▪️Almost everyone (including many libertarians) approaches the Israeli/Palestinian conflict wrong. They view it as a disagreement over tribal, collective “rights” to the land. The Jews have historical claim, Palestinian land was stolen, blah blah. There is no such thing as collective, tribal rights to land, that thinking is what has led to most wars throughout history. There’s only a right to the land particular individuals own, or have cultivated.
▪️Very few Palestinians living today have any legitimate property rights claim to land in Israel. More importantly, that’s not what they’re fighting for. #FreePalestine is not a movement to protect the individual rights of Palestinians (or anyone), it’s a movement to install a dictatorship, a theocracy that controls “Palestinian land.” Not only is there no right for such a dictatorship to exist, any movement which seeks to implement one is not in any way associated with freedom.
▪️Every single time Palestinians have been given autonomy and the ability to self rule they have chosen dictatorships and authoritarianism. There are no rights of any kind in Gaza. No freedom of speech, religion, or property rights. If they controlled more land, it would mean more oppression, not only for Israelis but for Palestinians.
▪️Israel, meanwhile, is a crappy government like the US is a crappy government. It does all sorts of awful things, but it protects basic freedoms. You can be gay in Israel, be a Muslim, be an entrepreneur, be critical of the govt, etc. You can pursue your dreams for the most part. In fact, Arabs living in Israel are far freer (and better off) than those in Gaza or most anywhere else in the Middle East.
▪️No state who violates any of the rights of its citizens deserves to exist, but in reality this only applies if the alternative is more freedom. Freedom movements are only moral or justified if they call for and actually bring more freedom to an area. The Palestinian cause does not, it only brings tribal rule with a genocidal desire to erase Israel.
▪️It doesn’t matter what the historical claims of the Jewish or Palestinian people are (although the Jews have a better claim even there imo). It matters what government is better at protecting its citizens’ rights. In that regard, it’s not even close in who to support. It’s night and day morally. It takes brainwashing or a college degree to rationalize supporting “Palestinian freedom” in the current context.
So many of these right wing accounts are just whiners now, this is a diatribe about automatic sinks and towels, the horror! As I explained in a prior post, most of the newer terminals have great bathrooms, some now have completely private stalls and plenty of them. The worst and most crowded airport bathrooms are invariably found in aging terminals that are decades old. It’s a reminder that airports were usually drab and uncomfortable.
I think the heyday of the air hand-dryers was like 15-20 years ago, where often you couldn’t find real towels. Now you can at least usually get real paper towels in airport bathrooms. Remember those old cloth roller towels that would go in a loop and somehow “clean” themselves? Yuck! Public bathrooms have always been gross, it seems some are deliberately having selective memories.
Airport food and drinks were always expensive, but now practically everyone brings those huge cooler flasks with them and fills them up. So not sure what he means that ...
I first critiqued this terrible take by looking at how food has actually improved substantially. Even though I said the same could be done in every category, people said “you’re only doing food.” So let’s do air travel and see why it’s not gotten better, not worse.
▪️Aircraft have greatly improved. Just 15-20 years ago, many domestic routes (~15%) were flown by turboprops like the Brasilia, Dash 8 or Saab. Now, almost everything is in jets, and most aircraft have WiFi. Some even have Starlink, where you probably have faster WiFi than your home. Most major airlines offer dozens or hundreds of movies and shows to watch.
▪️Newer designs like the 787 have lower cabin altitudes and improved humidity, which make a huge difference in passenger comfort on long haul flights. The first/business class international market has gotten very competitive globally, with many carriers offering excellent service and amenities. Pods, suites, showers, etc. Coach still sucks but is dramatically cheaper ...
This is the complete opposite of an empirical fact. The right has now joined the left in being pessimistic about the modern world and completely unappreciative of the amazing abundance we now have. I’ll just focus on food here, but you could do it for almost every category.
▪️Fresh produce used to be available only in season. In the winter it was canned or frozen. People used to send fruit for Christmas gifts, it was that much of a luxury good. Now, you can get giant, sweet berries year around in every grocery store. Corn on the cob in February. Not to mention once rare items like dragon fruit, heirloom tomatoes or baby bok choy.
▪️If you didn’t live on the coast, seafood was either not available, frozen, or extremely expensive. If you lived in the Midwest and traveled to coastal locales you would quite literally be able to eat food you had never seen. Salmon has become much more abundant and accessible. You can get fresh ahi at Walmart today. Sushi and oyster bars exist everywhere ...
