I haven’t seen Ole Miss students this riled up since James Meredith enrolled.

This is, importantly, why there is a difference between "rational" expectations and "correct" expectations. Correct expectations are when you expect what really ends up happening, but you only find that out later.

If you believe, based on the Obama and Biden precedents, that President Newsom will decline prosecution, why risk your Navy career? If you believe the IDF will control Palestine forever then why would you bother trying to "obey the laws of war" however you understand them?

One reason they have this conviction, as countless people have pointed out, is that the nominal "opposition" parties in the United States and Israel *oppose* prosecuting people following illegal orders issued by their fascist regimes. "We tortured some folks!"

Obviously the post-WWII order was designed to convince people that they would be held accountable over those relevant timeframes. It's why we didn't stop hunting Nazi camp guards when they got to retirement age, etc.

High quality free public transportation is not a mechanism to make middle class people rich — it doesn't raise the ceiling. It helps them get to their middle class jobs where they earn middle class incomes. Good policy is good because it improves people's lives, not because it makes them rich.

To give a recent example, DC started mandating coverage for infertility treatments this year. Letting middle class people struggling with fertility have kids without borrowing money or drawing down retirement savings will not make them rich. It advances their interests *as middle class people*

While the vast majority of middle class adults might *like* to be rich most do not believe they have any realistic prospect of *becoming* rich. Advancing the interests of the middle class does not mean "giving them the opportunity to be rich," it means improving their lives *in* the middle class.

“During days of torture and abuse, an Israeli soldier carved a Star of David into Ahmad’s back with a knife. Another soldier carved a smiley face into Nadia’s father’s neck.”

This happened *at a university* in Gaza.

And yet our institutions still collaborate with Israeli schools.

You don't need to be a crude materialist to see that a political project that hinges on asking the middle class for votes while ruling out anything that advances their interests is not going to succeed electorally long-term.