I think it is easy to underestimate the ugliness and disorder such a reckless executive order can unleash unless you start to think about the details or put yourself in the shoes of the people affected.
NBC News reports[0]:
The Trump administration also has yet to issue guidance to airports and airlines on how to implement the executive order. "Nobody has any idea what is going on," a senior Homeland Security official told NBC News.
As James Gleick put it on Twitter[1]:
And how was it communicated to Customs and Border Protection? Or have they just gone rogue?
And then there is the gross conflict-of-interest reflected in this map:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-trump-immigration-ba...
The event marks a horrible landmark. It's the first time I can point to the tangible harmful impact of Trump's executive policy on actual people. Up to this point, it has been possible for supporters and apologists to waive away his vague or careless remarks during the campaign as political rhetoric, jokes, or leverage for future negotiation. Now we start to see the mean (in every sense of the word) instinct that informed them and the harm they can do.
[0] http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-travel-restrictions-...
[1] https://twitter.com/JamesGleick/status/825380079526146048
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/visa-waiver-libya-somali...
These countries were already hard for US citizens to do business in (hence no Trump holidings). I don't think Trump cares much about money - he is interested in Power.
"Corruption" is a distraction. I also think the thing about his tax returns is the same.
> I don't think Trump cares much about money - he is interested in Power.
It's hard to know what his true interests are. But based on his actions, and his lack of desire for publicly stating his net worth or tax returns, I think he is very interested in maintaining not only his worth but also his companies'.
Trump is the first President in a long time that can directly be influenced by foreign governments through his business and property holdings.
I think that his tax returns are a huge distraction. When they leak, what will change? Everyone already knows he doesn't pay much tax. His fans see that as a good thing.
The only thing that could change out of it is if there is a line item "Russian bribes". But that's unlikely, especially since I tend to think his ties with Russia are philosophical, not financial.
1)piss everyone off except his core vote base
2) be forced out of office
3) launch a movie/book/tv show
4) profit
I don't think his original plan was to win the election.
(For real: I'm not from the US)
I agree with your comment though.
So, let's not pretend that he was constrained by some list from the Obama administration. It's an executive order, and President Trump owns the whole thing.
And the opposition and the media are so deep in Saud pockets, they can't even call Bush out for it.
See https://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2016/08/08/us-a...
If you poll this issue, you'll find at least 80% of Americans don't care how inconvenient our immigration policy is for those countries affected. And a very large majority wants no immigration whatsoever from any of those nations affected nor from any of their neighbors save Israel. Probably a majority of Hillary voters would approve if they could be reassured it would go no further than that.
Democrats (who voted 89% for Hillary) are strongly in support.
Overall 59% of Americans believe immigrants make the country stronger: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/15/americans-vi...
Most polls are quite vague approximations, when they aren't just lying with statistics. And you can easily frame them in all kinds of ways by how one asks the questions and how they present an issue.
But, of course, none of your comment answers the questions I posed. I'm less interested in litigating abstractions and more in the specifics. Care to take a whack at addressing them?
The polls about The Donald losing were also heavily reported: http://www.politicususa.com/2016/10/26/polls-shatter-myth-pr...
In any case, unlike you, I'm more interested in abstractions based on large historical body of evidence (for not trusting pollsters in general) than in specifics (evaluating a particular poll, especially in hot political and partisan issues, which presupposes that I can trust what those that created it say, that is not only trusting the methodology as they describe it, but also that they followed it -- and we obviously have no way of knowing the latter).
How did you verify the poll? Because this is not some scientific paper where one can retract the steps and redo the numbers. Just trusting the methodology reported (a meagre page with a 10-mile high view of the procedure and no specifics in the case of Pew Research Center, for example?) and having faith that no poll and/or research center would ever misreport or falsify?
Maybe my mistrust is wrong, but I don't see the trust as being any better, especially with so many off the mark polls that been shown in practice to be so (the actually verifiable and falsifiable ones, like the ones on voting preferences).
American immigration policy towards Israelis is essentially the same as towards anyone else. My (Jewish Israeli) coworker from grad-school wanted to work for Google in Mountain View, but the company couldn't swing him a visa. He stayed at Technion to do a PhD.
He now says that he doesn't want to come to the USA with Trump in power.
You tell me how a Jewish Israeli computer scientist poses a threat to the United States. And if you think you can, be aware that I'm such a person, on top of being American, so you had better explain to me how I'm a foreign threat to my own home country.
