It is not as flashy as the abuse and bigotry towards every non white-male group under the sun, encouragement of political violence, advocacy of war crimes, torture, the wholehearted embrace of nationalistic fascism, etc.
But recall Thiel was recently in the news for financing the lawsuit that destroyed Gawker as part of a personal vendetta. If Trump had his way, Thiel would likely be able to simply sue them out of existence because he wanted to and was wealthy -- instead of waiting for them to do something illegal and helping to support the resulting lawsuit.
Perhaps the answer is not so strange. Thiel is wealthy and powerful and likes to use that power to reform the world around him as he sees fit, and sees voting for a wealthy and powerful person who wishes to give the wealthy and powerful more power will help to further his ends.
There's really not any good evidence that Trump would do anything of the sort. He was for the wars in Iraq and Libya at the time, and is only against them now (and pretends he always was) because he's the ultimate political opportunist. Considering that right now he's said that he will "bomb the shit" out of ISIS and "send a few troops", it's pretty clear that a Trump presidency would be anything but isolationist.
The only thing that is clear about a Trump presidency is that nothing is clear about a Trump presidency.
I'm not sure where he truly stands. But I suppose I'll take his word that he'll want the U.S. to play an active role.
Democrats decided to nominate the candidate who voted for the war and has a very Hawkish foreign policy, not the one who was against it. So one way or another, Americans are voting for interventionism.
For context, only 15% of new lawful permanent residents in 2014 were selected for education or skill (the employment-preference category).
[1] like (but not limited to) anyone who likes strolling over the border or overstaying visas
These aren't actually opposing when you look deeper - the US does not provide much of a means of legal immigration for high skilled worker.
On the other hand, the US also does not restrict illegal immigration so much - it's easy to get a menial job, a driver's license, just about everything without a legal visa status.
In essence, you have a defacto second class citizen type immigration with a very limited first class immigration ability of the US.
Probably this is the opposite of what would benefit the country most.
...
> He then invested in the SeaSteading Institute which wanted to turn Thiel’s dream into a reality. The reason? He felt the government wasn’t doing enough to keep Silicon Valley stocked with foreign talent. [0]
Some mixed messaging here...
[0] http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/05/10/shouldnt-surprised-...
I see this conflation in almost all the election news I hear - people assume that Trump supporters are against any immigration. In fact, the white, blue collar workers making Trump's base are okay with most immigrants. They (quite understandably) dislike illegal South American immigrants, who compete with them for a shrinking pool of manufacturing and menial labor jobs. While immigration may benefit the country as a whole, illegal immigration from South America does not benefit them; instead, it contributes to ever-worsening employment prospects. To convince Trump supporters of the benefits of immigration, one must present a solution which simultaneously addresses the lack of jobs for workers at the low end. Until then, the tradeoff is clear - blue collar workers would rather ship illegal immigrants home than have increased local competition for employment, which I find understandable. Trump is also in favor of tariffs, etc. to keep American manufacturing jobs, and has spoken against NAFTA. For a blue collar worker, he may be the best candidate left in the race - and his protectionist position combined with a strong stance against illegal immigration may mean that he has been the best candidate in the race for a long time. (Again, seen from the perspective of a white, blue collar worker).
For Thiel, I can see a few reasons why a protectionist, anti-illegal immigration stance makes sense. He may believe we really do have an overpopulation problem, and wishes to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into America on those grounds. A protectionist stance makes more sense - America's prosperity in the 70's and 80's and South Korea and China's relative prosperity today make the case for keeping a manufacturing base at home, coupled with a reasonably strong creative and technical sector.
Again, this is just speculation on the beliefs of others; my own beliefs are different. But I think it's important to consider that Trump supporters may have reasonably nuanced views on immigration too, even if they don't align with our own stance.
I don't think Trump's opponents assume that his supporters are against all immigration at all. I think his opponents deliberately misinterpret Trumps' message to paint his supporters as ignorant racists. That's not to say that there aren't Trump supporters who are actually racist, but I see little actual evidence that it's the norm.
Throwing the racist card has been a pretty effective tactic for the left over the past 8 years, so I can't blame them for drawing from that well until it's dry, but I do get tired of the rhetoric. It's not helping the divisiveness in the United States.
