A good place to start for someone like Sam Altman is people in his strata, such as Peter Thiel, who notoriously donated money to Trump's campaign, and publicly endorsed him.
I don't think the United States is in a supply-limited triage situation right now, though. What's effectively been done is to cut off all non-Christians in certain countries – by issuing a blanket prohibition based upon a highly-religious-correlated country of origin, then an eventual exception for the religion that the president likes. This arrangement isn't prioritization, it's a ban.
What's worse: the rationale given for these countries – the September 11th attacks – isn't even supported by fact. The plot did not originate in these countries. That is reckless and dangerous policy.
Given a fixed number of refugees to be accepted, prioritization of one group means a near total ban on another. If there's a justifiable reason for that prioritization, then that's what you'll get. For example, if you had a refugee admittance process in the 1930's that was limited to N people (being a time traveler that knows the future), I might kick out a Jewish refugee in exchange for a nuclear physicist, but not some rando Lutheran. So what you'd get is a mix of Jewish people, Jehovah's Witnesses, disabled people, etc, with prioritization towards the young.
Obviously, this is not Trump's rationale, and there's the whole other angle of blocking reentry of permanent residents.
But for the general concept of religious based refugee admittance? I can't imagine the ACLU going back in time and arguing prioritizing Jewish refugees is unconstitutional.
>In a highly publicized event in May–June 1939, the United States refused to admit over 900 Jewish refugees who had sailed from Hamburg, Germany, on the St. Louis. The St. Louis appeared off the coast of Florida shortly after Cuban authorities cancelled the refugees' transit visas and denied entry to most of the passengers, who were still waiting to receive visas to enter the United States. Denied permission to land in the United States, the ship was forced to return to Europe. The governments of Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium each agreed to accept some of the passengers as refugees. Of the 908 St. Louis passengers who returned to Europe, 254 (nearly 28 percent) are known to have died in the Holocaust. 288 passengers found refuge in Britain. Of the 620 who returned to the continent, 366 (just over 59 percent) are known to have survived the war.
Presumably you are smart enough to see the difference between those two cases, given that one group was actively fleeing state-sanctioned oppression and eventual genocide. I would hope that no one has to explain that to you.
I'm not in Syria and thus can only repeat what other people say, but I've heard that ISIS is committing genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and Shiites. The source of this information is John Kerry.
> Of course, one plausible explanation is that Democrats don't like Christians
That's a conspiracy theory with no evidence, not a plausible explanation. Refugees can't vote for a long time. There are too few to make any substantive electoral difference.
From another comment thread: "Refugees are referred to the US by the UNHCR.". You're also comparing the percentage to the total population of the country, rather than those who applied for asylum/refugee status. This is not a meaningful comparison. Finally, you provide no year-over-year data; it's possible that they fled first in previous years, or are residing in areas that are protected by pro-Assad forces.
Again: Trump campaigned very specifically on a ban on Muslims. The religious minority directive is obviously an attempt to scope the restriction to adherents of Islam. It is worded in the way it is, again obviously, to make it more likely to withstand the pending legal challenges.
This isn't a tortured or biased interpretation of the directive. It is precisely the description Trump used over and over and over again on the campaign trail.
Why is that all of these posts saying to "take a stand" fail to explain the political process? I'll just quote myself here. If you want to help stop trump the most effective ways are to:
1. Call
- Local congresspeople (http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/)
- Senators (https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/)
- Local officials (https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials)
2. Participate
- Get involved in local elections (this is a decent start - to become informed locally http://www.npr.org/stations/)
- Protest
- Attend town hall and city council meetings (see npr)
How effective is calling local congress members if you live in an area with a strong progressive majority such as the Bay Area. Not that we shouldn't voice our option to our represented officials but I suspect in some ways it's redundant whereas things like raising money for national organizations may be more impactful.
It's still helpful if your representatives can say 'I've received n calls from outraged constituents!' There's little reason you couldn't raise money and make a phone call.
First, it helps put actual weight behind their words, so they can say "I received 2000 calls about this issue in the past week" or something. Second, members of congress have limited time and limited political capital, so if for example you want them to prioritize stopping the Muslim ban over stopping the border wall, you should let them know. It helps them choose what to focus on, and can also help them recruit other members to help them if they can say "look at the numbers, people really care about this one".
Fair enough, I do think the quantification argument is sound. I certainly don't mean to discourage anyone from contacting their elected officials, I just want to highlight the fact a lot of us live in areas that are both solidly more progressive and solidly more wealthy than the median county in the us.
Keep in mind, when politicians measure how much people care, the numbers are weighted by how much effort went in to making the statement. So, a unique, hand-typed letter takes a lot of effort and therefore is given a lot of weight. A phone call, less so. A copy-paste letter much less. And, a online petition signature, zero.
They need to know they have the support to fight in the strongest way possible. Dianne Feinstein, for example, has voted in favor of every Trump appointee so far.
I think it's short sighted; the administration is throwing a bunch of grenades up in the air counting on distraction and wearing people out. The reality is the easiest way to have flicked off this booger was the election, and that's over. Dealing with it is much harder, much more expensive. So you have to triage which battles you're going to fight, and how. Don't count on the replacement appointees being any better, and don't count on multiple rejections in a row (it never happens, and not because they become more politically agreeable), because literally there's another important item that will be on the agenda and getting sucked into a cabinet nominee black hole is not a hill worth dying on.
It feels like it's not very effective, but that may be because there needs more weight of numbers behind it. If you're in a progressive area like the Bay area I can see how it would just add extra load to officials who may not need further persuading.
I'm in Texas though. A very red state. I've been calling my representative and senators to voice my opinion on all this stuff, but it's hard to tell how effective it is. I either get someone on the phone who sounds like, "oh geez, another angry liberal" or I have someone who just sounds like they'll add my name to a tally or something and says "I'll pass it along" and it's hard to know if they will or if that will help. And then I call my state senator to oppose the bathroom bill going through the Texas senate and the person who I'm talking to on the phone gets borderline combative with me.
I found a group of local people who are trying to do this in a more organized way. I found this[1] the other day and it makes me feel hopeful that our efforts are helping somewhat. We just need to not lose steam. It's easy to get fatigued by this kind of stuff, and we're only a week in.
Yeah it's interesting how it can go the other way if you're in a solidly conservative district too (I used to live in austin ehich thanks to some ridiculous gerrymandering has very conservative congressional representation). Thanks for calling even if you aren't convinced they'all listen though, I think it's important to try and change minds and that's the place to start.
I wonder how much calling actually matters, because I feel like whether they receive 10 calls or 10,000, it's always going to be one-sided. Conservatives aren't going to call their reps and they don't have the propensity to engage in the same activism as progressives, so I would think representatives would take calls with a relative grain of salt. If a very conservative congressperson starts getting a bunch of calls saying how much the dislike [standard conservative proposal], they've got to think that as much as the people who voted against them don't want [standard conservative proposal], the conservatives who voted them in do.
It only really works if you are showing them that they are going against what they thought their base wanted. Free trade right now would probably be one where a lot of Republican members of congress would have likely been surprised to learn a year ago that there was a large percentage of their Republican voting constituency that was against free trade.
So yes, if you are a Republican with a Republican representative then calling them to voice your displeasure about Donald Trump's behavior may be beneficial. Otherwise it probably won't do much unless there really is massive numbers.
What is completely consistent with Republican policies for decades, however, is tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the wealthy, while supporting a regressive tax (which is what a tariff is) that will disproportionately impact the poor and working middle class.
> I have someone who just sounds like they'll add my name to a tally or something and says "I'll pass it along" and it's hard to know if they will or if that will help.
That is exactly what you are going for. They keep a tally on a lot of issues. Unless you are a big employer or influential player in your district, you are not going to get to speak to the Rep or even his/her senior staff.
Unions and some Orgs know that you have thousands of people call your Rep and voice an opinion. Call, fax, or send a letter. Show up to the district office and be nice, deliver your opinion, and hand them a letter.
Even if your Representatives (whose focus is entirely on your local community) are already on board, you still have two Senators who have to get elected by the entire state, not just the Bay Area. There are parts of California that are very, very conservative. Call them and remind them that there are parts that aren't too.
You want to give progressive incumbents the confidence that they are advocating for what their voters want. Positive and negative feedback are equally important. If you like what they're doing, tell them.
Just because you voted in someone doesn't mean that they necessarily know what you want them to legislate. Writing them letters and calling them is one of the most effective ways to do this and this was effective for SOPA.
There is a "strong progressive majority" in the bay area? I guess if one's calculus is "Democrat == liberal == progressive" that might be true. From my perspective I see a large majority of folks who pay lip service to the social tolerance issue with the most media coverage around election time every two years and who otherwise act like conservatives (especially on economic matters) in most other respects.
Either way calling Congress members is a feel-good thing that takes almost no effort. It's worthless in terms of getting political power and making changes.
I disagree that this will not be helpful. The old-guard of Democratic Party hails from these hyper liberal areas (Fienstein, Schumer, Pelosi), and based on what we have seen so far, they aren't even showing a slightest hint of resistance to Trump. See the senate democrat's response to Trump nominees for example. Put enough pressure on them, they will at least form a semblance of resistance which can inspire and have real effects.
For a practical example, if people of San Francisco jointly decide that they want Nancy Pelosi to do X, Y and Z (otherwise she will get primaried in 2018), she will have no option but to do that. This is exactly what the Tea Party did (with tremendous help from Koch brothers) in last eight years. They unseated the old leaders and took over the party.
Wide latitude has been given on cabinet appointments by the senate, historically. And also with a supreme court nominee looming, there's every reason for Democrats to not use their outrage on cabinet nominees where it won't matter anyway.
Lol.. history and norms. Norms like releasing your tax returns before running for office? You think we are going to a centrist judge because dems kept their powder dry? Outrage is the only thing left.
You second sentence was the excuse given by Democrats throughout George W. Bush's presidency for every single failure to contain the damage. And they did it every single time, every single violation of the constitution, every single movement-conservative (old-speak for alt-right) Supreme Court pick. The outcome was that newspapers got used to publishing the words "Democrats Capitulate" in headlines. That was great for building the party's brand, as you might imagine.
> The old-guard of Democratic Party hails from these hyper liberal areas (Fienstein, Schumer, Pelosi), and based on what we have seen so far, they aren't even showing a slightest hint of resistance to Trump.
What exactly do you want them to do (serious, not provocative question)? All three have spoken up (in varying volume) about the nastier executive orders / memoranda / proclamations, all three argued against several of the more controversial senate approved cabinet posts.
Nearly all the senate confirmable posts can't be filibustered under the current rules. I'd even call it surprising how many of them haven't yet made it out of the respective committees due to the republican majorities. All that's holding them back seems to be those arcane "collegiality" rules that the senate has, and the reticence of some republican MoC.
Except for filibusterable stuff, the democrats are largely powerless for the moment.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not particularly happy with how Democratic "leadership" is working, but it's far from clear to me what should be done.
>This is exactly what the Tea Party did (with tremendous >help from Koch brothers) in last eight years. They >unseated the old leaders and took over the party.
Do you have a link showing where, "they took over the party"? My understanding is that the Tea Party is a minority faction within the GOP.
Pay attention to the 2010 primary races that happened within GOP. There were also some high profile races where the Tea-party/Traditional-GOP split even caused Dems to win some seats (like Christine O'Donnell in Delaware)
After that cycle, mainstream republicans mostly co-opted the movement and the rift wasn't that evident in successive elections.
It's extremely important. The Republican coalition has had outreach programs for years set up to generate floods of calls; my senator, Dick Durbin, had to shut his phones off because of one such effort to push through pro-Israel legislation.
A large number of Democrats have voted to confirm John Kelly, the anti-immigration former general who will now run DHS and enforce Trump's Muslim ban. Almost all of the Democrats supported Mattis for DOJ, because he appears to be the sanest member of the administration's team. A decent sized number even supported Pompeo, a Muslim-alarmist, for CIA.
Coming up soon is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III for Attorney General. Sessions is by many accounts an unreconstructed white supremacist. But Democrats will support him, because he's also a member of the Senate, and collegiality goes a very long way in the Senate.
Unless the Democratic coalition makes it clear to their representatives that we are holding them accountable for their votes to give consent for confirmation votes, and for their actual confirmation votes, the Democrats will act "strategically", holding back resistance until they're absolutely required to offer it. It doesn't help that the Republican party is almost uniformly conservative and extremely white, while the Democratic party is a coalition of interests that leans but is not firmly planted in liberal tradition.
Even if you're in a liberal state. You have to call. Social media doesn't count. It's very easy to do and if enough people do it, it does make a difference. It's like voting, except that your calls have more influence than your votes.
I cannot recommend highly enough the Indivisible Guide, which is the outcome of a bunch of legislative staffers attempting to reverse-engineer the Tea Party's process from the last 8 years and apply them to Democratic objectives:
I live in Virginia. Both of my senators are Democrats, as is my representative. One of them (Mark Warner) has released a statement condemning the executive order, while Tim Kaine and Don Beyer are not. I left voice mail for the latter and wrote an email to the former, as AFAICT he doesn't take phone messages over the weekend.
Trump signed this on Friday because the response against it will be slower. Sure, a public statement by Democrats won't stop this, but it won't hurt and what the hell else are they doing? I work on the weekends, and they can too when core American values are under assault.
And of course, giving or raising money for other organizations is a great thing to do as well.
Because people are already deluged with reminders on how to participate in the political process, and also because it's apparent that the political process is in fact badly broken and corrupted, and is not so inherently self-correcting that it inhibits bad actors.
Allow me to suggest that you read and internalize this essay, because it is one of the few accurate summaries of out political reality that I've encountered in the past year.
I am nt arguing that politics is over and there's nothing that can be done any more, in fact I'm going to a city budgeting meeting in a couple of hours to find out/debate what to do about the imminent disappearance of federal funding. But your points about basic civics are redundant, I seriously doubt there's anyone reading or posting here who doesn't already know that.
Not until now, but I happen to be knowledgeable enough about immigration law that it's no big surprise to me. My primary worry is that because the executive branch does have extremely broad discretion over immigration enforcement and the scope of judicial review is somewhat limited, by law, the administration will be able to do enough damage on its own initiative that by the time disputes work their way through the courts the issue will be moot, as court proceedings are overtaken by facts.
Put another way, it's real hard to bring someone to justice for arson when you're inside the burning building. It might happen later, but in the short term that does little to remediate the risk to your life and property.
I think Mr. Altman is largely addressing tech CEOs here and urging them to make public statements. The actions you list are great for you and me, but he's mostly not really talking to us.
Supporting quotations from the post (because evidence):
"The tech community is powerful. Large tech companies in particular have enormous power and are held in high regard. We need to hear from the CEOs clearly and unequivocally"
"At a minimum, companies should take a public stance."
I think those are the people he wants to ultimately affect, but it's important to remember that attracting and retaining the best talent is one of the main things on the mind of the CEOs of top tech companies. Hearing from employees of prospective employees about the importance of this absolutely will impact their thinking.
Only small companies can take a public stance and they won't for numerous reasons. No large company will ever take a political stance like this. There's too much at stake. I've been saying this for a long time. US is a capitalist country, it does not matter that it's been built by immigrants.
Uh, I'd hope any large enough company in the USA (who's likely to have affected employees) sent out a similar message. They literally risk having personnel that was away on business travel get stuck outside the USA with nowhere to go.
The most effective action tech companies can take is what they did against SOPA: post large protest banners on popular websites. Though I don't think this is the right time to take that step. There are many outrages ahead, many will be directly related to tech, like killing net neutrality, forcing tech companies to compile Muslim registries, banning tech worker and student visas, and who knows what else. I think tech companies should reserve their fire for the many battles to come. Many different parts of society will be involved in these fights, it's not only up to tech communities to fight every battle.
Don't post banners about the US refusing reentry to Green Card holders who are the spouses of American citizens, or who fought alongside our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, because that might dilute our protests against net neutrality?
After a period of 6-12 months outside the country, US Green Card holders lose their Green Cards.
After a period of 6-12 months outside the country, US Green Card holders lose their Green Cards.
In a time of grave concern for many green card holders, it's probably better to avoid this sort of inaccurate info. It's freakout time but let's stick to freaking out about true things.
I'll true it up for you, it is actually worse than you describe.
If you are absent > 6 months you could end up with your green card status listed as 'abandoned', but even if you come back every 6 months that is no guarantee at all that it will not be listed abandoned.
The golden rule seems to be to be more than 6 months per year in the USA, preferably substantially more than 6 months to avoid ambiguity.
Further, it appears that after a year your green card is by statute no longer valid for reentry into the country. You don't lose the green card, but your reentry has to be special-cased by CBP or a consulate.
Green card is for people who want to immigrate into US; US isn't interested in granting citizenship to people living elsewhere (never was), the stated goal is to diversify US population. Given that, such a requirement makes sense - and is very common in immigration procedures around the world.
The rules to naturalize are separate and more stringent than the rules to maintain the green card. Talking about granting citizenship is a separate issue.
Key things: 6 months absence can be a factor in challenging your status as a Lawful Permanent Resident. 12 months absence means your green card (the actual document) is no longer valid for re-entry but it doesn't automatically make you a non-LPR.
Customs and Border Patrol can deny you entry, as we've just seen, on the basis executive action, legally questionable or not. But they can't take away your LPR status - only an order from an immigration court judge can do that.
A lot of this is cold comfort to any LPR caught up in this and unable to re-enter right now - but there is a process and the status itself is not so trivial to take away. The call to help organizations who provide legal aid to such people (and refugees and other visa holders) seems like the right thing to me, it's probably the most immediate need.
You're right, even as I wrote the original comment I knew in the back of my head that "lose their green card" wasn't the right way to put it; I just wrote carelessly. Thanks!
The most effective action tech companies can take is to pour rivers of money into immigrant advocacy and legal aid organizations, and to make sure their CEOs speak out loudly, right now.
Banners don't matter. Net neutrality mattered in October, doesn't really matter now. Get your head straight.
I am not sure that legal aid/advocacy will help those affected here. The President has wide latitude to make immigration decisions. Love it or hate it, the new policy is what it is and the courts are likely not in a legal position to be able to overturn or make an end-run around it, regardless of how compelling the argument in a given case is. Encouraging new and timely legislation is much more likely to be effective if you are opposed to this executive order.
1) You don't have the right to counsel in immigration hearings. There are several organizations that provide free legal aid.
2) Immigrant communities are scared and need to know their rights, and have a trusted source of information. There are unfortunately a ton of scammers who prey on scared people.
3) These organizations are a helpful intermediary between vulnerable people and government agencies, police, etc.
That won't help change attutiudes. It will reinforce existing attitudes.
"See! Immigration is good. These immigrants and their kids are building services!"
"See! Immigrants are hiring other immigrants and their children to provide lower cost labor and networking out-of-country and locking us out of the market."
If you want to change, you need a slogan like
"American made, American owned, American labor." along with the (now disappearing) attitude that American is not an ethnicity, it is a lifestyle.
I'm also unsure about protest banners, but on the general theme of holding your fire, "this is exactly how big companies lose against startups. They wait around to see what the startup will do, and by the time they have figured out that it’s important it is too late to catch up. This is why Andy Grove’s motto at Intel was “Only the paranoid survive.” So working with startups has taught me: don’t wait until it is too late. Protest early and often. We wouldn’t even be here if people hadn’t grossly underestimated Trump to begin with." (From Albert Wengler earlier this week, http://continuations.com/post/156262260395/what-i-learned-fr...)
Tech companies can also leave the states. Taking the amount of tax revenue they pay abroad will make a much stronger point than adding some banners, and that's before you factor in the deskilling of somewhere like the bay area if the tech companies leave.
Of course, too many of the mostly white male tech company founders and investors are hoping to benefit from things like reduced corporate taxes to care about discrimination that doesn't affect them.
The difference between populism and democracy is that populists always claim to speak "for the people" even if the people are divided. They'll even take action against the majority and simply claim that all the "real" people are for it.
Then secede? Have a majority referendum in your respective states about it and tell us how it goes. Either that or admit that part of being part of the union is agreeing with the electoral college and the outcomes that arise from it.
As much as I think that the majority Democrat States should suck it up about losing the election, I also think it's fully within their rights to secede if their populace wishes.
There's not a lot of illegal immigrants in any sector save for low wage agricultural and services (e.g. kitchens). Certainly not in tech. This distinction isn't needed.
Trump's power comes from the idea that he'll improve the economy. After this week, it should be clear that he'll do no such thing & maybe quite the opposite. Trump is too incoherent & impulsive.
He blames economic problems on the Chinese & Mexicans. Meanwhile, he ignores the role robots & Amazon will have in job destruction.
Corporate leaders can simply tell him to get lost when he sends a stupid tweet. With this he'll quickly lose his support base.
It'll be tough though. He is promising corporate america a big tax break which will instantly boost valuations (already has), giving CEOs nice bonuses & stock paydays.
What Altman doesn't need to worry about is the blowback and boycotting that occurs when actual CEOs speak out.
They know what he refuses to admit: that a non-vocal majority of this country strongly supports the President and will NOT support anyone who publicly smites him.
Attacking the President as a normal consumer goods CEO is a losing proposition.
That is what North Carolina thought. Major companies pressuring the government helps shift people's opinions on what is acceptable in modern society.
Even if you don't care about doing the right thing, losing some business from a (shrinking) minority of Americans is probably worth the positive publicity overseas, economic stability, retaining visa-holding employees, etc.
Thanks for the link. The initial results there are definitely problematic. If I'm reading the article correctly, they're expected to run a full audit to see if the results are confirmed, correct?
I'm particularly interested in what types of machines and other voting procedures were in use there. It looks like they're optical scan machines, so hopefully they have the paper ballots on hand to do a proper audit. That, along with the voter rolls, should be able to determine what the issues were. That's a strength of using the optical machines as opposed to the purely electronic ones.
You're right that Detroit is just one city. It's also a city that's deeply troubled on many levels, so I'm not sure if it's fair to consider it typical. That's by no means excusing what look to be issues there. Those should definitely be looked into, and exhaustively. You're claim above is that there were enough fraudulent votes that Trump would have over 50% of the popular vote if they were removed. Detroit alone isn't enough to do this.
> I'm particularly interested in what types of machines
More important is to look at who's got owning shares in those machines.....
In the perfect world, we'd have open source machines that all enter voites into a public blockchain/ledger and you'd get a private key you could verify your vote with. Optical sounds awesome. But good luck with that. The fraud just seems to swing back and forth from left to right every X years instead. It's madness.
My claim is just a bet right now. But it's one I'm willing to put money on IF they actually do a national investigation, which I'm not confident will happen.
Going back to my original comment, widespread faith that the voting process is safe is just as important as whether it actually is. Casting doubt on the process without really solid evidence undermines this faith. By no means do I want to be Pollyannaish about this: it's too important. Which is why I want to see improvements in the voting process.
If voting integrity is something you feel particularly strongly about (I certainly do), I encourage to look into the work that's already out there. The 2000 election spurred a lot of research. Some good starting points are:
Because this post is primary targeting CEO's and other primary influencers in the tech community. For that audience, speaking publicly and positioning your organization in the suggested manner are much more effective and practical actions to take than those you listed.
For those who aren't in positions of such influence, yes, your list is the right way to go
Libertarians et al have been trying to do this for quite some time. It does not work. The entire thing is set up so that you can't withdraw your consent or participation. Fines or jail will ensue.
If you oppose Trump and the right's regressive goals, then to condense this list down: take over state legislatures and governors, by running, supporting, or voting for progressive people. The Republicans learned years ago that state legislatures are the key to regressive state policies, and to helping keep a regressive majority in Congress.
For an emergency thing like this, direct pressure from affected tech companies is going to be the most effective thing. Letters to Congressmen from tech CEOs and the like.
For people who are not tech CEOs, financially supporting legal challenges is probably the highest value near-term approach, though the other stuff is important long term.
Interesting how calling politicians is a "thing" in the US. It seems very inefficient, archaic and unscalable. If I was a politician, I would hate those random (often organized) calls, such a waste of time. The politicians are usually not learning any new information, they know about most issues, including the approximate percentage of the people who are affected.
Well, it is supposed to unscaleable. This is how our house of representatives works! The idea is with-in each state there are districts. Representatives from a district are supposed to represent those people within the district. An exchange trader who lives in NYC probably have very different concerns than a farmer in an small district in Nebraska. It is actually a wonderful system when it works. We have grown as a nation so our number of people per representative has grown enormously since the start (we are locked by law at 435). One concern we all have in the states is, when does an individuals voice become too diluted!
The limit law is something congress enacted. The Constitution has a much higher limit based on population. Granted I don't think the house could function with over 10K members but then again it would make gerrymandering impossible.
It's not as though it functions well now. At least with that many members it would not-function in ways that more frequently benefited areas where people actually live.
With some technological assistance, it seems like a group of 10,000 representatives would actually be robust to many of the problems with the current smaller group.
While I appreciate the sentiment for a call to action, it seems pretty clear that the people who are pushing this agenda don't care about what other people think. The people who are pushing this agenda lost the popular vote but that has not stopped them. Many of these reps supporting these actions are in districts that are gerrymandered to insulate themselves from anyone that disagrees with them on this kind of action.
They won 96.1% of all precints. 30% of people within our state voted for him as well, many more would have voted if it wasn't a lost cause in California.
Not exactly true, here's a post on the subject from Instapundit, the largest conservative blog on the net:
WELL, THIS IS STUPID: DHS Spox: Trump Muslim Ban Includes Green Card Holders. It’s fine to be more careful about admitting people from countries that are major terror exporters, but Green Card holders are permanent legal residents — they’re not “admitted,” they’re returning home. If there’s a problem with green card grants to people from those countries, it needs to be addressed systematically, not simply by stopping people at the border. This is a debacle, and I’d be very interested in knowing who actually drafted the order.
Yes, pretty much. If enough people call to object then the prospect of losing the next election becomes real; they figure that if people are motivated enough to call then they might just be motivated enough to vote. That more than anything is what motivates politicians.
It's not correct. It's easy to ignore faxes, and throw them away by the bucket-full without ever reading them. A phone call requires spending some low level staffer's time to listen to you. Getting inundated day-in, day-out by callers, all on one side of an issue, does have some effect on a congressperson's staff, and sometimes, the congressperson's actions.
Unfortunately I can't find a source for this but I saw someone saying recently (and it makes sense) that a lot of congress fax numbers just convert the fax to an email message rather than physically printing it out.
The last three Libertarian candidates for President are:
2016 former Republican Governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson
2012 former Republican Governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson
2008 former GOP House member and Clinton prosecutor Bobb Barr
Gary Johnson ran as both a Republican and a Libertarian in 2008. Republican Ron Paul has run as a Libertarian.
On the evidence, the Libertarian Party is a flag of convenience for Republicans.
