Time to Take a Stand | Hacker News Reader

Time to Take a Stand

blog.samaltman.com

1,131 pointssama992 comments

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)

3. Share

  - Tell your friends

4. Vote (https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote)

5. Volunteer

6. Stop reading and start doing one of the other things.

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.

Your congressional representatives voted for Trump's nominees. Remind them who they work for.

Edit: misread 'local congress' vs 'US congress' but I think the point still stands.

Only a little sarcastically:

> Remind them who they work for.

The lobbyists who pay for their luxuries today, and secure their employment tomorrow?

This is true, but they still have to jump through the election hoop.

They just did. The only thing that will worry them is if those that did elect them are abandoning them.

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's not like there's some sort of fuel that is exhausted by voting "no" on Trump's appointees. We will only get worn out if we let ourselves.

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.

[1] http://www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2017/01/26/cruz-...

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.

> Conservatives aren't going to call their reps and they don't have the propensity to engage in the same activism as progressives

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.

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.

Check this out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_the_Tea_P...

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 a hell of a lot more likely to have some effect than not calling at all!

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:

https://www.indivisibleguide.com/

It's all actionable stuff.

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.

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.

Have you read this? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

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.

Second this, I call my reps offices but get a "this mailbox is full" message.

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.

Let's not give up so quickly: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/28/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-f...

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.

Plenty of large companies took a stance against NC. While this is a larger stance, you may still see it.

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.

Could you please true up the information?

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.

I'm no immigration lawyer - just a greencard holder who's been through a couple of adventures in the process. There's a decent summary here:

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.

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.

It helps in three really important ways:

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.

I suck at slogans, but...

"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.

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.

This is not true. The US taxes worldwide income regardless of country.

True. But country of residence gets first dibs, and you get a credit for taxes paid abroad.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that crazy rule. That doesn't apply to corporate taxes though right?

Brexit re-demonstrated that business interests are ultimately secondary to politics, populist politics especially.

Populist is just what the losing side calls democracy.

See also elitism vs meritocracy.

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.

Democracy isn't rule of the majority; that's tyranny of the majority.

That is how it should be in principle. In this case, the problem is not the political system, it is the politics.

(In other words, you get what you vote for.)

Except I didn't. Neither did a majority of my fellow voters.

I am specifically referring to the Brexit referendum, where the majority of voters did vote in favor.

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.

It would be useful for successful for the tech companies start by 1st or 2nd generation immigrants to speak up.

I think the list includes (but I could be wrong):

Apple

Google

Facebook

Amazon

Oracle

IBM

Uber

Yahoo

EMC

eBay

AT&T

Tesla

And, of course, ycombinator.

--->Legal immigrants

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.

The executive order we're all talking about directly affects only legal immigrants, doesn't it?

Pretty sure Elon wasn't a legal immigrant when he started Zip2.

Since this is HN, and, frankly, this audience is bay area centric, lobbying California to push back early and often might help.

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.

I fully support Sam's idea.

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.

/s/majority/almost half

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

These items seem to be the very things that have sapped our strength without any measurable impact.

We need to find more direct ways to peacefully withdraw our consent of and participation in the existence of the state.

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.

>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.

If you are going to contact your House and Senate representatives, you should do this at the local level.

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.

>the people who are pushing this agenda don't care about what other people think

they only care about their agenda. to make them care about what people think, disrupt their agenda.

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.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/255787/#respond

I think you'll be surprised at what people think on this issue who support the temporary ban.

How in 2017 is "calling a politician" the best way to stop an executive action?

Is the goal to DDOS these offices with phone calls in hopes these politicians will rile together and pass a law?

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.

Faxes are actually the most noticeable and effective tactic.

What's a fax? ;-)

Seriously though, how do you know this?

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.

https://dailyaction.org

7. Join a political party (I'd suggest the Libertarian Party, but whatever floats your boat)

8. Donate money to said party and to candidates in upcoming elections.

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.

>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.

Another fantastic place to start:

https://www.indivisibleguide.com/

This sounds really appealing. How do you do this? How do I get started on running for water reclamation?

Try starting here:

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.

Support the ACLU, who have already filed a lawsuit

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/aclu-and-other-groups...

Chris Sacca is matching donations up to 75K. Yes, $75,000

https://twitter.com/sacca/status/825403419376496641

https://twitter.com/sacca/status/825431544022102016

How about the best way:

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?

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.

Maybe Sam Altman, Chris Sacca and the like should put together a fund to help people who will not "just follow orders".

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.

How do you know they aren't already doing it? From what I've read, the Executive Order was somewhat vague. Border officials do have some discretion.

Maybe they are strictly interpreting it in order to cause an outrage?

So not you. Someone else. Well, that's easy then... For you.

Just offering the possibility that some of the workers actually agree with it? That their spine is perfectly intact?

Right now the most important thing you can do is donate money.

Consider starting here:

ACLU (state offices especially) Council on American-Islamic Relations (state offices especially) National Immigration Law Center

Can you expand on why donating to state offices is more effective? And, which states?

The state organizations have separate budgets, and they do the direct work with affected people.

