… great swaths of populations, in all kinds of terrible ways. Significant numbers of millennials told pollsters they have no friends (22 percent) or often feel lonely (30 percent), higher figures than of any other generation. Monsoons tragically uprooted more than a million people in India and Pakistan, devastating towns and villages and killing hundreds. And while Great Britain’s annual tally suggests that butterflies have turned out in strong numbers this summer—more painted ladies and red admirals than you can shake a net at, if you’re so inclined—the long-term climate picture, lepidoptera-wise, is much darker.
There’s more: Thousands of protesters occupied Hong Kong International Airport, drawing the attention of riot police and, increasingly, Beijing. (However, the protesters subsequently offered their regrets: “Please accept our sincere apology to all travelers, press reporters, paramedics.... Please give us a second chance to prove ourselves that we can be better.”) Thousands of Democratic presidential candidates … no, sorry, make that a clutch of them—Julián Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Tom Steyer—are within range but still struggling to qualify for the next debates. And thousands of demonstrators in Moscow demanded the release of previously arrested demonstrators; if the new demonstrators are also collared, this could go on for some time. (Maybe a note of apology would break the cycle?) In a more subtle manifestation of unrest, young Russians reportedly want to leave the country in record numbers (44 percent), their top destination choices being Germany and the United States. They might want to halve that list, now that Donald Trump, fresh from solving the U.S.’s illegal-immigration problem, has turned his attention to legal immigrants.
Nota bene: He’s supposed to be on vacation. Yet no sooner had he made fun of Asians by imitating their accent at a weekend fund-raiser in the Hamptons and flown off to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for 10 days, than he was issuing rules to bar insufficiently well-off legal immigrants, gutting the Endangered Species Act, retweeting Clintons-obsessed conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein (himself now on permanent vacation), calling on Israel to prevent two congresswomen he doesn’t like, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, from visiting that country (!), and otherwise spreading his customary sweetness and light. (“He’s nuts!,” “lunatic ranting,” “Fake News,” etc.) No, there’s no rest for the weary. And we don’t mean the president. —George Kalogerakis
