yet: Ann Coulter has been denying it. Her repeated accusation—“child actors weeping and crying”—is attempting to destabilize not just the facts on the ground, but also another kind of truth: the emotions most humans will feel, automatically, in response to children who cry in agony. Coulter’s warning to the world leader responsible for the tragedy—Do not fall for it, Mr. President—is a repetition of the logic deployed by some as a matter of moral reflex in response to the otherwise unimaginable, and otherwise inarguable, tragedies of Newtown, and Parkland, and so many others: They’re just actors, those people will insist. It’s all fake, they will assure. It is a moral claim as much as a factual one: You don’t have to act. You don’t even have to care. You can look away from this and still manage to look at yourself in the mirror. …
Ed. Ann Coulter: You’re a horrible human being. SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH !!!
Trumpism, Realized
To preserve the political and cultural preeminence of white Americans against a tide of demographic change, the administration has settled on a policy of systemic child abuse.
At least 2,000 children have now been forcibly separated from their parents by the United States government. Their stories are wrenching. Antar Davidson, a former youth-care worker at an Arizona shelter, described to the Los Angeles Times children “huddled together, tears streaming down their faces,” because they believed that their parents were dead. Natalia Cornelio, an attorney with the Texas Human Rights Project, told CNN about a Honduran mother whose child had been ripped away from her while she was breastfeeding. “Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing,” the Associated Press reported. “One cage had 20 children inside.”
In some cases, parents have been deported while their children are still in custody, with no way to retrieve them. John Sandweg, a former director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told NBC News that some of these family separations will be permanent. “You could be creating thousands of immigrant orphans in the U.S. that one day could become eligible for citizenship when they are adopted,” he said.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly blithely assured NPR in May that “the children will be taken care of—put into foster care or whatever.” The administration’s main focus is not the welfare of the children, as much as the manner in which breaking up families at the U.S.-Mexico border could send a message to other migrants fleeing violence or persecution. Kelly defended the policy as a “tough deterrent.”
The crisis, to the extent that one exists, is of the administration’s own making. The people fleeing to the U.S. border are a threat neither to American economic prosperity nor to public safety, there is not a great surge of border crossers requiring an extreme response. There are a variety of options for dealing with them short of amnesty, and the separation of families is not legally required. …
Ed. Personal opinion: This is yet another of Trump’s sick stunts to stir up the lunatics that put him in office ahead of the mid-term election.
Kirstjen Nielsen, Enough With the Lies!
The Homeland Security secretary’s cavalcade of lies has helped fuel interest in a national day of resistance to Trump’s family-separation policy.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at the daily White House briefing, June 18, 2018.
When we look back on this cruel and terrifying stretch of American history, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s 45 minutes of lies to the White House press corps about the Trump administration’s family-separation policy may mark a turning point in the way the humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexico border is covered—and whether the American people tolerate it or rise up against it.
Her ice-blue eyes blinking rapidly, Nielsen ricocheted between officious and affable as she assaulted the assembled reporters with mendacity, causing Twitter to explode with instant fact-checking. Trump’s Homeland Security chief lied when she insisted family separation was a matter of law, not policy (White House strategist Stephen Miller, the abomination’s architect, coolly terms it “policy”). She lied when she said that it was not intended as a deterrent to undocumented immigrants (her predecessor John Kelly, now chief of staff, described it as a way to “deter” parents from crossing last year). Nielsen depicted many of the “parents” crossing the border as smugglers, claiming that the number of “family units” consisting of a child and a smuggler, rather than a parent, jumped by 314 percent in the last five months. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump found that, while it’s true that the number of “individuals using minors to pose as fake family units” jumped from 46 in fiscal year 2017 to 191 in the first five months of 2018, that was out of 31,000 families. Which means that for every 1,000 families crossing the border seeking asylum, six included someone with a criminal record—whether smuggling, trafficking, drug dealing, or something else—using a child to press their claim; 994 did not.
Nielsen also insisted that detained children can call their parents (most cannot) and that they are being carefully tracked and well tended (lawyers, parents, advocates, and lawmakers who’ve visited the children say that’s not true either). The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics was told she could not hug a crying child; a former detention-center staffer turned whistle-blower said he was told not to let siblings hug each other. In one facility, a detained teenager was in charge of changing a toddler detainee’s diapers. “Once the parent and child are apart, they’re on separate legal tracks,” former ICE director John Sandweg told The New York Times. In fact, detained parents have no idea when, where, how—or even if—they’ll get their children back.
