Please don't leave us alone with these people. We in the US need you more than ever.
Both before WW1 and before WW2 there were really strong isolationist currents in US politics. I think that it's part of the "Chine syndrome": they're big, kind of isolated and mostly self-sufficient (or perceive themselves to be so).
People seem to have forgotten that the US opening during and after WW2 turned the US into the world's #1 super power. I guess it's hard to look farther ahead when you have pressing issues straight in front of you (immigrants "stealing jobs" and such).
> as a job-stealing immigrant, I now have 36 jobs and counting. I keep them in my basement like some kind of job dragon. what you gonna do
Edit: spelling of Friedman
Complete propaganda, the US tried to avoid European wars while profiting off them as much as possible. During this, they conquered huge areas of Native American, Mexican, Asian, and South American lands.
Almost all Americans think this sort of thing is nonsense. But the average American has little standing to hold the American bureaucracy accountable for its nonsense.
Americans, especially outside overcrowded urban areas, are courteous, helpful, hospitable people that are very tolerant of other people and ideas.
Sorry but they don't get off that easy when almost half of them voted Trump into office.
> Americans, especially outside overcrowded urban areas, are courteous, helpful, hospitable people that are very tolerant of other people and ideas.
I've found quite the opposite, out in the boonies you're more likely to get harassed when you're not the "right" color or religion. I've had some really nice, helpful people turn nasty as soon as I mentioned my atheism, for example.
8 years of Obama gave increased spying, kept the insane TSA, blocked people born in Iran from entering the country (independent of what nationality they currently have). Gave the ESTA Visa Waiver program, where you have to pay for getting exactly no rights what-so-ever. And as final insult, you are allowed to list the social media you use.
The American voter, individually and in aggregate, has lost much say in American bureaucracy. I don't blame Trump alone in this. Bush thought Homeland Security was a good idea. But Trump thinks the problem with American government is that he hasn't been running it. We'll see that that is a foolish take on things soon. Obama made the same mistake and had the same revelation eventually, hence all the executive orders and phone calls in his later presidency instead of laws and reforms and such.
I can't comment about your personal experiences in small town America other than to say that my experience is very different and that referring to areas epithetically (1) undermines your point. America is a very broad and diverse place, though, so there are idiots and bigots in places. But I would just like to point out that kind and welcoming people are easy to find. They don't make headlines. And good impressions don't last as long as bad ones, I guess.
(1) Boonies or boondocks implies a judgemental attitude that people are backwards or unsophisticated. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boondocks
That is not a valid argument by any possible mean. Everybody has the right to vote whatever they want of course, but saying what you said is like saying "people eat meat to piss off vegans more than because they like it". And regardless, the driving motive of something doesn't change the end result of such something.
People need to take responsibility for their actions. They voted for Trump and their is the fault of the current state of things. Period. The reasons behind why they did it don't matter and, frankly, it's also nobody's business.
Now try convincing someone. That is what I tried to do throughout the entire election, but the propaganda machine is treated as fact by many here.
These people get hung up on the idea that we can never leave the two party system, meaning no third party candidate will ever get elected.
Here in Utah, we did manage to give McMullin 20% of the vote, but that was still marginally less than Hillary (after salt lake county) or Trump.
Or... it's nothing like that?
I mean, I get the impression that some portion of people did vote for Trump to piss people off, but that's not what the parent was talking about. Saying that they "voted against Clinton more than they voted for Trump" means they cast a vote to avoid what they saw as the worse outcome.
Let me ask you a loaded question though: Are you white?
I am, and have had only good experiences both in NYC, LA, SF as well as a bunch of small towns.
If you are not white, or dress differently, or are transgender, I can guarantee you which of a small town or a big city would be more embracing. (On aggregate, there are of course outliers on both sides)
You cannot claim that people who didn't vote don't support Trump (or vice versa, don't support Hillary). There simply isn't any data to support this.
> Also keep in mind that most "Trump voters" voted against Clinton more than they voted for Trump.
Citation needed.
You simply fell prey to a focused disinformation campaign that actively tried to prevent intelligent voters from voting and that worked, probably well enough to influence the outcome of the election. That's a hard pill to swallow and you'll probably tell me and yourself that of course that's not what happened, but it wasn't an accident you felt that way. The Russians are very, very good at disinformation and always have been.
You're smart enough to accumulate huge karma here on HN so I'm sure you're smart enough to figure out how voting works. Hopefully you'll manage to fight the confirmation bias you'll likely look for to justify your past actions and be able to make your future actions matter. A great many people wish they had your vote. Please make it count.
