MrBeast’s Gift of Vision Is Nice! But One Guy Shouldn’t Have To Do It

It’s really great when people’s lives are made better, but mass uplift should not be subject to the goodwill or charity of a few. This is the major takeaway of a new viral video of MrBeast’s latest charitable act.

On Saturday, MrBeast, the YouTuber with a whopping 236 million subscribers, posted a video titled, “1,000 Blind People See For The First Time.”

Jimmy Donaldson, a.k.a MrBeast, begins the video by saying that 200 million people worldwide suffer from impaired vision. “They can’t see. But we have all the technology to fix it.” Ophthalmologist Jeffrey Levenson, who joined Donaldson, says that half of all cases of blindness in the world consists of people who need a 10-minute operation, a cataract surgery that vacuums out a cloudy lens in an eye and replaces it with an artificial one. With this context, Donaldson provides the quick operation to 1,000 individuals across the world, even giving some patients additional sums of money or cars as goodwill gifts.

As far as content creation goes, this is simply just a nice thing to do; MrBeast has accumulated inordinate amounts of wealth from his massive platform and is using it to help other people. There’s a discussion to be had about so-called “poverty porn,” in which forms of media exploit one’s poor conditions in order to generate attention. On a larger scheme, out of all the malicious ways people use and exploit others’ emotions online, this video perhaps isn’t too reproachable, particularly given MrBeast, at this point, has no issue garnering viewers. He is the fourth–most subscribed account on YouTube and the most popular individual account.

But the on-the-surface heartwarming story also reveals how dependent we are as a society on charity to improve people’s material conditions.

Not only does cataract surgery take a matter of minutes, as MrBeast’s video points out, but the life-changing operation also can cost as little as $25. Yet still, people are left paying hundreds, and more often thousands of dollars for such surgeries, especially for those who are uninsured.

MrBeast himself, not known by any means as a crusading socialist, understands this:

Though he also frames the contradiction, perhaps sincerely or perhaps to appease his broader audience in terms of market logic, MrBeast still communicated to his many fans what we all know to be true: such conditions are incomprehensible.

And so, it would be worthwhile to avoid any overscrupulous analysis of what MrBeast’s latest act of charity represents: the good nature of people, and why we should seek to embrace and imbue that nature into our systems, rather than restrict it to only existing in individuals.

The president of the New College of Florida was forced out by a board of trustees stacked with appointees of Governor Ron DeSantis, who is cracking down on “woke” thought in state schools, and replaced with another DeSantis ally.

The New College is a top-notch liberal arts school, as well as a politically liberal enclave not just in deeply red Florida, but in the county where it is located, too. The college’s board of trustees was overhauled in early January when DeSantis appointed six new conservative members.

The 13-member board of trustees met Tuesday night, where they ousted President Patricia Okker to the dismay of the school community.

DeSantis’s picks include Christopher Rufo, an anti–critical race theory advocate also known for his anti-LGBTQ rhetoric; Charles Kesler, a senior fellow at a far right think tank; and Matthew Spalding, a government professor at Hillsdale College, a highly conservative private Christian college in Michigan. Both Rufo and DeSantis’s chief of staff have said they want to remake New College in the image of Hillsdale.

During the meeting, DeSantis appointee Mark Bauerlein described diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs as “McCarthyite.” Rufo also criticized DEI and motioned to shutter the Office of Outreach and Inclusive Excellence.

The trustees appointed Richard Corcoran as interim president. Corcoran, the former state education commissioner, is a close DeSantis ally and was described by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune as “an eager participant in the governor’s education culture war battles.”

Students protested the meeting and have tried to push back on the changes at their school, but it’s a struggle in the face of what appears to be an all-out war by DeSantis on the state school system.

The New College board meeting came just hours after DeSantis announced he intends to defund DEI programs on state college campuses. He has also signed a law limiting what professors can teach about race, and another requiring tenured faculty to undergo review every five years.

Public school teachers have been told to hide their classroom libraries or risk five years in jail and a $5,000 fine for having material deemed “inappropriate” for students. DeSantis also banned high schools from teaching an A.P. African American studies class, deeming it “woke indoctrination.”

The College Board on Wednesday released an updated curriculum for its new Advanced Placement African American Studies course—and now missing are many Black writers and scholars on intersectionality, critical race theory, the queer experience, and Black feminism. Black Lives Matter is now optional in the new curriculum.

The New York Times first reported the news, which comes at the start of Black History Month.

The revision comes after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he wouldn’t allow the A.P. course in state schools, calling an earlier draft of the curriculum “woke indoctrination.” DeSantis and the Florida Department of Education specifically named six topics they took issue with: Black Queer Studies, Intersectionality, the Movement for Black Lives, Black Feminist Literary Thought, The Reparations Movement, and Black Struggle in the 21st Century. (He also complained that queer theory has nothing to do with Black history and is “pushing an agenda on our kids.”)

