She also took the opportunity to badmouth her classmates... not responding to their ideas, but leveling ad hominen attacks. She's just another whiny brat.

Republicans have embraced the whiny brat style of politics, which is the more mainstream sibling of the paranoid style.

It is a national priority problem. Higher education (or any education) is definitely not a US priority for decades. That’s why funding is continuously removed to starve it, forcing colleges to move their focus from education to funding.

Is this a plan or just accident?

I recently retired from my university fairly recently. I began as a student starting in 1980. I saw the difference in real time. Universities now pander to anyone who will give them money no matter who it came from. Students are no longer encouraged to challenge mainstream, conventional thought.

that's what i've seen too. The universities sold out the intellectual life for political and economic power.

Most universities abandoned their intellectual mandate years ago -- the leadership became focused on how best to exploit the "university" brand to maximize political and economic influence.

by those criteria, india is not part of asia. That's just the super obvious one.

That's an odd claim. I can't think of anyone who thinks like that (of course, other people's ignorance is often hidden). The stories I hear about are internal instability, not cross-border conflict. When I do hear about border disputes (Venezuela/Guyana), I'm amazed that it wasn't resolved long ago.

It's not that they don't matter, it's just that they have other names for themselves.

Or do they see imperialistic designs in use of the term "Americans"? I would have said that such designs were long dead... but recent events have me reconsidering.

If we normalize the term Yankee, we'll be a step ahead when we need to establish "the Yankee Republic" once MAGA finishes dismantling the USA.