▪️The Palestinian movement has a lot in common with BLM, which is why there’s a lot of overlap between the two now. BLM takes what could be a legitimate complaint, that police are sometimes too violent against minorities, and creates an obsessive and toxic ideology around it that ends up making the problem worse.
▪️Nearly every time a minority is killed by police, the BLM movement tries to turn them into a martyr and start protests/riots before any facts are known. Ancillary violence is ignored or excused by its members. Nearly every time, it then turns out the martyr was a violent low life and the police action was justified in the context.
▪️Instead of focusing on the toxic culture in inner city minority communities that leads to a continual cycle of violence, BLM focuses on blaming “systemic racism” and more broadly, American capitalism and Western Civ. They end up turning criminals into the victims and seek to destroy the entire core of what’s made us civilized and relatively free.
▪️Thus, whenever elements of BLM end up with autonomy over cities, things get worse. In particular, worse for minorities, who they claim to want to help. Just look at the spike of violence and deterioration of inner city schools after 2020, when BLM policies and culture were implemented in most major cities.
▪️The Palestinian cause is similar. They take what could be a legitimate grievance, create a toxic ideology to address it instead of criticizing and improving their own culture, and to the extent they are given any autonomy they turn their society into a cesspool and hurt the people they claim to help. The main difference is the Palestinian cause excuses and embraces violence to a much greater degree.
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 ...
▪️This is a proposal that pertains only to graduate level nursing degrees, not undergraduate ones (which were never considered professional degrees). The proposal will have a 30-60 day public comment period next year, where groups can object, before the DoE will decide on it.
▪️This is about how much federal student loans someone can take out for a particular degree. The cap on graduate degrees is $100k ($20,500/yr), while a “professional degree” limit is $200k ($50k/yr).
▪️Under the new rule proposal, professional degrees include:
🔹Pharmacy
🔹Dentistry
🔹Veterinary medicine
🔹Chiropractic
🔹Law
🔹Medicine (including osteopathic medicine & podiatry)
🔹Optometry
🔹Theology
▪️The nursing degrees excluded are ones like master of science in nursing (MSN), doctor of nursing practice (DNP) and PhD in nursing. These degrees would be limited to $100k in federal student loans, like all other graduate degrees.
▪️These changes came from the One Big Beautiful Bill’s...
