[helixten]

This is very American, The Green Book guided Black travelers to safe businesses during Jim Crow. The Underground Railroad was literally an information network to help enslaved people reach freedom. During WWII, communities helped hide Japanese Americans from internment. LGBTQ+ people created networks to find safe spaces during decades of criminalization. Native communities have long shared information about safe passage and resources.

[hydrogen7800]

Reminders like these are strangely comforting to me. It tells me we've been through this and worse, and have come out intact or even better afterward.

[newAccount2025]

Perfectly put. American as in the historic reality. Unamerican as in the marketing ideal.

[HaZeust]

Well said. A few days ago I made a response to a comment in a thread, where I laid out a list of some aspects of American Culture [1]. And, 2 of the BIG ones in the Beliefs category were, "fundamental distrust in government and a shared collective identity in those against it, free-speech absolutism"

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=HaZeust#44411990

[immibis]

Except they don't believe in free-speech absolutism. They say they do, but they obviously don't, because every time one of them gets in control of speech, they make it substantially less free.

[HaZeust]

They don't believe in fundamental distrust of government either, they're a little more forgiving of interpretation and purpose of policy when they're in charge - nonetheless, these virtues are in the American zeitgeist for better or for worse.

[burnt-resistor]

I'm wondering if the West Bank has such a guide to avoid settlers.

[dyauspitr]

This to me isn’t comforting at all because what we’re seeing now is a regression. We haven’t dealt with a regression before.