Whatever. My point has nothing to do with the LP. The point is that joining a party and donating money are some of the most effective strategies for pushing change. If you don't like the LP, due to ideology, strategy, both, or something else, then pick your own poison - even if it's one of the "major" parties.
I think your point here is a little disingenuous. (For reference I'm a longtime LP party member and have recently been getting very involved in the LP at the local level.) While it's true that the recent presidential nominees have all been former Republicans, the reason for this is that the Party has been wanting to put up respectable candidates who have experience. In its early years, the LP was effectively just an outreach organization aimed at spreading the libertarian message. But these days the LP has been wanting to become a real political party that gets candidates elected. And in order to get candidates elected, we need to have respectable candidates.
In local races it's fine to put up someone with no or little experience in government, as long as they are a respected member of the community. But you can't just put up "some dude" for president. So in practice this means we have to take defectors. But heaven knows there has been a lot of consternation in the LP over this. My guess is that the LP is getting tired enough of taking former Republicans that whoever they nominate in 2020 will be homegrown. (Maybe a former Democrat.)
But while the presidential race gets the most press, we've been working hard to get Libertarians elected at lower levels of government. It's just really, really hard to break past the two party mindset (and ballot access laws), and we haven't had a lot of success to date. The difficulties we have getting people elected to the lower levels of translate directly to us nominating former Republicans for president.
You think I'm being a little disingenuous? I think you're being a LOT disingenuous. It is VERY common for conservatives to espouse 'libertarian' principles as a criticism for liberals while then not applying those same principles to conservatives. And since you've been a libertarian for some time, I know you know what I mean.
Bob Barr, any sort of a libertarian? Please. He was the original drug warrior. Gary Johnson was quite willing to imprison drug offenders in New Mexico.
Sorry, but y'all get zero credit from this liberal. None. It isn't a third way. It's a flag of convenience. Reason was even bought by the Koch Foundation.
> You think I'm being a little disingenuous? I think you're being a LOT disingenuous.
Please don't be uncivil in comments here, regardless of how wrong someone else's comment may be. This sort of personal abrasiveness is destructive and leads to worse.
>Why is that all of these posts saying to "take a stand" fail to explain the political process?
Because most everyone here already knows these things.
And because the implication that it would be a useful strategy to keep reiterating basic principles seems reductionist.
This whole thing is a complex phenomenon that even experts are still trying to figure out. How was the sentiment or 27% of voters underestimated so badly and for so long? Even if the sentiment is now understood why did it bring about a post truth era and why do so many people easily accept this? And on and on.
Something is different this time. We need to understand it fundamentally and learn new approaches to counter it while making sure the responses themselves don't make the situation worse.
I don't think most people actually do know these things, or necessarily have the motivation to follow through on them. I think most of these blog posts are about self-expression and venting frustration more than anything else.
the only actions that matter at this point are going to be protests in which you bring thousands or millions of your friends and shut down economic activity in urban centers.
the democrats are a minority, and so they can't effect political change. the republicans are on board with trump, and so they won't effect political change.
that means that you have to effect political change by physically preventing the operation of the country to move forward until your demands are met.
you can't do this from your computer chair or your couch.
Run for office. Since it's hard to get up the gumption to run yourself (everyone here knows what imposter syndrome feels like), convince friends to run.
Don't limit yourself to Congressional races. Those are incredibly hard to win, especially for political outsiders. Run for parks commission, for library board, for school board, for town trusteeships, and for county offices. Run for water reclamation. You don't need to be a subject matter expert --- that's not expected of you. You just have to be willing to do a little extra work every month.
Any elected office gives you a greater voice in all of the rest of our politics. You use local offices to put pressure on your congresspeople and your state reps, and to build an organization to win more offices later.
This is what the Republicans have been doing since the 1980s, and as a result the GOP controls most US states.
Get a couple of friends together, and just pick one of you to go out for something, and then work as a team to collect information and plan outreach.
Even if you fail, treat the whole thing as an information gathering exercise. Take notes and share them. The GOP is crazy good at picking up local elected office, and they've had lots of practice. This is how they got that practice. Anyone who thinks local office doesn't matter should figure out who their State Senator is and how many constituents they have, and then look at Congressional redistricting --- it's state leg. that created the system in which rural Republican votes count so much more than urban Democratic votes do.
Think up better arguments, that might convince people. Examine your own opinions, to see whether they're actually right. Examine your opponents' opinions, to see whether they're right too. Maybe come up with new ways of thinking about the issue which are better than the way anyone's thinking about them at the moment. And then start talking.
People in politics should put less thought into HOW CAN I SPEAK LOUDER and more thought into how they can think of smarter things to say?
I'd say evaluate the actual target audience for this conversation, and choose to not engage an audience that clearly has no interest in anything other than what amounts to tribal warfare.
And that includes the president smearing every source of criticism as "FAKE NEWS!" He exactly represents those who voted for him: ignorant, fearful, angry, reactionary, conspiracy theorists, suspicious and vindictive. There is no possible way of having rational conversations whether smarter or louder. I don't see any point in examining these opinions, it's a colossal waste of time. I'm not responsible for their opinions, or changing them. I think a very decent chunk will have buyer's (voter's) remorse on their own without me having to say a thing about it, and the rest will just dig their heels in.
Ergo, Trump and Trump voters are a distraction. Focus on the effecting policies: non-violent demonstrations and associations, legal recourse, letting local and state reps know how you feel. There are mayors like Marty Walsh who historically have done more to stand up to overreaching state and federal bureaucracy than any U.S. Senator.
You do realize this sort of behavior doesn't grow in a vacuum right? In a relationship it takes two to tango, unless dealing with someone mentally ill. To claim that say 10 million voters who hold resentment against the left for what they perceive as hostile bias are all mentally ill is grossly unfair.
Conservative resentment against what they perceive as liberal intolerance has been going on since at least the early 2000s. The conservative blogosphere really took off around that time. There they either endured constant ridicule for their views or total ignoring from the established media which mostly runs liberal aside from Fox News. When they broke the story on Dan Rather and the faked National Guard memo on Bush, they were instantly derided for being nothing but people blogging in their pajamas. When they were proven true, the hostile indifference never let up. This has gone on for 15 years or so now. For them, this last election to them was the last straw. The coverage that went on during the 2016 elections was deeply shameful and outright scurrilous in some areas.
Keep in mind that during the 2000s and probably about until 2008 or so, the internet community sites were mostly dominated by liberal views. Reddit for instance looked vastly different compared to now. This allowed the formation of deep and entrenched echo chambers that allowed certain behaviors to foment and become acceptable. When conservatives began to join the internet en masse, they ran up against these entrenched social communities and quickly found that they were getting shut out. Rightly or wrongly, that kind of blanket treatment will cause resentment.
Vast swaths of people on the left have been dismissive of people on the right for ages. This is not a one sided issue, of course conservatives do the same. But that does not matter. We got here because everyone started talking past each other, insulting each other, and not doing the hard work of emphasizing irregardless of our agreement or not. Emotional labor matters and we've all dropped the ball hard. Conservatives are not monolithic and people always appreciate feeling listened to and that their concerns matter. You don't have to agree with someone to do this.
When we want to fix a relationship with our partners we don't concern ourselves with who was right or wrong. We concentrate on the relationship itself.
I agree with the premise that there is an insufficiently mature dialog, and engagement across the political spectrum.
But there's been, provably more dismissiveness and ensuing divisiveness within the conservative movement, which is where "Republicans eat their own" came frome. The explicit targeting by far right conservatives to destroy moderate Republicans in elections is not something that is at all common in the Democratic party. It was refined to great success by the Tea Party movement.
Smug liberalism is not at all the same kind of nefarious strategy the far right has used. Smug liberalism is a naive position that if only conservatives had the facts, they'd become liberals/progressives/Democrats or at the very least revert back to being moderate Republicans. It isn't intended to piss people off, even though that has been the outcome.
The political landscape is sufficiently damaged now that there is likely a significant and intractable minority who believe in a different reality where liberals are out to get them; that corporations and billionaires are out to screw them by hiring "illegals" (except for Trump's hand selected billionaires, they're the good ones); and that import tariffs are paid by foreigners. Damaged by the likes of Newsmax, Infowars, and Breitbart (previously run by now Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the U.S. president) are all far right sites trafficking in varying degrees of mistruth. These are not policy disputes, these are disputes over facts.
I do not think there is any fixable relationship when two sides are disagreeing on world view: how the world works, how it should work. They are mutually incompatible right now, and the thing to be negotiating is the outcome of losing arguments, which hopefully remain non-violent. The language of name calling and violence is destabilizing whether it is a one on one relationship, or directed at countries. The president is openly combative with everyone who disagrees with him. It'll be deeply fascinating to see how things go when those disagreements happen with people he's hand selected - which is why I think it's important senators support pretty much all of his cabinet selections, at least all of them are completely sane.
Actually I missed one: selfish. There are probably quite a fair number of Trump voters who are not any of the other things I listed, but were voting for lower taxes/regulation; and dismissed all of his other policy promises including some kind of Muslim ban.
On the plus side, many ill conceived or implemented policies last week were walked back. So it's not like the administration is completely intractable in the face of outcry.
You know who really needs to take a fucking stand?
The low-level workers at these airports who are enforcing this bullshit ban. They need to grow some spines and start ignoring bad orders, no matter who they come from.
"I was just following orders" was never an acceptable excuse to do the wrong thing.
I agree, but they often are the ones who have the most to lose. They lose their job and then aren't able to pay rent that month/feed their family etc.
A VP or probably even a middle manager taking a similar stand likely has cash saved up/secondary income/investments/other options to withstand this sort of change with fewer catastrophic results.
You know who might have more to lose? The people with green cards, the refugees, the people from that list of 7 countries, kept out of the US for bullshit reasons.
Sample script for calling your mayor; anyone near an international airport should be able to use a variant of this.
I am not a lawyer, but it looks as though airports (but not airport security) fall under the city's jurisdiction. (For example San Jose makes decisions about Uber at SJC, and Mayor Daley infamously tore up an air strip in the middle of the night with no warning).
Hello. My name is X. I am a resident of Y. Please do everything within your power to push for the release of any middle eastern refugees being held without cause by the Federal government at [local airport], and to put an end to this moving forward.
> In doing so, we should not demonize Trump voters—most of them voted for him for reasons other than the promise of a Muslim ban. We need their eventual support in resisting actions like these, and we will not get it if we further isolate them.
This is very important people - calling everyone who voted for Trump a racist homophobe, a moron, and not deserving of the franchise is not going to help anything. I didn't vote for Trump, but I do identify with some of the beliefs of those who did, and I can tell you that the rhetoric I'm hearing from many of the most vocal left is pushing the middle away.
At what point do we start holding people accountable then? Trump, so far, has done exactly what he said he would do. Are we supposed to believe the people who voted for him simply weren't listening?
This is just a practicality argument. The people best placed to stop Trump are members of Congress, they need votes to stay in office, so we need to convince their voters. "Holding people accountable" isn't productive.
would you want to lose your job because your boss said something they shouldnt have? or just something that ~50% of the population disagrees with?
because the companies you are thinking about boycotting very likely have ~50% of their employees who have similar political positions to you. you're hurting them too.
Exaclty. Two of his biggest campaign promises were to build a wall to keep out Mexicans and to ban Muslims immigrants and refugees. The wall was one of his earliest campaign promises. I find it amazing that we're supposed to believe that the majority of Trump voters don't support at least one of these.
Note, this is far broader than the refugee ban initially discussed. The ban truly is a Muslim ban. See quote from Reuters -- it bans permanent residents (i.e. greencard holders.) Note that permanent residents have to pay taxes even if living overseas!
"It will bar green card holders," Gillian Christensen, acting Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in an email.
Well, that didnt take long. The definition is about to get broader, per WSJ:
In a statement that the State Department is due to release, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the 90-day visa moratorium extends beyond just citizens of Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Libya, and Yemen.
It also applies to people who originally hail from those countries but are traveling on a passport issued by any other nation, the statement notes. That means Iraqis seeking to enter the U.S. on a British passport, for instance, would be barred, according to a U.S. official...."
Those nationals or dual nationals holding valid immigrant or nonimmigrant visas will not be permitted to enter the United States during this period. Visa interviews will generally not be scheduled for nationals of these countries during this period.
Huh. My next door neighbor is an American citizen, born in Iran. He left before the Shah was deposed. He owns a successful local company. Sounds like this would apply to him.
No wonder I haven't heard from them in a few months.
> I find it amazing that we're supposed to believe that the majority of Trump voters don't support at least one of these.
I'm taking a guess at this one, but many people believed this was just the usual pre-election bla bla and that he wouldn't follow through with such an unreasonable idea, given the obvious financial (wall) and legal (Muslim ban) challenges. They only wanted someone who promised to listen to them again after decades of globalization left them behind, and got a monster as result.
What I'm really afraid of: given the horrendous stuff Trump has done in a week, what will he have done in the next 1450 days?
It's all in a per-individual basis. I know many family members who specifically encouraged this ban. To them, I will now have to have the difficult conversation of how their desire for safety - at any cost to people unlike themselves - has unintended consequences. And I doubt it will be a pleasant conversation.
I think that their desire for safety is not valid either.
If an immigrant population believes they are unwanted by the majority, they'll tend to have "no skin in the game" for the society which they live and be much more open to political violence, crime etc.
I believe if you compare (in this case) Muslim immigrants to England vs Muslim immigrants to Canada you'll see a difference in acceptance by the majority. Obviously Canada does not have universal acceptance of Muslim immigrants or any immigrants, but Canada does try to integrate immigrants more. I believe this is reflected in the number of terrorist attacks in those countries.
If the Muslim immigrant minority (or any other) becomes more alienated, expect poor outcomes. Just like some poor Americans feel alienated by their country and some have fewer qualms about violent political acts.
I'm a Canuck and so I may be biased. But if my understanding is incorrect, I'd be interested in hearing.
Canada does not have anywhere near the same amount of skin in global geopolitics as the US, consequently it has not pissed off large number of people in other countries making it less of a target for bad things. I do appreciate the immigration system in Canada and such, I'm only pointing out why the comparison b/w US and Canada is not correct in this particular matter.
"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American ... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
I think it's disingenuous to say there's no difference between celebrating your cultural origins and refusing to adopt American ideologies.
I'm of Finnish descent. I have a Sisu bumper sticker and eat pulla. Do I refrain from making small talk with strangers at a bus stop? Of course not! Americans tend to be more open to strangers than Finns.
The problem is that it's so easy for bigots to conflate one with the other - if you see some lady in a headscarf she might just be carrying on the sartorial tradition she grew up with, but a bigoted person might say she's a harbinger of Islamic radicalism.
And there's no question that such radical Islamists exist, are generally strongly against the western-liberal-pluralist tradition, and that some of them are willing to commit heinous acts of violence. It would be a logical mistake to conclude that every Islamic person must necessarily be an extremist, but sadly it's not hard to think of politicians and pundits willing to mine that particular fallacy for all the political capital they can extract from it, and sadly there's a large portion of the population that is too dumb to spot the difference and who can easily be talked into scapegoating anyone who looks or acts differently, regardless of whether they actually pose any danger.
This is very important people - calling everyone who voted for Trump a racist homophobe
Maybe they are not racist homophobes, but they voted a racist homophobe and his cabal into power. They knew that his was one of the expected outcomes. Voting is powerful and you are (co-)responsible for the outcome.
If you don't want racist executive orders, don't vote for a racist. Simple as that.
Would you rather have a job and a racist in power, or no job and a person isn't racist in power?
I believe you are operating on a higher level of the Maslow hierarchy of needs than many people if your primary concern is about equality, and not about food, shelter, and a job.
Minorities on average earn less, have less job security and despite this they utterly rejected Trump and his hateful platform. Trump voters also weren't the most economically desperate, those people voted Clinton. Trump did well among solidly middle class white people in rural areas.
So no, Trump didn't get elected because people desperate for a job were willing to overlook his hate.
Yes, but it brings into question the 'hateful rhetoric' narrative, when it appears that minorities did not perceive it as such(at least, based on how they voted). If minorities viewed Trumps statements as dangerous to them, wouldn't you expect fewer minorities to vote for Trump than, say, Romney?
> If minorities viewed Trumps statements as dangerous to them, wouldn't you expect fewer minorities to vote for Trump than, say, Romney?
Not necessarily if they also viewed Clinton far less favorably than Obama; support of one party by any group in one election vs. another isn't a sign of absolute support for that party's candidate, it's a sign of relative support of that candidate compared to the alternative.
So...just because Clinton isn't as great as Obama, that leads minorities to vote for someone who "obviously hates them"(as per the anti-Trump narrative goes)?
Obama was an unusually charismatic candidate who got 93% of the Black vote in 2012 and 96% in 2008. There is no way Hillary or any other democratic candidate could match that. Hispanic turnout did turn out a bit below expectations, but not by much. Note that Hillary got completely crushed in the "White w/o college degree" category, which is a much larger demographic.
And despite that Hillary still won the popular vote by 3 million votes. She did pretty well across the board and in an election as close as this one almost any single thing could have flipped the outcome.
Interesting that you attribute Obama getting 93/96% of the black vote to his...charisma. Yes, I'm sure that was it.
> There is no way Hillary or any other democratic candidate could match that.
So, black people vote for a "charismatic" candidate, but when they are left with a mediocre candidate and a candidate that (as is argued) hates them, they decide "Hey, the guy that hates me is better than someone who isn't so charismatic"?
But the choice was not racist+job or non-racist+job. Also, let's keep in mind that a demographic within the population with the highest unemployment will not be helped at all.
I realize that the democratic candidate was less than ideal.
People keep saying that the democratic candidate was less than ideal. So what would have been ideal? Who or what would have been your dream candidate for the 2016 election?
Do you want the possibility of a job? Does it matter if your disadvantaged, Muslim, first-generation American friend - or his/her parents - gets the shaft so that you can have a happy home and a job?
Does having a job mean that I have to be careful not to be out in the sun because then I look arab? With good reason, too - my grandmother was first generation american. Her parents were from Syria.
Does having a job mean that my bi-racial niece and nephew have to deal with alt-right led government?
Does it mean that I have to hide the fact that I'm bisexual?
It isn't enough that I have food and shelter. I want others to have the same, otherwise, I'm simply sharing and having less on whatever paltry sum the overlords will pay out. It isn't like there is a real social safety net to rely on.
The interesting thing is about voter priorities. We can always argue about different shades of grey. But taking for example your list, I would love to see 1/0 data where people had to make the ultimate choice - prefer to hide the sexuality or have no job. Sometimes forcing people to make a choice and not hiding behind relatives could open the true priorities.
"sometimes forcing people to make a choice and not hiding behind relatives could open the true priorities"
This could be quite interesting. I'm sure I have picked up on some of this now -I'm an immigrant. My spouse knows all this stuff about me, and I was able to let go of some of the familial baggage. It is really freeing, at least for me.
But I don't know if that would be the case other places. I'm in Norway, and the culture tends to be (publicly) accepting of folks and treating folks as equals. Obviously this has its limits and there are some downsides. Discrimination and racism persist nonetheless. The king, though, puts out inclusive statements and it makes me feel better about being here. I'd love to know if such things were the norm or not - and I'd love to see that data.
And those questions are making the big assumption that the person claiming they can bring back those jobs will actually be able to. You can't fight economics...
The latter, and I know plenty about poverty. Economic conditions are transient and tend to improve due to technology, oppressive governments tend to consistently make things worse for everyone. Why would I possibly want to be governed by the sort of person who is prejudiced against me?
The point is that, to the voters, there were many unsavory characteristics of each candidate. And from a strategy perspective, it is a mistake to treat the people you need to appeal to as if they personally embody the most unsavory characteristics.
If Trump supporters want to appeal to the left, they shouldn't assume all Hillary supporters are liars, in favor of obstruction of justice, and want to go to war with Russia. Likewise, if you want to appeal to Trump supporters, which is what you'll have to do to get their votes in the next election, you're not going to get very far by calling them racists, homophobes, etc.
I didn't vote for Donald, because I think he sucks, but what other non-racist option was there? Hillary? Hillary exhibits just as much racism as Donald does; just in a different way. Hillary, along with many members of her party, are paternalistic racists. In other words, they hide their racism behind agendas that treat minorities and other groups like children. They feel that they are superior and better than other people, and so they talk down to them and coddle them in their campaigns and policies. It is condescending, and indeed a type of racism.
If we REALLY want to solve these sorts of problems, we need to:
1. Stop playing team sports with our votes, and be willing to look for the best options in third-party candidates. Sure, we may lose a few elections initially, but if we keep pushing, eventually we'll win. We can never achieve greatness by settling for the "evil of two lessers," as we did on both sides of the political fence last year.
2. Force our elected officials to stick to the checks and balances of the Constitution, and eliminate things like executive orders, which are in place solely to short-circuit Congress.
3. Get new blood in Washington. Stop voting for morons like Orrin Hatch, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell; or better yet, push for term limits and the elimination of exorbitant retirement benefits for these public servants. We cannot "drain the swamp," as Donald likes to say, until we, as voters, stop defecating into it with our suffrage.
The government is one of the biggest hinderances for minorities, and the Democrats are just as culpable as the Republicans, if not more so. If we're going to fix this issue, we need to fix the corruption in Washington, as well as in our states and local communities.
r: term limits for legislators. California tried that. Turns out representatives without experience at drafting and passing legislation rely on lobbyists with the requisite experience, and the power shifts from nominally accountable representatives to unaccountable lobbyists.
Agreed. Trump clearly stated that he was going to institute a Muslim ban and didn't rule out a Muslim registry when asked by reporters, so this policy shouldn't be a surprise to those who voted for him.
Germans have accepted collective guilt for the Holocaust, and have come to terms with that, even though a minority first voted Hitler into power-and, as a consequence of this collective acknowledgement, popular support for Nazism has been purged from German culture.
In contrast, a large proportion of South African whites tend to equivocate when asked if Apartheid, which was voted for for generations of whites, before they voted it out, was bad (spoiler alert: it was evil, and I'm not going to relitigate why on HN again). The Truth and Reconcilliation Comission allowed for those who committed physical acts of violence to confess their crimes in return for forgiveness, but the broader plunder and evil of apartheid remains unacknowleged by much of white South Africa (and its diaspora), and it means that racism still permeates SA society.
Working class people are hurting all over the world. But the economic pain felt by Germans in Weimar Germany didn't excuse the Holocaust. They were voting for anti-Jewish violence, as much as they were voting for VW Beetles and autobahns. Similarly, the suffering of Boers at the hands of the British didn't excuse Apartheid.
I'm not equating the scale or scope of Trump's actions with the Holocaust or with Apartheid, but I do think that those who chose to vote for him did so with their eyes wide open, and knew what he stood for. Trying to forgive them, or excuse their actions before they acknowledge their own culpability is not healthy for anyone.
You can stop being a muslim, you can stop being a christian (I know, I did) and you can stop being a socialist. You can't stop being whatever ethnicity you were when you were born.
Thus this is actually a worse order than a straight out ban on muslims from these countries would be.
You can stop being male. Is it ok to ban you from the country? It's acceptable to ban ideas and religion from countries? Holy shit what happened to America..
And of course it's discriminatory! That's sort of, like, the whole point. All the existing immigration policies are discriminatory. That's why I (Canadian) can go basically anywhere, but someone from Central America can't.
So Trump campaigned on a promise to ban Muslims from entering the US. He then instituted a blanket ban on entry from 7 overwhelmingly Muslim countries. Are we splitting hairs again implying that these two things are a coincidence because the wording of the EO happened to avoid a blatantly unconstitutional formulation?
When '(surprise!)' is written in brackets like that, or otherwise thrown in as an interjection, it is almost always intended sarcastically. This is a very common written English idiom (at least online).
It seems pretty ineffective to ban people from 7 nations, and ignore the nations where the vast majority of Muslims actually live and do business.
Do people really think Somalia is some kind of Isamic power-player versus Saudi Arabia or the Emirates?
These countries were not picked randomly because they "Muslim". There is a long standing animosity against them. A retired US general in 2007 said: “We’re going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran...”[1].
And now which countries are banned: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen... that's 6 out of the 7 named above.
Now please do not read this as a defence of the executive order. Whatever its intentions, it was poorly implemented and applied with seemingly no thought to the political fallout or the disruption to peoples' lives. Green card holders in America deserve better than no-notice before being detained at the borders.
However, it seems to me that every one of the countries named is currently embroiled in a civil war or has strong non-governmental forces within its borders----that is the commonality that they share.
Who do you vote for if you're a working class parent and you really, really, really don't want your children to earn less than you did at their age, but would prefer not to vote for a leader that the media seems to think is racist and homophobic?
Because that's a tough decision to make. You might decide that the media is wrong, you might decide that your kids are the most important thing, or you might decide that principles are worth more. Either way, it's not simple, it's very complicated.
I missed how Trump is a homophobe. Seriously, is there evidence for this or is it just a general insult thrown out when someone does something you don't like?
yep, it is a general insult our tolerant left is throwing at someone they don't like. standard multiple choice - racist, sexist, homophobe, antisemite, islamophob, child molester, hitler, nazi. or just downvote anonymously.
Whether demonizing people who express hateful beliefs is good strategy is unclear at best. Demonizing people you want to find common ground with is unstrategic, certainly, but I think demonizing and shaming people who are spreading hate is necessary and effective, because it sends a clear signal that bigotry is intolerable.
There is a huge difference between calling every single Trump voter a racist and bigot, and making the correct observation that Trump got elected on a platform of racism and bigotry. Some Trump voters chose him because of his racism and bigotry, and some Trump voters chose him despite of it. Regardless, there are no Trump voters for whom racism and bigotry are complete deal-breakers, as painful as that may be to acknowledge.
The hell I won't. Southerners didn't acknowledge that racism was wrong and slavery was evil until it was beaten into their hard skulls to the point where it was completely socially unacceptable to state a preference for either. I know this because I'm FROM there.
OK, but 52% is a pretty scary number. I'm still curious for a source on the statement that "most of them voted for him for reasons other than the promise of a Muslim ban".
If big numbers did vote for him on that reason then there's a cancer running deep in USA's society that trying to brush under the rug isn't really going to help.
In a two-party system, few people agree with every policy in someone's platform. I voted for Clinton but disagreed with many of her views and actions. Oftentimes people are voting based on a single very important issue or for the lesser of two evils.
I'm curious why you think supporting a ban like this is a "cancer"? It's heavy-handed and misguided, but religion is ideology. People see heinous acts worldwide perpetrated in the name of Islam. Some Muslims have extremely regressive beliefs on women's rights, gay rights, personal freedoms like drinking alcohol or even making loans that make even the staunchest Bible thumper look progressive. They see countries with larger Muslim immigrant populations like France in constant disarray, with little integration and once peaceful neighborhoods lit on fire. Even people with no initial ties to terrorism read up on this ideology online and commit lone wolf attacks.