Many experts on those topics are now gone: bell hooks, the feminist writer and author of Feminism Is for Everybody; Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, a Columbia University law professor and pioneering scholar on critical race theory; Roderick Ferguson, a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Yale University; and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author and journalist who wrote the definitive case for reparations for slavery and the National Book Award–winning Between the World and Me.

In a new curriculum, the College Board also suggests “Black conservatism” as an optional research topic for students.

David Coleman, the head of the College Board, told The New York Times that the changes were not due to political pressure. “At the College Board, we can’t look to statements of political leaders,” he said. The changes came from “the input of professors” and “longstanding A.P. principles.”

DeSantis’s criticism of the A.P. course seemed to be a preview of the Florida governor’s attack on education. On Tuesday, he vowed to defund diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at state colleges and suggested requiring students to take a course on Western civilization.

As The New Republic’s Tori Otten wrote:

It’s part of a larger war the governor is waging against “woke culture.” This includes signing a law limiting what professors can teach about race and another that would require tenured faculty to receive performance reviews every five years. If they are not up to standards, which have not been specified yet, they could be let go (defeating the purpose of tenure). DeSantis has also blocked high schools from teaching an A.P. African American studies class.

As Israel continues to escalate its violent campaign against Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined CNN’s Jake Tapper for an interview, in which the Israeli prime minister said he is not going to be bothered to get “hung up” on peace with Palestinians.

“If we wait for them, we’re not going to have peace,” Netanyahu said in the interview Tuesday evening, describing his plan to instead focus on other nations like Saudi Arabia first. “I think we’ll circle back to the Palestinians and get a workable peace with the Palestinians.”

In other words, Netanyahu’s grand master strategy is to delay addressing the devastating crisis Palestinians face, brought by the actions of the government he leads, because apparently Palestinians aren’t ready to come to the table to negotiate on not being occupied.

“I went around them (Palestinians). I went directly to the Arab states and forged, with a new concept of peace … I forged four historic peace agreements: the Abraham Accords,” he said.

When Tapper asked Netanyahu whether would be willing to give the right to vote to people residing in the West Bank or East Jerusalem, Netanyahu dodged the question and said he’s “willing to have them have all the powers that they need to govern themselves, but none of the powers that threaten us.”

Netanyahu also streamed lie after lie as he attempted to justify his proposal to weaken the Israeli judiciary by allowing a simple majority in the Knesset to overturn any Supreme Court decision. This would subject an independent supreme court to the party in power (thus making it no longer an independent).

Israel is currently led by the furthest right government ever, so such a plan would be all the more convenient for Netanyahu—especially as he himself seeks to evade accountability from his own corruption trial. Netanyahu’s justice minister, Yariv Levin, told the Israeli Knesset two weeks ago that the charges against Netanyahu “contributed to a very broad public understanding that there are failures that need to be corrected” in the judicial system.

The United States certainly has its own role in affirming Netanyahu’s nonsense. Beyond sending billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, the U.S. simply fails to recognize the humanity of Palestinians. Last week, Vedant Patel, spokesman of Biden’s State Department, refused to acknowledge that Palestinians are occupied. Israeli forces killed at least 35 Palestinians in just the first month of 2023.

Nikki Haley will run for president in 2024, The Post and Courier reported, a significant shift away from her previous stance that she would not compete against her former boss Donald Trump.

Haley is expected to formally announce her run on February 15, but the Post and Courier reported her intentions Tuesday night, citing an anonymous member of her “inner circle.”

The former South Carolina governor will join what is expected to be a crowded field for the Republican nomination. Haley is currently predicted to be one of at least three women, including South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and former Representative Liz Cheney, and one of at least two people of color, alongside Representative Tim Scott.*

Haley has been signaling her presidential ambitions for a while, despite making headlines in April 2021 for saying she “would not run if President Trump ran.” But in recent months, particularly since the start of January, she has been active on Twitter with posts either about how it’s time for a “new generation to lead” or about popular right-wing talking points, such as critical race theory and voting rights, aimed at winning over Trump’s base.

Haley was outspoken against Trump during the 2016 election, initially endorsing Senator Marco Rubio for president. But after Trump won, she happily accepted a position as United Nations ambassador and has become a loyal follower.

Haley spoke during the 2020 Republican National Convention in support of Trump. During her speech, she insisted, “America is not a racist country,” only to say immediately afterward that she and her family faced “discrimination and hardship” as Indian-Americans.

During the 2022 midterms, Haley called for Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock to be deported. (The state’s first Black senator was born in Savannah.)

Haley often plays up her Indian heritage as a sign that the GOP is not racist, falling into a familiar trap. From Herschel Walker not being allowed to speak in interviews and Byron Donalds being patted on the head when he voted for Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, Republicans of color seem to just be political pawns.

* This post originally misstated Noem’s title.