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.

Investigate CAIR before giving any money:

http://www.anti-cair-net.org/AntiCAIRDataBase.html

I can personally vouch for CAIR-MA, CAIR-CA, and CAIR-NY.

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.

I'll add:

7. Contribute money to organizations filing lawsuits against Trump's actions.

> 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.

Boycotts are so effective many places make them illegal.

One of LL Bean's board members thinks they're Unamerican and bullying.

How do you boycott 60 million random people? The statement was about voters, not companies or other organizations.

seems to me like the comment was obviously about other big decision-makers

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.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-immigration-gree...

Too bad it doesn't ban individuals from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (because if it was about islamism, it should)

Also, banning permanent residents is just ludicrous

Muslims, then GC holders. Very soon, certain group of citizens will suffer the same fate.

The prison walls are getting closer... By the time you're able to reach out and touch them, it'd be too late.

Quite. Historically, countries which build walls don't do so to keep people out, but to keep them in.

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...."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-visa-ban-also-applies-to-c...

Here's a non-paywall-ed version.

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.

That is very, very broad.

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.

He's an American citizen so he can't be denied entry.

* As long as he is not a dual citizen.

It is a ban on people coming from certain countries. Religion isn't anyone in there.

It is specifically for Muslims. Notice there is a special provision inviting Christian refugees from Syria (albeit a token quantity just for show.)

> 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 bans some Muslim immigrants and refugees.

I don't recall seeing anything about Indonesians being affected, or Indians, or Nigerians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc.

Here's what the current vice president said about banning Muslim immigrants last year.

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.

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."

-Theodore Roosevelt 1907

That's why I favor outlawing things like St Patrick's day parades - do these people want to be Irish or American?

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 Amish though, they should definitely be sent back to Germany where they belong.

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.

Thank you for this excellent reply. I understand the argument and agree with you. I guess we really can't have nice things.

BTW for confused readers I'm actually Irish and have nothing against parades - this was a satirical argument.

Pretty sure that at the St. Patrick's parade, they just want to get drunk on green beer.

On one hand, Teddy wasn't a very nice man. On the other, the US had a German and Irish problem then.

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.

Data does not support your opinion (yes I know Latinos is only one minority): https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-probably-did-bett...

65 percent Clinton to 29 percent Trump is a pretty strong margin regardless of how it compares to the previous election.

What point are you making here? That you can find a subset within a minority demographic that voted for Trump? If so, that proves nothing.

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.

Minorities always reject republicans. The argument is whether Trump did better with minorities given he is a republican.

Yes it does. The fact that Trump did slightly better than Romney doesn't alter the fact that he still lost big with that demographic.

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)?

So no, Trump didn't get elected because people desperate for a job were willing to overlook his hate.

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.

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"?

> Minorities on average earn less

Tell that to Asian Americans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...

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?

That wasn't the questions. It was:

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.

How is that any different than now? At least the public-facing oligarchy would change every few years.

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.

>racist

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.

Blocking a country is not racist. If the EO was "Persians are not allowed in" that'd be different.

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?

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..

Where in the EO does Muslim come into play?

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.

Where in the EO does Muslim come into play?

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?

And the EO has an exception for 'religious minorities', which are (surprise) never muslim in majority muslim countries.

And the EO has an exception for 'religious minorities', which are (surprise) never muslim in majority muslim countries.

I don't follow..a religious minority in a Muslim majority country would by definition not be Muslim. Why is this surprising?

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.

[1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-count...

how soon we forget. Trump was the world's most famous birther. But no racism there, of course!? right?

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.

You invest in education, obviously. Is there any other method that works?

Get rid of your television and replace your cable news subscription with a library card.

You are also assuming that the racist homophobe will do anything to make sure your children earn more than you did at their age.

racist homophobes

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?

The rabbi at his inauguration? His jewish daughter?

his anti-semite top advisor, Bannon?

not good enough. i still think he should be an antisemite.

edit: don't let little things like jewish son-in-law, daughter converting to judaism and inauguration rabbi fool you.

Kushner. A good chance that he'll use the American veto in the UN in support of Israel.

how does it stop Trump from being an antisemite?

It stops him as long as it suits him.

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.

At the cost of a war that killed the most Americans in history.

> most of them voted for him for reasons other than the promise of a Muslim ban

Source? June 2016, 48% of Republican votes strongly support a ban on Muslims entering the U.S:

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6ecRKMebsPAFHon1HVC86QbFYTg...

That means 52% of Republicans don't strongly support it, and Trump was elected by a mix of Republicans, independents and even Some Democrats.

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)

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."

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.

If you look at the chart again, it shows only 24% don't support a Muslim ban. 76% either strongly or somewhat support it.

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.

So by voting you're responsible for everything the person you voted for does? That leads to nobody but the extremes voting.

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)?

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.

Lay off seeking justice for a while

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.

I think I already pointed out that by 1935 in Germany it probably was too late.

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 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.

How do you propose Trump voters be "held accountable" for their vote?

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?

Glad to!

