It's screens. We don't allow my son to use social media and he is still addicted to using an Ipad. We have to forcefully remove it. He just wants to play games on it constantly.
Heck, I am constantly looking at hacker news on my phone.
Yes, it is. You just have to visit a dimly lit restaurant or bar with a nice big window facing the street. You'll see everyone mesmerised with what's happening outside during the day. The same place will might end up being a great conversation place after dusk!
I don’t think it’s even screens. It’s something more broad. I don’t get how people can see third spaces and so forth dwindling even in the 80s and 90s before screens in everyone’s hands were a thing.
People want community but at a distance and only when they want it at a specific time. Everyone talks about how great it is to have community/village for raising kids but then they deal with their family teaching their kids bad habits, others being slightly neglectful compared to them, and having to put up with giving back to others to make it more fairly compensatory.
Shocker. Many people didn’t like that shit and decided it was better to do it all alone than deal with any inconveniences from others. You what your parents to help raise your kids? Nope. They often did bad things to you that you didn’t like. Also it means someone’s family has to move or live with the other. Another dealbreaker.
We just live in expensive times and these things are harder to do in a more globally competitive economy. People have lower tolerance.
Agree with your post. As a Jewish American, I have been advocating that it would be better for Americans and even Jews if we stop sending money to Israel and put political pressure on Israel to abandon illegal settlements, end the war on Gaza and work towards a resolution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
Unfortunately, this POV doesn't seem to be widely held by many woth influence.
A 2 state solution is still wildly unpopular amongst Palestinians (both in the West Bank and Gaza), and since 10/7, is now a minority opinion (although still the plurality) amongst Israelis[1].
They also did try as recently as 2009, not that you'd have heard about it[2].
Also, the aid money the USA sends to Israel doesn't disappear into nothing any more than NASA's funding does. American aid to Israel (and to most places in the world) hinges on the condition that they only use that money to buy from American companies.
NASA is exploring space, our money to Israel encourages US participation in genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and global war. I'm in the US and support a single state solution: Palestine. I think most people under the age of 45 are in agreement.
Do you have any sources for this? I know a lot of Jews in the U.S. support Israel, but not sure why they would care about settlements if they don't live there.
And if what you say is true, why is Netanyahu still in power?
That said I don't think your point undermines my suggestion that the U.S. should get out of the business of funding Israel and joining it in any wars over there.
As a Jew and I don't think that is true at all and feel it is a bit of a dangerous characterization. Jews have just as much scruples as any other groups.
What I do think is true is that Jews have more fear of others based on past treatment and even a lot of current rhetoric and may justify actions as necessary for safety.
We do also happen to be a very small group of people. For instance, Palestinians have 1 billion Muslims supporting them.
That said, I happen to think that these unscrupulous policies will actually cause more harm than good.
Thank you for this nuanced position,. I understand what you're saying totally, as I perceive it like that, too, being non-Jewish.
However, as you stated, the recent acts of Israel's current government are not only horrendous and cruel, but I think are also causing a lot of harm to Israel itself, alienating its allies and creating a permanent state of war that Israel cannot survive on its own. It's idiotic thinking that everything will be fine if the Iranian regime falls. Permanent war is a brittle and dangerous position for everybody involved.
You are thinking narrowly if you think the only way Israel can exist is as a zionist state. Zionism is one example way Israel can exist, but it is not the exclusive way.
One can be against ethnonationalism and not anti-Isreal as a state where Jewish people are safe and free.
As a Jewish American, I don't think it's antisemitic. We really shouldn't be sending any money or weapons to Israel or joining them in any wars.
What I do think is a bit antisemitic is the suggestion that Israel is somehow unique here. Russia, China, and the U.S. are all doing this. Heck we just captured Maduro and killed leader of Iran. I just think a country like Russia is way more effective and subtle when it comes to election manipulation, especially in Eastern Europe.
We see hate everywhere to China and Russia every time in way higher levels than to Israel. Is that racist, too? Russia is also embargoed for doing the same things Israel does. Why isn't Israel embargoed? Antisemitism, too?
The US sadly just do the fuck they want, but I think they get a lot of criticism here in Europe at least. The only thing in what Israel is unique about is that it seems there are no consequences for their actions.
So, if I don't follow your what-about-ism, Im a racist? Thats what you are saying there; We all know that the US, china, Russia, and 99% of the countries in the world are doing this. Why is it racist to pick on the COUNTRY of Israel, which right now is trying its hardest to wipe out entire countries? We know Russia is doing that right now in Ukraine, but that does not eliminate what Israel is doing.
