Foreign desk: the West’s ‘genocide fatigue’
“Dozens or more of non-combatant Ukrainians are killed every day,” and “they are becoming more of a statistic than a tragedy.” laments Alexander J. Motyl on the hill. “We were shocked when the first Russian missiles hit Ukrainian cities”, “more shocked” when “they hit an infirmary and a theater that served as a hiding place for dozens of children” in Mariupol, later razed, and “even more shocked” for “mass graves in several cities north of Kyiv” found in April. “Since then, our capacity for genuine outrage has visibly diminished.” Bottom line: “We get tired of following an ongoing genocide,” wishing it would “just go away and stop interfering in our worldly affairs. Because the only way to stop a genocide is to use some degree of force.”
Attention to inflation: it is even worse than it seems
“Contraction inflation” (smaller packages selling for the same price) “doesn’t fool consumers for long.” advises Virginia Postrel of Bloomberg. “People notice when their stuff runs out faster.” Nor does such a reduction bypass “people who compile inflation statistics.” However, “a creepier inflation contraction is plaguing the economy today: declines in quality rather than quantity.” The “missing value” of that is “hard to capture in price indices.” Many hotels, for example, have ended daily housekeeping. “For the same room price, guests receive less service.” That’s not “conceptually different from shrinking a bag of chips,” however, the consumer price index likely won’t reflect it. Such drops in quality are “aggravating” and make consumers feel “taken for granted”. Unfortunately, they are now “so ubiquitous that even today’s terrifying inflation figures are almost certainly understated.”
Heartbeat of education: Medical schools must do no harm
The new diversity, equity, and inclusion competitions from the Association of American Medical Colleges, warns John D. Sailer in Newsweek, serve “as a model to inject the slogans of identity politics: ‘intersectionality,’ ‘white privilege,’ ‘microaggression,’ ‘alliance,’ into medical education.” “They will almost inevitably hamper free speech, politicize medical education, and lead to substantially harmful policies.” Already, “DEI programming and policies pervade medical education.” Eight of the 24 DEI officers at UNC Chapel Hill “work for the medical school.” Some schools are even rushing to “establish IED requirements for evaluation, promotion and retention”. Not only does this “harm academic freedom and open speech,” but it “is likely to lead to substantially harmful medical policy.” If it continues, we may “soon find out that IED is a poison, not a cure.”
Hunter Clock: Laptop an American ‘tragedy’
“The US spy chiefs who signed that infamously misleading letter” claiming Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation “knew what. . . Hunter was doing abroad, because it was his job to know”, notes Lee Smith in Tablet. And “the two most prestigious newsprint organizations in the United States” still won’t admit that they “were wrong to believe” those accusations. Indeed, “even without a trial, it’s clear that Hunter Biden has enjoyed one of the most maniacally reckless runs in American history” as well as “a safety net, billed to the American public.” In all, “it is simply the saddest story about an American in-laws that will never be told.”
Neocon: Higher Education Credibility Crisis
“The considerable gap between Republicans and Democrats” in opinions “on higher education has become an abyss”, warns Jonathan Marks of Commentary: 76% of Democrats, but only 32% of GOPers, view it positively. And “colleges and universities, facing both a short-term and long-term decline in college-age students, cannot afford to be looked down upon by half the country.” Additionally, only 48% of Generation Z, which includes all college-age individuals today, agree that “higher education is having a positive effect on the country”; 49% “disagree”. They are also “less likely than any other age group to agree that four-year colleges, public or private, are worth the cost of attending. And they were less likely than average to see education beyond high school as a good investment.” That’s a big problem with “the very young people” that colleges “hope to attract.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board