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:

  http://www.amerika.org/politics/the-peat-party/
  http://www.amerika.org/politics/why-we-need-three-castes/
  http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/07/sexual-liberation-and-racial-suicide/

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.

Ad. your '2', there is a fair chance that at some point violence is unavoidable.

The sooner you start steering away from the current course the better the chances that can be avoided.

But time is running out.

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?

A quick reply because I just got in.

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.

This was kind of long but you should read about who Richard Spencer, you repeated where's the "genocide" thing multiple but I don't know why.

>Who is speaking for ethnic cleansing and genocide? Can you provide citations?

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 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.

Welcome to 2017.

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.'

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.

Do you consider, for example, Noel Ignatiev a legitimate target of political street violence?

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.

Would you mind if people started hitting muslim extremist when they preach their ideology in a public space?

> 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.

Well, we definitely should not 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.

Do you think its possible to change their minds?

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.

[1] https://randpaul.com/issues

certainly bubbles exist on both sides but only one side is proudly anti-intellectual, anti-science, increasingly anti-reason, etc etc

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.

youre a sith bro

Its constructive but not enough.

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.

There are bad neighborhoods in Paris and Rio; how does Chicago stand out?

Last year, it had more murders than both Los Angeles and New York combined. Both cities are larger than Chicago.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chicago-murders-shootings-2016-m...

My question was about the good/bad neighborhood polarization issue in the comment above it.

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.

Rio has a reputation as being one of the most violent places in the world. So I guess it'd be hard to stand out against that.

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

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.

Edit 2: apology rescinded.

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.

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.

>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.

Trump has implied in twitter that he'll use the army and national guard to deal with the problems in Chicago.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/27/illinois-gov-we-dont-want-...

So, he just declared he will violate the Posse Comitatus Act?

There's modern precedent for the President's sending in Federal troops as part of law enforcement activities [1].

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0925.h...

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.

I would absolutely love to hear more about this. Any book/documentary/movie you can recommend?

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.

> Fuck 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.

>Fuck them

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?

So the reasonable people should shift down a gear so that those who take extreme positions are less offended?

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.

>1. Call 2. Participate 3. Share 4. Vote

This is the same kind of bullshit that's lost Hillary the election and got us here in the first place. It might have worked in the '90s to get a gold medal for Rosa Parks. It will not work in 2017 to make Trump back off his core message.

The problem here is not that your side isn't loud enough and can't get political attention for an issue. The problem is that the opposing side is too organized and too strong and already has a decided stance about your issue.

Being more strident won't help. Ostracizing people who have links to the opposing side will positively hurt.

Instead of doing all this "yell out louder" crap, any serious opposition should rather do some serious soul searching to figure out how to win back key constituencies. The only people who need to be ostracized are the idiots who got us here in the first place.

Yes. Instead of another round of finger wagging, maybe the left should figure out what they can concretely offer the local population left out from the globalization boom.

Health insurance? If all those who previously didn't have it and got it thanks to Obama had voted for Clinton, Trump wouldn't have been the president. Too many of them didn't and instead didn't vote, or voted for Trump.

Costly private health insurance is meaningless to the unemployed.

The goal as MLK Jr. states here is:

"You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue."

- [1] http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...

very unhelpful. i think any way to signal that trump and his policies are unpopular is helpful. if everyone knows that a vast majority of people are going to vote against him next time, congress people do not have to bend to his will, and world leaders do not feel as pressured to work with him. it seems like maintaining an illusion of popularity is paramount for history's bad political regimes, i think this is why. even in places that aren't democracies, when everyone knows you aren't popular, you seem to lose power. i think things like marches and calling congress people help because of this. certainly more than soul searching.

>it seems like maintaining an illusion of popularity is paramount for history's bad political regimes

That's why he is so obsessed with crowd sizes and the lie that he would've won the popular vote if not for 5-10 million fraudulent votes.

He's not really obsessed with those things, but it's an opportunity to run elements from the Russian propaganda playbook.

First, it establishes a norm with the press. This administration will lie to them, and blatantly. That way some of them will react more positively in the future when they're given anything resembling an answer of substance on some future issue. It's the PR equivalent of the "negging" pickup practice.

Second, it increases the separation between his core constituency and the rest of the country. He can't afford for any of his core constituency to abandon him, so he needs to ensure that they live in a different reality from the rest of the country and that no logic can cross that barrier. The more that the credibility of left-center-neutral news organizations is destroyed in the eyes of his Fox/Breitbart/alt-right constituents, the more legitimate news/logic can be dismissed by his supporters.

Third, it can help create a feeling in the minds of middle ground voters that the truth is unknowable if every fact is contested. At that point, it becomes a battle of personalities to determine who people believe. Donald Trump, if he's good at anything, it's sounding sure of himself.

These don't work if you only do it once or only do it on the important things. They work over time, based on opponent fatigue to combat every falsehood and our (humans) own natural-but-flawed ways that we determine trust. These techniques start off feeling absurd, especially to opponents, but have proven very effective to dictators around the world, including Russia.

Clearly you've missed the intention behind his statements regarding crowd sizes, which is yet another jab to the news media. It was very successful among his constituency ("liberal media lying again! very devious!") but the message seems to have been missed by the left.