How does one misinterpret this message to be racist when it is so blatantly racist in and of itself?
"Throwing the racist card has been a pretty effective tactic for the left over the past 8 years..."
With all of the dark skinned people getting killed by police lately it seems more likely that the US has a huge problem with racism. In that context the notion of a "racist card" makes no sense at all in a logical argument.
Also, your last sentence effectively means "since racism is a thing, all accusations of racism are valid" which is almost offensively wrong.
My last sentence suggests we have a major problem with race relations in the US. You can twist my words however you want but it doesn't change that fact. The entire concept of a "race card" was manufactured to belittle legitimate claims of racism. Creating a term to discredit legitimate questions of racism is offensively wrong.
Bigot is more fun to say, plus it doesn't turn into an -ism when used in the adjective form. Because we have enough -isms.
While I do agree that banning Muslims from entering the country is a horrible idea, Muslim is a religion (and a choice), not a race. For what it's worth, Mexican is also not a race.
>With all of the dark skinned people getting killed by police lately it seems more likely that the US has a huge problem with racism.
I think it seems this way due to increased media coverage and the impact of social media. Undoubtedly there are some racist officers, but I am skeptical that the problem is as large as some would lead us to believe. As of the last count of which I am aware, 130 black people have been killed by police so far this year. It seems likely that the vast majority of these were justified (according to police procedure, which may be flawed but not inherently racist). Don't get me wrong, it's a huge tragedy whenever any innocent person is killed, but being a skeptic, I need some hard evidence to convince me that the US has a "huge" problem with racism. By hard evidence, I mean stats or studies that have NO other plausible explanation other than racism.
Don't hold the victims to a higher standard of evidence then the perpetrators, when the perpetrators hold all the cards.
In regards to your comments on policing. I guess the black man who was shot today, unarmed, with his hands in the air and fully complying with police orders was just another outlier? How many black people need to be killed by police officers before you would consider race to be an issue? 130? 140? The prevalence of cell phone video has exposed an issue that has been present for a long time in the US.
Whether are not you think there is a "huge" problem with racism in the US, at least there is no doubt that there is a problem. Argue over the size of that problem if you'd like, but realize that openly racist groups have uniformly endorsed Trump for a reason.
edit: deleted reference to "white" officers because I don't think it is relevant.
As far as police debate goes, yes, that single person could also be an outlier, considering that there are somewhere around 13 million black Americans. If the police were truly "hunting black people", as the media and BLM would have us believe, I would think the number of black Americans killed by police would be far, far higher. As it stands, the odds of a black person being shot by police is extremely remote.
I would argue that the scope of the problem is very much important, given that racism will probably never truly disappear. Humans are inherently tribalistic. We find ways to divide ourselves by color, social status, political views, and which sports teams we support (sidenote: my dad was nearly killed by a Steelers fan for being a Bengals fan). It seems that it would take a major evolutionary shift for this to change.
As to the final comment, I would argue that Trump isn't fully responsible for the groups that choose to support him. For example, Hillary Clinton has received donations (via the Clinton foundation) from countries such as Algeria, where homosexual acts are punished by large fines and imprisonment. That does not mean Hillary Clinton is anti-gay.
I'll level with you. I think a Trump presidency would be a total disaster. I also think the police are far too quick to resort to violence and lack the training to properly defuse a situation or handle firearms. But I don't think the accusations of racism are entirely fair, and I believe in being fair, even to an enemy.
There are plenty of people in the press who consider all discussion of immigration reduction or control racist. That doesn't make it so.
Those calling them socialists are probably a bit socialist too, though.
This only fuels your argument that political words lose meaning over time.
So the many get lower prices, and pay taxes that compensate the concentrated few that are affected by the job losses or lower wages.
There might be a neg positive effect on the economy, but the benefits go to the rich and the immigrants, at the expense of the local poor and middle class. Prices are not going to fall that much because of immigrant labor, and certainly not enough to make up for the decreased wages.
And, if not, when is he going back to Germany?
It's truly extreme xenophobia and racism that these liars who falsely claim "mass immigration" can't tolerate the tiny 0.38% that comes to the U.S. every year. They see a few immigrants in their neighborhoods, and their blood immediately starts to boil, and they get filled up with loathing and hatred.