Also, it really reads as just a not-very-thinly-veiled accusation that people who do not vote for the candidate that you want to win are stupid and/or naive. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that, necessarily, but you might as well just say it. I disagree with both the rhetoric and the conclusion entirely, but your opinion is what it is.
Personally, I think this kind of thinking leads to the negative outcomes that pervade our political system. Even if third parties have no chance of winning, the idea that they might not be able to bank on the votes of people scared of the "wrong lizard" might force them to moderate their political stands.
And just like in every previous election, no one "listened" to the voters who voted for the spoiler candidates. No one said "if HRC or DT had just done x they would have gotten more of the Green Party or Libertarian voters." People who vote for spoiler candidates self select themselves into a group where they guarantee the winning and losing major parties don't care at all what they think. Voting for a spoiler candidate means the major candidates don't have to care what you think, and they don't, so you end up with even less influence than if you had voted for one or the other of the potential winners.
My third party vote in CA arguably has a bigger effect than a major party vote in CA, for the presidency in the general election.
By population, that's substantially less true - nothing I do in the ballot box is going to make a dent in a 60-40 split in CA, and quite a few will have to think just like me before it does. If you're in one of those parts, vote accordingly.
I assume, like me, OP was there. We tried to talk sense into voters, but this was the biggest concern for most of them. Here in the US, we have been stuck in a two party system for decades simply because of this (flawed) logic.
Most Americans won't change their behavior to effect a greater change unless they are sure that greater change will be happen because of their relatively insignificant effort. This is why we struggle so much with climate change, the two party system, monopolies, etc.
Irrelevant. What is relevant is that you can't claim that people that didn't vote at all aactually voted for Trump, which is necessary to support the upthread claim that nearly half of Americans voted for Trump. Less than 1/5 of Americans, and less than 1/3 of registered voters, voted for Trump.
Nowhere near half of Americans voted Trump into office. (Now, if you want to criticize a very large share of eligible voters for abstaining, that's valid, but abstaining isn't the same as voting for Trump.)
That is 19% of the total population. Reliable sources inform me that this may in fact be significantly less than half of all Americans.
The notion of the nutcase fringe in politics has been around for a while -- there's about 20% of the vote you've got to be very aware of. Where other voters are insufficiently motivated, or actively discouraged by various means (voter suppression efforts, media, uninspiring candidates), the fringe can win.
That said, there's a range of types throughout the country, and a worrying fraction are worrying. Or worse.
Yes, but it's a different decision than voting for candidate X. Facts matter in criticism.
Of course, even if you mean "Americans eligible to vote" or the slightly smaller number of "Americans registered to vote", the claim still isn't even approximately true.
I'm not sure exactly how we're getting away with having this ESTA thing at all for countries that are supposedly part of the Visa Waiver program, without them retaliating in kind. I only hope that we'll come to our senses and stop before they do so. But given that ESTA has now existed for 10 years and both parties seem to support it, I have low hopes of it going away.
The best rendition of the text on the I-94W form is undoubtedly Frank Zappa and the Ensemble Modern's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPPDrXHjJx8
Not to rehash the past, but I thought we had gotten it clear by now: voting for the guy does not indicate support. Americans vote for the candidate they fear and despise the least.
If you voted for Trump, you supported Trump. It's OK to change your mind, but people need to own and take responsibility for what they do at the ballot box.
That's exactly the flawed logic that is keeping us in this two party system. If we just vote for the candidate we support, neither Trump not Hillary would stand a chance.
The trouble with convincing people to actually do that is that most Americans feel the need to be on the winning side. "My vote is worthless unless it's for someone who can actually win."
Do you care to elaborate on this? That's incongruent with voting records.
I will say that America is very diverse. Various states and postal codes have wildly different attitudes about things and very few Americans want to change or homogenize that.
I understand that people from the countryside can be seen as kinder towards people they like but my impression is that hatred and prejudice is much more prevalent there... So care to elaborate if my impression is wrong?
That's not my experience at all. I dealt with more overt racism in NYC than any tiny red state town, and I've spent plenty of time in both. There are racist people everywhere, but even in rural areas, they tend to be ignorant and antisocial so they are not really in any position to oppress anyone.
People tend to mistake talking heads on TV for actual people. People also tend to mistake voting patterns for personal quality of character. There's a caricature on TV (a bigoted one IMO) that small towns are full of shirtless racist rednecks that throw beer cans at all minorities that wander in town. That's because it's a useful trope and an easy way to advance a narrative. Every all town church I'm aware of sends missionaries overseas to build schools, wells, etc. That doesn't mesh with the "we hate foreigners" narrative. I had dinner in a tiny red state town last week. The most popular place in town is run by Mexican immigrants. And it's thriving. Life is more complicated than most media lets on.