> This is the same kind of bullshit that's lost Hillary the election and got us here in the first place.

Wasn't low democrat turnout part of the problem?

Wasn't running the most corrupt, least trustworthy candidate who couldn't cite a single accomplishment in 30 years of public "self service" THE problem?

The GOP smear campaign was so successful that even many liberals went along with it.

Trump is undeniably more corrupt, less trustworthy and has no experience whatsoever. It shows everyday. She on the other hand was actually a decent candidate with a lot of experience and few scandals.

> The GOP smear campaign was so successful that even many liberals went along with it.

You can say the same thing about the Democratic smear campaign against Trump.

Clinton was somebody who was complacent, part of the existing political machine, and ran on a divisive platform that marginalized 25% of the electorate. Plus it didn't help that she ran the gender card into the ground and got out campaigned by political neophytes in both major parties in the biggest campaign in the world.

False equivalence. Clinton did not insist against all evidence that climate change is a Chinese hoax and the president is a foreign ineligible immigrant.

Trump did not try to paper over sexual improprieties by his spouse, make real estate investments of questionable legality, or handle emails improperly while sitting secretary of state, OR allow an american diplomat to get killed in Bengazi.

What's your point? Clinton screwed up in not exactly the same way?

Clinton lost the election. This is about Donald Trump, who has presided over sexual improprieties, encouraged violence at political rallies, denigrated POWs, appointed his son in law to an influential position, failed to eliminate international conflicts of interest, claimed climate science is a "Chinese hoax", advocated an invasion of North Korea, and lied to the American people repeatedly (birtherism, voter fraud claims, inauguration photos). He is unfit for the presidency.

You're missing the points. Both parties have run huge smear campaigns, and no matter who won, there would have been huge stains on their reputations.

Almost every single thing you've said can be applied to Clinton. She's defended a sexual predator, written off 25% of United States citizens as stupid, failed to eliminate domestic conflicts of interest, used a private email server and deleted emails, destroyed the relations between the sexes, and presided over the death of a diplomat. She is unfit for the presidency.

> Trump is undeniably more corrupt,

Undeniably? Why do you say "undeniably". Almost half the country disagrees with that I think. Not saying he is not corrupt, but I wouldn't go with "undeniably" here.

Won't release his tax returns, appointed an administration full of bankers, CEOs and even family members (nepotism). Didn't cut ties with his company. Mayor intelligence agencies are investigating his relationship to Russia.

> Won't release his tax returns,

How does that show undeniable corruption. He is not legally required to release those. It is suspicious, yes. I wish he did, but because he didn't doesn't mean there is undeniable corruption. There might be corruption but it is pretty deniable

> appointed an administration full of bankers, CEOs and even family members (nepotism).

And Hillary got paid $200k for speeches to the same CEOs and bankers... She appealed to Occupy Wall St. kids in public and also Wall St. That's pretty interesting I think and afraid one of the reason she lost.

> and even family members (nepotism)

True. But Clinton appointed Hillary the head head of the health task force. That is far worse nepotism. She wasn't qualified and it was a waste and a failure.

> Mayor intelligence agencies are investigating his relationship to Russia.

And Hillary has been investigated by FBI since ... forever? The start of her campaign at least. All brought on by her own misjudgment to use a private email server. Which ended up with Top Secret classified material on it.

But the list goes on with Hillary.

* For example rigging Palestinian election:

" we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.” or in her own words: https://soundcloud.com/user-30899546/hrc-determine-who-win-1

* Took $1m bribe from Qatar after she new it was funding ISIS

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/8396

"- Would like to see WJC "for five minutes" in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC's birthday in 2011."

You might say it is because Qatar was deeply concerned about AIDS in the world. And it might be believable except that as soon as the election was lost, Clinton Foundation donations dropped. That is very unexpected as clearly Hillary and her family will now have a lot more time to refocus on charity. Many people might call that whole setup "corruption" and "pay to play".

* Even during the campaign she could not win honestly and had Donna Brazil pass questions to her for the debates. Why? That is ridiculously stupid. She didn't have to cheat. She could have just let Trump talk and bury himself.

* Now also in case there is still doubt about the purpose of many of those "charitable foundations". Doug Band clearly articulates how the "bread is buttered" so to speak:

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/32240 (see doc attachment)

The list goes on. Unlike claims against Trump these are pretty undeniable. Unless we think these emails are doctored and not original. But I think they are and most people think they are.

Lol you mean the candidate that got more votes than Trump?

And those suggestions seem pretty similar to the Tea Party playbook. They were really successful in getting their message out.

I don't understand your point. Who said anything about ostracizing people with links to the opposing side? In fact, Sama said the exact opposite. Winning back key constituencies is all great, and should definitely be done, but it isn't going to do anything until the next elections 2 years away. If you're suggesting we just sit tight and let Trump do whatever he wants till then, that is simply ridiculous.

