Foreign desk: Carte Blanche for Hong Kong’s Cops

The South China Morning Post’s Alex Lo is “scared” after the latest press conference by Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, which suggests that “Hong Kong police have been given unconditional support and carte blanche to suppress unrest and protests without the fear of subsequent punishment.” On Monday, cops used nearly as many rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets as in all of June and July. Arrests are way up, and serious charges more frequent. In all, “the Hong Kong government has been shrunk to just the police and the Department of Justice, so far as Beijing is concerned.” And the head of that government, Carrie Lam, is now a mere “figurehead . . . not allowed to quit; it’s a signal . . . that there will be no more compromises, only harsh measures from now on.”

Conservative: Joaquin Castro’s Un-American Activity

When Democratic Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro publicized the names and employers of 40-plus Trump donors from his San Antonio district, he was trying “to sic every unhinged progressive activist” on “retirees and business owners whose only sin” was displeasing him, thunders The Federalist’s David Harsanyi. Democrats like Castro “rationalize any tactic” deemed necessary to fight President Trump, including, apparently, “intimidation.” True, the names are public record. But Castro’s action “makes a strong case for expanding anonymity in political speech.” That people have to “report to the state before expressing their political opinions is un-American,” says Harsanyi. The First Amendment protects “unpopular individuals from ­retaliation” at the hands of the “intolerant,” the Supreme Court has ruled. The “intolerant force in this case,” adds Harsanyi, “is Castro.”

Shrink: America’s Big Opioid Mistake

Years into the opioid crisis, psychiatrist Sally Satel writes at The Atlantic, it is time to “revisit some of the stories we have told ourselves about the role of prescription medication in the crisis” and realize we have overestimated “the risk that these drugs posed to the average patient while simultaneously doing too little to urge clinicians to identify those most vulnerable to addiction.” Notably, “people who abuse pills are rarely new to drugs.” And “the percentage of patients who become addicted ­after taking opioids for chronic pain is measured in the single digits.” Her own casework suggests we need to understand “the complex nature of addiction. Opioids acquire their dark power when they keep souls — not just broken shoulders and teeth — from throbbing.”

Iconoclast: Millennials’ Loneliness Plague

A third of US millennials feel lonely, per a recent YouGov survey, and a fifth say they have no friends, notes The Week’s Matthew Walther. And while “we can make facile jokes about avocado toast and baristas with degrees in cultural studies” he is “not sure we should find them amusing.” The crisis of modern loneliness is but one facet of an atomized, soulless society: “We cannot concentrate on anything. We don’t go anywhere, not even to buy food or diapers. . . . The richer we happen to be, the less likely we are to take time off to enjoy ourselves, despite generous vacation allowances. The poorer we are, the more likely we are to kill ourselves with drugs, alcohol and guns. Even fornication is boring — we have porn for that.”

Education beat: CUNY Turns Against Excellence

City University’s plan to ditch “objective testing intended to determine which of its incoming students can do college-level work and which require remediation,” sighs Bob McManus at City Journal, “points toward a reversal of 1990s-era reforms that pulled the university out of a long period of stagnation and decline” after a similar lowering of standards in the ’60s “reduced the once-great university to a national laughingstock.” The winners: “teachers’ unions and unaccountable bureaucrats,” since this “greatly relieves pressure on New York City’s public schools to do better.” CUNY’s move fits a pattern of camouflaging “objective evidence of classroom failure.” Indeed, “The integrity of the City University of New York is just the latest casualty in New York’s ongoing education tragedy.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board