“Literally everything she said was a lie,” a still-stunned Representative Pramila Jayapal told me by phone Tuesday morning. Asked to choose one outstanding falsehood, she quickly replied: “Well, the children being detained are significantly younger than Nielsen said.” Just last week, the Seattle congressmember met mothers in detention who’d lost children as young as 1 year old. …
The Outrage Over Family Separation Is Exactly What Stephen Miller Wants
For President Trump’s senior adviser, the public outrage and anger elicited by policies like forced family separation are a feature, not a bug.
When the news stories began to surface last month of sobbing young migrant children being forcibly removed from their parents at the border, many close White House watchers instantly suspected Stephen Miller was behind it.
Though he keeps a relatively low profile compared to the cast of camera-muggers and Twitter warriors in President Donald Trump’s orbit, the 32-year-old speechwriter and senior adviser has cultivated a reputation as the most strident immigration hawk in the West Wing. So, it came as little surprise when The New York Times reported over the weekend that Miller had played a key behind-the-scenes role in advancing the new border policy:
“No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement,” he said during an interview in his West Wing office this past week. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”
… Privately, Mr. Miller argued that bringing back “zero tolerance” would be a potent tool in a severely limited arsenal of strategies for stopping migrants from flooding across the border … And in April, after the border numbers reached their zenith, Mr. Miller was instrumental in Mr. Trump’s decision to ratchet up the zero tolerance policy.
But while Miller’s influence on this issue is a matter of documented fact, his motives remain somewhat murkier. Why exactly is he using his perch to champion a measure that’s so unpopular that it’s opposed by fully two-thirds of Americans? Theories abound, of course—ranging from ideology to incompetence to xenophobia—but they are almost all products of distant speculation. …
The world will finally have to confront its massive plastic problem now that China won’t handle it
“RECYCLING”
Now that China won’t take it, the world will have an extra 111 million metric tons of its plastic waste to deal with by 2030.
Since the 1950s, when the world was first introduced to the flexible, durable wonder of plastic, 8.3 billion metric tons of it has been produced. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade, so technically, all of that tonnage is still sitting someplace on the planet. And a lot of it is in China.
That’s because when hundreds of countries around the world said they were “recycling” their plastic over the past few decades, half the time what they really meant was they were exporting it to another country. And most of the time, that meant they were exporting it to China. Since 1992, China (and Hong Kong, which acts as an entry port into mainland China) have imported 72% of all plastic waste.
But China has had enough. In 2017, China announced it was permanently banning the import of nonindustrial plastic waste. According to a paper published Wednesday (June 20) in the journal Science Advances, that will leave the world—mostly high-income countries—with an additional 111 million metric tons of plastic to deal with by 2030. And right now, those countries have no good way to handle it.
As of 2016, the top five countries exporting their plastic to China were the US, the UK, Mexico, Japan, and Germany. …
5 Ridiculous Skills You Didn’t Know Common Jobs Require
Lots of jobs will throw you curveballs from time to time. Writing my first internet article involved researching greasy butthole leakage, which definitely wasn’t in any of the Mark Twain biographies that I’ve read. My point is, regardless of where you work, your job training is going to include things that you never suspected. In the case of these five relatively common jobs, they’re things that no one on Earth expected.
5. Firefighters Are Learning How To Remove Cock Rings
Ever read a story about a man who isn’t me getting his penis stuck in a weird place? It happens a lot. Here’s a guy who got it stuck in a bottle. This one chose a pipe. A bench. A vacuum. A subway gate. A dumbbell. I could probably list everything on Earth with a hole in it and several things that don’t have them (yet), and you could find a corresponding news story about dong trappage.
So when metal cock rings were invented, it was inevitable that guys would constantly be confused about what diameter was necessary for safe extraction. As a result, German firefighters are now receiving training in the fine art of cock ring rescue. That link contains some great and terrifying photos of these heroes practicing cutting a too-tight cock ring off a fairly realistic rubber boner.
Just to paint you a picture, the firefighters are equipped with what looks like a tiny pie server. The little dessert tool is slipped between the tender flesh and the metal band, while a gel that can absorb intense heat is spread all over the place, because shit is about to get real. The exposed pork mallet needs to be bandaged so it can avoid sparks and shrapnel. A small grinder is then used to cut the ring away while the victim’s entire life flashes before their eyes.