It's not easy, but protests work. Calling your local congressmen and putting pressure on them works. Remember the debacle from back when Republicans tried to "reform" medicare? People spoke up overwhelmingly. They put tremendous pressure on their congressmen, who in turn put pressure on the party leadership, who then backed down. The same mechanic played itself out during every single government shutdown, where public pressure eventually cowed stubborn politicians into submission.

It's not going to be easy, but some things are worth fighting for. Defeatism is seductive, but isn't going to get you anywhere.

> the opposing side

The opposing side is people who support the arbitary and harmful ban on a huge number of people based primarily on their religion.

No, the opposing side needs to learn some bipartisanship. The idea that a narrow election victory gives the right to steamroller a programme like this through is extremely dangerous.

[trolling deleted]

It would be particularly hilarious watching the left twist itself into knots transitioning from an anti-gun position to pro violent overthrow.

There are other options: nationwide strikes, sit-ins, boycotts and so on.

Sadly I can't remember last time that was effective. I remember Occupy Wall Street from a few years back. So was so much excitement and energy there but what came of it? A bunch of arrests mostly.

There were some anti-Trump protests. Right after election remember people blocking hospital exits, and setting cars on fire. At the inauguration, downtown DC, a lot of protestors torched trash cans in the street and blocked people getting the main event. It was very visible, for sure, but did it have the desired effect? I don't talk to Trump supporters but wonder how many saw the burning trash cans or who failed to get to the Inauguration thought "yap, this has convinced me, I am switching sides and will vote against him next time..."?

Vietnam, MLK, Womens voting rights, gay rights, workplace safety, end of apartheid etc.

Plenty of them all over the world. Occupy Wall Street lacked one thing: a clearly defined goal. You can protest social and economic inequality but that's not the same as saying we will continue to protest until we have 'X' where X is some very clear, concrete and achievable goal.

> Vietnam, MLK, Womens voting rights, gay rights, workplace safety, end of apartheid etc.

Exactly. What is the most recent one? It has been so long. Does this tactic even work. I am worried it doesn't.

> Occupy Wall Street lacked one clear thing: a defined goal.

I think Trump opposition is also in trouble for not having a clear goal unless the goal is "remove Trump because I wanted Hillary to win". It has to be like in this case "against extreme vetting from these 7 countries". Or against "building the wall". It has to be a clear message.

Historically speaking those are yesterday.

Heck, I remember the Vietnam war and the end of it (I was 12 at the time).

Of course it will work. If enough people will get off their well-fed asses that is, and there lies the biggest problem.

> I think Trump opposition is also in trouble for not having a clear goal unless the goal is "remove Trump because I wanted Hillary to win".

No, that would be the wrong goal.

More something along the lines of 'stop this madness or we'll shut the country down until congress presents a working plan on how we're going to:

(1) get rid of Trump

(2) put safeguards in place that limit the power of the Presidency

Way too much power in those executive orders, it should not be possible for a single individual to affect the world this radically on such a short timespan without adequate debate and on-the-record voting by people that can be held accountable.

Republicans are in power, they own this mess, they should solve it. And if they don't perceive it as a mess it is fairly easy to make them see the light if enough people will connect, and I suspect that by now plenty of Republicans see it the same way.

> (2) put safeguards in place that limit the power of the Presidency

> Way too much power in those executive orders,

Makes sense. Coming from Europe and talking to people there, it takes a while to explain to them how the President here has so much power here.

> we'll shut the country down until congress presents a working plan on how we're going to: > (1) get rid of Trump

But what would be the basis of that? Just people saying "not my president". He was voted in by a large part of the country after all.

Now let's think about Google or Facebook shutting for a day maybe. That would get people's attention. Wonder if that would work... it might. There is no real "Republican leaning" equivalent there for those services. Most technology companies which face the public are left-leaning I think. So yeah, I want to see they try that perhaps.

> But what would be the basis of that?

Damaging America, possibly beyond repair. One person should not be allowed to do that, especially someone who was voted in on the slimmest of margins.

I'm trying to imagine how the Republican congress would have reacted to Hillary Clinton signing any of these executive orders, I don't think they'd be wanting for reasons to impeach in that situation.

> Now let's think about Google or Facebook shutting for a day maybe. That would get people's attention.

Just twitter for a couple of weeks. That would at least stop Trump from putting his foot in it for a while, though I'm sure the narcissist in chief would quickly find some other avenue to keep ramming on the buttons of his base.

Oh, another real problem with the US electoral system: no matter what there is a four year lock-step system, even if the outcome is horrible. Elsewhere governments can fall early and new elections would be called. Such a thing would never happen in the US and I believe this is an important safety mechanism.

How about 'damaging the world beyond repair'?

We dutchies didn't get a vote in this, but we will in all likelihood have to face consequences for his actions.

Yes, it may well come to that. Let's do what we can to avoid that.

> especially someone who was voted in on the slimmest of margins.

How so? He won an unexpectedly high number electoral college votes 304 vs 227. That's not the slimmest margin. Slimmest margin would be having a national recount and so on.

> Just twitter for a couple of weeks.

Shadow ban him! Let him Tweet and if he refreshes the browser he'll see his own tweets. Then add a few "great tweet" comments from some robots, but nobody else see them.