So why do we want these people coming in? Maybe we have a principles-based belief in religious freedom and don't want to appear discriminatory. There are some more secular or Westernized Muslims who can live peacefully and contribute to our society. Helping refugees will help save innocent lives and undermine ISIS. Those are all great reasons, but it's disingenuous to pretend they come at zero cost. Some people do this analysis and say it's worth it, and others disagree. A sovereign state has a right to its borders and admitting immigrants who advance its interests.
I don't support the ban, namely for the reasons I gave above, but it's completely understandable why someone would. It doesn't make them a bigot or evil, just scared and perhaps lacking in empathy. The hardcore left does itself no favors in this regard, constantly parroting the "religion of peace" line and pretending there are no reasonable reasons to oppose immigration that they need to argue against.
It makes them bigoted or evil because people likely said the exact same things about their ancestors (unless they are descended from native americans or the original british colonists)
His mix of indepedent and democratic voters pulled largely from the 12% of democrats and 31% of independents that support the ban. Again, it was literally his platform.
Absolutely! There's some folks who aren't going to be persuaded and love what Trumps doing, but there's a large group of people who tried to convince themselves this was just campaign rhetoric, or who just disposed Hillary, or who are conservative Christians and pro life but who do missionary work and help refugees. Collapsing anyone who supported Trump into "deplorables" won't help change their minds next time an election comes up. Convincing them that he's dangerous and doesn't represent their values however very well might.
This comment reeks of victim blaming. Nobody who voted for Trump and Pence should be allowed to escape being held accountable for what they support. If their "economic anxiety" was bad enough that they can ignore the rights of LGBT people and religious minorities, then they are all the more guilty. Those people were never centrists and knew exactly who they voted for.
Come on, banning Muslims was a _key campaign point_. He talked about it all the time during the primaries and the general election. So yes, I do hold people accountable for voting for this.
Every candidate has had key points that I've fundamentally disagreed with. And taken actions I fundamentally disagree with, which is even worse than campaign talking-points. Should I vote?
Edit: to be clear, I do think Trump is (and was) much further down the extreme side than others have been in recent history. But what you're advocating for does not make sense.
You focus so much on holding people accountable rather than prevention. Lay off seeking justice for a while, try to seek order instead. Listen to why people voted Trump rather than call them all bigots and justify it with "they knew what they were getting into".
As a european who truly despises Trump: This idea that you're too busy blaming people for being racist to spend time listening to them is honestly frightening.
One day perhaps in your lifetime, there'll be a candidate, populist like Trump but with extreme-left ideals and you'll be duped, just like the people you refuse to listen to were duped, because when there was time to learn you chose to be vengeful instead.
Dude, I'm also European and I've spent 25 years listening to and debating with conservative people - in person, on the net, at academic gatherings and many other places. I have studied a wide variety of conservative philosophies and social groups. At what point are you OK with me drawing some conclusions, even temporary working conclusions that I might have to alter later?
When I hear comments like this, the overriding impression I have is that thinking about this stuff is rather new to you and you are hesitating out of uncertainty. But it's a mistake to assume that people with stronger opinions than your own have not put in the hours to think through the issues.
Valid, but I think it comes mostly from the loudest people being the ones that haven't done so. They're the ones that need attention, because they're driving so many personal attacks (which largely make people more extreme, not less).
As always, there are exceptions (like you). Which is broadly what the comment was claiming - Trump voters are not 100% made up of nazis, in essence.
Germany wasn't 100% made up of Nazi supporters either. That didn't stop disaster.
A Trump voter that votes Trump because of some economic point also votes in support of all the other policies that Trump stands for and so carries fractional responsibility.
Sure. But it doesn't mean we condemn all Germans. Other threads in here are basically suggesting we confront every German we see about Hitler's atrocities. What will that accomplish?
edit: a good chunk of this is that all this sets up "damned if you do, damned if you don't, double-damned if you choose the winning side". This doesn't encourage more people to get involved, it just drives them away from trying. That's the exact opposite of what we need.
The present day generation Germans is so far removed that that would make no sense. But it would have made sense prior to approximately 1935 or so.
Even then it probably was too late but who knows, maybe there would have been a way to push back against the brownshirts.
Historians are not in agreement on this subject, there is a school of thought that the whole thing might have been averted.
The main culprit (the treaty of Versailles) was a 'winner takes all' arrangement that sowed the seeds for WWII, Hitler merely tapped in to the resentment that was already there and managed to wreck Europe for two generations as a result of that. In the end Germany ended up much worse than where they started as a result of their 'Germany First' policy.
I think the main lesson learned here is that if the spoils from globalization aren't divided in a fair way there will be a huge backlash (predictable), unfortunately turning the clock back will result in yet another backlash.
These pendulum swings are way too fast and violent for society to adapt without damage.
So take the 1935 Germans. Confront them. Rant about how their decisions destroyed so much. Visibly encourage others to do the same.
Now what do you expect them to do when they're offered the chance to vote for two new candidates, neither of which they approve of? Personally, I expect them to run the other way, rather than voting.
To late to correct that one, yes. But not too late to prevent the next one - that's what I'm arguing about. I'm saying that this sets up a negative bias for doing anything early enough when controversy pops up, which is at best not beneficial.
Yes, indeed. This goes for any course correction, the longer you wait the more extreme the correction will have to be until they are accurately described as 'violent'. The French Revolution comes to mind (not that that was such an example of exclusively positive change but it definitely was change).
I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're saying here. Is this a reply to me or to the parent comment? Where do you see me make assumptions about how strong anyone's opinions are?
This idea that you're too busy blaming people for being racist to spend time listening to them is honestly frightening.
When I call people out for being racist I assure it is not for want of having listened to them first. I'm absolutely in favor of listening to people, but there are also times when you need to firmly declare your opposition to their ideas and your intent to obstruct them.
Not all ideologies are morally equivalent, and I am opposed to any ideology that seeks to limit or reduce the rights of individual people in order to promote compliance with some abstract moral standard as opposed to some utilitarian one where you can demonstrate a harm exceeding a putative benefit.
Your comment is eerily reminiscent of this quote from MLK's Letter From Birmingham Jail:
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
I have been fighting this for a year, far better with plain discussion than anyone I've seen with sticks and this isn't even my country. Your implications are disgusting and the nicest way I can find to tell it to you is to stuff it.
What I said in my comment (I'm guessing you were too busy looking for that quote instead of reading mine more carefully) is that focusing on holding people accountable is no good.
It will NOT bring you Clinton, Sanders or anyone else back and it will certainly NOT change people's minds.
It's fucking enraging that you do not understand that. I swear, some people here are pettier than Trump himself.
What you said is that we should seek order over justice. This elevates the oppressor to the same moral ground as the oppressed, and demotes the freedom fight to a petty political squabble with a "right" answer somewhere in the middle.
Your comparison of me to Trump is ironically the pettiest thing in this thread.
I haven't read the thread closely enough to be sure. Perhaps the MLK quote was particularly provocative in context but I didn't see anything outright uncivil about what the commenter said. Even if it was, though, it doesn't mean that you get to break HN's rules. I'm sure you can do much better than "fucking enraging".
I get why swearing is not (and shouldn't be) the default tone on HN but is that really the issue here? I didn't insult hsod.
Meanwhile, I was equated with somebody tacitly approving of segregation. Because I'm telling someone else that it's more productive to understand why this is happening than look for retribution.
Civility is about more than tone. hsod's tone was fine but his comment certainly wasnt; my tone was harsh but I maintain it was appropriate for the kind of accusations I was replying to.
my tone was harsh but I maintain it was appropriate
It wasn't, by the site's guidelines and patient explanation by a moderator. These aren't laws of physics, just the norms of the venue. Would you 'maintain' it's appropriate to show up at a stranger's funeral waving a lighter and yelling 'Freebird'? Same thing.
I understand you're view point but what is their to listen to? There are people that support republicans against their own interests, they are also amenable xenophobic rhetoric. They largely cling to a fantasy of America that was only close to being "reality" about a decade before 1960. They are skeptical if the rest if the world and think somehow we wil revert this country back to an early twentieth century industrial revolution ... Ok, but that is all nonsense. I know that's not nice to say but that's how it is, so what are we listening to? If it's about strengthening social safety nets, better education, fights for "living wage," well, um that's not Paul Ryan or Donald Trump.
It's a little foolish to think that over half the country is as xenophobic as the bottom tier of the trump demographic.
I'm not telling you to listen to the xenophobic demographic, but to listen to those who are willing to disregard their moral limits in order not to vote for the other side.
Trump has gotten votes from wildly diverse demographics. He's hijacked two parties he doesn't belong to just to win the election and he did win the election. Think of analyzing this as a post-mortem: What went wrong, why did people vote for somebody like this, etc.
Anyway, what I was trying to communicate (and seem to have failed to) in my earlier comment was that like in any post-mortem it's pointless to try and point fingers and assign blame. What good is "holding people accountable" going to do, other than strenghten the divide?
I see this "support republicans against their own interests" line so often around here. This ignores feelings of integrity, pride, shame, sin, ethics, morality, and self-worth. One's self interests include feeling that one is respectable and just.
People might accept welfare, but that doesn't mean they feel OK about it. Many people, conservatives especially, want jobs. People want to feel that they support a family, without help. Poor conservatives don't seek to tax the rich because that would feel unethical.
So yes, life is tough for these people, but they really don't want to feel that it is also unfair. They don't want to cheat, they don't want others to cheat, and they don't want the government helping anybody to cheat. An equal chance is demanded, but an equal outcome is at best a nice-to-have. (possibly undesirable because the non-lazy should be rewarded)
There is no lack of understanding here. It's a different value system.
yeah a lot aren't racist, they are just incredibly stupid lemmings. we need to learn to brainwash them like Fox News, Trump, and ads for buying gold do.
I've sen a lot of angst over the last week about people on the left expressing approval for 'punching nazis' following Richard Spencer suffering a whack on the ear during a TV interview. It's true, someone, probably form the left, carried out an act of physical violence while he was just standing there talking.
But let's not forget that Spencer and various members of his social circle have - for years now - been expressing approval for ethnic cleansing and even straight-up genocide. Some people say that the solution to objectionable speech is more speech, but that's an easy stand to take when you're not one of the people who should be 'ovened' in alt-right parlance. Oh sure, they're just expressing their dislike and probably don't have an actual to plan to construct ovens and shove people into them, but this is not the sort of joke whose punchline I care to passively wait around for.
When people are promoting genocidal ideas and attempting to normalize them as political discourse, they are themselves engaged in political violence, notwithstanding that it's indirect incitement rather than active commission. If you've ever been the target of gang violence than you may have experienced the phenomenon of a smart person calling the shots, while bigger and less cerebral types do the actual punching and kicking. That's why, if you find yourself cornered by a gang, you should focus your attentions on the guy at the back rather than the toughs in the front.
It's true that not everyone who voted for Trump is a bigot. But they were OK with voting for one, weren't they? The longer someone makes excuses for this sort of thing, the more responsibility one takes on for it. You say you're worried about the rhetoric from the left, but it's Trump who has been going about expressing a desire to use nuclear weapons, punish women who have abortions, muzzle the press, demean women and so on.
I am absolutely not going to apologize for being against such statements or moderate my condemnation of them. If you let those things slide by saying 'it's just Trump being Trump' or whatever, then you're making excuses for the systematic intimidation of large social groups. Why would you want to normalize such behavior? Why does open opposition to that bother you?
I have questions about a few of your comments, if you don't mind indulging me:
1. Who is speaking for ethnic cleansing and genocide? Can you provide citations? I hear a lot of people talking out against illegal immigration, since it drives down wages and makes it harder for poor Americans to compete and make a living. I also hear politicking regarding banning muslims from entering the U.S., due to the fear of terrorism. I agree that an all out ban stinks of WW II internment camps (a bit close to home too, since my wife is Japanese), but I'm not sure how you can extrapolate genocide from those conversations. Disallowing people from entering the U.S. doesn't really equate to genocide, does it? I don't really know what you're referring to, exactly, since you didn't provide any citations, but "genocide" seems a bit hyperbolic to me, with the information I currently have.
2. Are you advocating physical violence against people who have differing opinions than you? You lead in with Richard Spencer, and then ended by saying you're not going to apologize for being against the political speech you're referring to. I'm curious if you're suggesting physical violence as a means of shutting down said opinions?
1. Here are some examples of people calling for ethnic cleansing/genocide or similarly oppressive policies. If you're basically liberal then these articles will be pretty offensive:
I don't want to get sidetracked into quantitative analysis, but if you really want I can direct you to material compiled by a former US intelligence officer that is documented with hundreds if not thousands of citations. The animus you'll find in the links above directed at people of other races, 'cultural Marxists' and so on may be novel to you, but I've been observing this particular social group on the net for nearly 15 years now.
2. I'm OK with physical violence against people who are actively promoting violence like this, yes. People can have differing opinions about all sorts of subjects and I'm fine with that. I am even wiling to defend the concept of free speech for people like neo-nazis and the kkk - but only up to the point where they endorse violence against others as opposed to merely asserting their own superiority.
1. Thanks for the citations, but who the hell are F. Roger Devlin and Brett Stevens, and why should anybody care? Their blogs seem to be on the fringe, and not something one would see in day-to-day politics. I'm not saying you don't have a point. Our society certainly has a few of these weird eggs, but there brand of "thinking" is generally viewed as abject ignorance by mainstream society, isn't it?
2. How would your policy of physical violence be any different, or less self-superior, than the kind of violence you believe this type of talk incites? I'm not trying to be snarky. It's just that enforcing a prescribed way of thinking via violence tends to have a lot of ill side effects that people don't take into consideration before heading down that slippery slope.
I agree that some violence is unavoidable, and some violence is absolutely necessary. I don't think that the time for either is when people are simply talking though. Disagreeing with someone doesn't justify punching them in the face, no matter how self-righteous you may be. At least that's the way I look at it.
Agreed 100%. Long before that there are many other options that can be tried with varying chances of success depending on how many people participate and what kind of response one can expect.
How many threats of violence should someone accept against themselves before it's OK for them to punch the person making the threats?
Come on man, one of our ongoing political problems is the unfortunate tendency of police officers to shoot unarmed black men because the police officer felt a degree of anxiety about their personal safety, sometimes without even knowing why, as in this case: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/21/opinions/shooting-man-lying-do...
That strikes me as a serious problem, compounded by the fact that police officers have difficult and complex jobs and nobody outside of a few theoretical anarchists wants to abandon the idea of policing crime.
I'm really not that worried about very minor acts of violence directed against people advocating nazi ideologies and the violent death or removal of other people by the millions. Such proposals are not the sort of thing I can agree to disagree over, because they constitute a threat against my friends, family members, and my self. Why should we be subjected to such threats with no means of responding to them? You can worry about a slippery slope of violence all you want, but I don't recall historical oppressive regimes making a special exception to their oppressive practices for the conscientious objectors who repudiated violence, do you?
> You can worry about a slippery slope of violence all you want, but I don't recall historical oppressive regimes making a special exception to their oppressive practices for the conscientious objectors who repudiated violence, do you?
Rather the opposite, those were the first up against the wall because it was already known they wouldn't resist.
I'm not sure I'm following your line of thinking here, but I really want to understand where you're coming from, so maybe you could go over it again and help me understand what you mean.
You started out talking about Donald and his supporters, then jumped to some fringe and obscure websites as citations. Who is it, exactly, that you want to start punching? Some nobody with a website? Donald? His supporters? I don't get it.
Then, in response to my statement that it isn't right to combat words with fists, you jumped to cop violence (which happened far more frequently under Obama than Donald, so far). I think when the state is actively shooting you for no reason, you're justified in fighting back with equal violence; however, this is a far cry different than punching someone in the face for having a different opinion than you do, isn't it?
1. The fact that you haven't heard of them is beside the point. They're influential within their circles and have been building their fan base for years. I would hope you have heard of Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, and I have no hesitation in saying that their political starting point is only a very short hop away from the authors I've cited here.
2. To put it very simply, I'm saying that it might be OK to punch a nazi in response to the things they say or do which threaten the safety of others; they're saying it might be OK to kill or harass people because of their genetic characteristics or social affiliations, absent any demonstrable harm.
If I was saying it's OK to punch Richard Spencer because he's white, then you'd be right. But I have no interest in punching Richard Spencer for being white, or for thinking that white people are better, or for saying that he'd prefer to hang out only with other white people. When he starts saying it's OK to get rid of other people in order to create the white nationalist utopia he pines for, that's an incitement to violence and may justify a violent response.
Look, these people are not mainstream folk that are basically the same as everyone else but made a racist joke one time or something. Promoting violence against demographic groups is way outside the realm of acceptable discourse and is not something that we should be attempting to incorporate into it. You seem oblivious to the effect such behavior has on people who are members of the designated out groups.
I can't believe I even need to explain this to an intelligent adult person.
Richard Spencer has openly declared his White Nationalist aspirations, and is on video exhorting his supporters to party like it's 1933 and exchanging nazi salutes with them, with arguments like 'for us, it is conquer or die.'
I did not decide he was a nazi by making some theoretical extrapolation using Marxist calculus or somesuch. He's saying in plain English (and occasionally German) that he wants to engage in a race-based war of conquest in which the stakes are life and death.
But let's not forget that Spencer and various members of his social circle have - for years now - been expressing approval
Actual Nazis liked to be punched by their opponents and even arrested by the cops for their nonviolent activism in the 1920s and early 1930s. They like the publicity for the same reason Gandhi and MLK liked it: It makes them sympathetic by exposing the evil behaviors of those that hate them.
Punching Spencer is a huge win for Spencer and the things Spencer stands for.
> I didn't vote for Trump, but I do identify with some of the beliefs of those who did, and I can tell you that the rhetoric I'm hearing from many of the most vocal left is pushing the middle away.
I'm in the exact same boat. I don't like Trump at all and this move frightens me. But my friends who argued for Trump actually had more logical arguments and my friends who opposed Trump actually mostly just insulted the people who voted for Trump.
How is anyone going to listen to us if we just insult them?
why are we giving so much benefit of the doubt to trump and trumps supporters
not only is this move ridiculous but it was executed with no foresight. now border agents are forced to make ad hoc decisions because it went into effect immediately. trump supporters cheering and claiming its just temporary, to give us time to "figure out whats going on" are deluding themselves. they rush through a ridiculous, anti-american order and now somehow they are going to make it all better.
trump supporters are a minority of the country. they won this time but i dont see any reason to pander to them.
I actually think most people (Trump supporters, you, me, everyone) vote mostly based on identity (liberal/conservative, religion, race, open-minded, well-mannered, etc). I think Trump supporters mostly voted for the party that they most identified with, the guy they thought was on their side. And I think you did the same. (I see myself as unaligned and open-minded, thus I voted for someone else as I found both sides to be extreme and closed-minded.)
But, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe most Trump supporters are horrible people. But they are still people. Like you and me, they have a dark and a noble side. And, just like you and me, they are not going to listen to the reasons of someone who insults them.
So what do we gain from demonizing them? We only lose influence.
Republicans were against Trump. He's a centric independent who run as republican.
By all means liberals keep doubling down on identity politics. The anti-fascist are the new fascist. Democrats were against Lincoln as well. Trump will be championed as modern day hero who was opposed by the most hateful people.
Yes. If it weren't possible to influence people's political positions, I think we wouldn't have campaigns or other political movements or organizations.
Trump supporter here. Unfortunately not a citizen, so I couldn't vote. I believe, as do many people in the world, that US Presidential Election is worth following due to the influence that USA has on the rest of the world.
You are right about the ideology being very important. I originally supported Rand Paul [1] and moved to Trump when Paul dropped out. I wish either Ron Paul or Rand Paul would be the nominee of GOP and sincerely believe that is the purest form of Republicanism that currently exists out there. I support both the ideology and the priorities that both of them are pushing. However, since we couldn't get Rand Paul, Trump was the next best choice this season.
I can't stand any of the Democrats right now. I wish they instead nominated someone like Elon Musk, who would cut on identity politics, political correctness and similar things that are being pushed so hard to divide us instead of uniting us; e pluribus unum. I would like to see a future nominee focus on the scientific and technological development, abolishment or at least a reform of the patent system, ending NSA spying, etc.
Tech CEO's have to address the outsourcing/factory shutdowns and visa misuse that has happened for a couple decades now. Using the Obama line of "well those jobs have gone and wont come back" creates space for characters like Trump to exploit.
I feel like the only thing that he campaigned on was hurting black/brown people and repealing the ACA. Everything else, every other policy topic was met with "I have the best people" or "I will have the best advisors." He constantly, falsely, repeated how bad black people have it in inner cities. How we can't go anywhere without the fear of being shot and killed by other black people. He touted the need for a nation-wide stop and frisk program, something deemed wildly ineffective by anyone who looked at the data. He demonized muslims EVERY chance he got. Every. Single. One. Remember the whole Khizr Khan incident? He is still trying to build a wall that will be costly and ineffective.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to have any good will for people who voted for him. Especially the "I voted for you, but you're doing X" people. EVERYONE seen how hateful his campaign was. There isn't a sensible person who looked at it and thought otherwise. However, there are a lot of people who witnessed what he was doing and thought "it won't hurt me though" and were absolutely okay with him and his hateful approach to "making America great"
Fuck them
I know people, aside from myself and my family, that are already hurting because of his policies. And now when he gets whatever form of that nationwide stop and frisk going, it won't be white kids harassed by law enforcement, it will be my suburban black son and his friends.
You can miss me with the "not all voters" bull because every single one of them are complicit in how things are going now. Those people NEED to be called out. They need to be shown and constantly told that they made the WORST choice. I don't care about their feelings when the person that they voted for policies will criminalize me and a lot of people that I care about. Again, fuck their feelings
>How we can't go anywhere without the fear of being shot and killed by other black people.
I'm not from the US but this really looks awful. I wouldn't set foot on this city even if you paid me a million dollars.
http://crime.chicagotribune.com/
Yes, there's problems in Chicago. But the violence is heavily concentrated in the South and West side. I live in a nicer part of Chicago and I've never felt like I was in any danger where I live. Even walking home by myself at 2 AM.
Every city has bad and good areas. Chicago is no different.
Cities in the US seem particularly polarized. Where I grew up there were neighborhoods with better off and worse off people but there wasn't any part of town where you would feel uncomfortable or at risk of violence walking at any time, day or night. I visited Chicago in the early 90's and I remember being told never to go past a certain stop on the train. The US has serious social problems going back a long time and I'm not sure trying to pretend otherwise will help in solving them.
I have difficulty comprehending your follow up remark. If it is smaller than both those cities AND has more murders than both combined AND there are some safe neighborhoods, it seems obvious on the face of it that the polarization there must be pretty seriously extreme.
France overall has a murder rate of 1 per 100K. Paris I believe is slightly above average. Chicago is something like 15.
I wouldn't necessarily consider Paris to be some sort of golden standard either. You should aim for much better.
If you feel that having an x15 murder rate isn't "standing out" and it's just that you've got some bad neighborhoods than IMHO you're deluding yourself.
EDIT: And assuming the murders are not evenly spread out but rather focus in the "bad" neighborhoods is support for the polarization argument. We can look at some stats but I'm pretty sure they would support my notion that the bad neighborhoods in US cities are much worse than the bad neighborhoods in safe cities worldwide. Try comparing violent crime statistics of major US cities to major European cities over 50 or 100 years. This didn't start yesterday.
EDIT2: Don't take all this to mean I support Trump's rhetoric or actions on this topic. I do not. But I do think Americans need to do some introspection here
As a resident of that very city, I thank you for not bringing your bigoted behind here. Stay away, please.
Edit: okay, that was not a great thing for me to say. Sorry. I'm just fed up with the repeated vilification of a great American city by the buffoon-in-chief. Yes, violence in the city is a big problem, but it's hardly its defining characteristic.
Yes, don't worry--I'll stay away from a city that has 250 property crimes and 80 violent crimes every day while those in power keep looking the other way to be politically correct.
>Yes, don't worry--I'll stay away from a city that has 250 property crimes and 80 violent crimes every day while those in power keep looking the other way to be politically correct.
Wonderful. Stay away from the world-leading food and culture scene as well. More for the rest of us.
>That'll end when Trump sends the Feds as he's promised on Twitter, though
Under what authority? And which Feds are we talking? Just more delusional talk.
Chicago is a huge city. Yes, it has a crime problem. Yes, "something" needs to be done. That doesn't mean policies like Trump's are necessarily the right ones. I've visited Chicago. It was a beautiful and wonderful place, and I did not have any fear.
You know what is easy? Looking at the data now and coming to a conclusion that you believe to be sound. What is difficult is doing a little research to figure out how Chicago got the way it is. How gang culture took hold. How it was passed down from generation to generation. What policies were put into place that caused people to turn to illegal activities. Do a little research and try to get a full picture. Everyone agrees that crime, especially violent, should not be the norm in any place be it Chicago, Aleppo, or some random Brazilian city, but you need to understand how and why it got there before you give your final judgement.
Although not directly related to crime rates in Chicago, 13th by Ava DuVernay is a wonderful documentary on Netflix regarding mass incarceration of minorities as a new means of racial segregation.
I know many people who live in that city, very happily and safely. The comment is ignorant and it's important we don't, in our ignorance, connect skin color with other personal characteristics; it leads to very bad outcomes that hurt many people.
So I wouldn't be too far off saying that this part of what I wrote describes you:
> However, there are a lot of people who witnessed what he was doing and thought "it won't hurt me though" and were absolutely okay with him and his hateful approach to "making America great"
Regardless of how others are behaving, it's never okay on HN to express yourself this way. Please keep things civil and substantial, or refrain from commenting.
So, I very much agree with emehrkay, but you should probably deliver the same admonition to emehrkay for the way they chose to phrase their sentiment. "Fuck you" and "fuck them" are the same when you're one of the "them".
This is the same flavor of bigotry and ignorance that leads people to believe that all immigrants or black people are dangerous criminals. Not everyone who voted for Trump supports all of his positions. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if a good chunk of his voters disagree with the majority of his positions, such is the nature of a two-party system.
How is me saying "fuck people who voted for bigotry because it won't affect them" a "flavor" of bigotry?
Are you saying that white Americans would had been okay with Obama campaigning on harsher policing for white people and their kids because he also spoke about lowering taxes or giving everyone access to healthcare?
You people keep coddling these bigots or bigot-ajecent people and telling us, the people most affected, to treat them with kid gloves. No that doesn't make any sense. Talk to the openly bigoted/bigot-sympathizers about their behavior and beliefs. Don't come to me asking me asking me to see beyond the stuff that hurts me and the people I love because they were promised jobs
> How is me saying "fuck people who voted for bigotry because it won't affect them" a "flavor" of bigotry?