They are total hypocrites, who ignore that most of their ancestors came here in the last 200 years[2], and a disgrace to this country and its immigrant heritage. I hypothesize that there would no complaining if 100% of the immigrants who came here were white Europeans. At the root, it's not about immigration -- it's just plain racism.
[1] As Sam Altman of Y Combinator aptly put it: "most Americans saying no immigration are here because their families immigrated in the last 200 years", c.f. https://twitter.com/sama/status/550110475199848448
I guarantee that people would complain if the immigrants were European. Because they did in the past! In the past a huge number of immigrants were from Ireland and other countries, and there was lots of hatred and anti immigration movements. It has literally nothing to do with race. People fear immigrants because they take their jobs, and see them as competition. They are also concerned about crime and increased population density, or worried about their culture being replaced, or the immigrants political influence, etc. But mainly it's economic, and I think the concern is genuine.
>"most Americans saying no immigration are here because their families immigrated in the last 200 years"
That's a nice soundbite, but a poor argument. All countries are descended from immigrants. Human beings have migrated and conquered other lands since the beginning of time.
That's totally irrelevant to whether an immigration policy in 2016 would have a positive or negative effect on current US residents. And if they believe it has a negative effect, why would they vote for it? Because their ancestors would? So what?
They were sub-human, ape-like, violent alcoholics. Many English viewed them as such, and brought that viewpoint with them to the US.
... Racism doesn't have to make sense.
And 1 in 8 is super-low for a settler nation. It's also only slightly higher then the average European state.
You can't use "racism" as a fully general insult against anyone that disagrees with you.
Europe may or may not have higher rates of immigration. It's irrelevant to US policy. And it certainly seems like they are starting to have their own problems with immigrants the last few years.
This is pile of nonsense. The elected representatives from the Democratic Party don't show hate towards immigrants and have generally fought their betterment, and the Democratic Party won the popular vote in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2012. That's five out the last six elections.
There was a huge amount of European immigration in the 1800s , and the early 1900s. Just as there was anti-Irish sentiment, I'm sure there were people back then who believed deeply in the Lump of Labor Fallacy[1], but their will was never put into effect as law.
If people freaking out about jobs had put the same limits we have on immigration today back in 1800, the U.S. population would likely be the same as Canada's, and our total GDP less than one-tenth of what it is today. We probably also wouldn't have had the economic might to win World War I and World War II, or the Cold War (e.g. Marshall Plan[2]).
Instead it was white-on-white racism, and the Nordic/Aryan supremacy[3] theories of Madison Grant[4] that actually led to the first major immigration restriction legislation in the U.S., the Emergency Quota Act[5] and the Immigration Act of 1924[6], which limited immigration to people from North-Western Europe, as a majority of the Congressmen back then believed that Southern and Eastern Europeans were a lower, less worthy breed of people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passing_of_the_Great_Race
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Grant
Because the democrats 1) benefit from immigrants since they tend to vote democrat and 2) represent Northerners and the upper middle class, who aren't threatened by immigrants economically.
>There was a huge amount of European immigration in the 1800s , and the early 1900s. Just as there was anti-Irish sentiment, I'm sure there were people back then who believed deeply in the Lump of Labor Fallacy[1], but their will was never put into effect as law.
The economy was totally different then. It was much more agricultural based, which isn't as threatened by immigrant labor. Unemployment was nowhere near as high as today. There was a general trend of economic progress that could support the immigrants, and even benefited from their labor.
>If people freaking out about jobs had put the same limits we have on immigration today back in 1800, the U.S. population would likely be the same as Canada's, and our total GDP less than one-tenth of what it is today. We probably also wouldn't have had the economic might to win World War I and World War II, or the Cold War (e.g. Marshall Plan[2]).
Possibly. The US population growth was pretty high until recent times. Much higher than in Europe. And population size alone is not the only factor in GDP. Especially today in the age of automation.
I say that as an Irish person. We've made considerable progress since in the late 20th century to the present, and now we are better in most metrics than the British (and perhaps they have also fallen), but don't imagine we were all sweetness and light in the past. Present day Irish have undergone a terrific cultural shift, evidence of which would be a supposed Catholic majority country voting in gay marriage.