Even if we narrowed everything down to political views, the traditional red state view is that diversity in government (federalism) provides better prosperity, diversity, justice, freedom, and so on. Most red state types are fine leaving Colorado with its marijuana and Nevada with its brothels. They value the ability to self determine more than they value the ability to control other people.
Though this is a hard conversation to have meaningfully since different people mean different things by racism. The context here is a Northern European visiting the U.S. I think it would be a bit of a stretch to say they'll have a hard time in the rural south. I'd say (accented) rural Southerners would have a harder time in NYC than Scandanavian visitors would have in Mobile.
It's also a super weird comparison. Southern intolerance is subtextually about animus towards African Americans and Latinos. Nobody is arguing that a Scandinavian would have any trouble in Mobile.
Further: Mobile is a weird choice for a comparison as well, since it's comparatively urban and well-educated. Mobile is more diverse than many parts of Chicago. When we talk about Southern racism, we're generally not talking about the urban south.
Finally, and I want to make this point gingerly, but if we want to drag US political parties into this discussion, the Republican party is almost mathematically determined to be more racist than the Democratic party, which is a coalition of labor, minorities, and liberal whites. It's also just empirically true that the Republican party harbors more overt racists, but we don't have to dive into a lot of value judgements about conservatism and nationalism to conclude that; we can just observe that the Democrats have African American and Latino voters as one of the foundations of their constituency.
The assumption you build this on is that those groups are not more racist than the groups in the Republican party. The only way you could even make that kind of jump is if you subscribe to the definition of racism where you can't be racist if you are systematically oppressed in some regard. Is that the case?
If not, then you will definitely need some data showing that blue collar workers, minorities, etc have lower rates of racism.
The vast majority of racism I hear (assuming the definition based on race discrimination) comes from uneducated people, regardless of political affiliation.
Living in the bay area, I've encountered more anti-black racism from Chinese people than any white people. Should I take that to presume whichever party has more asians is automatically racist against black people?
Just because a party has more people of a specific skin color than another says nothing about racist behavior. Anything else would imply that the Bernie Sanders crowd is the most racist group of them all (skews very heavily white).
That's all I'm saying. I am not psychoanalyzing Republicans in general. Most Republicans probably aren't racist. That's not my point.
I'm really not interested in what you think Chinese Americans think, sorry.
Of course it can be bigoted. Those minorities do not make up a majority of the party and as long as they feel the goals of the party overall help them more than Republicans they will put up with whatever racist crap that comes from Democrats (e.g. "tell em you're a Muslim" Pelosi).
It's all about tradeoffs, a party that offers racist policies in your favor and/or the refusal to enforce laws that affect many of your people is better than a party with no favors offered, even if the former is filled with bigoted morons.
>I'm really not interested in what you think Chinese Americans think
And I never offered you what I thought they think, so go attack some other strawman to attempt to gain some moral high ground.
People in rural areas seem to think of "city people" as brash, always in a hurry, always on their cell phones, etc. whereas they themselves are courteous, friendly, would give you the shirt off their back, etc. I grew up in a small town in the south and heard this sort of thing a lot, but it's bullshit. It's just one parochial stereotype among many.
Looking at maps like these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2016_Nationwide_US_presid...
http://www.270towin.com/2016-house-election/
is always useful to remind yourself that there are still plenty of 'red' pockets in deeply 'blue' states and vice versa. In 2016 presidential election I believe there where only two states where all counties went Republican and two states where all went Democratic.
True. But you can not organise conferences in the USA. You can tell your employers that holding meetings in the USA is bad. etc.
(For the record: I never had any problems whatsoever both using ESTA and a visa. However, the process feels significantly more hostile and unwelcoming compared to other countries.)
Rennes is kind of a pain to get to, when coming from abroad, but the town and the people there rock !
Pragmatically, this has problems of its own. Most sufficiently large tech companies have a number of employees at any given time who may legally reside and work in the US, but cannot legally leave it and return. This is a common stage in the H1B -> Green Card transition process.
Honestly, which are the non US-centric sites in English language?
The Guardian
And much as I hate to say it: The Mail online
The Daily Mail seems almost entirely Daily Mail centric, reflecting nothing more than it's own bubble of reactionary bile and oxymoronic smug self-loathing.