> Elsewhere governments can fall early and new elections would be called. Such a thing would never happen in the US and I believe this is an important safety mechanism

Oh, great point. I forgot about that. I remember it periodically when I read "such and such government has fallen" in the news from Europe and then have to explain to the horrified American what that means (they think it means mass unrest, cats and dogs living together, chaos, looting etc)

> How so? He won an unexpectedly high number electoral college votes 304 vs 227. That's not the slimmest margin. Slimmest margin would be having a national recount and so on.

Lost the popular vote and won because of approximately 100K votes in three states.

The electoral college is a total aberration and should be abolished (fat chance of that happening), if it didn't stop this BS from happening it is patently useless, that was the only reason I thought it might have some use one day.

I hope those electors lose a lot of sleep.

> Lost the popular vote and won because of approximately 100K votes in three states.

Electoral campaign strategy is endogenous so to speak. Why would he bother campaigning in a state if he was sure he had enough there to win just a bit over the margin.

I understand if it was a single state that flipped but it was multiple states that flipped, and most importantly it seems he knew he needed just enough votes to flip them. And campaigned exactly there in the last weeks before the election.

The other question is why did Clinton campaign in California and never even set foot in some states that flipped? She was the one supposedly having the most experience and stellar team managing the strategy for her.

I think it is important to not minimize or reduce his winning to chance, it wasn't a random and and not a slim margin of error. Consider he didn't even start on equal footing. He was a TV personality with no political experience, with all mass media against him, with the president against him, without all the Wall Street backing him etc. That means he is even less of a random fluke. I think he is a symptom of something. If we don't understand why he was elected we'll have another Trump and another worse one and so on. Not saying I have a clear answer yet why but I think it is worth digging more in there, mostly on the self-reflecting side than blaming and name-calling side, thought I've see more of the later not the former in my circle of acquaintances.

> I hope those electors lose a lot of sleep.

It was sad really. There was so much talk and a small glimmer of hope that electors would flip against Trump and in the end the opposite happened more flipped against Clinton (5).

“Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.” – President Obama

Regarding the second amendment: ".@realDonaldTrump makes death threats because he's a pathetic coward who can't handle the fact that he's losing to a girl," - Elizabeth Warren

That's mighty clever of you, but there's a world of difference between a random pseudonymous person implying we should take Second Amendment solutions to kill Trump and a Donald Trump implying we should take Second Amendment solutions to kill Clinton.

You're a smart guy: you know this. You can do better.

I'm confused. Was Elizabeth Warren wrong to criticize a second amendment solution to the wrong person being democratically elected?

Just to get us on track:

I agree that talk of Second Amendment remedies is incredibly inappropriate. Random internet comment suggests it, and it should be downvoted. Donald Trump suggests it, and he should be considered ineligible for election to dog catcher, let alone President. Agreed?

I'm hardly a Trump fan, but the American people disagree with me. Insofar as democracy is legitimate (note: I do not believe in democracy), so is he.

>No, the opposing side needs to learn some bipartisanship. The idea that a narrow election victory gives the right to steamroller a programme through is extremely dangerous. Give it a few months and the left will start talking about the second amendment solution.

The GOP won majorities in both houses of congress, along with winning the presidency. There's also no "almost" winning in American politics. The left was shot down pretty decisively and we really need to start thinking about why that is. Call me crazy, but I don't think we're going to win back more of those swing voters by advocating armed overthrow of the president they democratically elected.

> Ostracizing people who have links to the opposing side will positively hurt.

Yes. It will positively hurt them. Consider it a price signal, a message. This idea that we somehow have to be nice about this is wrong. This idea that I somehow have to do some soul searching is also wrong.

For many Americans Sam Altman and Madonna are unrelatable so the messaging falls on deaf ears (or is potentially even counter productive). Nobody believes Google or YC is hiring refugees, or that Sam Altman and others are sending their kids to public schools attended by refugees, or living in low to middle income neighborhoods housing refugees and having to manage the increased violence that ensues. All well and good to bang your hands on a table from the Ivory tower that is San Francisco when millions of people in middle America believe that you are not the one bearing the cost of this "open door" policy. To be effective, I think the message needs to come from people middle America can relate to not millionaire celebs and billionaire tech CEOs.

I find this so ironic. The so-called "heartland" and their complaining about "liberal elites" on the coast are so incredibly wrong. Every election in modern history is decided, ultimately, by these people who let themselves believe that they're disadvantaged and being left out. It's the reverse that's true: they get more representation proportional to their population, they get to decide what the makeup of the majority of Congress looks like, and they're the swing states that decided presidential elections. Meanwhile, in other places like the South or the West and East coast, if you vote contrary to the large majority, you may as well not even bother.

Would you say Donald Trump, himself a billionaire celebrity, is someone Middle America can relate to? Why or why not?

A qualified no - Trumps relatability may not matter in this context. There are two parts to this: the message and the messenger.

Speaking in broad strokes here...

I believe more people are relating to (i.e. are inclined to agree with) Trumps [closed border] message and therefore do not need to relate to Trump the messenger.