We're still Irish, but we're mostly better than we were. Now if we could only resuscitate the courage of our grandparents we'd be in better shape yet.
It is probably correct but very difficult to solve for, it can take centuries, which is not what most people want to hear. Cultural shifts are faster than biological evolution but are not always as fast as many people suppose.
Personally I believe in the use of eugenics for both blacks and whites in order to create an improved type of human. We know high IQ has, among others, the side affect of sharply declining propensity for violent crime. We know people with good health are able to think longer term than the sickly.
This goes way beyond the usual discussions but I think it is on the table whether people like it or not. I realize that the majority of people think this issue was laid to rest mid-twentieth century, but it is obvious those questions were always going to come back and it is only a matter of time. We've already been doing moderated forms of eugenics for decades except we've given it a hundred other names.
Maybe they are angry because people are coming illegally.
After all, his great-grandparents legally entered the country... At the time when undesirables, like Chinese, Indians, and the Polish were barred from entry.
But at least the Frenchmen came legally! Sure, entry was granted under an extremely racist immigration law, but the legality is what gives him the moral high ground to stand on.
Build the wall and regulate immigration so more Indians and Chinese come relative to their world population.
"Hurr, durr, build a wall to keep them out", and "Keep America Christian" does nothing to resolve it. If you actually give a shit about either, then backing Trump (Or the other big names from the 2016 Republican line) is backing the wrong horse.
Even more ironically, two of the other candidates (Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio) are the descendants of Cuban refugees... And any Cuban entering the US can immediately apply for permanent residency. No questions asked.
Strangely, they oppose the same privilege to people fleeing repression/drug cartels/terrible poverty in the rest of Central America.
If all our illegal immigrants were from Germany and Ireland, I am certain that there would be far less complaining.
In fact most of the angry people today would not be fighting to keep them out -- they'd be fighting for visas for them.
Very curious, on what do you base this certainty? Is it just a feeling based on personal experience?
The truth is that the people behind most of this anti-immigrant rhetoric can't see the humanity of someone who is not of their same skin color. When they call a human being "an illegal" -- it's dehumanizing, and it plainly reveals they don't see their common shared humanity. I've noticed it in the language they use, and they way they talk about other people -- and not just immigrants, but black Americans as well. They simply do not see other races as people like themselves.
I absolutely do not think that Luis Gutierrez is someone that is just looking out for "his own people", as you seem to be implying.
No, it's an accurate, dry, legal characterisation of someone present in the country illegally, much like referring to someone who has murdered someone else as 'a murderer,' or to someone who has shoplifted as 'a shoplifter.'
I'm actually philosophically inclined towards completely open borders (although I have some deep concerns about what that does to community & culture), but an alien who is present illegally is truly an illegal alien. Words mean things, and that's what those words mean.
I want to put this on the biggest billboard I can find, or put it in Nazca lines across the surface of the moon, so maybe we'll remember. Language lawyering is profoundly useless, and I've no patience with it.
There is a lot of implied sub-communication that comes with word choice in human languages. Only an idiot or a robot would take everything by its literal meaning.
If everyone is free to redefine words to mean whatever they damn well please, then it is impossible to have clear, effective discussions, because you get wound up wrangling about definitions - as we do habitually here, talking past each other.
10% of the California workforce is undocumented
5% of the national workforce is undocumentedIn contrast his opponent is way more predictable but also very largely unlikeable.
This is what's most baffling considering Trump is the most statist candidate in modern politics. Most of his success is built on anti-immigration and tariffs. He may agree with more non-interventionist/isolationist foreign policy of Trump, but I don't see these as the cornerstone of his campaign. Also, he's been less consistent on those issues, in one breadth suggesting he wouldn't support NATO allies, and in another saying he would be aggressive in internationalist expansion in fighting terrorism.
One theory is that he's an opportunist, and since he is such a unique surrogate of Trump, he will be in a unique position to promote his ideas. The Democratic side is likely more crowded in terms of tech-billionaires writing out checks for a sympathetic ear. He's simply hedging, which ironically he's against as well!