And what about the people I know without second passports? Should a certain friend refuse to visit China with her parents because Trump might decide to ban her (with an American passport!) from returning home over some spat about trade policy?
The Department of Homeland Security should have refused this order.
Trump can't do that. That would take something way beyond an executive order.
I moved to the US ~a year ago, now as a permanent resident. Debating on what to do if things continue going down along the current course.
However, my view on that is a bit different - if he can avoid, working on his own for his own future instead of a big corp is the way to go.
PS: goog emp.
As I understood it, he had gone through the interview process and been offered a specific role in Mountain View, for which they then couldn't get the visa. This was back in 2015, so no Trump craziness yet then, just the ordinary bureaucratic stuff.
And just to express my butthurt, Israelis don't even get visa-free tourism to the United States.
That said, it looks like it's past now. Good luck to your friend.
America is a nation and only those that further the aims of the existing nation should come. Even then it should be very few of those because America is already full.
We can't build enough space to live and infrastructure for the people that are already here. And our natural environment is already threatened by overdevelopment.
And just try driving in any major prosperous city at rush hour or riding the subway. Or renting an apartment in SF or NY. We can't expand housing or infrastructure in those cities and we're admitting millions of foreigners overfilling them even further.
We're 6 days in. At this point, can anyone really assure them of that?
The Hart-Celler Act abolished the national origins quota system that had structured American immigration policy since the 1920s, replacing it with a preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or residents of the U.S.
http://library.uwb.edu/Static/USimmigration/1965_immigration...
Executive Orders are there to fill in the implementation details that congress leaves out.. they can't override laws entirely.
In all the discussions I heard so far on Facebook and media I noticed a lot blame, name-calling, despair and so on. But I haven't seen enough solid self-reflections. Specifically focusing on why did the Democrats stay home that day. Without it we will have another Trump and then another ...
In the US the "blue map" does really matter except psychologically since everyone votes in a specific state, but the predictions from the media probably didn't help.
Hopefully Trump will drive democratic midterm voter turn out.
So far, their actions have been rather dismal. For instance, they've voted for most if not all of Trump's cabinet appointments.
Media might not be covering their response more? But, I don't know what they could do in Congress.
Not like they made it easy before but still we can expect similar responses to the proposed 20% border tax with Mexico.
Edit Some people seem to think US citizens cannot visit Iran. From the horse's mouth:
Cuba's been for a long time the only country the US won't allow its citizens to visit (head, meet desk); North Korea is, so far as I know, the only country that actively prevents US citizens from visiting, although that may be a misrepresentation of the facts on the ground.
Anyway, http://uncorneredmarket.com/american-travel-iran/ has more information.
The typical experience for Americans who have applied for visas to visit North Korea is a very long wait, with only gaining approval (sometimes after years of applications), only to have the approval revoked sometimes as late as hours before their flights depart. Some people report having had their travel visas revoked three or four times before finally being granted entrance.
"Not blocked" doesn't seem like the right term for whatever that is.
TL;DR: Visa applications take longer (but still usually <30 days) and you must be accompanied by a guide at all times, but other than that you're free to travel around.
It's worth noting that this is considerably looser than North Korea, where you not only have a guide, but can only go to the places that have been agreed in advance and your guides permit you to go to.
But we do this shit all the time. The US' immigration system is byzantine at best.
We deport "illegals" who have lives in the US routinely whose lives are no less worthwhile; Obama did something similar to Cubans coming here right before leaving office, leaving those moving to the US with the expectation that "wet foot dry foot" policy would continue stranded at airports.
We're just all more sympathetic to the MIT student.
Maybe I'm just overly cavalier, but it feels no different from the arbitrariness I have experienced in the US immigration system where random officials may make decisions with no relationship to the law with no grounds for appeal.
This country already makes it ridiculously hard for skilled workers to move here; the optics sure do look shitty though.
I do feel truly sorry for the refugees though, they have nowhere to go back to and are truly in a world of hurt. It saddens me that every country I have called home is so callous to them.
It's possible we may get some useful legal precedents, though, if some of this ends up in the courts. A good number of conservative judges are already skeptical of both excessive executive delegation and federal-government overreach, and were making moves in that direction during Obama's administration. Will Trump cause some liberal judges who have traditionally had differing views to wake up to the danger of such an executive, without an equal-or-greater number of conservative judges suddenly having a change of heart in the opposite direction? And will good test cases arise, with standing, etc.? Maybe, maybe not, but it's possible.