Because you are indiscriminately labelling all Trump voters as racists.
> Are you saying that white Americans would had been okay with Obama campaigning on harsher policing for white people and their kids because he also spoke about lowering taxes or giving everyone access to healthcare?
I do believe many white Americans would still have voted for him, if they felt the alternative was worse or felt like harsher policing was a small price to pay for universal healthcare.
> You people keep coddling these bigots or bigot-ajecent people and telling us, the people most affected, to treat them with kid gloves.
In my defense, I'll probably be more affected than you (e.g. I stand to lose my visa if Trump does re-negotiate NAFTA like he said he would). I'm also what you might call an anti-nationalist and am generally in favor of free movement across borders. Still, I can see valid, non-racist, reasons people might have voted for him.
Finally, I'm not trying to coddle people who voted for Trump. I don't want you to show them good will or have sympathy for them. I just want you to be more rational about this because I'm tired of seeing Americans talk past each other. People who voted for Trump did so for a variety of reasons and while you might not convince the racists amongst them, you might still have a chance of gaining support from the rest (if you stop insulting them).
The man openly campaigned on the premise of "keeping certain muslims out of the country" and it is snowballing to even affect you. But you want to worry about labeling the people who voted for that as racist.
I wish you the best, I really do. I hope the pressures from silicon valley and the people change things for the better, but we'll see how that plays out. If this first week is any indication of the next four years, we're in for a constant bombardment of our sensibilities. Daily they will say something that we know is a lie or put forth something that will hurt people and say it doesn't. Pretty soon we'll be thinking "am i the crazy one?"
I have an Iranian friend whose parents are visiting and they'll be leaving soon. If this ban becomes the norm there is a good chance he'll either never see them again or never be allowed back into this country where he came for a better life.
I choose not to sympathize with those who constantly put people in power to oppress me and my loved ones. Again, fuck them and fuck him too.
I'm sorry but they've pushed themselves away by their own actions. At some point a stand has to be taken and a demand for accountability has to be made.
At this point I'm not willing to wait to see how far this goes before they come to their senses.
Trump is the most unpopular new president in history and lost the popular vote by millions of votes. He doesn't have the middle. He has an obnoxious minority.
The ACLU is both challenging the order and rounding up attorneys to help legal residents and Visa holders that have been prevented from entering the country. Now would be a good time to donate. https://www.aclu.org.
People have a right to choose who they (do or don't) associate with. And people have a right to judge those based on who they deem worthy of association. Thiel can believe what he wants. He can say what he wants. Mostly it shows he's a cowardly little narcissistic shit. And it's damn telling when folks still keep him around.
It's crazy that you can't see how hypocritical you are: you ate literally saying that restaurants shouls ban thiel because he supports a person who bans people.
Look in a mirror once in a while, buddy
Do you believe Christian bakeries should be forced to bake cakes for gay customers?
You and plenty of people in this thread seem to confuse "behave" and "say".
"While Trump's"enemies take him literally not seriously & friends seriously not literally", the wise looks at his acts & acts only. No words." --NNTaleb
Ostracizing others for their words is incredibly immature, petty, and vindictive. And ironically, ostracizing is an act, not words, so it does expose your character.
> Do you believe Christian bakeries should be forced to bake cakes for gay customers?
I don't believe Christian bakeries should be forced to bake cakes for anyone. I do believe that if they want the protections of the legal system, they must follow the same protections for others, even if they find them abhorrent. A principled stand against those protections does not mean they get to do that at no cost to themselves.
If "person who supports an abhorrent ideology" is a protected class in SV restaurant service law, I rescind my call to ban him from getting a table, and change it to "let him eat alone".
> Ostracizing others for their words is incredibly immature, petty, and vindictive. And ironically, ostracizing is an act, not words, so it does expose your character.
No its not. Its a basic component of all human interactions. We all choose to associate or not with people based on their beliefs. Those associations are powerful multipliers for both success and failure in this world. That there is not a penalty for unwanted behavior in a given society is not a mark of value.
Finally, giving money to someone is also an act, regardless of what the Supreme Court says. Thiel has exposed his character, he is not welcome at my house and I won't work for him.
> If "person who supports an abhorrent ideology" is a protected class in SV restaurant service law, I rescind my call to ban him from getting a table, and change it to "let him eat alone".
Political ideologies are legally protected against discrimination in California.
But even if they weren't, why judge someone by their beliefs? The only reason you would is if you think support for Trump is a moral defect, with no exceptions. In other words you're not against him because of his political beliefs, but because of your (not universal) beliefs about what is moral and what isn't.
> We all choose to associate or not with people based on their beliefs.
Disagree. Most people judge others on social status and personal character, neither of which have any link to political ideologies or personal beliefs.
> he is not welcome at my house and I won't work for him
That's a fine personal decision, but there's a huge leap between "I don't want to be involved with him" and "everybody else should ostracize him, or they are just as evil as him". The former is "live and let live", and the latter is "the world should bow to me".
Thiel donated $1.25 MILLION to the Trump campaign. This isn't holding him accountable for his "beliefs" or even his "speech" - this is holding him accountable for helping to cause this mess we're in.
DJT and his associates hint that only a subset of the population have a right to their beliefs, others should keep their mouths shut. That seems like a problem worth going against and it may become acute rather sooner than later.
> People have a right to their beliefs, even if their beliefs are stupid. If not, than what kind of country are we?
When the person's actions are directly and publicly detrimental to the business interests, the investor/backer/employee is at odds with the rest of the group and yeah at that point its not just a belief but a question of the self-interest of the business being at odds with one of its investor/employee/backers.
Let us be honest here, Thiel is also backing a man that has no trouble firing people who aren't Yesmen. If that is the sort of standard he wants applied to other people, it should apply to him as well.
There comes up a point when the pile of problems extends simply beyond belief but realized action in the real world that directly impacts other people. It is at that point, action is always taken in any situation. Please do not simply call this a 'belief' at this point when Thiel's goals and the related actions are realized in the manner he desired.
> People have a right to their beliefs, even if their beliefs are stupid. If not, than what kind of country are we?
Politics is a process of conflict and negotiation between varied, competing interests. In a liberal democracy, "people have a right to their beliefs" is the starting point for that process, not the endpoint.
How many degrees of separation from Trump do you think people should go?
"It goes without saying that if the people of Group X are staring at you demandingly, waiting for you to hate the right enemies with the right intensity, and ready to castigate you if you fail to castigate loudly enough, you may be hanging around the wrong group." - http://lesswrong.com/lw/42/tolerate_tolerance/
This is the guy, after all, who spent his time making "you can't take him literally" arguments about the same policies Trump is pushing forward in his very first week.
> Anyone in a position of power who took a look at Trump and didn't recoil with disgust needs to be exiled from civil society.
And this well represents the leftist-elitistic-rhetoric that drove so many to vote for Trump (HRC's "deplorables" comment).
Five year olds say "I told you so," adults find reasonable pathways forward in difficult situations.
People voted for and supported Trump for a variety of reasons, let's not generalize them all into one block like his administration is doing to Muslims.
Five-year-olds don't commit genocide. Five-year-olds don't become tyrants. Five-year-olds don't deport people. Five-year-olds might say "I told you so," but they have a far better track record at the things that matter than adults. Maybe we should take a lesson from them.
I find your comment a bit bizarre. You ignored the point of my entire comment, instead deciding to focus on a meaningless portion of my metaphor and apply it to an equally meaningless point about how humans ought to be.
This comment becomes even more bizarre whenever my comment was about acceptance of everyone, including Trump supporters, which is in line with your tao of five year old here.
Five-year-olds don't feel compelled to accept everyone. They love everyone, yes, but when someone hurts them, they cry and fight back, they don't say "Hm, how can I work together with this person like an adult."
The inclination to treat unreasonable people as if they're reasonable is a major and easily exploited failure of adulthood. Plenty of Trump supporters are reasonable. Peter Thiel is not.
Every five-year-old knows a dozen stories about a good king with an evil counselor, and how the king would have been better off getting rid of the counselor.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough with "position of power". I wasn't talking about "James Wilson, truck driver in Madison" or "Allison Smith, bartender in Columbus".
It's the folks who single-handed lot have power to shape the world. Thiel can grab a friendly dinner with the greatest threat to humanity on Monday, and yet Sam Altman will gladly have lunch with him on Tuesday and joke about his "friends" as though nothing happened?
> Perhaps I wasn't clear enough with "position of power". I wasn't talking about "James Wilson, truck driver in Madison" or "Allison Smith, bartender in Columbus".
I suppose I don't really see much of a rhetorical difference. Proposing that we exile people who disagree with you is pretty gross to me. It doesn't matter you constrained yourself to only punishing the 'powerful'.
> Thiel can grab a friendly dinner with the greatest threat to humanity on Monday
This just sounds hyperbolic. Care to back this ridiculous statement?
> and yet Sam Altman will gladly have lunch with him on Tuesday and joke about his "friends" as though nothing happened?
People are multifaceted. As much as you'd like to reduce people down to single words or ideas, they're not that simple.
Objectively ridiculous. Davos disagrees[0], and geopolitical experts are utterly nonplussed by Trump (Stratfor, Geopolitical Futures). What 22 year old journalism majors decry as "a systemic threat to the world order" is just seen by geopolitical observers as an interesting gambit that may pay off big. Take what they say about Trump and Taiwan[1], NATO, torture (Trump said yesterday that Mattis was in charge, and if Mattis doesn't believe in torture, he gets to override Trump's orders). Your hysteria is unfounded.
Adults usually tell five year olds I told you so after having already told them.
Republican voters had many choices in their primary. Cruz, Carson, Christie, Huckabee, ... were just as bad. So your variety of reasons isn't very convincing. At a certain point, you have to take responsibility for your vote. Hand waving it away with a variety of reasons isn't fooling anyone.
You're not advocating "responsibility". You're saying Trump supporters are morally defective, and when they refuse that label, you say: "see! not only are you morally flawed, but you won't even admit it! proves my point!"
Is it hard to understand that Trump supporters vote for what they think is morally just and right, just like you, and not for evil, because they're evil?
Actually, I am advocating responsibility. That's why I used that word when I called out his hand waving with a variety of reasons. Moreover, when you say what they think is morally just and right it's pretty much the same.
At a certain point, you have to accept responsibility. Trump is your guy and he is doing your work.
I suppose you need to understand that y'all went way over the line with Trump and that we're not going to be nice about it.
I appreciate this post by Sam, it means a lot. I think your sentiments are sound, as well.
I think what's more important is clarifying Peter Thiel's beliefs and how he's going to make things better moving forward. The line in the sand that Sam and YC should seriously consider is when do the political freedoms of their partners supersede the actual freedoms of their founders?
The way I feel, as a founder, is slightly taken advantage of. I'm not directly part of the YC network, but there's an implicit social contract in Silicon Valley --- help others, and it will come back to you. YC's value is in fighting for founders. When a partner actively supports a vehemently anti-immigrant candidate and their political freedoms are defended at the potential expense of founders' livelihoods, it's confusing. It sends a message to founders that they're simply cattle - you can afford to lose a few along the way because you have the greenest pasture and you're confident they'll overlook the slaughterhouse.
I like YC. I love the founders and partners I've met that are part of the network and have a great deal of respect for everyone involved. There's some murky water here, though, and additional clarity would alleviate the anxieties of, I think, a lot of talented entrepreneurs, both aspiring and successful.
And Obama was the biggest nazi of all times, he created a spy machine that would have made gestapo jealous. Where was the outcry in the last 8 years. Some of you bigots voted for him twice!
It's probably not a great tactic to perpetuate the American habit for making sweeping comments about the rest of the world which aren't really grounded in truth. Might be best to be scrupulously fact-based on these matters.
It's impossible to talk about politics in a non-hyperbolic way right now, so I've mostly just stopped. I'm not going to stop voting, but I'm going to stop trying to discuss anything, which means I will be much harder to persuade.
Read the headline. "Trump promises". Christians from those countries are currently banned from entering the US. In fact, all citizens of those countries are banned, regardless of their religion (unless they have a US passport).
Trump's list of countries has been on Captain America's ultimate shitlist for a long time.
During and after the Vietnam war the U.S. took in a vast number of refugees from Southeast Asia, something remarkable about the Iraq war is that we have taken a handful of handful of Iraqis in during that time.
The ban itself isn't relevant to it supposed goal.
Between 1975 through 2015, 17 foreign-born folks from these nations were convicted of carrying out or attempting to carry out a terrorist attack on U.S. soil and they killed zero people. Zero Libyans or Syrians intended to carry out an attack on U.S. soil during this time.[1]
None of the post-9/11 terrorists in the United States came from any of the targeted countries (and none were refugees) either. Both the 9/11 terrorists and the few non-domestic Muslim post-9/11 terrorists that actually carried out attacks were non-refugees from countries not covered by the order.
I feel like in this case you should be able to give them the benefit of the doubt. Do you really believe that they were advocating for violent protests in a list of legitimate, peaceful political activities?
I'm not saying we're there yet, but, at the risk of waking Godwin, at what point in 1930s Germany would violent protest finally be OK? We'll start at "Never," and work back from there.
The 1930s were full of violent protest - running battles on the streets between gangs of thugs on both sides (red vs Brown shirts). It helped Hitler portray himself as the law and order candidate.
Peaceful but overwhelming mass civil disobedience and protest is better. The time for that is now.
And I'm hoping we never reach the need for more than that.
As for violent German protests, I'm pretty sure taking away those violent opposition protests would not have prevented Hitler from taking power. Perhaps they needed more violence. And indeed they eventually did get more violent opposition that did defeat them, by the West's armies.
Perhaps more violence in the thirties might have prevented WWII.
And now much of that is virtualized or amplified and concentrated in terrorist incidents - like many other things in our technological society. Why would you expect political activity to have stayed the same when everything else is changing? Just as we don't go downtown to do all our shopping any more, many conflicts are carried out in cyberspace rather than in the street. go look at the comments section on major newspapers, they are a battleground for ideological dominance. There is abundant historical evidence that such battles are only a prelude to physical conflict.
Incidentally if you think violence hasn't already erupted then you're being wilfully blind. Here's a recent example and I could point to many more and famous examples, like that of Anders Brievik and his imitators.
I'm not saying it has not errupted (it has) I'm saying violence and the glorification if it (as in people sharing the punch a Nazi video) is a dead end and will definitely strengthen trump support.
The way to defeat him is to resist, massively, peacefully and persuasively - to persuade the nation that he is wrong, irrational and damaging everyone with insane policies like retroactive withdrawal of green card status.
I hope you're right, but I have to prepare for the very strong possibility that you're wrong and that he and his major cohort of supporters are not in fact amenable to reason and shared conceptions of fairness.
It is not possible to really invoke Godwin's law regarding Trump, he already opened this door when he accused the CIA of being like NAZIs for reporting he facts. I don't think there is very much reason to be shy with such comparisons anymore.
Congratulations on being able to enjoy such a luxury. Pacificism is an easy stand to take if you don't have to worry about being unwillingly victimized by authoritarian policies.
The state and powerful groups rely on opinions like your. All they have to do is insert an agent provocateur[1]. They can turn any legitimately peaceful protest into something that, in your eyes, should be ignored. It reminds me of this meme: https://pics.onsizzle.com/white-people-2016-destruction-of-p...
The country you live in and the laws you abide by were founded on, and enforced by violence. Essentially your comment is saying "I will only respect the violence of the state".
In that context the violence was targeted. The tea was owned by a company closely aligned with the state. So violence against a Trump property would make more sense then say just busting out a Starbucks window. This is even more true now that we know that Trump will keep his properties.
In case anyone is still skeptical that this is really a Muslim ban and not just a blanket ban on refugees and immigrants, note that Trump has said he will give priority to Christian refugees: http://www1.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2017/01/27/brody-fi...
Yet we never heard from you during the years the Obama administration did the opposite... Syria is over 10% Christian, yet only 56 of the ~10K Syrians let into the country were Christian.
Heard from who? This is a major, major problem with political discourse in America right now. We are acting reflexively. We are engaging in collective punishment. We are making unproven assumptions.
Your source doesn’t dispute the accuracy of this number at all:
> Cruz is rounding up, but he is correct about the percentage of Christians among the Syrian refugees who have resettled in the United States.
> A total of 2,290 Syrian refugees have arrived in the United States since fiscal year 2011, which is when the Syrian civil war began, through Nov. 20, according to the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center. Of those, only 62 were identified in the center’s database as Christian. That’s 2.7 percent, even though the Christian population in Syria is about 10 percent, according to the CIA World Factbook.
All it says is that the UN stacked the pool, and Obama never challenged it.
1. Obama is no longer president, this is not a particularly relevant point.
2. We did hear about it, Ted Cruz could not stop talking about it.
3. Refugees are referred to the US by the UNHCR. If their referrals don't reflect the demographics of Syria, that's not something we can directly or easily change.
4. Christians are 10% of Syria, but it's not clear that they would be 10% of refugees. I couldn't immediately find any statistics on that.
That is, I'd expect that a Christian in the middle east would be more likely to have citizenship or family in a western nation than your average Syrian.
Now it could be, but 'they are being specifically targeted' doesn't immediately imply to me that 'they should be a disproportionately high number of refugees'.
That story mentions Bishops and priests who are very likely to not be Syrian Citizens, and instead be capable of just flying back to their home countries.
That is, I'd expect that a Christian in the middle east would be more likely to have citizenship or family in a western nation than your average Syrian.
Why would you assume that? These are Syrian Christians who have lived their for centuries. They are no different than other Syrians other than their religious beliefs.
>That story mentions Bishops and priests who are very likely to not be Syrian Citizens, and instead be capable of just flying back to their home countries.
I'm by no means saying that every Christian will be more capable of leaving, or not be a citizen. But if 30% of Christians are citizens elsewhere, and only 3% of Muslims, then you have 70% of 10% of the poopulation as potential Christian refugees, and 97% of 90% of the population as Muslim refugees, which would make 7.4% of asylum seekers Christian, as opposed to 10% of the population.
I was talking about this last night with my wife and she mentioned she saw some statistic showing Christians were, until now, de-prioritized and actually given refugee status at a disproportionately low rate compared to their population in the ME. I don't have a source, but thought this might be useful to bring up. It sounded like this was why he did that.
He said this because demonizing Muslims got him elected. If he were only considered about the alegged de-prioritization of Christians, he would say "we will no longer de-prioritize Christians".
If Christians were de-prioritized, it was done by the UNHCR, not the US. And there is no direct evidence suggesting this happened, the fact that 10% of Syria is Christian does not mean 10% of the refugees would be.
Yes we should, and Muslim refugees are also victims of religious persecution. Unfortunately, Trump's order says we only care about your persecution if you're in the religious minority in your country.
But this type of vetting is used all the time. Refugees that come to the US (and other countries, including my own, Canada), examine refugee claims using very similar methods.
If you are a minority (religious, ethnic, political) that is used as evidence of persecution and helps your claim for refugee status.
One should be very careful in ascribing rational motivations to things the Trump administration does - even his rhetoric (vague allusions to the attacks of September 11, 2001) isn't borne out by the executive order. He did not ban immigrants from a single one of the countries of origin of the 19 attackers.
Yeah, he's doing a shitty job communicating it, but what did you expect...
> (b) Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.
> (e) Notwithstanding the temporary suspension imposed pursuant to subsection (a) of this section, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may jointly determine to admit individuals to the United States as refugees on a case-by-case basis, in their discretion, but only so long as they determine that the admission of such individuals as refugees is in the national interest — including when the person is a religious minority in his country of nationality facing religious persecution, when admitting the person would enable the United States to conform its conduct to a preexisting international agreement, or when the person is already in transit and denying admission would cause undue hardship — and it would not pose a risk to the security or welfare of the United States.
It's not irrelevant. Why do you insist on looking at this is a vacuum? He's made hundreds of public statements about this. He already told us what he wants to do.
> Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.
> to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.
Which religion is the majority in all of these countries?
Donald Trump and Steve Bannon's blatant disregard for objective fact is reckless and dangerous. Go too much further and talent will begin to divest from the United States for moral reasons. Your move, America.
I'm already seeing this in Berlin. I know multiple engineers and academics who have abandoned career moves to the US because they "don't want to live in such a toxic environment."
I'm thinking about moving to Berlin, but a million of illegal economic migrants from middle east in Germany and Trump policy in the US regarding them make US much more attractive option
Refugees are those who fleeing the war to neighbor regions or countries to get to safety.
People who pay smugglers to get to rich countries because they can live better there are illegal economic migrants.
It's not that we don't need to help but the fact that sponsoring anyone who claims he is a refugee is just plain wrong. Stop the war and spend resources more efficiently by helping rebuild the economy and not wasting it on a bunch of free riders.
As an American living between Berlin and NYC for 7 years now, here's how it feels to me: The migrants in Germany have created some tension and isolated incidents, but the political and interpersonal climate is the US is significantly more toxic. Even though per capita the US is taking way less migrants than Germany is.
This isn't the tech community's responsibility. This is everyone-who-disagrees' responsibility. If the GOP doesn't. It starts with holding representative's responsible. I think you're right that big tech has a huge voice, but I can't agree with the idea that it's their job to Be the Guiding Light ™
I think Sam's point about strength in numbers is really critical. The tech community sometimes has a little fear of being first that can rapidly shift into fear of being last, so I wonder what will cause a critical mass of tech leaders to take a stand. I think Sam is right that employees will have to provide some of the push, the New York Times article I read on this earlier mentioned an Iraqi Facebook employee in Seattle who can no longer go to Vancouver BC to visit his family for instance, so this effects us and our colleagues directly, not abstractly. I would suggest we all try and start bottom up pressure within our organizations to denounce the immingration ban, tech has always been pretty pro immigration (not always for noble reasons) so this shouldn't be a difficult sell.
I am affected personally by this. I have extended family members from Indonesia and Malaysia in the US who are still on Green Card. Although those countries aren't affected by the ban, who knows when Trump will decide to change his mind at his whim.
But the time for talk has passed. I don't think very much is going to happen because Trump is empowered by his election victory, and he won't listen to anyone. Has he ever listened to anyone, even during his celebrity-only days? To think that you can actively engage him in a conversation is not the way to do this.
What is needed is to prepare for the 2018 and 2020 elections RIGHT NOW. We need an organized social media structure where all of the positive, democracy-pro candidates in every electoral district gets publicized and supported. EDUCATE YOUNG PEOPLE WITH GREAT POLITICAL CANDIDATES AND MOTIVATE THEM TO VOTE. I'm not talking about just voting for the Democrats. Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans. We need a new voice that actually cares about progressive, democratic values, and actually believes in what they say. Not the same, tired politicians that play us for fools and leave us with the best of two evils.
Organize now, smash the two-party oligarchy and elect REAL POLITICIANS, hopefully young people that care about the US, not people who want to enrich themselves from the teat of government funding. You could argue that Trump was that candidate for half of Americans, as well as Sanders for the other (nearly) half. We need fresh blood, and we need to start now.
The only way to stop Trump is to silence him by breaking up the Republican Congress majority, and it's only in 2 years.
Compared to the post above, a German citizen has an incredibly smaller chance of being affected by any of Trump's future follow-up actions similar to the executive order that was just issued, so your comparison is invalid.
If one has to come up with new contingencies based on radical shifts in the likelihood of extreme events, then of course they are directly affected.
I'm not so sure I agree. It seems to me that Germany is currently having issues identifying refugees entering their country as well as keeping its citizens safe.
If this trend continues, it wouldn't be too far fetched for the US to require "extreme vetting" of German document holders to enter the US.
I'm personally affected because my extended family is terrified of what could happen next. They do a lot of business in SE Asia, and can't afford to be locked out of the country indefinitely. We are all in it together, because we're a family, so yes, I'm personally affected.
The word you are looking for is concerned not affected. As you yourself pointed out, so far he hasn't done anything that actually affects you. If you want people to take you seriously, you need to not play the victim card and instead make rational arguments.
Of course GP and their family are affected. They are having to map out an entire alternate plan for their lives, and beyond just many hours spent worrying they may have already taken concrete steps toward preparing for the worst.
You are completely incorrect. Empirically, the country voted with a nearly 50/50 split between the two candidates, meaning the country felt both candidates were "just as bad". Just because you have your own personal biases doesn't actually make them right, the data does.
> This false equivalence convinced people to vote for Trump.
"false equivalence" is a non-argument used by Hilary supporters to sidestep proving that she is objectively better than Trump, after it is correctly pointed out that she is not an angel from heaven either.
> No way Hillary would have implemented this ban.
This is a misleading statement that you can't even prove, because it requires you to either be a mind reader or being able to travel to an alternate reality. For the sake of argument though let's assume that she wouldn't have performed this action, can you prove that she wouldn't have done worst things? She gets money from Saudi Arabia, you would have a hard time proving that she can do no bad.
Criticize them all you want, but keep in mind your goal. Do you care about changing their minds, political/social polarization in the US, etc? If so, criticizing them would be a very stupid thing to do. Especially considering the GOP is the strongest its been from a local to national level since the 1920s.
Then just skip to violence and stop wasting time? You can absolutely change closed minds, and I don't think most of those people's minds are as closed as you perceive them to be.
Violence is usually the outcome when political discussion breaks down. So if your belief that discussion with Trump supporters is impossible is true, it would seem like time to hop to it.
Winning elections and peaceful protest are not breakdowns of political process. They're part of it. As are waiting and acceptance/apathy. What separation has come about that hasn't been violent?
Call me naive but Trump's repugnant behaviour and actions may well steer voters away from similar european candidates. The rise of Martin Schulz, plus Merkel, is probably enough to stop Germany's far right from gaining power. Austrians have shown restraint in the last election and at least for now Spain and Portugal are pretty safe. Will Hamon/Macron be enough to block the FN in France? Lest not forget that the FN inherited most votes from the Communist Party, specially in the north. Could you give us an overview of the situation in the Netherlands?
NL is about (March) to make a huge shift to ultra-right. The coming elections are predicted to be a landslide victory for the PVV, the extremist/nationalist party which is pushing those exact same buttons that Trump is pushing.
We may end up in a very strange situation where the largest political party will not be part of government and where the prime minister will be part of that party (a constitutional crisis, historically the largest party has always delivered the minister president because they always were part of the coalition, it has never happened that the largest party was not part of the coalition but it just might happen). I'm waiting for the first wave of articles pointing this out and trying to decide whether largest party meant largest party in the coalition or largest party in an absolute sense.
Like you I hope that there will be some kind of vaccination effect from the damage Trump is wreaking on the USA but that may just end up being wishful thinking.
Excellent information, thank you. So it will be the coalition rather than the largest party. I was hoping for that but could not easily find a source to make that un-ambiguous, precedent is better than anything else.
Call me naive but Trump's repugnant behaviour and actions may well steer voters away from similar european candidates.
