> Who is actively calling for the dismantling of the United States? No one. But Israel is fair game.
Because we "won". There are almost no indigenous people left in the United States, because we killed nearly all of them and destroyed their culture and civilization. I hope that this does not happen to Palestinians. For those indigenous people that remain, I definitely support greatly expanded rights and territory.
> If you actively call out for Israel to be dismantled I would expect for Europe to at least give away 50% of it's wealth to the people it destroyed.
One could argue on the number and logistics, but I absolutely support stronger European reparations for the damage done by colonialism.
I never said I support a genocidal Arab ethnostate, that's extremely offensive. I support no ethnostates, no colonialism, and no occupation in the region.
> Should the U.S exist? Last I checked California used to be part of Mexico - why isn't it being returned to it's rightful owners?
Yes, the U.S. is also a colonial state. Not all states owe their existence to colonialism and occupation, but the U.S. is definitely one of them. We committed a genocide on an unimaginable scale, and took all the line of the people whose territory this was rightfully theirs. Not a good example of states to emulate.
> How about West Europe? Maybe it should be dismantled and have all it's assets transferred to Africa?
Its colonial territories in Africa should have been, and were, transferred to Africa.
> The Jewish people were the indigenous people of that territory. In what way do they not rightfully control and occupy Israel?
This is a fictional narrative constructed to justify the state of Israel. It has no basis in historical fact -- there never existed a Jewish ethnostate in the territory known as Palestine, this is a modern construction. Regardless, I don't believe in ethnostates -- of any ethnicity, anywhere.
> Theoretically, I guess, but it's really strange how the one tiny country in the whole world that has a Jewish-dominated society is so often a target for complete destruction.
Because it’s a colonial ethnostate, with massive support from the United States. Israel (the colonial ethnostate) should not exist. Palestine is not an ethnostate, it is the name for the multicultural, multi-ethnic state who rightfully controls the area occupied by Israel, before British colonialism and subsequent invasion and occupation of the territory.
> 45 minutes means an hour and a half of your life every day that you don't get paid for and have to just throw away. (not only that but spending it doing one of the more dangerous things you can do in the US: driving.)
I've never found commuting to be "thrown away", but I've never commuted by car. I can read, listen to a podcast, or just people watch on the train. Or when biking/walking to work, I get some exercise. Seems to me the problem isn't commuting, but car commuting.
> One of my many disagreements with feminism is that it has somehow persuaded itself that this is somehow a privilege for men, and not an intolerable and sometimes literally fatal burden.
It definitely is a privilege, as a whole. People bring up workplace fatalities, and compare the experience of poor or working-class men vs women in general. The experience of a working class woman in this country is absolutely worse than that of a working class man, but both are very bad, because our country is not built for our working class or poor, regardless of gender.
If you compare women vs men in the same class, men undeniable have privilege.
> There was a golden era of reddit right before the great Digg migration.
People say this, but this is also when Reddit was the largest place for underage "softcore" pornography on the internet. It was one of the first things you saw when you google searched "reddit"
I find it bizarre that your stance on civil liberties allows people to carry a gun freely but is totally OK with totally taking away someone's freedom for years or decades because they are supposedly a threat to public safety.
I live in California, which is part of that country, and bans open carry. Why would I need to move to another country for sensible gun laws? I believe there is a balance which respects the second amendment (which I support!) while also placing reasonable restrictions on purchasing and carrying guns. Guns are extremely serious things, and just because I support the right of gun ownership doesn't mean that I support the totally unrestricted right of anyone to buy any gun at any time and bring it anywhere.
Call me an out of touch west coast liberal, but I personally would prefer that I don't regularly encounter people carrying a weapon capable of killing me. This isn't a war zone.
> What the average HN user and the average user want is worlds apart. The average person likes their emails to be nicely designed like a website with blocks of colour and the site logos.
Taste is generated. Cool trendy startups make "nicely designed" emails, users come to expect that. If scam emails looked "nicely designed" and Google sent emails in plaintext, the "nicely designed" emails would be considered untrustworthy. As a counterpoint, an "average user" wants software to work, and forcing every email client to parse HTML (which is far outside the scope of what an email client should do, especially with html as complex as it is today) often breaks things in unexpected ways.
In my opinion, html and plaintext are both inappropriate for email. HTML is far too complex, and plaintext is a bit too simple. I think a markdown-like syntax would be the best balance, but I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed.
> Free market Capitalism (one form of capitalism) is the only economic system that is compatible with individual liberty
Have you heard of the call on the left to “abolish the police”? I have never heard this from libertarians. Do you support abolishing police and prisons? Because that seems to me a far more oppressive institution than, say, income tax. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, I cannot imagine anything worse for individual liberty than that. Also, what about people’s freedom to do what they want with their time? Americans work the longest hours in the western world and have some of the worst labor protections. Libertarians are obsessed with freedom to consume but have little interest in protecting people’s freedoms at work. If the government monitored how long you were in the bathroom, that would be insane, but when an Amazon warehouse in a small town in Alabama does, it’s “the free market”. Libertarians hate when the government takes your money, but love when your boss takes your money, libertarians hate lazy people who don’t work, but have no problem with people who in inherit wealth and live off their investments. They love free speech and free association, but hate unions: which is a freely chosen organization of workers representing their interests. I could go on, but I fully support individual liberty and freedom, which is why I’m a socialist.
I mean don’t get me wrong, the infrastructure in this country is awful but it isn’t because it is done by a government. The state is the only institution that can really do infrastructure projects is my point, how and whether it does them is a political decision
Because we "won". There are almost no indigenous people left in the United States, because we killed nearly all of them and destroyed their culture and civilization. I hope that this does not happen to Palestinians. For those indigenous people that remain, I definitely support greatly expanded rights and territory.
> If you actively call out for Israel to be dismantled I would expect for Europe to at least give away 50% of it's wealth to the people it destroyed.
One could argue on the number and logistics, but I absolutely support stronger European reparations for the damage done by colonialism.