1. It's not what "half of you wanted". It's what a portion of the portion of those that voted in a 55% turnout election wanted. A tiny and vindictive portion, that lost the popular vote.
2. Even if it were what "half of you wanted", it's also what half of you did not want. This is not a kid's game where you count up the points and call the clear winner. If half of your population's will is being disregarded and worked against, there is a problem.
3. This is plain and simply abhorrent. Even if these were popular policies, they are reprehensible. The majority can be misguided.
PS: Your twitter feed is worse than an angry child's. Seriously, get a hold of yourself. Applauding Trump's targeting of the free press and minorities? "Civilizational cancer"? Are you seriously surprised that people dislike you and your ideologies?
Then it seems to me there has been a problem in the US for many years now.
(Good news everyone! There's now a problem in the UK, too!)
First, it's 46% of the people who voted (i.e. less than half). Second, it's quite disingenuous to suggest that all of those people would support this hamfisted immigration restriction, as-is; in case you were oblivious to your surroundings for the last year, vast numbers of voters -- if not the majority -- were merely voting for the person they despised less. It's more than a tad delusional that there's a mandate here to go and fuck over people's lives because of the happenstance of where they happen to come from.
And it is pretty capricious.
But yeah, he did repeatedly say he would do it.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
It is a trap to think this is about just Trump.
And you think 26.7% of eligible voters, after you've suppressed and disenfranchised so many people, entitles you to violate our laws, our Constitution, and the boundaries of morality?
No. "President" Trump and his neo-Nazi advisor Stephen Bannon can shove this fascist crap where the sun don't shine.
Regardless of how strongly you feel, how heated the discussion, or how others are behaving, you're doing yourself and your argument no favors with the name-calling. Even if you feel that you're just calling a spade a spade, you're just providing others with ammunition to dismiss you and anything you say as just an angry, unreasonable rant. And if you're not actually addressing the people who you don't agree with (which means you're addressing the people who already agree with you, or at best, people who are on the fence), is it really worth saying?
You make a lot of good points at the beginning of your comment. These figures need to be kept in mind, on all sides of these discussions.
I think the problem here is that I genuinely feel I'm calling a spade a spade. Trump himself is probably not ideological enough to be a devoted neo-Nazi. Stephen Bannon, on the other hand, makes Republicans allude to fascism[1].
>“The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office,” said John Weaver, a Republican strategist who ran the presidential campaign of Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and previously advised Senator John McCain of Arizona. “Be very vigilant, America.”[2]
[1] -- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/14/steve-bannon-who-...
[2] -- https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/us/politics/donald-trump-...
How many people strongly supported the candidate they ended up casting their ballot for? Both Trump and Clinton had historically low favorability ratings. If people think they're being attacked by one side or the other, it makes it all the harder for them to listen to reasoned debate, and much more likely that they'll be actively voting against a candidate.
Even this "other side" language is problematic, in my opinion. How are you going to find allies among those you don't already agree with when you think of them as "other"? How do you expect them to listen to you? People dig in, get defensive, when they feel they're being attacked. They're no longer listening. There are some people who will never listen to you, or even if they do listen to you, aren't going to end up agreeing with you. But that's not necessarily everyone you don't currently agree with. If you've already written off everyone who voted for a different candidate than you, then you're stuck with very few options. People are more complex than the effectively binary option that was the 2016 US Presidential Election admits.
It's not a "better than them" thing. It's a "what's actually going to make a difference" thing. Language alone isn't going to solve this, of course. But language used poorly can drive needless wedges between people.
All your statements about trying to make people understand, to make them feel equal and not defensive, I was 100% on board with such an approach. And then you realise it's futile.
India did not become independent because Gandhi won; India became independent because it became unfashionable to have colonies, and the British were pressured into letting their empire dissolve.
This is naked white supremacism. For as much bullshit as we've heard about political correctness, why not just come out and say this is straight up religious and racial discrimination?
The president's Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor is a white nationalist, who used to run Breitbart.com, where there is a distinction made between white supremacists and white nationalists (I cannot explain the distinction, for I don't see one). A site all about how awful multiculturalism is, separation of races is necessary for the survival of a country, etc.
Without letting down your guard or concern, my advice is to moderate it with another possibility. The U.S. has much better insulation geographically than European countries, and a history that involves worse rhetoric and divisiveness and we've survived. There might be a pro where the whole world sees what even a little bit of white nationalism does to a country, and all those European countries flirting with their own far right nationalists, and have elections coming up soon, might just have an "OH FUCK NO" moment.
