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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

Indeed, Americans need to realize that almost everything about our society is a bad first draft, in need of prompt replacement. People reflexively defend existing institutions, but the more I've thought about it over the years, the more I've realized there's almost no aspect of American life worth preserving. Police departments might be a good place to start, but most American cities also need to address structural deficit, disposable built environments, persistent segregation, absurd jurisprudence, and more.

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>but the more I've thought about it over the years, the more I've realized there's almost no aspect of American life worth preserving

There is so much about America that is worth preserving. One easy example right off the top of my head is the law and culture that enables people to peacefully demonstrate like they are today. Even discussing the idea of doing this in many countries could get you killed - or worse! That's another amazing thing (again, just off the top of my head), in America the worst punishment we have is death, and even that is outlawed in many places. The idea of an internment camp[0][1] is not even considered.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps

[1] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/17/20861427/india-...

Scores of videos in the last week show police brutally beating regular citizens who have assembled peacefully. Recent events are proving the First Amendment sounds great on paper, but is utterly worthless when people actually try to exercise that right.

Sure, we don't _currently_ have internment camps, but we used to have them and the current president, when asked point blank by Time magazine, refused to rule out using WW2-style internment camps for muslims. So there's that.

Freedom of expression is one of those things that I'd prefer to keep, but we can see that it is stronger on paper than in practice. In practice, if you gather in the capital city to bring your grievances to the government, unidentifiable mercenaries will gas you. And if you are a journalist reporting in front of your local police station some cop will shoot you in the head with "non-lethal" rubber ball, leaving you without eyes, or teeth.

It is the institutions of American that need to be dismantled, because are an implementation that doesn't reflect the founding ideals of our country.

> The idea of an internment camp is not even considered.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/22/us/ice-detention-coronavirus-...

https://www.insider.com/report-detention-centers-use-disinfe...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/border-fac...

https://archive.is/bxmYQ [WaPo]

Those are for people who are specifically not here legally and therefore don't recieve the full protection of our constitution and laws. While I vehemently disagree with these camps, there's no reason to assume a re-born America's laws would apply to people who are not citizens/legally accepted into its borders. A fix for these camps would be to guarantee the same protections we Americans enjoy to people who come here illegally, which can be accomplished using the current framework we have today.

> Those are for people who are specifically not here legally and therefore don't recieve the full protection of our constitution and laws

Do you have a citation on that? I don't think that's true. ICE detains a lot of people here legally, including citizens.

https://www.google.com/search?q=american+citizens+in+ice+det...

Regardless, ICE should be obeying international laws for human rights, which they are not.

It seems to me that ICE is meant to intimidate entire groups of people regardless of their citizenship or legal status.

There is ongoing legal debate on what aspects, including these very ones, of our constitution and laws apply to non residents.

> Those are for people who are specifically not here legally and therefore don't recieve the full protection of our constitution and laws.

What's the point in calling them 'human rights' if they only apply to Americans. The US Bill of Rights does not make any reference to citizenship or legal immigration status in the 6th or 8th amendments (which seem particularly relevant). Not to mention you still need due process to prove the person does not have legal immigration status in the first place.

There isn't really any ambiguity here, unless the law specifically targets citizens or people with a valid legal immigration status the law protects illegal immigrants as well.

I'm not very well versed in US law but it's my understanding you can't shoot a man down in the street for jaywalking because he's a criminal and thus not protected by the law.

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

The term "human rights" do not appear anywhere in the constitution.

It doesn't, but the US Constitution still defines human rights within the jurisdiction of the United States.

The word 'comment' doesn't appear in your comment, but that's still what it is.

It does not define "human rights". It defines some legal rights of people within the jurisdiction of the document - not some global notion of "human rights"

Human rights are legal rights. Human rights vary by jurisdiction. For example, the The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) administers Ontario provincial law.

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...

> legally accepted into its borders.

You should read up on who's in these camps. Most are asylum seekers. Applying for asylum is legally recognized under the Geneva Convention. Hell, I just watched a documentary where an asylum seeker was asked to come to the Tijuana/SD border for his asylum interview, thrown into detention ICE, and then transferred from one center to another before finally being deported a year later. He was imprisoned for asking for asylum, not being in the US illegally.

What's the documentary?

I watched it at the last film festival: http://thirdhorizonfilmfestival.com/films/what-happened-to-a...

The tile is What Happened to a Dream Deferred. During the QandA the director told us how she had to get involved because the subject that applied for asylum was arrested at the interview. Then moved through many detention camps. This is done so their immigration lawyers can't find them and represent them during the hearings. I found this to be really shocking.