Or it might show them that it's possible to "take action against the muslim/refugee threat" and they'll demand the same from their candidates.
The most terrible nuances, like the ban affecting permanent residents, weren't reported in the news here. Most people wouldn't understand how the US system works anyway.
"Trump is hell bent on destroying America from within"
No he isn't. Those kind of ridiculous hyperbolic statements don't help anything.
You may disagree with Trump's policies and platform. But "intent on destroying America" is a silly charge. And it is equally silly when (as often happens) it is leveled at the left.
I'm just looking at the evidence of the last two weeks and that's my conclusion. That he thinks he's doing something positive I'll believe but the end result is going to be a very large net-negative, the longer this goes on unchecked the worse it will get.
What you think is hyperbole is merely extrapolation from the last two weeks over a period of four years. You'll see a world order remarkably different than the present one, one in which America's role will be greatly diminished and where the American economy will be much smaller than it is today or even worse.
It's about May 1914, time is running out to get the train back on the rails before momentum will take over.
June 28, 1914 was the day Franz was murdered. Before that day there weren't really any more danger of a war in Europe than there were the year before.
It was a wildcard and nobody predicted what would happen it could have happened 10 years before and it could have happened 10 years later. Had there been a couple decent diplomats left in Europe the war could have been avoided. Had the Moltke plan been followed maybe Germany really would have won early. Too many variables to predict.
In summary, please don't compare this to 1914, it makes no sense.
Are there any publicly pro-Trump founders in the current YC batch and, if so, how ostracized do they feel reading things like this?
EDIT: If there's no answers from the current batch (either due to sample size or general shyness), I'll pose the same question regarding past YC alumni. I find it hard to believe out of a thousand people there isn't a single Trump supporter.
I can very easily believe it. If you're capable of running a start-up you probably have some critical thinking skills and YC is - if anything - an extremely good selector for those skills. On top of that the undercurrent is to want to change the world, now you could take that the cynical way but for the most part that would bring out people with an idealist streak.
> I can very easily believe it. If you're capable of running a start-up you probably have some critical thinking skills and YC is - if anything - an extremely good selector for those skills. On top of that the undercurrent is to want to change the world, now you could take that the cynical way but for the most part that would bring out people with an idealist streak.
To suggest that Trump supporters are incapable of critical thinking or being successful start-up founders is pretty insulting. This type of circle jerk in a bubble thinking is a big part of what got him elected in the first place.
It's also comments like yours (and Sam's original post) that further prevent anyone from coming forward to express their dissenting views. Most people shy away from situations that start off with a group of thugs referring to them as idiots.
See, the 'little helpers' (or useful idiots by another term) are exactly the people who empower these assholes, historically, over and over again.
And afterwards, when the carnage has finally run its course they are all suddenly short of memory and did not know a thing.
If you are able to think for yourself and you dissociate from all things internet related, study history and economics for a bit and then look at what is being done today and you will not come to the conclusion that this is damaging America and the world in general then your critical thinking skills are indeed in short supply.
Whatever button a demagogue is able to push they'll push no amount of counterweight is going to convince scared people looking for a 'strong man' that they themselves are part of the problem.
But feel free to go soft and easy on anybody that is helping to push the cart over the edge, me, I'll happily give them both barrels and that includes my closest friends and family if I feel that they are going to help destroy my country and our world.
In pre-war Germany exactly those same sentiments that you are appealing to were used widely and we all know how that ended. Let's be a bit more forceful this time around, it might not yet be too late.
Or would you rather wait with that until the momentum is so large that this disaster is unstoppable?
No, obviously not. We can disagree on all kinds of things. What we can't disagree on are facts and figures and historical lessons learned about walking certain paths.
If we fail to learn from the past we will repeat it endlessly and I really could do without a repeat of the path that we are currently on. But who knows, maybe the world just needs it's population reset every half century or so, we're overdue.
With the kind of bull-in-a-China-shop behavior on display at the moment it's a toss-up how this will end but war is definitely on the menu.
We can disagree on the historical lessons. I wonder, right now, which historical lesson you are referring to? If you mean Nazi Germany, my opinion is that there aren't actually that many parallels. Or do you mean cases when cultures were eradicated by invaders (real Collapse for some examples, or look at the history of the USA)? Or maybe the cases where Muslims took power, like the Iranian revolution?
Divide and conquer is a fantastic strategy against a stronger opponent and Putin is playing this like a master.
Maybe America's time has run out, but I for one would like to see the USA remain strong and united, I fear this may already past the point of no return and with ever day that goes by and this madness continuous you'll be looking wistfully back at those 'terrible' years under Obama, Bush, Clinton and so on.
And in a way that is the most vexing of all this: Trump is lying through his teeth to get those votes, he will not be able to give his voters what he wants but in the meantime the clock is going backwards at a rate of about 4 years per week that this guy is in power.
America's signature under a treaty (always a dicey thing) is now worth absolutely nothing, international relations are damaged for years to come, re-armament will be on the agenda in lots of places that were better off without the ability to slaughter their neighbors and so on. Think of it as the roll-back of 50 years of diplomatic policy that kept a large chunk of the world - the USA included - stable and prosperous.
I thought historians are still debating what caused the fall of Rome?
I can't really take you serious if you invoke Putin as the supposed mastermind...
International relations: because the countries he temporarily blocked for immigration have previously been such big friends to the USA? I don't think that accurately reflects reality.
> I can't really take you serious if you invoke Putin as the supposed mastermind...
Between Putin and Assange there are very good reasons to damage America as much as they can get away with and it didn't take much to tip the balance. America has never been as divided in recent memory as what is happening today.
To think that Putin would not be involved is naive, what with the situation in the Ukraine being what it is he desperately needs some way to get out of the stalemate and with America run by the likes of McCain and Clinton and NATO and the EU being strong and united there would be very little chance of that.
Putin stands the most to gain from all this by far.
> International relations: because the countries he temporarily blocked for immigration have previously been such big friends to the USA? I don't think that accurately reflects reality.
You must have missed his comments on Taiwan, Mexico and a whole bunch of other countries.
If Putin can control the US from his third world backwater, maybe he deserves to be in power. What makes him so good that the world's most advanced country is powerless against him? Is it because Russians are such good hackers?
Taiwan, Mexico and so on - fair enough. But overall it is not as if all the countries in the world were friends and only Trump is shaking things up now. There were always conflicts of interest, new trends that shift power (like oil and phracking), military interventions and what not.
> If Putin can control the US from his third world backwater, maybe he deserves to be in power.
Destruction and construction are asymmetric. It takes far less effort to destroy something than it does to create something and things that are delicately balanced can be toppled with only a small application of force.
> What makes him so good that the world's most advanced country is powerless against him?
Internal divisions, magnified to make them seem larger than they really are.
> Is it because Russians are such good hackers?
No, it is because when it comes to propaganda Russia has a leg (or rather several legs) up compared to the USA. The USA would do something like 'voice of America', the Russians would carpet bomb the nation with their version of the story, a history to corroborate their version and a continuous barrage of flak to get in the way of intelligent discussion.
And anybody that managed to get some kind of opposition going would as a rule never be heard from again.
Fortunately in America that stage has not yet been reached, let's hope it will never happen.
> Taiwan, Mexico and so on - fair enough.
Ok
> But overall it is not as if all the countries in the world were friends and only Trump is shaking things up now.
No, but they weren't all-out enemies either and Trump is pushing in that direction (not Taiwan). Even in Europe, one of the USA's staunchest allies when it comes to operations abroad there is strong talk of distancing because of the new perceived instability of America.
> There were always conflicts of interest, new trends that shift power (like oil and phracking), military interventions and what not.
Yes, but just like Hitler found out: you can't fight wars on all fronts at once.
"the Russians would carpet bomb the nation with their version of the story"
But how can they carpet bomb the US with fake news from Russia?
"Even in Europe"
Maybe Europe will have to shake off its arrogance and realize how much they have always depended on the US. I say that as an European - and here, also, people are divided over Trump, just as in the US. There are elections in Germany this year (if you meant Germany), although to be fair, no major shakeup is to be expected. But that is only for lack of an alternative, there is no Trump here to vote for. But maybe some adjustment of policies will occur before the election date, anyway.
"Yes, but just like Hitler found out: you can't fight wars on all fronts at once."
Still, making a tactical error is not in itself evil. And chaos is a tactic that sometimes works. It won him the election already.
On top of that most news fora are overrun by trolls shouting down any kind of dissent and picking up a fair share of support from 'useful idiots' who will endlessly repeat the talking points.
Make no mistake: a war is in progress, it is a war without bullets but with bits, the consequences are every bit as real and sooner or later the one may lead to the other.
> Maybe Europe will have to shake off its arrogance and realize how much they have always depended on the US.
There is no other choice. But that also carries significant risk.
> Still, making a tactical error is not in itself evil. And chaos is a tactic that sometimes works. It won him the election already.
Yes but that's like congratulating the dog on catching the car.
Putins information war: number of web sites or fake social media accounts does not imply lots of people are reading them. In any case, Trump and Hillary wanted to win - all the strategies of the Russians would have been open to Hillary and Trump, too. Why should Putin be better able to employ them?
War - everybody has some interest to pursue, sure. That is nothing new, though.
Europe on its own: what risk do you mean?
"congratulating the dog on catching the car"
Becoming president seems more useful than a car is for a dog, though.
Edit: only now read the BBC link. That's even more ridiculous than "The Russians did it". Now it is Macedonian teenagers who rigged the US election? Come on...
> only now read the BBC link. That's even more ridiculous than "The Russians did it". Now it is Macedonian teenagers who rigged the US election? Come on...
No, but it's but a small wheel in the much larger machine. There has been plenty of reporting on the Russian propaganda machine, if you're going to reject each and every component out of hand then you'll end up rejecting the conclusion as well but that would be a step too far.
See, for this to succeed a number of things have to happen:
- reliable sources of news need to be discredited
- a large amount of flak needs to be generated so people are discussing that rather than the real news
- a consistent barrage of the 'right' talking points needs to be presented so people start repeating those things as though they are real
All of those components are well represented, I would be highly surprised if all this would amount to coincidence.
Most "reliable sources of news" discredited themselves in the last couple of months. And the barrage was pretty onesided, too, wasn't it?
As for the barrage - again, how do you do that? Like creating bots on Twitter and Facebook and zillions of web sites doesn't mean people will read them.
The 'One China' policy essentially is about saving face. China is extremely sensitive to not being seen as losing face because of bullying from the West about what they consider to be their sphere of influence.
That in practice Taiwan acts and to all intents and purposes is an independent country doesn't matter as much as being able to claim that Taiwan is a republic of China does.
So, if everybody would just pretend that the 'One China' view is the correct one while Taiwan gets away with being a relatively progressive democratic society everybody wins.
If Trump starts throwing his weight around he might just trigger an invasion of Taiwan and just like Europe and the USA stood by while the Eastern part of Ukraine was annexed I do not expect anybody to lift a finger to stop it.
That's why you don't put unstable bullies in charge of foreign diplomacy with your single largest trading partner and a formidable military power to boot.
Vastly oversimplified but that's about the gist of it as far as I can see, corrections welcome.
Sure, but that to me sounds like a technical argument, not a political one (that is, it is neither Republican or Democratic, for example). It is not really a moral argument.
And it might not be the only possible scenario - in fact, with all the Hitler comparisons floating around, this stance towards China reminds me a lot of the appeasement politics towards Hitler.
Ultimately, saving face with regard to Taiwan is probably just one part of the general trade deal with China? So as the other parts, it should probably be up for negotiation? Or even be a factor ("we pretend Taiwan belong to you, and you give us moar iPhones").
Not saying that protectionism is a good idea, but also not saying that all trade deals are always optimal for both parties.
I think Ukraine was about more than saving face for Russia, too - Russia has always wanted the Krim for strategical reasons?
> ("we pretend Taiwan belong to you, and you give us moar iPhones")
That's pretty much the way it was. Except for it being a lot more than just iPhones.
> I think Ukraine was about more than saving face for Russia, too - Russia has always wanted the Krim for strategical reasons?
The Krim is extremely important from a military perspective to Russia, their response was - again - extremely predictable (in fact, I'm surprised they didn't simply call the EU's bluff and invaded outright but then again, appearances matter even to the Kremlin).
The sort of facts-and-figures type of Democrat doesn't realize that politics is not the same thing as the technocratic administration of society.
Politics is not an optimization problem, it's not about finding the "optimal" state of affairs or whatever.
It's about hopes and dreams. It forms the horizon of the destiny people imagine for themselves, both individually and collectively.
It's also about virtue, morality, sacrifice, etc.
You may sneer but the masses do not.
This is why Democrats lose. They have no vision. What they offer right now is the same boring, stagnant, soul-less status quo, guided along by accurate reasoning about facts and figures.
This is not about winning or losing elections. This is about winning or losing (big time) as a country in the future.
Rapid change is invariably bad, steady, slow changes and growth are good. The long view is the one to take, even if it can't be compressed down into juicy soundbites and isn't sexy.
See, if you 'win' but end up wrecking your country then you lost anyway, 'boring' in politics is good.
There is a reason that 'may you live in interesting times' is generally considered to be a curse, not a blessing.
I would hope any Trump supporters in YC have read http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html and taken to heart "My advice is, don't say it. Or at least, pick your battles." The Overton window of the left is surprisingly narrow given how they talk about tolerance.
I'm sure there are but they are afraid to say so. On many ways Thiel has the biggest balls, he sounds weak, but sure does have guts. I applaud him for having courage. I'm sure many people here don't live in a liberal circlejerk either but are afraid to talk out because of the aggressive left.
I'm (YC S11) not blindly anti-Trump (I support the sitting President whoever he is, but while I voted Johnson, I don't think Trump was the worst choice of the 4 top choices), and I think some of what he's trying to do is positive. I support Keystone XL and other pipelines. I think out of 2000 founders there are probably >50 but <250 who support Trump as much as I do.
On the immigration issue: I'm in favor of immigration reform. I disagree with the current EO because it doesn't include Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and because it doesn't exempt Special Immigrant Visas (which should have been super fast tracked), and because it seems punitive vs. corrective. If the reasoning behind it is an actual improvement in the screening process, and re-examination of all past visas under that basis, then there's probably a way to do it which is less disruptive to the >99% of visa holders who are not terrorists.
(The immigration reforms I'd like to see are both improving the experience for "good" people, and more effective screening of "bad" people, though superior technology and procedures. I'm hugely in favor of deporting/banning actual criminals who are in the US and not citizens; tracking visa expiration better; physically securing borders to prevent access without valid authorization. I'd like the borders to be far more deterministic for valid visa holders, friendlier, and for the immigrant or visitor experience, starting from the websites and how we treat people in foreign embassies, to be better. That might require more funding for State/USCIS, and definitely requires better tech. In general I think the test at the border should be "will this person make the US a better place." We have a human rights need to provide emergency refuge to refugees, but that doesn't necessarily mean immigration, and could in Syria be most efficiently accomplished by funding camps in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq.)
(The trade war is dumb; if the wall is going to cost $15b, we should just pay for it.)
Reporting "will give priority to Christians" is a mischaracterization of: "> (b) Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality."
If you really believe that doing the "extreme vetting" is necessary for your security, then you have some form of "islamophobia". Just look at the numbers: The number of ISIS soldiers is in the thousands. There is more than 1 billion muslim, though.
The probability of the guy being extremely vetted is a terrorist is a ridiculous 0.000001%. That doesn't take into account that a good number of terrorists are already known, are in war, locked in jail cells or have no passports/documents.
This probability is also probably lower than the guy being from a visa-waiver country where the guy happen to be mentally unstable and go on a killing spree. In both cases, your extreme vetting is very unlikely to detect the bad guy.
However, here is the thing. By alienating the population to the "dangers of islam", you are further separating these people from the American communities and not helping them getting integrated. This will, in the long run, backfires badly as it creates huge "muslim neighbour-hoods" that are not compatible with the fabrics of American society. France is a good example.
Oh, I missed your actual question: I don't have a problem with it at all. Sam has some political opinions personally which I disagree with (and so do most other people, in different ways), and as long as they're clearly personal and not organizational views, great.
In the case of immigration, that's clearly a YC position as well -- if you look at the percentage of YC founders who are immigrants, immigrants in early employee roles, and international markets, it would be negligent for YC to not be pushing for sane immigration rules. While the status quo isn't great, either, it's quite reasonable to criticize changes which also don't make things better. SOPA/PIPA, spying, etc. are all critical issues for YC and other groups of tech companies. Stuff like 2A, abortion, etc. isn't, even though a lot of people care about those.
Trump needs to be focused onto social and humanitarian issues where his penchant for aggressive and disruptive change can be a benevolent force, if that's possible.
> ... the executive order from yesterday titled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” is tantamount to a Muslim ban and requires objection.
But it's more than that -- it's illegal. Apart from known criminals, the government can't arbitrarily choose which groups to deny entry:
It makes me sad that politics has made its way to the top of HN. I'm relatively new here. One of the things I love about the community is that it has been something of an oasis over the past few months.
This is in no way intended to denigrate the esteemed author or his thesis. I'm just disappointed that we're at this point.
You can only afford to ignore politics for as long as it ignores you. This no longer ignores us, because it's affecting our friends, our companies, the pool of tech workers that make up the intelligence that builds Silicon Valley.
This is entirely comparable to when Jewish scientists were first getting barred from getting positions in German universities. We are now seeing the much-publicised case of an Oscar-nominated director being unable to attend to receive his prize. There are many other, less publicised cases of colleagues getting barred from working alongside us.
> You can only afford to ignore politics for as long as it ignores you.
Hey it's totally ignoring me. So sorry for Americans here, but I agree with the person you're responding to: I too liked HN for being quiet about Donald duck.
fair but there are such things as moments in history where things go one way or things go another way and the results of that breaking point cannot be reversed. there is no oasis in those times
You can argue that want your little safe space where you can debate Erlang versus Go until the Titanic has gone down but at some point everything is politics and your life too will be affected (and likely not in a positive sense).
Not all that long ago PG wanted to argue against the death penalty and it got debated wide and far, but not on HN because hey, we're techies and we can't be bothered with such un-important stuff, we're too busy changing the world.
And then one day you look up from your keyboard and you realize that that little bubble you were living in is now affecting you and those around you. There is no safe space, that's just an illusion you can only afford to keep for so long.
HN is only an oasis by virtue of willful ignorance about stuff that really matters and that is spinning out of control at a very rapid rate. Ignore it at your peril.
> It makes me sad that politics has made its way to the top of HN.
Yes I'm sad about this too, but we can't turn our backs on this, it's just too big. We can't just pretend it will go away and the world will sort itself out. We can't retreat to the comfortable confines of our algorithms and code, the real world needs us and needs us now.
What's happening is literally sickening to me. The thought of young people in 20 years looking at me and saying "You caused this, you did this to us" is a terrifying image. I blame my parents for Reagan, but this time it's on me. And I'm not going to let this go any further. We all need to get out of our happy code utopia and confront the real world before it is all destroyed. We need to stop this, and we need to stop this now.
We can't retreat to the comfortable confines of our algorithms and code, the real world needs us and needs us now.
Judging by the comments here, HNers have nothing to offer the real world (of politics) other than shrill shrieking about racism and bigotry. That's not going to help anything.
If you actually want to create political change, put your head back into your work and amass a fortune. Maybe in 20 years you'll have enough to make a difference.
"Should you undertake political violence in response to the age of Trump? I don’t know; what political violence, by whom, against which targets, towards what end, as part of what larger strategic campaign? If you don’t have answers to those questions then the debate is useless. Should you undertake direct action? I don’t know; what direct action, by whom, in what sites, towards what end, as part of what larger political campaign? Should you get involved in partisan politics? I don’t know; what campaigns, for what party, towards what specific political goal, as part of what larger vision of building an effective mass movement? Should you call your members of Congress? Same deal.
No more dorm room debates. No more abstraction. What is going to actually work to build a better world, right now, under these real-world conditions? What’s your plan to make real, substantive, large-scale progress? That’s the question you’re confronted with. If you can’t tie a particular act to a plausible vision of how to make real progress in the real world, then you’re wasting your time."
If the Democrats and liberally minded people want to affect true political change, then this kind of discourse needs to take hold within discussions like these. There's far too much emoting and virtue signaling going on that builds up tribal unity at the expense of alienating all others that do not go along with it.
Like it or not, a significant portion of the country is deeply afraid of Islamic terrorism. They are not assuaged by the methodology of the past 8 years. What alternative solution can the left offer that calms their fears while holding true to core ideology of the movement? Calling these people racist may energize your base and serve as catharsis, but is going to shrink the potential voting base more and more.
It deeply saddens me to see how much invective is being thrown around on a community that I prize for being able to discuss technical issues at great depth.
Me too. It even pops up on notifications that I set to filter out the top 5% (or so) of posts, so I don't miss anything that was really good.
When governments of "other countries" do something like this, it's a political post that has no place on HN. When it's America, oh boy do we get involved.
I understand this place is 90% American, but truly, there are plenty of other places to discuss this.
I mean.... Stay out of the political posts? The tech stuff seems unaffected by this.
One thing I love about this community is that, even on divisive political issues, I usually see excellent discussion and points, specifically by people who disagree with me.
I want HN debating politics* because of how HN debates.
* But yeah, as long as it stays to DEFINITELY political posts. Only politics I want in my tech is language wars :P
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 448 ms ] threadWhat's worse: the rationale given for these countries – the September 11th attacks – isn't even supported by fact. The plot did not originate in these countries. That is reckless and dangerous policy.
Obviously, this is not Trump's rationale, and there's the whole other angle of blocking reentry of permanent residents.
But for the general concept of religious based refugee admittance? I can't imagine the ACLU going back in time and arguing prioritizing Jewish refugees is unconstitutional.
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/mobile/en/article.php?ModuleId=100...
That's a conspiracy theory with no evidence, not a plausible explanation. Refugees can't vote for a long time. There are too few to make any substantive electoral difference.
This isn't a tortured or biased interpretation of the directive. It is precisely the description Trump used over and over and over again on the campaign trail.
1. Call
2. Participate 3. Share 4. Vote (https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote)5. Volunteer
6. Stop reading and start doing one of the other things.
Edit: misread 'local congress' vs 'US congress' but I think the point still stands.
> Remind them who they work for.
The lobbyists who pay for their luxuries today, and secure their employment tomorrow?
I'm in Texas though. A very red state. I've been calling my representative and senators to voice my opinion on all this stuff, but it's hard to tell how effective it is. I either get someone on the phone who sounds like, "oh geez, another angry liberal" or I have someone who just sounds like they'll add my name to a tally or something and says "I'll pass it along" and it's hard to know if they will or if that will help. And then I call my state senator to oppose the bathroom bill going through the Texas senate and the person who I'm talking to on the phone gets borderline combative with me.
I found a group of local people who are trying to do this in a more organized way. I found this[1] the other day and it makes me feel hopeful that our efforts are helping somewhat. We just need to not lose steam. It's easy to get fatigued by this kind of stuff, and we're only a week in.
[1] http://www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2017/01/26/cruz-...
The last 8 years were driven by the Tea Party doing exactly this. They show up to vote more and practice local politics like everyone should be doing.
So yes, if you are a Republican with a Republican representative then calling them to voice your displeasure about Donald Trump's behavior may be beneficial. Otherwise it probably won't do much unless there really is massive numbers.
That is exactly what you are going for. They keep a tally on a lot of issues. Unless you are a big employer or influential player in your district, you are not going to get to speak to the Rep or even his/her senior staff.
Unions and some Orgs know that you have thousands of people call your Rep and voice an opinion. Call, fax, or send a letter. Show up to the district office and be nice, deliver your opinion, and hand them a letter.
Either way calling Congress members is a feel-good thing that takes almost no effort. It's worthless in terms of getting political power and making changes.
For a practical example, if people of San Francisco jointly decide that they want Nancy Pelosi to do X, Y and Z (otherwise she will get primaried in 2018), she will have no option but to do that. This is exactly what the Tea Party did (with tremendous help from Koch brothers) in last eight years. They unseated the old leaders and took over the party.
What exactly do you want them to do (serious, not provocative question)? All three have spoken up (in varying volume) about the nastier executive orders / memoranda / proclamations, all three argued against several of the more controversial senate approved cabinet posts.
Nearly all the senate confirmable posts can't be filibustered under the current rules. I'd even call it surprising how many of them haven't yet made it out of the respective committees due to the republican majorities. All that's holding them back seems to be those arcane "collegiality" rules that the senate has, and the reticence of some republican MoC.
Except for filibusterable stuff, the democrats are largely powerless for the moment.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not particularly happy with how Democratic "leadership" is working, but it's far from clear to me what should be done.
Do you have a link showing where, "they took over the party"? My understanding is that the Tea Party is a minority faction within the GOP.
Pay attention to the 2010 primary races that happened within GOP. There were also some high profile races where the Tea-party/Traditional-GOP split even caused Dems to win some seats (like Christine O'Donnell in Delaware)
After that cycle, mainstream republicans mostly co-opted the movement and the rift wasn't that evident in successive elections.
A large number of Democrats have voted to confirm John Kelly, the anti-immigration former general who will now run DHS and enforce Trump's Muslim ban. Almost all of the Democrats supported Mattis for DOJ, because he appears to be the sanest member of the administration's team. A decent sized number even supported Pompeo, a Muslim-alarmist, for CIA.
Coming up soon is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III for Attorney General. Sessions is by many accounts an unreconstructed white supremacist. But Democrats will support him, because he's also a member of the Senate, and collegiality goes a very long way in the Senate.
Unless the Democratic coalition makes it clear to their representatives that we are holding them accountable for their votes to give consent for confirmation votes, and for their actual confirmation votes, the Democrats will act "strategically", holding back resistance until they're absolutely required to offer it. It doesn't help that the Republican party is almost uniformly conservative and extremely white, while the Democratic party is a coalition of interests that leans but is not firmly planted in liberal tradition.
Even if you're in a liberal state. You have to call. Social media doesn't count. It's very easy to do and if enough people do it, it does make a difference. It's like voting, except that your calls have more influence than your votes.
I cannot recommend highly enough the Indivisible Guide, which is the outcome of a bunch of legislative staffers attempting to reverse-engineer the Tea Party's process from the last 8 years and apply them to Democratic objectives:
https://www.indivisibleguide.com/
It's all actionable stuff.
Trump signed this on Friday because the response against it will be slower. Sure, a public statement by Democrats won't stop this, but it won't hurt and what the hell else are they doing? I work on the weekends, and they can too when core American values are under assault.
And of course, giving or raising money for other organizations is a great thing to do as well.
Allow me to suggest that you read and internalize this essay, because it is one of the few accurate summaries of out political reality that I've encountered in the past year.
https://medium.com/deep-code/situational-assessment-2017-tru...