Not shocking that this is downvoted around here. On X and the amount of anti-semitic content this is fueling is scary.
As a Jewish person, I can't help feel that the magnitude of the outrage is because Epstein and quite a few of his associates were rich Jews.
Not to downplay what they did as it was horrible, but I don't recall similar levels of outrage about all the scandals in the Catholic Church.
Epstein isn't the first person to be involved in sex trafficking. Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases.
It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.
>It's hard not to feel like a lot of people want to paint a picture that Jews are especially depraved and amoral.
That is because it is true, a lot of people do want to paint all Jews like that. People would probably find the catholic church stuff even juicier if the vatican was running an intelligence agency that brokers with most other western intelligence agencies with these same rapists.
The thing with Epstein is that he really seems heavily connected to intelligence. Maxwells dad is alleged to be a Mossad agent. There are pictures of him in meetings in his office with a map of Israel, gaza, and the west bank on the wall. There are FBI documents that allege epstein himself was at least at one point a Mossad agent.
So you have this compelling israeli intelligence angle. The fact that global elites genuinely partied with this man. All the history of the case from the sweetheart plea deal in 2007 that stopped the federal investigation at the time in its tracks and granted immunity for potentially involved parties, the fact he was never actually convicted before he died (even that is suspect), the fact that outside Maxwell no one has been arrested.
I mean it really quacks like a tin foil hat global elite conspiracy. That is what makes this story so damn juicy and compelling. It isn't just a couple priests getting their rocks off with some alter boys, but an entire systematic thing where its looking like this guy was not only trafficking girls but running some sort of Bene Gesserit esque breeding program impregnating teenagers he thought had good genetic traits.
You couldn't even write this stuff into a movie it is so wild and hardly believable if it wasn't coming from DOJ evidence respositories.
1 The Epstein story has an interesting Mossad angle, maybe they contacted him or even paid him
2 Lunatic antisemites (and probably many bots) are overrunning the internet with medieval-style antisemitism in which Epstein is still alive, babies were eaten, etc.
I am not Jewish, and must be lucky to hang out in the parts of the internet where I haven't seen it. (Except for Breitbart comments - I pop in there when I want to know the subtext of what right wing politicians are saying. There's plenty of anti-semitism there.)
> Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases.
I have no interest in dying on this hill, but there's 3 different technical terms which describe distinct kinds of attraction people have to children in relation to puberty, and that term does not describe 14-15 year olds. For whatever that is worth, with regards to the legality in parts of Europe indeed age of consent can vary widely across nations, and even states within nations. But let's be clear - what Epstein did was illegal even if it was done to adults. That's human trafficking.
I am not trying to rehabilitate Epstein. He was a vile and disgusting sex trafficker, rapist, pedophile, whatever you want to call him. I am all for going after anyone else who can be proven to be involved.
He is also dead. I just don't think there was anything particularly exceptional/unique about him as a story other than his wealth as human trafficking is a global problem.
You aren't taking into account all of the effort the Republicans spent ginning up conspiracy theories about Satanic pedophile cults within the Democratic Party and how Trump's base made that and "releasing the Epstein files" their entire identity, or the absolute clownshow debacle of the Trump administration trying to stall, prevaricate and memory-hole the entire thing after it became clear how implicated Trump himself was.
Also the number of celebrities and powerful people (including the sitting President) involved makes it a bigger story.
That said, yes the antisemites have come out in force around this, just as they did around Palestinian activism, and just as they always do. But I think most people's outrage is focused on systems of privilege and power and on the Trump administration in particular, not anything about "the Jews."
Thanks for the perspective. It could be that I am being overly sensitive to the discourse around this.
As someone who avoids forums where these ideas are promoted, it's hard to know when people are talking about things like "Satanic cults" whether that is some code word for Jews.
> it's hard to know when people are talking about things like "Satanic cults" whether that is some code word for Jews.
That came straight out of /pol/ so it definitely was, although I suspect that as with "cultural Marxism" it got diffused enough within the right wing that the antisemitism got obscured for most people, but the roots are still there. Trump tweeted this image of Hillary Clinton in 2016, after all[0].
But I think that it's important not to mistake online discourse for societal norms. All of that is intentionally engineered by social media platforms and political interests to maximize the effect of radicalism and extremism, and Twitter explicitly for right-wing ends. I think in the real world, most people don't fall in for that sort of thing.
Yes, totally a leap. Just check out the list of coincidences that Schmerika made in this thread. Epstein could have been a Nigerian spy as much as a Mossad one, am I right?
Heck, I am constantly looking at hacker news on my phone.
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