And that's probably better than if Europe were electing far right governments before the U.S. Europe has a history of conflagration. Maybe Europe gets cold feet and starts taking far right nationalist politics more seriously, and rejects it more concisely and clearly, at election time. It's much easier, safer, more stable, to squash this at an election.
You should be ashamed. Imagine being unable to go to work after a short vacation - because someone didn't like where you were born, and in the meantime, on a whim, decided not to let you go.
For absolute shame.
Every group on HN notices things that appear to be against them. It's normal human bias. I've seen plenty of flagging/down-voting going on all sides of various issues.
If you legitimately are interested to dig into this more, there are at least two different HN APIs available for you to mine the comments on the site. I'd be interested in the results if you chose to do so.
I don't think looking at a single submission is adequate in dealing with the perception issue, but for the sake of argument, I looked at all of the references for "nazi" (as it was the first on your list) in the comments for the submission you referenced. Only one of them in my opinion can be construed as name-calling, and that is nuanced in that it explicitly says "not all". Still not great, admittedly, but not the blanket name-calling you imply.
This is all the effort I'm willing to do for you on this front. I think this shows good faith. I encourage you to take a step back and look at everything as a whole as objectively as you can. I know this is hard (it's hard for me), but it's increasingly important lest we increase the polarization we already have. We can't control how other people behave directly. All we can do is do our best to control our own behavior to encourage others to do likewise and move forward constructively.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508902
popular support for Nazism has been purged from German culture.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13509130
Trump voters are not 100% made up of nazis, in essence.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13510141
Germany wasn't 100% made up of Nazi supporters either. That didn't stop disaster.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508404
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.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508941
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.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508852
Punching nazis is OK. The left gets to decide who is a nazi.
Punching commies is OK. The right gets to decide who is a commie.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13509038
We restricted Nazi immigration, we restricted communist immigration, and we should certainly restrict Muslim extremist immigration.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508999
If you mean Nazi Germany, my opinion is that there aren't actually that many parallels.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508593
For some reason I'm thinking of a parable that goes like: "First they came for the Nazis"...
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508879
And Obama was the biggest nazi of all times
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508763
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.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508587
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.
Good faith means doing that work upfront to ensure that what you're saying has some basis, and in the case of contentious issues, strong basis. Good faith also means backing down when you're called out on something and found to be lacking that strong basis, not continuing to push it forward.
Most people's good faith doesn't extend infinitely. They're fools if they do continue to extend it when repeatedly shown that the people they're engaging with aren't doing so as well.
And you still don't seem to have gotten my original point: I agree that name-calling is uncalled for and actively unconstructive and uncivil. The perception that "your side", whatever that may be, is being treated unfairly pops up on all sides of contentious issues here on HN. Go out and do some real stats work if you think there's something pernicious about some particular behavior. The data is out there. Just anecdotes don't cut it. Your bias (and mine, and anyone's) isn't going to let you see the picture clearly on its own. And when you're done, share the data, methodology, and results with the rest of us. I know there are a lot of people besides me who would be interested in seeing it, regardless of the actual results.
Even for those strongly against Muslims, or immigration in general, it seems difficult to believe that this kind of lame-ass shit is what they had in mind when voting Trump.
And for those few with enough animus to want to screw over some innocent PhD student because of where she was born? Fuck those guys.
That's the intention. The USA is more than a convenient incubator for foreigners. It's a nation responsible for its own future. Quite a lot of Americans don't want foreigners to make plans expecting that the USA will just always be there to fulfill their whims.
A little unpredictability goes a long way in changing your national reputation as an easily exploited doormat.
Also, why do you think immigrants are always going to be non-American? My father has lived here for nearly 40 years, pays taxes, pays into SS, and raised my family here. Is he just fulfilling his whims?
What I am trying to say is, if you believe USA is "an easily exploited doormat" you need to step out of the echo chamber and diversify your news sources.
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While it's been easy to think about many possible negative outcomes in the proceeding days, weeks, months, another subtle aspect of this policy's ramifications is how it weakens trust and faith in the concept of stability for future American policy — the likelihood of future government actions, executed with little to no foresight, warning, or serious consideration, with serious consequences. How this effects this country's current reputation as a place to study, travel, find work, and start families + settle down can't be understated.