I am nt arguing that politics is over and there's nothing that can be done any more, in fact I'm going to a city budgeting meeting in a couple of hours to find out/debate what to do about the imminent disappearance of federal funding. But your points about basic civics are redundant, I seriously doubt there's anyone reading or posting here who doesn't already know that.
Put another way, it's real hard to bring someone to justice for arson when you're inside the burning building. It might happen later, but in the short term that does little to remediate the risk to your life and property.
Supporting quotations from the post (because evidence): "The tech community is powerful. Large tech companies in particular have enormous power and are held in high regard. We need to hear from the CEOs clearly and unequivocally"
"At a minimum, companies should take a public stance."
After a period of 6-12 months outside the country, US Green Card holders lose their Green Cards.
In a time of grave concern for many green card holders, it's probably better to avoid this sort of inaccurate info. It's freakout time but let's stick to freaking out about true things.
If you are absent > 6 months you could end up with your green card status listed as 'abandoned', but even if you come back every 6 months that is no guarantee at all that it will not be listed abandoned.
The golden rule seems to be to be more than 6 months per year in the USA, preferably substantially more than 6 months to avoid ambiguity.
http://lawandborder.com/risk-abandoning-green-card-abroad-6-...
Key things: 6 months absence can be a factor in challenging your status as a Lawful Permanent Resident. 12 months absence means your green card (the actual document) is no longer valid for re-entry but it doesn't automatically make you a non-LPR.
Customs and Border Patrol can deny you entry, as we've just seen, on the basis executive action, legally questionable or not. But they can't take away your LPR status - only an order from an immigration court judge can do that.
A lot of this is cold comfort to any LPR caught up in this and unable to re-enter right now - but there is a process and the status itself is not so trivial to take away. The call to help organizations who provide legal aid to such people (and refugees and other visa holders) seems like the right thing to me, it's probably the most immediate need.
Banners don't matter. Net neutrality mattered in October, doesn't really matter now. Get your head straight.
1) You don't have the right to counsel in immigration hearings. There are several organizations that provide free legal aid.
2) Immigrant communities are scared and need to know their rights, and have a trusted source of information. There are unfortunately a ton of scammers who prey on scared people.
3) These organizations are a helpful intermediary between vulnerable people and government agencies, police, etc.
"You like this service? Our founder came to the US in 19XX"
"You enjoy this website? Here's a list of 2nd generation immigrants on our executive board"
...might get people to realise how much of the US economy is driven by 1st & 2nd generation immigrants.
"See! Immigration is good. These immigrants and their kids are building services!"
"See! Immigrants are hiring other immigrants and their children to provide lower cost labor and networking out-of-country and locking us out of the market."
If you want to change, you need a slogan like
"American made, American owned, American labor." along with the (now disappearing) attitude that American is not an ethnicity, it is a lifestyle.
Of course, too many of the mostly white male tech company founders and investors are hoping to benefit from things like reduced corporate taxes to care about discrimination that doesn't affect them.
See also elitism vs meritocracy.
(In other words, you get what you vote for.)
As much as I think that the majority Democrat States should suck it up about losing the election, I also think it's fully within their rights to secede if their populace wishes.
I think the list includes (but I could be wrong):
Apple
Google
Facebook
Amazon
Oracle
IBM
Uber
Yahoo
EMC
eBay
AT&T
Tesla
Reddit
And, of course, ycombinator.
Many of us live in "sanctuary cities" with local governments that plan to stand up to Trump's immigration policies anyway.
Strong business support here could easily inspire action by Sacramento and our congress critters.
Action now will matter a lot more than after the feds broaden their target.
Trump's power comes from the idea that he'll improve the economy. After this week, it should be clear that he'll do no such thing & maybe quite the opposite. Trump is too incoherent & impulsive.
He blames economic problems on the Chinese & Mexicans. Meanwhile, he ignores the role robots & Amazon will have in job destruction.
Corporate leaders can simply tell him to get lost when he sends a stupid tweet. With this he'll quickly lose his support base.
It'll be tough though. He is promising corporate america a big tax break which will instantly boost valuations (already has), giving CEOs nice bonuses & stock paydays.
They know what he refuses to admit: that a non-vocal majority of this country strongly supports the President and will NOT support anyone who publicly smites him.
Attacking the President as a normal consumer goods CEO is a losing proposition.
Even if you don't care about doing the right thing, losing some business from a (shrinking) minority of Americans is probably worth the positive publicity overseas, economic stability, retaining visa-holding employees, etc.
Edit: s/election/voting/
The election includes the whole primary system and the electoral college. Here I specifically mean the vote.
That's plenty for the seeds of doubt, especially given how easy it is to vote in several states.
I'm particularly interested in what types of machines and other voting procedures were in use there. It looks like they're optical scan machines, so hopefully they have the paper ballots on hand to do a proper audit. That, along with the voter rolls, should be able to determine what the issues were. That's a strength of using the optical machines as opposed to the purely electronic ones.
You're right that Detroit is just one city. It's also a city that's deeply troubled on many levels, so I'm not sure if it's fair to consider it typical. That's by no means excusing what look to be issues there. Those should definitely be looked into, and exhaustively. You're claim above is that there were enough fraudulent votes that Trump would have over 50% of the popular vote if they were removed. Detroit alone isn't enough to do this.
More important is to look at who's got owning shares in those machines.....
In the perfect world, we'd have open source machines that all enter voites into a public blockchain/ledger and you'd get a private key you could verify your vote with. Optical sounds awesome. But good luck with that. The fraud just seems to swing back and forth from left to right every X years instead. It's madness.
My claim is just a bet right now. But it's one I'm willing to put money on IF they actually do a national investigation, which I'm not confident will happen.
If voting integrity is something you feel particularly strongly about (I certainly do), I encourage to look into the work that's already out there. The 2000 election spurred a lot of research. Some good starting points are:
Ronald L. Rivest MIT
Auditability and Verifiability of Elections
ACM-IEEE talk March 16, 2016
https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv16x.pdf
---
Ben Adida Google Tech Talks December 19, 2007
Theory and Practice of Cryptography: Verifying Electiosns with Cryptography
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s
For those who aren't in positions of such influence, yes, your list is the right way to go
We need to find more direct ways to peacefully withdraw our consent of and participation in the existence of the state.
That's all well and good if you're an anarchist, but not everyone who objects to Trump also objects to the existence of the state, per se.
For people who are not tech CEOs, financially supporting legal challenges is probably the highest value near-term approach, though the other stuff is important long term.
they only care about their agenda. to make them care about what people think, disrupt their agenda.
WELL, THIS IS STUPID: DHS Spox: Trump Muslim Ban Includes Green Card Holders. It’s fine to be more careful about admitting people from countries that are major terror exporters, but Green Card holders are permanent legal residents — they’re not “admitted,” they’re returning home. If there’s a problem with green card grants to people from those countries, it needs to be addressed systematically, not simply by stopping people at the border. This is a debacle, and I’d be very interested in knowing who actually drafted the order.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/255787/#respond
I think you'll be surprised at what people think on this issue who support the temporary ban.
Is the goal to DDOS these offices with phone calls in hopes these politicians will rile together and pass a law?
Seriously though, how do you know this?
8. Donate money to said party and to candidates in upcoming elections.
On the evidence, the Libertarian Party is a flag of convenience for Republicans.
In local races it's fine to put up someone with no or little experience in government, as long as they are a respected member of the community. But you can't just put up "some dude" for president. So in practice this means we have to take defectors. But heaven knows there has been a lot of consternation in the LP over this. My guess is that the LP is getting tired enough of taking former Republicans that whoever they nominate in 2020 will be homegrown. (Maybe a former Democrat.)
But while the presidential race gets the most press, we've been working hard to get Libertarians elected at lower levels of government. It's just really, really hard to break past the two party mindset (and ballot access laws), and we haven't had a lot of success to date. The difficulties we have getting people elected to the lower levels of translate directly to us nominating former Republicans for president.
Bob Barr, any sort of a libertarian? Please. He was the original drug warrior. Gary Johnson was quite willing to imprison drug offenders in New Mexico.
Sorry, but y'all get zero credit from this liberal. None. It isn't a third way. It's a flag of convenience. Reason was even bought by the Koch Foundation.
Please don't be uncivil in comments here, regardless of how wrong someone else's comment may be. This sort of personal abrasiveness is destructive and leads to worse.
Because most everyone here already knows these things.
And because the implication that it would be a useful strategy to keep reiterating basic principles seems reductionist.
This whole thing is a complex phenomenon that even experts are still trying to figure out. How was the sentiment or 27% of voters underestimated so badly and for so long? Even if the sentiment is now understood why did it bring about a post truth era and why do so many people easily accept this? And on and on.
Something is different this time. We need to understand it fundamentally and learn new approaches to counter it while making sure the responses themselves don't make the situation worse.
the democrats are a minority, and so they can't effect political change. the republicans are on board with trump, and so they won't effect political change.
that means that you have to effect political change by physically preventing the operation of the country to move forward until your demands are met.
you can't do this from your computer chair or your couch.
Don't limit yourself to Congressional races. Those are incredibly hard to win, especially for political outsiders. Run for parks commission, for library board, for school board, for town trusteeships, and for county offices. Run for water reclamation. You don't need to be a subject matter expert --- that's not expected of you. You just have to be willing to do a little extra work every month.
Any elected office gives you a greater voice in all of the rest of our politics. You use local offices to put pressure on your congresspeople and your state reps, and to build an organization to win more offices later.
This is what the Republicans have been doing since the 1980s, and as a result the GOP controls most US states.
Another fantastic place to start:
https://www.indivisibleguide.com/
https://www.runforoffice.org/
Get a couple of friends together, and just pick one of you to go out for something, and then work as a team to collect information and plan outreach.
Even if you fail, treat the whole thing as an information gathering exercise. Take notes and share them. The GOP is crazy good at picking up local elected office, and they've had lots of practice. This is how they got that practice. Anyone who thinks local office doesn't matter should figure out who their State Senator is and how many constituents they have, and then look at Congressional redistricting --- it's state leg. that created the system in which rural Republican votes count so much more than urban Democratic votes do.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/aclu-and-other-groups...
https://twitter.com/sacca/status/825403419376496641
https://twitter.com/sacca/status/825431544022102016
7. THINK
Think up better arguments, that might convince people. Examine your own opinions, to see whether they're actually right. Examine your opponents' opinions, to see whether they're right too. Maybe come up with new ways of thinking about the issue which are better than the way anyone's thinking about them at the moment. And then start talking.
People in politics should put less thought into HOW CAN I SPEAK LOUDER and more thought into how they can think of smarter things to say?
And that includes the president smearing every source of criticism as "FAKE NEWS!" He exactly represents those who voted for him: ignorant, fearful, angry, reactionary, conspiracy theorists, suspicious and vindictive. There is no possible way of having rational conversations whether smarter or louder. I don't see any point in examining these opinions, it's a colossal waste of time. I'm not responsible for their opinions, or changing them. I think a very decent chunk will have buyer's (voter's) remorse on their own without me having to say a thing about it, and the rest will just dig their heels in.
Ergo, Trump and Trump voters are a distraction. Focus on the effecting policies: non-violent demonstrations and associations, legal recourse, letting local and state reps know how you feel. There are mayors like Marty Walsh who historically have done more to stand up to overreaching state and federal bureaucracy than any U.S. Senator.
Conservative resentment against what they perceive as liberal intolerance has been going on since at least the early 2000s. The conservative blogosphere really took off around that time. There they either endured constant ridicule for their views or total ignoring from the established media which mostly runs liberal aside from Fox News. When they broke the story on Dan Rather and the faked National Guard memo on Bush, they were instantly derided for being nothing but people blogging in their pajamas. When they were proven true, the hostile indifference never let up. This has gone on for 15 years or so now. For them, this last election to them was the last straw. The coverage that went on during the 2016 elections was deeply shameful and outright scurrilous in some areas.
Keep in mind that during the 2000s and probably about until 2008 or so, the internet community sites were mostly dominated by liberal views. Reddit for instance looked vastly different compared to now. This allowed the formation of deep and entrenched echo chambers that allowed certain behaviors to foment and become acceptable. When conservatives began to join the internet en masse, they ran up against these entrenched social communities and quickly found that they were getting shut out. Rightly or wrongly, that kind of blanket treatment will cause resentment.
Vast swaths of people on the left have been dismissive of people on the right for ages. This is not a one sided issue, of course conservatives do the same. But that does not matter. We got here because everyone started talking past each other, insulting each other, and not doing the hard work of emphasizing irregardless of our agreement or not. Emotional labor matters and we've all dropped the ball hard. Conservatives are not monolithic and people always appreciate feeling listened to and that their concerns matter. You don't have to agree with someone to do this.
When we want to fix a relationship with our partners we don't concern ourselves with who was right or wrong. We concentrate on the relationship itself.
But there's been, provably more dismissiveness and ensuing divisiveness within the conservative movement, which is where "Republicans eat their own" came frome. The explicit targeting by far right conservatives to destroy moderate Republicans in elections is not something that is at all common in the Democratic party. It was refined to great success by the Tea Party movement.
Smug liberalism is not at all the same kind of nefarious strategy the far right has used. Smug liberalism is a naive position that if only conservatives had the facts, they'd become liberals/progressives/Democrats or at the very least revert back to being moderate Republicans. It isn't intended to piss people off, even though that has been the outcome.
The political landscape is sufficiently damaged now that there is likely a significant and intractable minority who believe in a different reality where liberals are out to get them; that corporations and billionaires are out to screw them by hiring "illegals" (except for Trump's hand selected billionaires, they're the good ones); and that import tariffs are paid by foreigners. Damaged by the likes of Newsmax, Infowars, and Breitbart (previously run by now Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the U.S. president) are all far right sites trafficking in varying degrees of mistruth. These are not policy disputes, these are disputes over facts.
I do not think there is any fixable relationship when two sides are disagreeing on world view: how the world works, how it should work. They are mutually incompatible right now, and the thing to be negotiating is the outcome of losing arguments, which hopefully remain non-violent. The language of name calling and violence is destabilizing whether it is a one on one relationship, or directed at countries. The president is openly combative with everyone who disagrees with him. It'll be deeply fascinating to see how things go when those disagreements happen with people he's hand selected - which is why I think it's important senators support pretty much all of his cabinet selections, at least all of them are completely sane.
On the plus side, many ill conceived or implemented policies last week were walked back. So it's not like the administration is completely intractable in the face of outcry.
The low-level workers at these airports who are enforcing this bullshit ban. They need to grow some spines and start ignoring bad orders, no matter who they come from.
"I was just following orders" was never an acceptable excuse to do the wrong thing.
A VP or probably even a middle manager taking a similar stand likely has cash saved up/secondary income/investments/other options to withstand this sort of change with fewer catastrophic results.
Maybe they are strictly interpreting it in order to cause an outrage?
Consider starting here:
ACLU (state offices especially) Council on American-Islamic Relations (state offices especially) National Immigration Law Center
For example, CAIR-MA serves all of New England on less than a quarter million dollars a year.
Any state, but particularly red states. Consider CAIR-Oklahoma.
http://www.anti-cair-net.org/AntiCAIRDataBase.html
I am not a lawyer, but it looks as though airports (but not airport security) fall under the city's jurisdiction. (For example San Jose makes decisions about Uber at SJC, and Mayor Daley infamously tore up an air strip in the middle of the night with no warning).
Hello. My name is X. I am a resident of Y. Please do everything within your power to push for the release of any middle eastern refugees being held without cause by the Federal government at [local airport], and to put an end to this moving forward.
7. Contribute money to organizations filing lawsuits against Trump's actions.
This is very important people - calling everyone who voted for Trump a racist homophobe, a moron, and not deserving of the franchise is not going to help anything. I didn't vote for Trump, but I do identify with some of the beliefs of those who did, and I can tell you that the rhetoric I'm hearing from many of the most vocal left is pushing the middle away.
because the companies you are thinking about boycotting very likely have ~50% of their employees who have similar political positions to you. you're hurting them too.
"It will bar green card holders," Gillian Christensen, acting Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in an email.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-immigration-gree...
Also, banning permanent residents is just ludicrous
The prison walls are getting closer... By the time you're able to reach out and touch them, it'd be too late.
In a statement that the State Department is due to release, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the 90-day visa moratorium extends beyond just citizens of Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Libya, and Yemen.
It also applies to people who originally hail from those countries but are traveling on a passport issued by any other nation, the statement notes. That means Iraqis seeking to enter the U.S. on a British passport, for instance, would be barred, according to a U.S. official...."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-visa-ban-also-applies-to-c...
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-visa-ban-also-applies...
Those nationals or dual nationals holding valid immigrant or nonimmigrant visas will not be permitted to enter the United States during this period. Visa interviews will generally not be scheduled for nationals of these countries during this period.
No wonder I haven't heard from them in a few months.
I'm taking a guess at this one, but many people believed this was just the usual pre-election bla bla and that he wouldn't follow through with such an unreasonable idea, given the obvious financial (wall) and legal (Muslim ban) challenges. They only wanted someone who promised to listen to them again after decades of globalization left them behind, and got a monster as result.
What I'm really afraid of: given the horrendous stuff Trump has done in a week, what will he have done in the next 1450 days?
I don't recall seeing anything about Indonesians being affected, or Indians, or Nigerians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc.
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/825371208355020801
"Calls to ban Muslims from entering the US are offensive and unconstitutional".
Were people listening to that and hoping he'd reign in Trump? Was he lying when he said that?
Trump just spews a bunch of stuff, some of it contradicts things he said earlier.
I'm a Canuck and so I may be biased. But if my understanding is incorrect, I'd be interested in hearing.
-Theodore Roosevelt 1907
I'm of Finnish descent. I have a Sisu bumper sticker and eat pulla. Do I refrain from making small talk with strangers at a bus stop? Of course not! Americans tend to be more open to strangers than Finns.
And there's no question that such radical Islamists exist, are generally strongly against the western-liberal-pluralist tradition, and that some of them are willing to commit heinous acts of violence. It would be a logical mistake to conclude that every Islamic person must necessarily be an extremist, but sadly it's not hard to think of politicians and pundits willing to mine that particular fallacy for all the political capital they can extract from it, and sadly there's a large portion of the population that is too dumb to spot the difference and who can easily be talked into scapegoating anyone who looks or acts differently, regardless of whether they actually pose any danger.
Maybe they are not racist homophobes, but they voted a racist homophobe and his cabal into power. They knew that his was one of the expected outcomes. Voting is powerful and you are (co-)responsible for the outcome.
If you don't want racist executive orders, don't vote for a racist. Simple as that.
I believe you are operating on a higher level of the Maslow hierarchy of needs than many people if your primary concern is about equality, and not about food, shelter, and a job.
So no, Trump didn't get elected because people desperate for a job were willing to overlook his hate.
Just look at the graphs here:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trump...
White people elected Trump, minorities rejected him. Fact.
Not necessarily if they also viewed Clinton far less favorably than Obama; support of one party by any group in one election vs. another isn't a sign of absolute support for that party's candidate, it's a sign of relative support of that candidate compared to the alternative.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/e...
Check out the swings in the race section. If there hadn't been a massive swing towards him from blacks and hispanics, he might not have won.
And despite that Hillary still won the popular vote by 3 million votes. She did pretty well across the board and in an election as close as this one almost any single thing could have flipped the outcome.
> There is no way Hillary or any other democratic candidate could match that.
So, black people vote for a "charismatic" candidate, but when they are left with a mediocre candidate and a candidate that (as is argued) hates them, they decide "Hey, the guy that hates me is better than someone who isn't so charismatic"?
Tell that to Asian Americans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...
I realize that the democratic candidate was less than ideal.
Do you want the possibility of a job? Does it matter if your disadvantaged, Muslim, first-generation American friend - or his/her parents - gets the shaft so that you can have a happy home and a job?
Does having a job mean that I have to be careful not to be out in the sun because then I look arab? With good reason, too - my grandmother was first generation american. Her parents were from Syria.
Does having a job mean that my bi-racial niece and nephew have to deal with alt-right led government?
Does it mean that I have to hide the fact that I'm bisexual?
It isn't enough that I have food and shelter. I want others to have the same, otherwise, I'm simply sharing and having less on whatever paltry sum the overlords will pay out. It isn't like there is a real social safety net to rely on.
This could be quite interesting. I'm sure I have picked up on some of this now -I'm an immigrant. My spouse knows all this stuff about me, and I was able to let go of some of the familial baggage. It is really freeing, at least for me.
But I don't know if that would be the case other places. I'm in Norway, and the culture tends to be (publicly) accepting of folks and treating folks as equals. Obviously this has its limits and there are some downsides. Discrimination and racism persist nonetheless. The king, though, puts out inclusive statements and it makes me feel better about being here. I'd love to know if such things were the norm or not - and I'd love to see that data.
If Trump supporters want to appeal to the left, they shouldn't assume all Hillary supporters are liars, in favor of obstruction of justice, and want to go to war with Russia. Likewise, if you want to appeal to Trump supporters, which is what you'll have to do to get their votes in the next election, you're not going to get very far by calling them racists, homophobes, etc.
If we REALLY want to solve these sorts of problems, we need to:
1. Stop playing team sports with our votes, and be willing to look for the best options in third-party candidates. Sure, we may lose a few elections initially, but if we keep pushing, eventually we'll win. We can never achieve greatness by settling for the "evil of two lessers," as we did on both sides of the political fence last year.
2. Force our elected officials to stick to the checks and balances of the Constitution, and eliminate things like executive orders, which are in place solely to short-circuit Congress.
3. Get new blood in Washington. Stop voting for morons like Orrin Hatch, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell; or better yet, push for term limits and the elimination of exorbitant retirement benefits for these public servants. We cannot "drain the swamp," as Donald likes to say, until we, as voters, stop defecating into it with our suffrage.
The government is one of the biggest hinderances for minorities, and the Democrats are just as culpable as the Republicans, if not more so. If we're going to fix this issue, we need to fix the corruption in Washington, as well as in our states and local communities.
Germans have accepted collective guilt for the Holocaust, and have come to terms with that, even though a minority first voted Hitler into power-and, as a consequence of this collective acknowledgement, popular support for Nazism has been purged from German culture.
In contrast, a large proportion of South African whites tend to equivocate when asked if Apartheid, which was voted for for generations of whites, before they voted it out, was bad (spoiler alert: it was evil, and I'm not going to relitigate why on HN again). The Truth and Reconcilliation Comission allowed for those who committed physical acts of violence to confess their crimes in return for forgiveness, but the broader plunder and evil of apartheid remains unacknowleged by much of white South Africa (and its diaspora), and it means that racism still permeates SA society.
Working class people are hurting all over the world. But the economic pain felt by Germans in Weimar Germany didn't excuse the Holocaust. They were voting for anti-Jewish violence, as much as they were voting for VW Beetles and autobahns. Similarly, the suffering of Boers at the hands of the British didn't excuse Apartheid.
I'm not equating the scale or scope of Trump's actions with the Holocaust or with Apartheid, but I do think that those who chose to vote for him did so with their eyes wide open, and knew what he stood for. Trying to forgive them, or excuse their actions before they acknowledge their own culpability is not healthy for anyone.
Explain how the EO is racist. Blocking a country is not racist. If the EO was "Persians are not allowed in" that'd be different.
And homophobe? A gay man spoke at the RNC to huge applause (even made a comment on how getting upset over transgender bathroom use is pointless).
These kind of careless accusations just make everyone ignore real charges of racism.
Indeed."Muslim" is not a race. Perhaps a better word would be "bigoted" or "discriminatory" not "racist"?
If we are going to be splitting hairs: are Persians a race, or are they an ethnicity?
Thus this is actually a worse order than a straight out ban on muslims from these countries would be.
And of course it's discriminatory! That's sort of, like, the whole point. All the existing immigration policies are discriminatory. That's why I (Canadian) can go basically anywhere, but someone from Central America can't.
So Trump campaigned on a promise to ban Muslims from entering the US. He then instituted a blanket ban on entry from 7 overwhelmingly Muslim countries. Are we splitting hairs again implying that these two things are a coincidence because the wording of the EO happened to avoid a blatantly unconstitutional formulation?
I don't follow..a religious minority in a Muslim majority country would by definition not be Muslim. Why is this surprising?
Do people really think Somalia is some kind of Isamic power-player versus Saudi Arabia or the Emirates?
These countries were not picked randomly because they "Muslim". There is a long standing animosity against them. A retired US general in 2007 said: “We’re going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran...”[1].
And now which countries are banned: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen... that's 6 out of the 7 named above.
Now please do not read this as a defence of the executive order. Whatever its intentions, it was poorly implemented and applied with seemingly no thought to the political fallout or the disruption to peoples' lives. Green card holders in America deserve better than no-notice before being detained at the borders.
However, it seems to me that every one of the countries named is currently embroiled in a civil war or has strong non-governmental forces within its borders----that is the commonality that they share.
[1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-count...
Because that's a tough decision to make. You might decide that the media is wrong, you might decide that your kids are the most important thing, or you might decide that principles are worth more. Either way, it's not simple, it's very complicated.
Get rid of your television and replace your cable news subscription with a library card.
They used to call Trump also an anti-semite in the same sentence. Now he is down to just a racist and homophobe. Have I missed something?
edit: don't let little things like jewish son-in-law, daughter converting to judaism and inauguration rabbi fool you.
There is a huge difference between calling every single Trump voter a racist and bigot, and making the correct observation that Trump got elected on a platform of racism and bigotry. Some Trump voters chose him because of his racism and bigotry, and some Trump voters chose him despite of it. Regardless, there are no Trump voters for whom racism and bigotry are complete deal-breakers, as painful as that may be to acknowledge.
Source? June 2016, 48% of Republican votes strongly support a ban on Muslims entering the U.S:
https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6ecRKMebsPAFHon1HVC86QbFYTg...
If big numbers did vote for him on that reason then there's a cancer running deep in USA's society that trying to brush under the rug isn't really going to help.
I'm curious why you think supporting a ban like this is a "cancer"? It's heavy-handed and misguided, but religion is ideology. People see heinous acts worldwide perpetrated in the name of Islam. Some Muslims have extremely regressive beliefs on women's rights, gay rights, personal freedoms like drinking alcohol or even making loans that make even the staunchest Bible thumper look progressive. They see countries with larger Muslim immigrant populations like France in constant disarray, with little integration and once peaceful neighborhoods lit on fire. Even people with no initial ties to terrorism read up on this ideology online and commit lone wolf attacks.
So why do we want these people coming in? Maybe we have a principles-based belief in religious freedom and don't want to appear discriminatory. There are some more secular or Westernized Muslims who can live peacefully and contribute to our society. Helping refugees will help save innocent lives and undermine ISIS. Those are all great reasons, but it's disingenuous to pretend they come at zero cost. Some people do this analysis and say it's worth it, and others disagree. A sovereign state has a right to its borders and admitting immigrants who advance its interests.