  Applying for asylum is legally recognized under the Geneva Convention

Only at the first border reached. So, only Canadians, Mexicans, and those coming by water directly from their nation of origin are even theoretically eligible.

People on HN thrown "Geneva Convention!" (sic) around like it's a magic amulet. There are multiple conventions with multiple articles, and the USA isn't even a signatory to all of them. When people argue random Geneva Conventions nexus for some element of policy without stating a specific Convention and Article, assume that they're bullshitting you. It's like a lazy Support rep saying, "it's in the manual... somewhere."

> One easy example right off the top of my head is the law and culture that enables people to peacefully demonstrate

If you compare that right to any other country in the West, it doesn't look so peaceful and free.

I can only assume you've awakened, Rip Van Winkle style, from a extended sleep - not only one so long you missed dozens of people getting severely assaulted by the police and hundreds of people being held for extended periods of time (>24 hours) without charge, but so long that you apparently also missed the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II.

You also missed Trump musing on the idea of Muslim internment camps, so "not even considered" is a long bow. We might also include "kids in cages" while we're at it.

There are plenty other worse countries, but this seems like a rather low standard for a victory lap ("Freer than China! Less repressive than Belarus!").

>the more I've realized there's almost no aspect of American life worth preserving

I would suggest living in a third or second world country without outside support. I had your same mindset, and did that for a few years. I could not wait to come back.

Actually it was living abroad in a third world nation that soured me on America. Bringing my children back to the USA was painful to me and disappointing to them.

Which nation was this?

Even so, the third world is not our standard. We’re ready for the version two improvements by virtue of the iterative process, and our own expectations for ourselves.

Have you ever really tried one for yourself?

East Berlin used to be second World, but many of my American friends moved there because they were tired sick of being harassed by their own country brutality and would never go back.

Even many African countries are safer than the US if you are black.

On the other side, one of the most annoying kind of tourist you can find in my city, which is Rome in Italy, are Americans.

They lack the basic notions about "respecting others cultures and habits"

I sure have, Venezuela. No water, constant power failures, gas at 8-12 USD per gallon (controlled by the military police$$$, though that is a recent development), minimum wage at 5USD per month. Food at international prices. Basically non-existent judicial system. Police brutality several notches above what you see in the US.

So out of the 200+ countries you could have compared the US to you chose a failed state. There are many other 3rd world/developing countries who have fully functional governments.

Obviously not every other country is the same. The situation is not that the US does everything one way, and the entire rest of the world does it another way; there are about 200 different countries, and they all do things differently in some ways. Some countries get most things right, some get most things wrong, but most countries get some things right and some things wrong.

There's a lot to learn and improve by looking at how other countries solve their problems.

This was also the topic of Michael Moore's Where To Invade Next. Instead of taking other countries' oil, the US should take other countries' ideas, and Moore had a couple of suggestions for interesting ideas from other countries, like school lunches from France, prison system from Norway, etc.

Bullshit. If you had really lived there, you would know that Venezuela's problems are mostly caused by USA-imposed sanctions. The police are so "brutal" that they have let the would-be coup leader and CIA contractor Juan Gauido prance about the nation unmolested for a couple of years now. How many poor black Venezuelans have died under the knees of Venezuelan cops in the last month?

I like how you used the phrase “second world.” Most people have forgotten that’s a thing. Now it’s just Belarus.

Or even Western Europe. I’ve lived in the UK, and it absolutely gave me an appreciation for many aspects of American life.

For example, municipal government and school boards. Yes they can go bad. But as the protestors in Minneapolis are showing, the city is extremely responsive because it is local.

If there was a similar protest in Birmingham (UK), I can’t imagine the city disbanding the police department under any circumstances.

It might result in parliament taking action. But the idea of independent municipal government is very lacking.

Municipal governments in England are very much subordinate to Parliament.

There’s a reason Blair was so pathetically and stupidly pro-American. America actually has a lot to offer.

Not my America. It has problems, sure. But it's the place where people line up to get in. The place where multinationals that hire lots of international colleagues are headquartered. A super-power, and one that has good intent at least as much as any other super-power.

I'm proud of my America, even if it does have warts (some of them ugly.) I have confidence we'll get better in the future.

big surprise, somebody at hacker news who hates america and says none of it is worth preserving.

And I guess I could say the same about every country in Africa. NOTHING WORTH PRESERVING. Oh look suddenly people have their eyes bulging out.

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