Fewer people are relating to the open border message and thus, to help guide their analysis, people are looking to the messenger and finding them less relatable.

So there isn't an equal burden of proof / relatability and that's part of the problem. The left is already perceived as being out of touch and their loudest / most visible voices may not be helping that.

This is demonstrably untrue, the people you're talking about enthusiastically voted for a millionaire celeb.

Furthermore, Sam Altman and crew did not utter a word when people who they _can_ relate to - thousands of legal immigrants from India and China working in technology companies - have been discriminated against by per-country green card quotas. Now the same crowd feel for refugees and other legal immigrants from certain countries being discriminated against. The hypocrisy is amusing.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508050, since it's no more a reply to the top comment than it is to the OP.

Voting and participating lost Hillary the election?

The fuck are you even talking about? That makes no sense.

Furthermore, millions of people voted for Clinton over Trump. Trump has the lowest approval ratings of a new president ever. It's very clear that the majority of the country is against him and his policies.

>Instead of doing all this "yell out louder" crap, any serious opposition should rather do some serious soul searching to figure out how to win back key constituencies

How do you do that without calling, participating, and sharing? These are all key on-the-ground actions for building a political base.

I've worked in politics and organizing for 20 years. You don't know what you're talking about in the slightest. Please stop spreading bullshit.

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...

On the Christian Broadcasting Network no less. This is morally repugnant.

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.

It took 2 seconds of googling to fact check you http://www.factcheck.org/2015/11/facts-about-the-syrian-refu...

How could a stat from 11/2015 possibly cover anything that only concluded in 2016?

Is Newsweek part of the Trump train? http://www.newsweek.com/us-bars-christian-not-muslim-refugee... (mid-Sept 2016).

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.

Or maybe the areas where most Christians live were less affected by the war?

Precisely: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/syrias-christians-stand-by-assad...

More detail here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/25/why-syrian-...

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.

Misleading statistic. Compare the distribution of people who asked to immigrate, not the population of the whole country.

Yet Christians are specifically being targeted in Syria.[1] Wouldn't you think they would be the first ones who want to leave?

[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.

You'll be happy to know that coalition forces have retaken the city of Qaraqosh, referenced in your 2015 article: http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/19/middleeast/mosul-isis-operatio...

But would they be more likely to be refugees?

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.

Christians have been living there since the times of St Peter, of course the vast majority of them are Syrian citizens.

Irrelevant troll.

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.

Christians are being specifically persecuted in some Muslim countries, particularly in those areas under the control of ISIS.

Shouldn't we prioritize people who are the victims of religious persecution.

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.

What's the statistic? The only data I have seen do not support systematic discrimination against Christians:'

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.

> He did not ban immigrants from a single one of the countries of origin of the 19 attackers.

I found this interesting as well

A statistic that someone else saw does seem like the kind of rationale that Trump uses.

Irrelevant. The text of the order is what matters.

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.

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.

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.

> 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?

The religious minority is a nice grey line drawn. Do you consider subsets of major religions separate religions themselves?

A terrorist could claim they are a minority to get priority... the prejudice is apparent.

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.

thanks for reminding us - I just put in my card on a repeated monthly donation. Easier to keep giving if set on auto-pay vs forgetting

I think that the only way to fix this long-term is by winning the hearts and minds of those who think this ban is a good idea, or who are ambivalent about it. Unfortunately, those of us who have been shrilly opposing every move Trump has ever made are perhaps the most poorly positioned to do that. Trump has successfully demonized the voice of the mainstream media and costal cultural elites, and if you're perceived as being in that group, your objections are likely to fall on deaf ears.

We need to find a way to rebuild bridges between different tribes in America, so that we can have a reasonable dialog. I don't pretend to know how to do this, but I'd love to have a discussion about how to get it done. I think that is the only way to keep Trump or someone else like him from capturing the voice of the people long term.

"How to Culture Jam a Populist in Four Easy Steps" https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2017/01/20/culturejam/

Not thinking of dialogue as 'culture jamming' would probably be a good start.

Yeah, the title isn't great and is a bit click-baity, but if you read the article I think you'll find the content much less objectionable.

The article comes off to me as though it assumes there was no inherent flaw in the message coming from the other side. That there weren't enough legitimate reasons to support Trump over Clinton in the election, and that Trump supporters all think the way they do because they were sold some great lie. Which I think is untrue, condescending, and a terrible starting position if the goal is to understand the opposition and try and change their minds.

> Find a wound common to many, someone to blame for it and a good story to tell. Mix it all together. Tell the wounded you know how they feel. That you found the bad guys. Label them: the minorities, the politicians, the businessmen. Cartoon them. As vermin, evil masterminds, flavourless hipsters, you name it. Then paint yourself as the saviour. Capture their imagination. Forget about policies and plans, just enrapture them with a good story. One that starts in anger and ends in vengeance. A vengeance they can participate in.

> In their mind it’s very simple: if you’re not among the victims, you’re among the culprits. In your case, you’re that modern bogeyman called the liberal urbanite hipster who thinks all cultures and religions are valid and equally worthy, who thinks of the working-class disparagingly. You are, in short, ‘a citizen of nowhere’ whose utopia is a massive, world-wide kumbaya with carrot chips, no church, and no soul either.