I don't support the ban, namely for the reasons I gave above, but it's completely understandable why someone would. It doesn't make them a bigot or evil, just scared and perhaps lacking in empathy. The hardcore left does itself no favors in this regard, constantly parroting the "religion of peace" line and pretending there are no reasonable reasons to oppose immigration that they need to argue against.
http://www.ushistory.org/us/25f.asp
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/racist-...
Quoting the first line of the Atlantic article:
"There was a time in America when the Irish were characterized as apes, Italians as street filth, and Chinese as parasitic locusts."
Has there ever been a candidate who even talked 100% of what you would approve of? If no, why did you vote (or have you ever)?
Edit: to be clear, I do think Trump is (and was) much further down the extreme side than others have been in recent history. But what you're advocating for does not make sense.
As a european who truly despises Trump: This idea that you're too busy blaming people for being racist to spend time listening to them is honestly frightening.
One day perhaps in your lifetime, there'll be a candidate, populist like Trump but with extreme-left ideals and you'll be duped, just like the people you refuse to listen to were duped, because when there was time to learn you chose to be vengeful instead.
Dude, I'm also European and I've spent 25 years listening to and debating with conservative people - in person, on the net, at academic gatherings and many other places. I have studied a wide variety of conservative philosophies and social groups. At what point are you OK with me drawing some conclusions, even temporary working conclusions that I might have to alter later?
When I hear comments like this, the overriding impression I have is that thinking about this stuff is rather new to you and you are hesitating out of uncertainty. But it's a mistake to assume that people with stronger opinions than your own have not put in the hours to think through the issues.
As always, there are exceptions (like you). Which is broadly what the comment was claiming - Trump voters are not 100% made up of nazis, in essence.
A Trump voter that votes Trump because of some economic point also votes in support of all the other policies that Trump stands for and so carries fractional responsibility.
edit: a good chunk of this is that all this sets up "damned if you do, damned if you don't, double-damned if you choose the winning side". This doesn't encourage more people to get involved, it just drives them away from trying. That's the exact opposite of what we need.
Even then it probably was too late but who knows, maybe there would have been a way to push back against the brownshirts.
Historians are not in agreement on this subject, there is a school of thought that the whole thing might have been averted.
The main culprit (the treaty of Versailles) was a 'winner takes all' arrangement that sowed the seeds for WWII, Hitler merely tapped in to the resentment that was already there and managed to wreck Europe for two generations as a result of that. In the end Germany ended up much worse than where they started as a result of their 'Germany First' policy.
I think the main lesson learned here is that if the spoils from globalization aren't divided in a fair way there will be a huge backlash (predictable), unfortunately turning the clock back will result in yet another backlash.
These pendulum swings are way too fast and violent for society to adapt without damage.
Now what do you expect them to do when they're offered the chance to vote for two new candidates, neither of which they approve of? Personally, I expect them to run the other way, rather than voting.
When I call people out for being racist I assure it is not for want of having listened to them first. I'm absolutely in favor of listening to people, but there are also times when you need to firmly declare your opposition to their ideas and your intent to obstruct them.
Not all ideologies are morally equivalent, and I am opposed to any ideology that seeks to limit or reduce the rights of individual people in order to promote compliance with some abstract moral standard as opposed to some utilitarian one where you can demonstrate a harm exceeding a putative benefit.
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
I have been fighting this for a year, far better with plain discussion than anyone I've seen with sticks and this isn't even my country. Your implications are disgusting and the nicest way I can find to tell it to you is to stuff it.
What I said in my comment (I'm guessing you were too busy looking for that quote instead of reading mine more carefully) is that focusing on holding people accountable is no good.
It will NOT bring you Clinton, Sanders or anyone else back and it will certainly NOT change people's minds.
It's fucking enraging that you do not understand that. I swear, some people here are pettier than Trump himself.
Your comparison of me to Trump is ironically the pettiest thing in this thread.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
How is the comment I was replying to at all civil?
Meanwhile, I was equated with somebody tacitly approving of segregation. Because I'm telling someone else that it's more productive to understand why this is happening than look for retribution.
Civility is about more than tone. hsod's tone was fine but his comment certainly wasnt; my tone was harsh but I maintain it was appropriate for the kind of accusations I was replying to.
It wasn't, by the site's guidelines and patient explanation by a moderator. These aren't laws of physics, just the norms of the venue. Would you 'maintain' it's appropriate to show up at a stranger's funeral waving a lighter and yelling 'Freebird'? Same thing.
I'm not telling you to listen to the xenophobic demographic, but to listen to those who are willing to disregard their moral limits in order not to vote for the other side.
Trump has gotten votes from wildly diverse demographics. He's hijacked two parties he doesn't belong to just to win the election and he did win the election. Think of analyzing this as a post-mortem: What went wrong, why did people vote for somebody like this, etc.
Anyway, what I was trying to communicate (and seem to have failed to) in my earlier comment was that like in any post-mortem it's pointless to try and point fingers and assign blame. What good is "holding people accountable" going to do, other than strenghten the divide?
People might accept welfare, but that doesn't mean they feel OK about it. Many people, conservatives especially, want jobs. People want to feel that they support a family, without help. Poor conservatives don't seek to tax the rich because that would feel unethical.
So yes, life is tough for these people, but they really don't want to feel that it is also unfair. They don't want to cheat, they don't want others to cheat, and they don't want the government helping anybody to cheat. An equal chance is demanded, but an equal outcome is at best a nice-to-have. (possibly undesirable because the non-lazy should be rewarded)
There is no lack of understanding here. It's a different value system.
But let's not forget that Spencer and various members of his social circle have - for years now - been expressing approval for ethnic cleansing and even straight-up genocide. Some people say that the solution to objectionable speech is more speech, but that's an easy stand to take when you're not one of the people who should be 'ovened' in alt-right parlance. Oh sure, they're just expressing their dislike and probably don't have an actual to plan to construct ovens and shove people into them, but this is not the sort of joke whose punchline I care to passively wait around for.
When people are promoting genocidal ideas and attempting to normalize them as political discourse, they are themselves engaged in political violence, notwithstanding that it's indirect incitement rather than active commission. If you've ever been the target of gang violence than you may have experienced the phenomenon of a smart person calling the shots, while bigger and less cerebral types do the actual punching and kicking. That's why, if you find yourself cornered by a gang, you should focus your attentions on the guy at the back rather than the toughs in the front.
It's true that not everyone who voted for Trump is a bigot. But they were OK with voting for one, weren't they? The longer someone makes excuses for this sort of thing, the more responsibility one takes on for it. You say you're worried about the rhetoric from the left, but it's Trump who has been going about expressing a desire to use nuclear weapons, punish women who have abortions, muzzle the press, demean women and so on.
I am absolutely not going to apologize for being against such statements or moderate my condemnation of them. If you let those things slide by saying 'it's just Trump being Trump' or whatever, then you're making excuses for the systematic intimidation of large social groups. Why would you want to normalize such behavior? Why does open opposition to that bother you?
1. Who is speaking for ethnic cleansing and genocide? Can you provide citations? I hear a lot of people talking out against illegal immigration, since it drives down wages and makes it harder for poor Americans to compete and make a living. I also hear politicking regarding banning muslims from entering the U.S., due to the fear of terrorism. I agree that an all out ban stinks of WW II internment camps (a bit close to home too, since my wife is Japanese), but I'm not sure how you can extrapolate genocide from those conversations. Disallowing people from entering the U.S. doesn't really equate to genocide, does it? I don't really know what you're referring to, exactly, since you didn't provide any citations, but "genocide" seems a bit hyperbolic to me, with the information I currently have.
2. Are you advocating physical violence against people who have differing opinions than you? You lead in with Richard Spencer, and then ended by saying you're not going to apologize for being against the political speech you're referring to. I'm curious if you're suggesting physical violence as a means of shutting down said opinions?
1. Here are some examples of people calling for ethnic cleansing/genocide or similarly oppressive policies. If you're basically liberal then these articles will be pretty offensive:
I don't want to get sidetracked into quantitative analysis, but if you really want I can direct you to material compiled by a former US intelligence officer that is documented with hundreds if not thousands of citations. The animus you'll find in the links above directed at people of other races, 'cultural Marxists' and so on may be novel to you, but I've been observing this particular social group on the net for nearly 15 years now.2. I'm OK with physical violence against people who are actively promoting violence like this, yes. People can have differing opinions about all sorts of subjects and I'm fine with that. I am even wiling to defend the concept of free speech for people like neo-nazis and the kkk - but only up to the point where they endorse violence against others as opposed to merely asserting their own superiority.
2. How would your policy of physical violence be any different, or less self-superior, than the kind of violence you believe this type of talk incites? I'm not trying to be snarky. It's just that enforcing a prescribed way of thinking via violence tends to have a lot of ill side effects that people don't take into consideration before heading down that slippery slope.
The sooner you start steering away from the current course the better the chances that can be avoided.
But time is running out.
Come on man, one of our ongoing political problems is the unfortunate tendency of police officers to shoot unarmed black men because the police officer felt a degree of anxiety about their personal safety, sometimes without even knowing why, as in this case: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/21/opinions/shooting-man-lying-do...
That strikes me as a serious problem, compounded by the fact that police officers have difficult and complex jobs and nobody outside of a few theoretical anarchists wants to abandon the idea of policing crime.
I'm really not that worried about very minor acts of violence directed against people advocating nazi ideologies and the violent death or removal of other people by the millions. Such proposals are not the sort of thing I can agree to disagree over, because they constitute a threat against my friends, family members, and my self. Why should we be subjected to such threats with no means of responding to them? You can worry about a slippery slope of violence all you want, but I don't recall historical oppressive regimes making a special exception to their oppressive practices for the conscientious objectors who repudiated violence, do you?
Rather the opposite, those were the first up against the wall because it was already known they wouldn't resist.
You started out talking about Donald and his supporters, then jumped to some fringe and obscure websites as citations. Who is it, exactly, that you want to start punching? Some nobody with a website? Donald? His supporters? I don't get it.
Then, in response to my statement that it isn't right to combat words with fists, you jumped to cop violence (which happened far more frequently under Obama than Donald, so far). I think when the state is actively shooting you for no reason, you're justified in fighting back with equal violence; however, this is a far cry different than punching someone in the face for having a different opinion than you do, isn't it?
1. The fact that you haven't heard of them is beside the point. They're influential within their circles and have been building their fan base for years. I would hope you have heard of Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, and I have no hesitation in saying that their political starting point is only a very short hop away from the authors I've cited here.
2. To put it very simply, I'm saying that it might be OK to punch a nazi in response to the things they say or do which threaten the safety of others; they're saying it might be OK to kill or harass people because of their genetic characteristics or social affiliations, absent any demonstrable harm.
If I was saying it's OK to punch Richard Spencer because he's white, then you'd be right. But I have no interest in punching Richard Spencer for being white, or for thinking that white people are better, or for saying that he'd prefer to hang out only with other white people. When he starts saying it's OK to get rid of other people in order to create the white nationalist utopia he pines for, that's an incitement to violence and may justify a violent response.
Look, these people are not mainstream folk that are basically the same as everyone else but made a racist joke one time or something. Promoting violence against demographic groups is way outside the realm of acceptable discourse and is not something that we should be attempting to incorporate into it. You seem oblivious to the effect such behavior has on people who are members of the designated out groups.
I can't believe I even need to explain this to an intelligent adult person.
Well, probably the guy saying "sieg heil" and giving a Nazi salute[1]. And he's giving a Nazi salute because he thinks the election winner is his guy.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o6-bi3jlxk
Punching commies is OK. The right gets to decide who is a commie.
Welcome to 2017.
You can see some highlights(>!) of a recent speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o6-bi3jlxk
I did not decide he was a nazi by making some theoretical extrapolation using Marxist calculus or somesuch. He's saying in plain English (and occasionally German) that he wants to engage in a race-based war of conquest in which the stakes are life and death.
Actual Nazis liked to be punched by their opponents and even arrested by the cops for their nonviolent activism in the 1920s and early 1930s. They like the publicity for the same reason Gandhi and MLK liked it: It makes them sympathetic by exposing the evil behaviors of those that hate them.
Punching Spencer is a huge win for Spencer and the things Spencer stands for.
I'm in the exact same boat. I don't like Trump at all and this move frightens me. But my friends who argued for Trump actually had more logical arguments and my friends who opposed Trump actually mostly just insulted the people who voted for Trump.
How is anyone going to listen to us if we just insult them?
not only is this move ridiculous but it was executed with no foresight. now border agents are forced to make ad hoc decisions because it went into effect immediately. trump supporters cheering and claiming its just temporary, to give us time to "figure out whats going on" are deluding themselves. they rush through a ridiculous, anti-american order and now somehow they are going to make it all better.
trump supporters are a minority of the country. they won this time but i dont see any reason to pander to them.
I actually think most people (Trump supporters, you, me, everyone) vote mostly based on identity (liberal/conservative, religion, race, open-minded, well-mannered, etc). I think Trump supporters mostly voted for the party that they most identified with, the guy they thought was on their side. And I think you did the same. (I see myself as unaligned and open-minded, thus I voted for someone else as I found both sides to be extreme and closed-minded.)
But, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe most Trump supporters are horrible people. But they are still people. Like you and me, they have a dark and a noble side. And, just like you and me, they are not going to listen to the reasons of someone who insults them.
So what do we gain from demonizing them? We only lose influence.
By all means liberals keep doubling down on identity politics. The anti-fascist are the new fascist. Democrats were against Lincoln as well. Trump will be championed as modern day hero who was opposed by the most hateful people.
You are right about the ideology being very important. I originally supported Rand Paul [1] and moved to Trump when Paul dropped out. I wish either Ron Paul or Rand Paul would be the nominee of GOP and sincerely believe that is the purest form of Republicanism that currently exists out there. I support both the ideology and the priorities that both of them are pushing. However, since we couldn't get Rand Paul, Trump was the next best choice this season.
I can't stand any of the Democrats right now. I wish they instead nominated someone like Elon Musk, who would cut on identity politics, political correctness and similar things that are being pushed so hard to divide us instead of uniting us; e pluribus unum. I would like to see a future nominee focus on the scientific and technological development, abolishment or at least a reform of the patent system, ending NSA spying, etc.
[1] https://randpaul.com/issues
people have dark and noble sides, sure, but the balance of them is not always the same
at protests in nyc last night people were chanting for love and no hate, all our welcome, this is your land.
maybe that's corny, but compare that to "lock her up" and "build the wall"
there is a right and there is a wrong.
Tech CEO's have to address the outsourcing/factory shutdowns and visa misuse that has happened for a couple decades now. Using the Obama line of "well those jobs have gone and wont come back" creates space for characters like Trump to exploit.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to have any good will for people who voted for him. Especially the "I voted for you, but you're doing X" people. EVERYONE seen how hateful his campaign was. There isn't a sensible person who looked at it and thought otherwise. However, there are a lot of people who witnessed what he was doing and thought "it won't hurt me though" and were absolutely okay with him and his hateful approach to "making America great"
Fuck them
I know people, aside from myself and my family, that are already hurting because of his policies. And now when he gets whatever form of that nationwide stop and frisk going, it won't be white kids harassed by law enforcement, it will be my suburban black son and his friends.
You can miss me with the "not all voters" bull because every single one of them are complicit in how things are going now. Those people NEED to be called out. They need to be shown and constantly told that they made the WORST choice. I don't care about their feelings when the person that they voted for policies will criminalize me and a lot of people that I care about. Again, fuck their feelings
I'm not from the US but this really looks awful. I wouldn't set foot on this city even if you paid me a million dollars. http://crime.chicagotribune.com/
Every city has bad and good areas. Chicago is no different.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chicago-murders-shootings-2016-m...
I think Paris is much safer than Chicago: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Uni...
France overall has a murder rate of 1 per 100K. Paris I believe is slightly above average. Chicago is something like 15.
I wouldn't necessarily consider Paris to be some sort of golden standard either. You should aim for much better.
If you feel that having an x15 murder rate isn't "standing out" and it's just that you've got some bad neighborhoods than IMHO you're deluding yourself.
EDIT: And assuming the murders are not evenly spread out but rather focus in the "bad" neighborhoods is support for the polarization argument. We can look at some stats but I'm pretty sure they would support my notion that the bad neighborhoods in US cities are much worse than the bad neighborhoods in safe cities worldwide. Try comparing violent crime statistics of major US cities to major European cities over 50 or 100 years. This didn't start yesterday.
EDIT2: Don't take all this to mean I support Trump's rhetoric or actions on this topic. I do not. But I do think Americans need to do some introspection here
Edit: okay, that was not a great thing for me to say. Sorry. I'm just fed up with the repeated vilification of a great American city by the buffoon-in-chief. Yes, violence in the city is a big problem, but it's hardly its defining characteristic.
Edit 2: apology rescinded.
15 humans lost their lives yesterday in shootings, 268 during January: http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/shootings
I suppose that'll end when Trump sends the Feds as he's promised on Twitter, though.
Wonderful. Stay away from the world-leading food and culture scene as well. More for the rest of us.
>That'll end when Trump sends the Feds as he's promised on Twitter, though
Under what authority? And which Feds are we talking? Just more delusional talk.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/27/illinois-gov-we-dont-want-...
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0925.h...
> However, there are a lot of people who witnessed what he was doing and thought "it won't hurt me though" and were absolutely okay with him and his hateful approach to "making America great"
This is the same flavor of bigotry and ignorance that leads people to believe that all immigrants or black people are dangerous criminals. Not everyone who voted for Trump supports all of his positions. Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if a good chunk of his voters disagree with the majority of his positions, such is the nature of a two-party system.
Are you saying that white Americans would had been okay with Obama campaigning on harsher policing for white people and their kids because he also spoke about lowering taxes or giving everyone access to healthcare?
You people keep coddling these bigots or bigot-ajecent people and telling us, the people most affected, to treat them with kid gloves. No that doesn't make any sense. Talk to the openly bigoted/bigot-sympathizers about their behavior and beliefs. Don't come to me asking me asking me to see beyond the stuff that hurts me and the people I love because they were promised jobs
Because you are indiscriminately labelling all Trump voters as racists.
> Are you saying that white Americans would had been okay with Obama campaigning on harsher policing for white people and their kids because he also spoke about lowering taxes or giving everyone access to healthcare?
I do believe many white Americans would still have voted for him, if they felt the alternative was worse or felt like harsher policing was a small price to pay for universal healthcare.
> You people keep coddling these bigots or bigot-ajecent people and telling us, the people most affected, to treat them with kid gloves.
In my defense, I'll probably be more affected than you (e.g. I stand to lose my visa if Trump does re-negotiate NAFTA like he said he would). I'm also what you might call an anti-nationalist and am generally in favor of free movement across borders. Still, I can see valid, non-racist, reasons people might have voted for him.
Finally, I'm not trying to coddle people who voted for Trump. I don't want you to show them good will or have sympathy for them. I just want you to be more rational about this because I'm tired of seeing Americans talk past each other. People who voted for Trump did so for a variety of reasons and while you might not convince the racists amongst them, you might still have a chance of gaining support from the rest (if you stop insulting them).
I wish you the best, I really do. I hope the pressures from silicon valley and the people change things for the better, but we'll see how that plays out. If this first week is any indication of the next four years, we're in for a constant bombardment of our sensibilities. Daily they will say something that we know is a lie or put forth something that will hurt people and say it doesn't. Pretty soon we'll be thinking "am i the crazy one?"
I have an Iranian friend whose parents are visiting and they'll be leaving soon. If this ban becomes the norm there is a good chance he'll either never see them again or never be allowed back into this country where he came for a better life.
I choose not to sympathize with those who constantly put people in power to oppress me and my loved ones. Again, fuck them and fuck him too.
That attitude is not going to solve your problem; that attitude is not going protect you or your friends.
Look you are angry, for all I know you may be 100% right. The question is, do you want to be right, or do you want to improve the situation?
At this point I'm not willing to wait to see how far this goes before they come to their senses.
1) YC voted Thiel off the island 2) YC establishes a policy of "take money from Thiel and you are toxic to us"
Anyone in a position of power who took a look at Trump and didn't recoil with disgust needs to be exiled from civil society.
I don't like Trump, but fighting him isn't worth going against the very principles we fight for.
People have a right to their beliefs, even if their beliefs are stupid. If not, than what kind of country are we?
That Thiel can get a table at a restaurant in SV proves all the talk about changing the world tech leaders do is so much nonsense.
It's not even partially hypocritical to claim one is ok & the other isn't.
You realize the reason segregation was wrong was because it was based on someone's skin color, not the actions they've taken?
However, people were sent to concentration camps for their actions and beliefs, and we all think that's wrong...
Also, does that invalidate my point? I mean, I don't think it does, but I figured I might as well ask...
You and plenty of people in this thread seem to confuse "behave" and "say".
"While Trump's"enemies take him literally not seriously & friends seriously not literally", the wise looks at his acts & acts only. No words." --NNTaleb
Ostracizing others for their words is incredibly immature, petty, and vindictive. And ironically, ostracizing is an act, not words, so it does expose your character.
I don't believe Christian bakeries should be forced to bake cakes for anyone. I do believe that if they want the protections of the legal system, they must follow the same protections for others, even if they find them abhorrent. A principled stand against those protections does not mean they get to do that at no cost to themselves.
If "person who supports an abhorrent ideology" is a protected class in SV restaurant service law, I rescind my call to ban him from getting a table, and change it to "let him eat alone".
> Ostracizing others for their words is incredibly immature, petty, and vindictive. And ironically, ostracizing is an act, not words, so it does expose your character.
No its not. Its a basic component of all human interactions. We all choose to associate or not with people based on their beliefs. Those associations are powerful multipliers for both success and failure in this world. That there is not a penalty for unwanted behavior in a given society is not a mark of value.
Finally, giving money to someone is also an act, regardless of what the Supreme Court says. Thiel has exposed his character, he is not welcome at my house and I won't work for him.
Political ideologies are legally protected against discrimination in California.
But even if they weren't, why judge someone by their beliefs? The only reason you would is if you think support for Trump is a moral defect, with no exceptions. In other words you're not against him because of his political beliefs, but because of your (not universal) beliefs about what is moral and what isn't.
> We all choose to associate or not with people based on their beliefs.
Disagree. Most people judge others on social status and personal character, neither of which have any link to political ideologies or personal beliefs.
> he is not welcome at my house and I won't work for him
That's a fine personal decision, but there's a huge leap between "I don't want to be involved with him" and "everybody else should ostracize him, or they are just as evil as him". The former is "live and let live", and the latter is "the world should bow to me".
When the person's actions are directly and publicly detrimental to the business interests, the investor/backer/employee is at odds with the rest of the group and yeah at that point its not just a belief but a question of the self-interest of the business being at odds with one of its investor/employee/backers.
Let us be honest here, Thiel is also backing a man that has no trouble firing people who aren't Yesmen. If that is the sort of standard he wants applied to other people, it should apply to him as well.
There comes up a point when the pile of problems extends simply beyond belief but realized action in the real world that directly impacts other people. It is at that point, action is always taken in any situation. Please do not simply call this a 'belief' at this point when Thiel's goals and the related actions are realized in the manner he desired.
Politics is a process of conflict and negotiation between varied, competing interests. In a liberal democracy, "people have a right to their beliefs" is the starting point for that process, not the endpoint.
The hypocrisy of being anti-Trump but accepting Thiel is all over the valley.
"It goes without saying that if the people of Group X are staring at you demandingly, waiting for you to hate the right enemies with the right intensity, and ready to castigate you if you fail to castigate loudly enough, you may be hanging around the wrong group." - http://lesswrong.com/lw/42/tolerate_tolerance/
This is the guy, after all, who spent his time making "you can't take him literally" arguments about the same policies Trump is pushing forward in his very first week.
So how many degrees of separation? Let's start with "more than one, please" and go from there.
And this well represents the leftist-elitistic-rhetoric that drove so many to vote for Trump (HRC's "deplorables" comment).
Five year olds say "I told you so," adults find reasonable pathways forward in difficult situations.
People voted for and supported Trump for a variety of reasons, let's not generalize them all into one block like his administration is doing to Muslims.
This comment becomes even more bizarre whenever my comment was about acceptance of everyone, including Trump supporters, which is in line with your tao of five year old here.
The inclination to treat unreasonable people as if they're reasonable is a major and easily exploited failure of adulthood. Plenty of Trump supporters are reasonable. Peter Thiel is not.
Every five-year-old knows a dozen stories about a good king with an evil counselor, and how the king would have been better off getting rid of the counselor.
It's the folks who single-handed lot have power to shape the world. Thiel can grab a friendly dinner with the greatest threat to humanity on Monday, and yet Sam Altman will gladly have lunch with him on Tuesday and joke about his "friends" as though nothing happened?
I suppose I don't really see much of a rhetorical difference. Proposing that we exile people who disagree with you is pretty gross to me. It doesn't matter you constrained yourself to only punishing the 'powerful'.
> Thiel can grab a friendly dinner with the greatest threat to humanity on Monday
This just sounds hyperbolic. Care to back this ridiculous statement?
> and yet Sam Altman will gladly have lunch with him on Tuesday and joke about his "friends" as though nothing happened?
People are multifaceted. As much as you'd like to reduce people down to single words or ideas, they're not that simple.
Objectively ridiculous. Davos disagrees[0], and geopolitical experts are utterly nonplussed by Trump (Stratfor, Geopolitical Futures). What 22 year old journalism majors decry as "a systemic threat to the world order" is just seen by geopolitical observers as an interesting gambit that may pay off big. Take what they say about Trump and Taiwan[1], NATO, torture (Trump said yesterday that Mattis was in charge, and if Mattis doesn't believe in torture, he gets to override Trump's orders). Your hysteria is unfounded.
[0]: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-biggest-risks...
[1]: https://geopoliticalfutures.com/trump-taiwan-and-an-uproar/
Republican voters had many choices in their primary. Cruz, Carson, Christie, Huckabee, ... were just as bad. So your variety of reasons isn't very convincing. At a certain point, you have to take responsibility for your vote. Hand waving it away with a variety of reasons isn't fooling anyone.
You're not advocating "responsibility". You're saying Trump supporters are morally defective, and when they refuse that label, you say: "see! not only are you morally flawed, but you won't even admit it! proves my point!"
Is it hard to understand that Trump supporters vote for what they think is morally just and right, just like you, and not for evil, because they're evil?
At a certain point, you have to accept responsibility. Trump is your guy and he is doing your work.
I suppose you need to understand that y'all went way over the line with Trump and that we're not going to be nice about it.
Don't include me in that. I'm not even American.
"We're not going to be nice about it" is once again pretty vindictive. Is that a threat?
I think what's more important is clarifying Peter Thiel's beliefs and how he's going to make things better moving forward. The line in the sand that Sam and YC should seriously consider is when do the political freedoms of their partners supersede the actual freedoms of their founders?