A callous person might argue that anyone who continually gets their wang jammed into too-tight spaces is simply an example of natural selection trying to tell us something, but our courageous rescuers do not make such judgments. And while we’re talking about dick stuff …
Scientists believe we could cure the common cold in the next 10 years
NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT
Snot funny.
Some people get barely any symptoms and recover rapidly. Others end up confined to bed, surrounded by used tissues. For those with compromised immune systems or respiratory conditions, it can even be life-threatening. We’d all dearly like to see a cure for the common cold, but it never quite seems to arrive. So what’s the hold up—and will it be over soon?
The common cold is actually a catch-all term for a variety of viral infections that cause sore throats, headaches, coughs and sneezes. Men may be predisposed to suffer more from these symptoms, though the existence of “man flu” is a subject for another day.
The most common variety of common cold is rhinovirus, which accounts for around 50% of all infections (it gets its name not directly from the wild animal but because “rhino” is Greek for “nose”). Kids are usually infected between eight and 12 times a year, adults more like two or three times. Other viruses that we also think of as the common cold include adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus and influenza virus. But for most scientists in this field, cracking rhinovirus is the number one challenge. …
What Petty Nextdoor Posts Reveal About America
The hyperlocal social-media platform highlights small grievances—and proves that neighbors have more in common than they think.
Here are some of the things I heard about in my neighborhood over the past year: A thunderstorm downed a tree, blocking a central road; a shadowy agent called “the night clipper” arose, surreptitiously cutting overhanging bushes while unsuspecting property owners slept; several dogs and cats were lost, found, or “on the loose,” whatever that means for a cat; a federal-grand-jury-summons telephone scam struck; someone sought belly-dancing classes, an apparent alternative to Pilates; and, innumerable times, people deposited bags of dog poop into lawn-clipping and recycling canisters at the curb. All of this news came courtesy of the social-media service Nextdoor. On its website and app, people can post recommendations, updates, and warnings about their building, block, or neighborhood.
Anyone who has subscribed to a neighborhood email listserv—or used the internet—can guess what might go wrong. Social networks connect people, but many of those connections degrade into vitriol. If Twitter is where you fight with strangers, and Facebook is where you vie with friends, then Nextdoor is where you get annoyed with neighbors—for sending “urgent alerts,” pushed late at night to mobile phones, about questionable emergencies; for trying to sell a tattered massage table or used carpet shampooer at near-retail price; for issuing nasty reprisals on matters large and small. But it can also foster connections among neighbors and help counter the social isolation brought about by technology.
Nextdoor works a lot like Facebook, but instead of a “Like” button, it offers a “Thank” button, encouraging a kind of neighborly grace. More important, in order to join, you have to prove that you live where you say you do (by entering a code mailed to your home address, for example). Which means the community you enter is not imagined or diasporic, comprising people from the same school, profession, or interest group—it’s physical. You can “mute” neighbors on Nextdoor to hide their posts, but you can’t make them move away. Like it or not, these are the people in your neighborhood—the people that you meet each day, as the old Sesame Street song goes. Not just the postman and the barber, but also the aspiring belly dancer, the night clipper, the cat looser, and all the rest.
Thanks to its popularity, the service offers a unique window into daily life around the country. Nextdoor’s virtual communities—which cover more than 180,000 U.S. neighborhoods, including more than 90 percent of those in the 25 largest cities—are becoming representative of the country’s actual populations. …
Paraguay man surprises family at his own wake
Mr. Penayo disappeared from a village near the border town of Pedro Juan Caballero.
A man from the small village of Santa Teresa in Paraguay returned home after three days away to find his family mourning a body they thought was his.
Juan Ramón Alfonso Penayo, 20, had last been seen on Thursday leaving the family home on the border with Brazil.
The area is hotly disputed between a number of drug gangs and when Mr Penayo did not return, his family assumed he had met with trouble.
When police found a charred body on Sunday, they concluded it was him.