I would assume that for larger conferences the tendency won't be as strong, but it'll definitively be noticable.
I also see this when doing business; when interacting with companies where face to face interaction is needed there is a tendency to avoid business that requires travel to the US. Either they come here or we find partners outside the US. I know of several concrete business deals that have been made with non-US companies for precisely this reason.
It is tempting to think that this might end when the current administration ends, but it may not. The reason is that the last 6 months have demonstrated how volatile the policies can be in the US and how easily and quickly things can change for the worse. This affects long term planning. You don't want to make long term commitments when you have no faith in there being a moderating force to smooth out the more extreme forces acting on policy.
On the other hand if you have[1] the "good life", you might want to legitimately reduce access to it to those outside[2], especially if you view the outside world as some kind of second rate wasteland (or rich but weirdo culturally, e.g. EU/Japan) that just comes to grab a piece of the pie [3].
With its large internal market, the US was never much for foreign tourism, its average population never cared much for world affairs (except from intervening where their interests are and hating the "target du jour"), and it was never that open to cultural imports (foreign movies, foreign music, foreign books, etc) with the exception of British music, anime, temporary fads (like Caribbean music), and whatever immigrants brought themselves (e.g. national cuisines that got bastadized).
[1] or you think you have -- since in reality they are lagging in several aspects, from education to infant mortality, and the middle class is pressed too much, and let's not get started with guns, police violence, etc.
[2] Whether current Americans are themselves immigrants or children of immigrants doesn't matter much. It's not illogical or hypocritical to want to stop others from getting to where you've gone -- it's just selfish/self-serving.
[3] It's also not illogical to not believe that much in the "pie analogy is wrong because the economy-pie can grow" argument, because they (the US middle/working class) don't see it much happening in actual practice.
We already know that the totalitarian government that it's becoming is a threat to the privacy and rights of people worldwide. Avoid censorship and surveillance. Look for and build alternatives.
Nothing better to change deep rooted policy rot than economics?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
For all the hate that the US is getting, it is still by far one of the largest countries that accept foreigners from all over the world to move in the social ladder and build wealth.
The lottery program alone accepts 45 thousand every year. You can get your mother/son into the US if you are a US citizen. I know many people who moved their entire families to the US this way. Sure the process was a hassle (a multi-year hassle) but it enabled them to access the US infrastructure.
Not that I disagree with your conclusion: I hope conference organizers (and other groups) do start focusing abroad. The only thing that the GOP reliably responds to is the interests of money. Start moving the tech industry abroad, and see how quickly they change course.
Trump isn't representative of the bulk of the GOP, in other words. When he's gone, you won't see this sort of thing re-emerge. As weird as it sounds to some, Trump won mostly because he was not Clinton, not because there's some ideology being advocated here (modulo Supreme Court justices).
1) That doesn't explain him beating out ~12 other seasoned GOPers in the primaries.
2) His platform.
3) Clinton was portrayed as toxic by attacks, not because she was. "But her emails" was something GOPers and DNCers had done for decades before and Trump staff continues to do today. It's not right, but it's not isolated and there are much worse things going on. It's not an excuse, but it was a distraction.
Then Clinton, a terrible candidate who may have been the only person who could have lost to Trump made a bunch of errors allowing Trump's campaign to flip those rust-belt states. The DNC owns some of the blame here for their long term strategy in those states (or lack of). The RNC also are reaping the fruits of having spent years whipping up the loonies in their party.
2) Trump's platform is Trump. Everybody knows that. He doesn't have an ideology. He contradicted himself all through the campaign so any platform is moot.
3) Clinton was unpopular for many reasons beyond the email stuff. In many ways she was a bad candidate. She was an ultimate political insider, for instance. Personal concerns aside, many people who voted against her were also alarmed that Scalia would be replaced with another Souter or Kagan. Even given Trump's capriciousness, they thought a gamble on a "good" justice was better than a guarantee of a bad one.
Probably not for several generations if the GOP get to stuff SCOTUS (which is looking increasingly likely with Kennedy's rumoured retirement and the age of the existing Dems on there.)
[Edit to correctly reference Kennedy instead of Roberts]
These conferences where people around the world meet should start to be hosted somewhere else. Not in the USA anymore. Somewhere in a country that welcomes people instead of treating all of them like possible threats.
Just organize All Hands in Berlin next year. Or Barcelona, or Munich, or Stockholm, or Amsterdam, or whatever. Just not the US anymore. Americans don't want foreigners on their soil. Or at least everything looks that way from the outside. Let them be that way.