The way I feel, as a founder, is slightly taken advantage of. I'm not directly part of the YC network, but there's an implicit social contract in Silicon Valley --- help others, and it will come back to you. YC's value is in fighting for founders. When a partner actively supports a vehemently anti-immigrant candidate and their political freedoms are defended at the potential expense of founders' livelihoods, it's confusing. It sends a message to founders that they're simply cattle - you can afford to lose a few along the way because you have the greenest pasture and you're confident they'll overlook the slaughterhouse.
I like YC. I love the founders and partners I've met that are part of the network and have a great deal of respect for everyone involved. There's some murky water here, though, and additional clarity would alleviate the anxieties of, I think, a lot of talented entrepreneurs, both aspiring and successful.
We don't work like that. If we do the next one exiled will be you.
Oh wait, maybe not. Because when we finally got around to fighting Nazis it was good fucking riddance.
Islam by country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country
1. Indonesia
2. Pakistan
3. India
4. Bangladesh
5. Nigeria
6. Iran
7. Turkey
8. Egypt
9. Algeria
10. Sudan
It's probably not a great tactic to perpetuate the American habit for making sweeping comments about the rest of the world which aren't really grounded in truth. Might be best to be scrupulously fact-based on these matters.
This ban also prevents any Christians living in those countries from coming to the US as well.
During and after the Vietnam war the U.S. took in a vast number of refugees from Southeast Asia, something remarkable about the Iraq war is that we have taken a handful of handful of Iraqis in during that time.
Maybe because the EO explicitly refers to 9/11 not once, not twice but three times.
Between 1975 through 2015, 17 foreign-born folks from these nations were convicted of carrying out or attempting to carry out a terrorist attack on U.S. soil and they killed zero people. Zero Libyans or Syrians intended to carry out an attack on U.S. soil during this time.[1]
It's all bullshit.
[1] - https://www.cato.org/blog/guide-trumps-executive-order-limit...
Hurting people is the default tactic of the state, but doesn't have to be our way.
While violence is occasionally effective in making political change, many of us hope that in the internet age, it won't be.
Peaceful but overwhelming mass civil disobedience and protest is better. The time for that is now.
And I'm hoping we never reach the need for more than that.
As for violent German protests, I'm pretty sure taking away those violent opposition protests would not have prevented Hitler from taking power. Perhaps they needed more violence. And indeed they eventually did get more violent opposition that did defeat them, by the West's armies.
Perhaps more violence in the thirties might have prevented WWII.
Incidentally if you think violence hasn't already erupted then you're being wilfully blind. Here's a recent example and I could point to many more and famous examples, like that of Anders Brievik and his imitators.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-neo-nazi-stabbed-20...
The way to defeat him is to resist, massively, peacefully and persuasively - to persuade the nation that he is wrong, irrational and damaging everyone with insane policies like retroactive withdrawal of green card status.
The country you live in and the laws you abide by were founded on, and enforced by violence. Essentially your comment is saying "I will only respect the violence of the state".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur
A lot of the freedoms you take for granted were achieved by "violent protests", including the "Boston Tea Party".
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508050 and marked it off-topic.
Is Newsweek part of the Trump train? http://www.newsweek.com/us-bars-christian-not-muslim-refugee... (mid-Sept 2016).
> Cruz is rounding up, but he is correct about the percentage of Christians among the Syrian refugees who have resettled in the United States.
> A total of 2,290 Syrian refugees have arrived in the United States since fiscal year 2011, which is when the Syrian civil war began, through Nov. 20, according to the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center. Of those, only 62 were identified in the center’s database as Christian. That’s 2.7 percent, even though the Christian population in Syria is about 10 percent, according to the CIA World Factbook.
All it says is that the UN stacked the pool, and Obama never challenged it.
More detail here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/25/why-syrian-...
2. We did hear about it, Ted Cruz could not stop talking about it.
3. Refugees are referred to the US by the UNHCR. If their referrals don't reflect the demographics of Syria, that's not something we can directly or easily change.
4. Christians are 10% of Syria, but it's not clear that they would be 10% of refugees. I couldn't immediately find any statistics on that.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/is-this-the-end-...
By the way, this article is from one of your reputable news sources.
That is, I'd expect that a Christian in the middle east would be more likely to have citizenship or family in a western nation than your average Syrian.
Now it could be, but 'they are being specifically targeted' doesn't immediately imply to me that 'they should be a disproportionately high number of refugees'.
That story mentions Bishops and priests who are very likely to not be Syrian Citizens, and instead be capable of just flying back to their home countries.
Why would you assume that? These are Syrian Christians who have lived their for centuries. They are no different than other Syrians other than their religious beliefs.
I'm by no means saying that every Christian will be more capable of leaving, or not be a citizen. But if 30% of Christians are citizens elsewhere, and only 3% of Muslims, then you have 70% of 10% of the poopulation as potential Christian refugees, and 97% of 90% of the population as Muslim refugees, which would make 7.4% of asylum seekers Christian, as opposed to 10% of the population.
If Christians were de-prioritized, it was done by the UNHCR, not the US. And there is no direct evidence suggesting this happened, the fact that 10% of Syria is Christian does not mean 10% of the refugees would be.
Shouldn't we prioritize people who are the victims of religious persecution.
If you are a minority (religious, ethnic, political) that is used as evidence of persecution and helps your claim for refugee status.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/27/key-facts-ab...
One should be very careful in ascribing rational motivations to things the Trump administration does - even his rhetoric (vague allusions to the attacks of September 11, 2001) isn't borne out by the executive order. He did not ban immigrants from a single one of the countries of origin of the 19 attackers.
I found this interesting as well
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/refugee-musli...
Yeah, he's doing a shitty job communicating it, but what did you expect...
> (b) Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.
> (e) Notwithstanding the temporary suspension imposed pursuant to subsection (a) of this section, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may jointly determine to admit individuals to the United States as refugees on a case-by-case basis, in their discretion, but only so long as they determine that the admission of such individuals as refugees is in the national interest — including when the person is a religious minority in his country of nationality facing religious persecution, when admitting the person would enable the United States to conform its conduct to a preexisting international agreement, or when the person is already in transit and denying admission would cause undue hardship — and it would not pose a risk to the security or welfare of the United States.
> Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-...
This is what he wants, this is what his supporters want. He's not doing a shitty job of communicating at all, he's being very clear and upfront.
As to your specific quotes, the vast majority of refugees from these countries are in the (Muslim) religious majority.
Which religion is the majority in all of these countries?
A terrorist could claim they are a minority to get priority... the prejudice is apparent.
But the time for talk has passed. I don't think very much is going to happen because Trump is empowered by his election victory, and he won't listen to anyone. Has he ever listened to anyone, even during his celebrity-only days? To think that you can actively engage him in a conversation is not the way to do this.
What is needed is to prepare for the 2018 and 2020 elections RIGHT NOW. We need an organized social media structure where all of the positive, democracy-pro candidates in every electoral district gets publicized and supported. EDUCATE YOUNG PEOPLE WITH GREAT POLITICAL CANDIDATES AND MOTIVATE THEM TO VOTE. I'm not talking about just voting for the Democrats. Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans. We need a new voice that actually cares about progressive, democratic values, and actually believes in what they say. Not the same, tired politicians that play us for fools and leave us with the best of two evils.
Organize now, smash the two-party oligarchy and elect REAL POLITICIANS, hopefully young people that care about the US, not people who want to enrich themselves from the teat of government funding. You could argue that Trump was that candidate for half of Americans, as well as Sanders for the other (nearly) half. We need fresh blood, and we need to start now.
The only way to stop Trump is to silence him by breaking up the Republican Congress majority, and it's only in 2 years.
> Although those countries aren't affected by the ban...
So, you have not yet been personally affected? That's like saying German citizens have been personally affected by this action.
If one has to come up with new contingencies based on radical shifts in the likelihood of extreme events, then of course they are directly affected.
If this trend continues, it wouldn't be too far fetched for the US to require "extreme vetting" of German document holders to enter the US.
There is a real chance that you'll get more fresh blood than you are bargaining for.
When you start running roughshod over peoples lives violence is just around the corner and should be expected.
Action -> reaction, it's as old as physics.
Of course that plays right into Trumps hands.
In the Senate, this will get tough, because the majority of positions in the senate available for reelection is mostly Democrat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_elections,_2018).
And even if Congress Republican majority is broken down, Trump and Pence will still be able to rule with Presidential orders, much like Obama did.
The ban on muslims is not something he decided "at his whim", but something he promised he'd do if he won the presidency.
Turns out he did win, and he's delivering on his promises.
This false equivalence convinced people to vote for Trump. No way Hillary would have implemented this ban.
"false equivalence" is a non-argument used by Hilary supporters to sidestep proving that she is objectively better than Trump, after it is correctly pointed out that she is not an angel from heaven either.
> No way Hillary would have implemented this ban.
This is a misleading statement that you can't even prove, because it requires you to either be a mind reader or being able to travel to an alternate reality. For the sake of argument though let's assume that she wouldn't have performed this action, can you prove that she wouldn't have done worst things? She gets money from Saudi Arabia, you would have a hard time proving that she can do no bad.
Trump is hell bent on destroying America from within and his followers (who we are not supposed to criticize) are A-Ok with that.
Soon to be seen in a theater near you in Europe as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_Czechoslovakia
Unfortunately we have Yugoslavia as counter example, it started off well but ended up extremely bloody.
We may end up in a very strange situation where the largest political party will not be part of government and where the prime minister will be part of that party (a constitutional crisis, historically the largest party has always delivered the minister president because they always were part of the coalition, it has never happened that the largest party was not part of the coalition but it just might happen). I'm waiting for the first wave of articles pointing this out and trying to decide whether largest party meant largest party in the coalition or largest party in an absolute sense.
Like you I hope that there will be some kind of vaccination effect from the damage Trump is wreaking on the USA but that may just end up being wishful thinking.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_general_election,_1977
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_general_election,_1982
Or it might show them that it's possible to "take action against the muslim/refugee threat" and they'll demand the same from their candidates.
The most terrible nuances, like the ban affecting permanent residents, weren't reported in the news here. Most people wouldn't understand how the US system works anyway.
No he isn't. Those kind of ridiculous hyperbolic statements don't help anything.
You may disagree with Trump's policies and platform. But "intent on destroying America" is a silly charge. And it is equally silly when (as often happens) it is leveled at the left.
What you think is hyperbole is merely extrapolation from the last two weeks over a period of four years. You'll see a world order remarkably different than the present one, one in which America's role will be greatly diminished and where the American economy will be much smaller than it is today or even worse.
It's about May 1914, time is running out to get the train back on the rails before momentum will take over.
June 28, 1914 was the day Franz was murdered. Before that day there weren't really any more danger of a war in Europe than there were the year before.
It was a wildcard and nobody predicted what would happen it could have happened 10 years before and it could have happened 10 years later. Had there been a couple decent diplomats left in Europe the war could have been avoided. Had the Moltke plan been followed maybe Germany really would have won early. Too many variables to predict.
In summary, please don't compare this to 1914, it makes no sense.
> Had there been a couple decent diplomats left in Europe the war could have been avoided.
Cf Trumps twitter feed.
EDIT: If there's no answers from the current batch (either due to sample size or general shyness), I'll pose the same question regarding past YC alumni. I find it hard to believe out of a thousand people there isn't a single Trump supporter.
To suggest that Trump supporters are incapable of critical thinking or being successful start-up founders is pretty insulting. This type of circle jerk in a bubble thinking is a big part of what got him elected in the first place.
It's also comments like yours (and Sam's original post) that further prevent anyone from coming forward to express their dissenting views. Most people shy away from situations that start off with a group of thugs referring to them as idiots.
See, the 'little helpers' (or useful idiots by another term) are exactly the people who empower these assholes, historically, over and over again.
And afterwards, when the carnage has finally run its course they are all suddenly short of memory and did not know a thing.
If you are able to think for yourself and you dissociate from all things internet related, study history and economics for a bit and then look at what is being done today and you will not come to the conclusion that this is damaging America and the world in general then your critical thinking skills are indeed in short supply.
Whatever button a demagogue is able to push they'll push no amount of counterweight is going to convince scared people looking for a 'strong man' that they themselves are part of the problem.
But feel free to go soft and easy on anybody that is helping to push the cart over the edge, me, I'll happily give them both barrels and that includes my closest friends and family if I feel that they are going to help destroy my country and our world.
In pre-war Germany exactly those same sentiments that you are appealing to were used widely and we all know how that ended. Let's be a bit more forceful this time around, it might not yet be too late.
Or would you rather wait with that until the momentum is so large that this disaster is unstoppable?
If we fail to learn from the past we will repeat it endlessly and I really could do without a repeat of the path that we are currently on. But who knows, maybe the world just needs it's population reset every half century or so, we're overdue.
With the kind of bull-in-a-China-shop behavior on display at the moment it's a toss-up how this will end but war is definitely on the menu.
Divide and conquer is a fantastic strategy against a stronger opponent and Putin is playing this like a master.
Maybe America's time has run out, but I for one would like to see the USA remain strong and united, I fear this may already past the point of no return and with ever day that goes by and this madness continuous you'll be looking wistfully back at those 'terrible' years under Obama, Bush, Clinton and so on.
And in a way that is the most vexing of all this: Trump is lying through his teeth to get those votes, he will not be able to give his voters what he wants but in the meantime the clock is going backwards at a rate of about 4 years per week that this guy is in power.
America's signature under a treaty (always a dicey thing) is now worth absolutely nothing, international relations are damaged for years to come, re-armament will be on the agenda in lots of places that were better off without the ability to slaughter their neighbors and so on. Think of it as the roll-back of 50 years of diplomatic policy that kept a large chunk of the world - the USA included - stable and prosperous.
I can't really take you serious if you invoke Putin as the supposed mastermind...
International relations: because the countries he temporarily blocked for immigration have previously been such big friends to the USA? I don't think that accurately reflects reality.
Between Putin and Assange there are very good reasons to damage America as much as they can get away with and it didn't take much to tip the balance. America has never been as divided in recent memory as what is happening today.
To think that Putin would not be involved is naive, what with the situation in the Ukraine being what it is he desperately needs some way to get out of the stalemate and with America run by the likes of McCain and Clinton and NATO and the EU being strong and united there would be very little chance of that.
Putin stands the most to gain from all this by far.
> International relations: because the countries he temporarily blocked for immigration have previously been such big friends to the USA? I don't think that accurately reflects reality.
You must have missed his comments on Taiwan, Mexico and a whole bunch of other countries.
Taiwan, Mexico and so on - fair enough. But overall it is not as if all the countries in the world were friends and only Trump is shaking things up now. There were always conflicts of interest, new trends that shift power (like oil and phracking), military interventions and what not.
Destruction and construction are asymmetric. It takes far less effort to destroy something than it does to create something and things that are delicately balanced can be toppled with only a small application of force.
> What makes him so good that the world's most advanced country is powerless against him?
Internal divisions, magnified to make them seem larger than they really are.
> Is it because Russians are such good hackers?
No, it is because when it comes to propaganda Russia has a leg (or rather several legs) up compared to the USA. The USA would do something like 'voice of America', the Russians would carpet bomb the nation with their version of the story, a history to corroborate their version and a continuous barrage of flak to get in the way of intelligent discussion.
And anybody that managed to get some kind of opposition going would as a rule never be heard from again.
Fortunately in America that stage has not yet been reached, let's hope it will never happen.
> Taiwan, Mexico and so on - fair enough.
Ok
> But overall it is not as if all the countries in the world were friends and only Trump is shaking things up now.
No, but they weren't all-out enemies either and Trump is pushing in that direction (not Taiwan). Even in Europe, one of the USA's staunchest allies when it comes to operations abroad there is strong talk of distancing because of the new perceived instability of America.
> There were always conflicts of interest, new trends that shift power (like oil and phracking), military interventions and what not.
Yes, but just like Hitler found out: you can't fight wars on all fronts at once.
But how can they carpet bomb the US with fake news from Russia?
"Even in Europe"
Maybe Europe will have to shake off its arrogance and realize how much they have always depended on the US. I say that as an European - and here, also, people are divided over Trump, just as in the US. There are elections in Germany this year (if you meant Germany), although to be fair, no major shakeup is to be expected. But that is only for lack of an alternative, there is no Trump here to vote for. But maybe some adjustment of policies will occur before the election date, anyway.
"Yes, but just like Hitler found out: you can't fight wars on all fronts at once."
Still, making a tactical error is not in itself evil. And chaos is a tactic that sometimes works. It won him the election already.
Thousands of websites are targeted at the US with fake news skewing the picture and messing with people's heads.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38168281
https://www.rt.com/
On top of that most news fora are overrun by trolls shouting down any kind of dissent and picking up a fair share of support from 'useful idiots' who will endlessly repeat the talking points.
Make no mistake: a war is in progress, it is a war without bullets but with bits, the consequences are every bit as real and sooner or later the one may lead to the other.
> Maybe Europe will have to shake off its arrogance and realize how much they have always depended on the US.
There is no other choice. But that also carries significant risk.
> Still, making a tactical error is not in itself evil. And chaos is a tactic that sometimes works. It won him the election already.
Yes but that's like congratulating the dog on catching the car.
War - everybody has some interest to pursue, sure. That is nothing new, though.
Europe on its own: what risk do you mean?
"congratulating the dog on catching the car"
Becoming president seems more useful than a car is for a dog, though.
Edit: only now read the BBC link. That's even more ridiculous than "The Russians did it". Now it is Macedonian teenagers who rigged the US election? Come on...
No, but it's but a small wheel in the much larger machine. There has been plenty of reporting on the Russian propaganda machine, if you're going to reject each and every component out of hand then you'll end up rejecting the conclusion as well but that would be a step too far.
See, for this to succeed a number of things have to happen:
- reliable sources of news need to be discredited
- a large amount of flak needs to be generated so people are discussing that rather than the real news
- a consistent barrage of the 'right' talking points needs to be presented so people start repeating those things as though they are real
All of those components are well represented, I would be highly surprised if all this would amount to coincidence.
As for the barrage - again, how do you do that? Like creating bots on Twitter and Facebook and zillions of web sites doesn't mean people will read them.
The 'One China' policy essentially is about saving face. China is extremely sensitive to not being seen as losing face because of bullying from the West about what they consider to be their sphere of influence.
That in practice Taiwan acts and to all intents and purposes is an independent country doesn't matter as much as being able to claim that Taiwan is a republic of China does.
So, if everybody would just pretend that the 'One China' view is the correct one while Taiwan gets away with being a relatively progressive democratic society everybody wins.
If Trump starts throwing his weight around he might just trigger an invasion of Taiwan and just like Europe and the USA stood by while the Eastern part of Ukraine was annexed I do not expect anybody to lift a finger to stop it.
That's why you don't put unstable bullies in charge of foreign diplomacy with your single largest trading partner and a formidable military power to boot.
Vastly oversimplified but that's about the gist of it as far as I can see, corrections welcome.
And it might not be the only possible scenario - in fact, with all the Hitler comparisons floating around, this stance towards China reminds me a lot of the appeasement politics towards Hitler.
Ultimately, saving face with regard to Taiwan is probably just one part of the general trade deal with China? So as the other parts, it should probably be up for negotiation? Or even be a factor ("we pretend Taiwan belong to you, and you give us moar iPhones").
Not saying that protectionism is a good idea, but also not saying that all trade deals are always optimal for both parties.
I think Ukraine was about more than saving face for Russia, too - Russia has always wanted the Krim for strategical reasons?
That's pretty much the way it was. Except for it being a lot more than just iPhones.
> I think Ukraine was about more than saving face for Russia, too - Russia has always wanted the Krim for strategical reasons?
The Krim is extremely important from a military perspective to Russia, their response was - again - extremely predictable (in fact, I'm surprised they didn't simply call the EU's bluff and invaded outright but then again, appearances matter even to the Kremlin).
See also: Kaliningrad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad
Politics is not an optimization problem, it's not about finding the "optimal" state of affairs or whatever.
It's about hopes and dreams. It forms the horizon of the destiny people imagine for themselves, both individually and collectively.
It's also about virtue, morality, sacrifice, etc.
You may sneer but the masses do not.
This is why Democrats lose. They have no vision. What they offer right now is the same boring, stagnant, soul-less status quo, guided along by accurate reasoning about facts and figures.
This is not about winning or losing elections. This is about winning or losing (big time) as a country in the future.
Rapid change is invariably bad, steady, slow changes and growth are good. The long view is the one to take, even if it can't be compressed down into juicy soundbites and isn't sexy.
See, if you 'win' but end up wrecking your country then you lost anyway, 'boring' in politics is good.
There is a reason that 'may you live in interesting times' is generally considered to be a curse, not a blessing.
On the immigration issue: I'm in favor of immigration reform. I disagree with the current EO because it doesn't include Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and because it doesn't exempt Special Immigrant Visas (which should have been super fast tracked), and because it seems punitive vs. corrective. If the reasoning behind it is an actual improvement in the screening process, and re-examination of all past visas under that basis, then there's probably a way to do it which is less disruptive to the >99% of visa holders who are not terrorists.
(The immigration reforms I'd like to see are both improving the experience for "good" people, and more effective screening of "bad" people, though superior technology and procedures. I'm hugely in favor of deporting/banning actual criminals who are in the US and not citizens; tracking visa expiration better; physically securing borders to prevent access without valid authorization. I'd like the borders to be far more deterministic for valid visa holders, friendlier, and for the immigrant or visitor experience, starting from the websites and how we treat people in foreign embassies, to be better. That might require more funding for State/USCIS, and definitely requires better tech. In general I think the test at the border should be "will this person make the US a better place." We have a human rights need to provide emergency refuge to refugees, but that doesn't necessarily mean immigration, and could in Syria be most efficiently accomplished by funding camps in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq.)
(The trade war is dumb; if the wall is going to cost $15b, we should just pay for it.)
Reporting "will give priority to Christians" is a mischaracterization of: "> (b) Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality."
The probability of the guy being extremely vetted is a terrorist is a ridiculous 0.000001%. That doesn't take into account that a good number of terrorists are already known, are in war, locked in jail cells or have no passports/documents.
This probability is also probably lower than the guy being from a visa-waiver country where the guy happen to be mentally unstable and go on a killing spree. In both cases, your extreme vetting is very unlikely to detect the bad guy.
However, here is the thing. By alienating the population to the "dangers of islam", you are further separating these people from the American communities and not helping them getting integrated. This will, in the long run, backfires badly as it creates huge "muslim neighbour-hoods" that are not compatible with the fabrics of American society. France is a good example.
In the case of immigration, that's clearly a YC position as well -- if you look at the percentage of YC founders who are immigrants, immigrants in early employee roles, and international markets, it would be negligent for YC to not be pushing for sane immigration rules. While the status quo isn't great, either, it's quite reasonable to criticize changes which also don't make things better. SOPA/PIPA, spying, etc. are all critical issues for YC and other groups of tech companies. Stuff like 2A, abortion, etc. isn't, even though a lot of people care about those.
But it's more than that -- it's illegal. Apart from known criminals, the government can't arbitrarily choose which groups to deny entry:
NYT Op-Ed: Trump’s Immigration Ban Is Illegal: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigratio...
Edit: You said it deserves a black bar atop HN. Have some respect.
Respect for who, you asked? The people who've left this world.
This is in no way intended to denigrate the esteemed author or his thesis. I'm just disappointed that we're at this point.
This is entirely comparable to when Jewish scientists were first getting barred from getting positions in German universities. We are now seeing the much-publicised case of an Oscar-nominated director being unable to attend to receive his prize. There are many other, less publicised cases of colleagues getting barred from working alongside us.
We can no longer ignore these politics.
There's a big difference between ignoring it and wishing that wishing that I wasn't immersed in it.
Hey it's totally ignoring me. So sorry for Americans here, but I agree with the person you're responding to: I too liked HN for being quiet about Donald duck.
Again, not a commentary on the author or HN, but a commentary on society as it stands right now.
You can argue that want your little safe space where you can debate Erlang versus Go until the Titanic has gone down but at some point everything is politics and your life too will be affected (and likely not in a positive sense).
Not all that long ago PG wanted to argue against the death penalty and it got debated wide and far, but not on HN because hey, we're techies and we can't be bothered with such un-important stuff, we're too busy changing the world.
And then one day you look up from your keyboard and you realize that that little bubble you were living in is now affecting you and those around you. There is no safe space, that's just an illusion you can only afford to keep for so long.
HN is only an oasis by virtue of willful ignorance about stuff that really matters and that is spinning out of control at a very rapid rate. Ignore it at your peril.
Yes I'm sad about this too, but we can't turn our backs on this, it's just too big. We can't just pretend it will go away and the world will sort itself out. We can't retreat to the comfortable confines of our algorithms and code, the real world needs us and needs us now.
What's happening is literally sickening to me. The thought of young people in 20 years looking at me and saying "You caused this, you did this to us" is a terrifying image. I blame my parents for Reagan, but this time it's on me. And I'm not going to let this go any further. We all need to get out of our happy code utopia and confront the real world before it is all destroyed. We need to stop this, and we need to stop this now.
Judging by the comments here, HNers have nothing to offer the real world (of politics) other than shrill shrieking about racism and bigotry. That's not going to help anything.
If you actually want to create political change, put your head back into your work and amass a fortune. Maybe in 20 years you'll have enough to make a difference.
No more dorm room debates. No more abstraction. What is going to actually work to build a better world, right now, under these real-world conditions? What’s your plan to make real, substantive, large-scale progress? That’s the question you’re confronted with. If you can’t tie a particular act to a plausible vision of how to make real progress in the real world, then you’re wasting your time."
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/01/25/make-every-question-a-st...
If the Democrats and liberally minded people want to affect true political change, then this kind of discourse needs to take hold within discussions like these. There's far too much emoting and virtue signaling going on that builds up tribal unity at the expense of alienating all others that do not go along with it.
Like it or not, a significant portion of the country is deeply afraid of Islamic terrorism. They are not assuaged by the methodology of the past 8 years. What alternative solution can the left offer that calms their fears while holding true to core ideology of the movement? Calling these people racist may energize your base and serve as catharsis, but is going to shrink the potential voting base more and more.
It deeply saddens me to see how much invective is being thrown around on a community that I prize for being able to discuss technical issues at great depth.
When governments of "other countries" do something like this, it's a political post that has no place on HN. When it's America, oh boy do we get involved.
I understand this place is 90% American, but truly, there are plenty of other places to discuss this.
One thing I love about this community is that, even on divisive political issues, I usually see excellent discussion and points, specifically by people who disagree with me.
I want HN debating politics* because of how HN debates.
* But yeah, as long as it stays to DEFINITELY political posts. Only politics I want in my tech is language wars :P
That only works because HN mostly isn't about politics. There must be a name for this paradox.