Live data from Hacker News

The United States withdraws from UNESCO

state.gov

291–300 of 989 posts

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#291
post #40

And it’s wild to think that more than 1/3 of the devs I’ve met in my life support this admin. These are seemingly smart people. The past 10 years or so made me realize I don’t know anything about human nature or intellect. Edit: I am in no way saying conservatism is bad and liberalism is good. I have my values in both.

There is just a shocking lack of empathy in the world today. Selfishness is off the scale.

I personally blame social media and the financialization of everything for this. A person's entire self-worth can be reduced to the size of their 401K and their instagram reels (brunch, dog, destination wedding, hike, repeat).

Depressing.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#292
post #92

[flagged]

[flagged]

Not all supporters of a given political party agree on everything. They may simply align with the party on the topics that are most important to them, even if they disagree with other topics that are lower on their priority list.

It is disingenuous to suggest that any group of people unilaterally agree on a diverse collection of topics.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#293

Not that this is a topic that I think anyone is still rubed on (in the sense that even those who voted for him thinking he'd be better on Israel / Palestine relations have been disabused of the notion), but did anyone else have "Trump withdraws the US from UNESCO because they support Palestine" on their bingo card? And, of course, the follow-up question: did anyone have it on a Harris bingo card?

Yes, because he did it before.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> This is what happens when your neighbours wall you off because they don't want you in their countries… Ah, so now context matters. > keep training your children to hate them As do Israeli settlers. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/clip-of-israeli... "An Israeli organization calling itself The Civil Front has sparked controversy on social media by producing a song in which children fete the “destruction”…

> An Israeli organization calling itself The Civil Front has sparked controversy on social media by producing a song in which children fete the “destruction” in Gaza and say “nothing will be left there” in a year’s time."

That sounds like extreme Israelis, or the average Palestinian. If this were normal, Palestine would just be bombed to dust

> "How Israel’s Army Uses Palestinians as Human Shields in Gaza": https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/world/middleeast/israel-g...

Yes, that is bad. But that doesn't remove the other thing. Stop thinking in sides and start thinking in principles. If you hide behind civilians in a war then you get to have sympathetic journalists write pieces about the natural results of that practice, but you also clearly don't care about your civilians.

> Is that actually what happened?

I don't know - I'm responding to earlier in the thread, as that didn't seem to be challenged before. Here[0]'s an example of what they mean, I think.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-40530396

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#295
1984: U.S. withdraws. 2003: U.S. rejoins. 2011: U.S. stops paying dues after Palestine joins. 2017: U.S. announces withdrawal (effective end of 2018). 2023: U.S. rejoins, pledges to repay dues. 2025: U.S announces withdrawal

Seems to be a revolving door

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#296
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deeply, deeply deranged to suggest that Israel—a $600B economy—is "wagging the dog" of our $30,500B economy.

AIPAC is the most powerful lobby in Washington. And money get's you anything in politics.

Lol this is obviously not true

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#297

This administration has zero ability to build or bring people together, able only to destroy what others have made. On the bright side, it isn't effective until December 31, 2026 so there is plenty of time to chicken out.

[flagged]

Do you truly believe the US involvement in UNESCO was cruft?

This is entirely because of Palestine.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#298
post #40

And it’s wild to think that more than 1/3 of the devs I’ve met in my life support this admin. These are seemingly smart people. The past 10 years or so made me realize I don’t know anything about human nature or intellect. Edit: I am in no way saying conservatism is bad and liberalism is good. I have my values in both.

It took me a long time to realize that most people don’t make any effort to understand politics beyond surface level headlines. A lot of people treat politics like they behave in the HN comment section: They see the headline, arrive at a conclusion based on previous assumptions, and head straight to the comment section to argue their side without ever even making an effort to read the article. With politics, politici…

The problem is that politics, particularly in the US, tends to push people into binary thinking.

I certainly do not love the Trump admin and think Kamala would easily do better. However, that does not mean the Trump admin has done nothing I agree with. There are nice parts to the OBBB that directly benefit me. Further, I think the approach to H1Bs, removing the lottery and instead basing it on salary, is the right move.

I say this because regardless of admin, there's going to be things you like and dislike. What seems to happen is people get completely sucked in a media bubble which only reports the good or bad of their political opponents.

Even the worst and most evil world leaders in history did good or had some good policies. There's never been a pure evil or good leader. Unfortunately, people want to flatten the world and remove the nuance "if so and so did it, it must be good/bad".

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#299

> UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and maintains an outsized focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy. Ummm...what? This is the kind of nonsense that makes me want to leave this country.

It's too bad to see otherwise intelligent people refusing to engage with any statement or action of the US federal government in good faith. However I suspect the point you cited is far more relevant to this move than the distraction that is Israel v. Palestine. There is plenty to criticize and oppose in the UN's agenda. Much of it suggests developed countries severely inhibit their growth and further centralize power to better control the pesky proles who might not want to go along with the plan. See James Lindsay's reading of their Sustainable Development Goals which cites them directly.

Re: The United States withdraws from UNESCO

#300
post #267
post #40

And it’s wild to think that more than 1/3 of the devs I’ve met in my life support this admin. These are seemingly smart people. The past 10 years or so made me realize I don’t know anything about human nature or intellect. Edit: I am in no way saying conservatism is bad and liberalism is good. I have my values in both.

Do they support some policies or everything that this administration proposes? In my experience I have seldom seen people who believe 100% in whatever party/government does. Most of the time it's a few topics that matter - be it immigration, or less taxes, or whatever. However, they are not gonna protest for leaving UNESCO. They might find it stupid, but probably they find topic XYZ more important. So they suck it up…

> But I like to believe and think they are a minority.

There's a lot of MAGA hats out there man. Historically, has it ever been a good thing when so many people believe everything one man says is pure truth? I mean, even if I agreed with every policy, the extent and dedication of this cultish behaviour would give me pause.

Post reply on HN