The family held a wake in the village only for Mr Penayo to turn up and find them grieving over the coffin they thought held his body. …
WHEN THE SPRUCE GOOSE FLEW
It was a cool California November afternoon in 1947 when the HK-4 Hercules, also known as the Spruce Goose, finally flew. It was supposed to be a simple taxi test, nothing more than motoring through the water of Long Beach Harbor to show off its speed and test out the plane in open water. But having endured years of people mocking the project and himself for trying to build a plane so massive it had no hope of flying, Howard Hughes decided to take the opportunity to extend his middle finger at them all in the most poignant way he could.
No doubt with a twinkle in his eye as the Hercules cruised through the water, Hughes turned to the 30 year old hydraulic engineer, David Grant, who he had chosen as his co-pilot that day despite him not actually being a pilot, and unexpectedly told him to “lower the flaps to 15 degrees”- the take off position.
Not long after, the massive, few hundred thousand pound (250K lb / 113K kg empty, 400K lb / 181K kg gross), 218 ft (67 m) long aircraft with a still record holding wingspan of just shy of 321 feet (98 m) was out of the water. It was airborne for under a minute, went less than a mile, and only about 70 feet in the air, but it had done the impossible- the Spruce Goose flew.
Given the rather innovative use of a hydraulic system, landing was a bit abnormal for planes of the age in that the plane had to be landed under power, as Grant would instruct Hughes to “fly it into the water.” …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
President Donald Trump met with Congressional Republicans on Capitol Hill Tuesday to discuss a path forward on various immigration bills — but a solution to the family separation crisis at the border was still far from certain when the meeting wrapped.
While House Republicans plan to vote on two wide-ranging immigration proposals this week, only one of them currently includes a proposal to prevent children from being separated from their parents when apprehended at the border. That bill, a compromise proposal hammered out by House GOP Leadership, is still facing long odds of passage, as every Democrat is expected to vote against it.
On the Senate side, a trio of senators have each introduced standalone bills specifically addressing the family separation crisis, while leaving other controversial immigration issues out. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), an immigration hardliner and one of the lawmakers offering a bill to fix the situation, emphasized that while the “broader debates about immigration… will continue,” the scope of his current efforts is much smaller.
“My focus is on solving the specific problem of ensuring that kids stay with their parents,” he told VICE News.
But ultimately, the solution to the problem lies with the president. But he’s spent the last week further complicating the issue by offering a series of contradictory statements on the House GOP immigration bills — all while denying any responsibility for the crisis in the first place. (Trump’s administration is responsible for introducing the “zero tolerance” policy, which is at the heart of the current crisis on the border.)
On Tuesday, Trump even suggested that the debate over immigration could continue indefinitely.
THANKS to HBO and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Republican lawmakers join the chorus of outrage over the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant families, but Fox News pundits continue to cheer the president on.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
It’s a game of morality limbo as Kirstjen Nielsen, Jeff Sessions and Laura Ingraham see if they can go as low as Donald Trump.
THANKS to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson warns Americans to assume the opposite of what the MSM reports, leaving Jordan to question his own trust in Fox News.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Opposition with Jordan Klepper for making this program available on YouTube.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds an impromptu press briefing to answer burning questions, like “Was there ever a time that Trump liked Germany?”
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un bond in Singapore…
Max keeping busy with his destruction.
FINALLY . . .
The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You
Before dying at the age of 39, Blaise Pascal made huge contributions to both physics and mathematics, notably in fluids, geometry, and probability.
This work, however, would influence more than just the realm of the natural sciences. Many fields that we now classify under the heading of social science did, in fact, also grow out of the foundation he helped lay.
Interestingly enough, much of this was done in his teen years, with some of it coming in his twenties. As an adult, inspired by a religious experience, he actually started to move towards philosophy and theology.
Right before his death, he was hashing out fragments of private thoughts that would later be released as a collection by the name of Pensées.
While the book is mostly a mathematician’s case for choosing a life of faith and belief, the more curious thing about it is its clear and lucid ruminations on what it means to be human. It’s a blueprint of our psychology long before psychology was deemed a formal discipline.
There is enough thought-provoking material in it to quote, and it attacks human nature from a variety of different angles, but one of its most famous thoughts aptly sums up the core of his argument:
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
According to Pascal, we fear the silence of existence, we dread boredom and instead choose aimless distraction, and we can’t help but run from the problems of our emotions into the false comforts of the mind.
The issue at the root, essentially, is that we never learn the art of solitude. …
Ed. More tomorrow? Probably. Possibly. Maybe. Not?