This kind of attack is completely unnecessary. How is anyone supposed to respond to this comment when you've already constructed a straw man for your opponent and trivialized it?

But their student brains have been replaced by brains bereft of critical faculties and programmed to conform. To the untrained eye, they seem like your average book-devouring, ideas-discussing, H&M-adorned youth, but anyone who’s spent more than five minutes in their company will know that these students are far more interested in shutting debate down than opening it up.

This base-shoring piece ironically panders to people who've already made up their mind and are uninterested in engaging in any kind of meaningful discussion. You can't possibly write something like that and expect to convince anyone that you're arguing in good faith.

I've taken several in center city! (unsurprisingly, a much better experience than CC cabs...)

As for the second, I think that's an unfair and paralyzing comment but I don't think you mean it in bad faith. We all have different capacities to help alleviate suffering in different ways, with different impacts. The fact that there are "bigger" injustices does not mean that small ones should be ignored, especially when they are within your community and you have the ability to fix them yourself.

Or - if you're interested in stepping a little outside mainstream opinions - what makes animal suffering any less important than human suffering? Are we really special in some way that other animals aren't?

Edit: Feel free to disagree with me, but personally I wouldn't see WoW on a resume and think, "This person has experience doing hard work in the face of adversity".

As for the military, I guess that one is more debatable. I agree that the Bush-era "support the troops" jingoism isn't around much, but I used to see a lot posts where it's implicit. Things like hugely popular photos of special ops soldiers followed by adoring comments of how "badass" they are.