> Because, again, the problem is not the message but the messenger.

The article is horrible.

is that true? those people represent a minority of the minority of citizens that voted.

there are enough people who hate the ban and the ideas that lead to it to win elections. they need to be activated, consistently.

I know it's an extremely antisocial position but I can't help but feel like most of Trump's immigration policies and outrageous tweets are just bait to keep our attention away from big money legislation that the 1% wants to get through.

For example, the Keystone XL and Dakota access pipelines were heavily debated, protested, and ultimately rejected under Obama but Trump just signed orders to have them built and Sam's post doesn't even mention it. Seeing Sam write about the accusations of voter fraud instead brings this quote to mind:

> The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....

- Noam Chomsky, The Common Good

> are just bait to keep our attention away from big money legislation that the 1% wants to get through.

I really doubt that, considering a vast majority of the 1% supported Hillary.

I'm not sure that Hillary "public and private positions" Clinton is much better in this regard.

Don't get me wrong I'd much rather she won. But even with her in power I think I'd still be concerned that wealth inequality and climate change would continue to get sidelined in favor of never ending battles about racism, lgbt issues, and misogyny.

I don't think that's true. I don't think you hear from the "vast majority" of the 1%

I've heard the exact opposite, people saying Trump's orders on highly controversial but minor-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things pipelines are cover for his less tangible but much more damaging moves on immigration and refugees.

As to your last point, it is not unreasonable to ask the president for evidence when he challenges a core pillar of our society. It is good that hugely significant yet baseless opinions are not considered acceptable, especially for people in power.

I have not heard that. It doesn't even make sense to me given what's actually getting covered in the press is immigration, his crazy tweets, and gross comments on a bus.

Well, neither of these ideas make sense. He's just going through his list of priorities and trying to do what he promised to do. Maybe his tweets are a deliberate smokescreen, but his executive orders are not.

Maybe it's a lot simpler:

Shoot off a whole barrage of policies that are all controversial, and watch the opposition implode as they are unused to debating more than one large matter at a time.

It's both. He knows that if he does a million outrageous things, some fraction of them will get through. Everything is there to distract us from everything; there isn't anything he's doing that's particularly less serious.

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.

> I am affected personally by this.

> 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.

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.

> We need fresh blood, and we need to start now.

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.

> The only way to stop Trump is to silence him by breaking up the Republican Congress majority, and it's only in 2 years.

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.

>Although those countries aren't affected by the ban, who knows when Trump will decide to change his mind at his whim.

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.

>Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans.

This false equivalence convinced people to vote for Trump. No way Hillary would have implemented this ban.

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.

Empirically, it wasn't 50/50, not even among the percentage of the population that actually voted.

That's pretty disingenuous. For the purpose of my argument, 48/46 is close enough to 50/50 to make my point that it was close to split.

Just because a lot of people "felt" something doesn't make it true.

> 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.

Things companies in tech can do:

- Demand to see the detailed plan for TrumpCare. What's it going to cost us? What will it do to our employees? Where are the details? That's what lobbyists are paid to find out. Employers have a big stake in this.

- Demand to see the tariff plan. So far, it's all talk, but soon it will be legislation. This has huge impacts for many businesses. Business planning and investment will stall until the details are settled. Already, you don't want to build a factory in China or Mexico. On the other side, will there be efforts to make it easier to sell into China?

- About that infrastructure thing. What kinds of projects will be supported? Roads? Internet access? Pothole repair?

- How serious is the administration about not employing illegal aliens? Will employer sanctions be increased or more stringently enforced? Will employers be going to jail? On the other side, will the enforcement be effective enough to force growers to use robotic picking? Is it time to get behind ag startups like Abundant Robotics? Get into robotic floor cleaning for commercial buildings?

- Will there be tax incentives for investing in communities in rural America? If so, how much, and when will they become available?

- Will Glass-Stegall come back? That was a Trump campaign promise, and it's in the Republican platform.

Every one of those is a real business issue, and business needs to know what's going to happen.

I think this is a Chess vs Checkers issue. It doesn't matter if you lay out a plan based on reason if the other side is playing a different game altogether.

Check out this simple strategy from the Republican playbook. They pour money into State elections (through Super PACs) during a census year and take control over legislature and the redistricting process and execute a horrendous gerrymandering which drives urban areas out of voting power. This leads them to hold on to a majority in the House at national level which forms the bedrock of their agenda execution at national level.

When have you seen Democrats executing such long-term ruthless strategy?

There is nothing stopping from Tech Billionaires doing the exact same thing Koch brothers did for the past 15 years.

There is that, but Republican politicians will listen to business about business issues.

One other important thing, especially when trying to persuade someone ambivalent or even in favor of this insanity: appeal to their self-interest.

People who don't see a problem with ethnically cleansing the country of people based on religion or nationality are by definition selfish, immoral and hateful. Thus, as disgusting as this is, you will not persuade them by making appeals to the humanity of the people they hate.

Fortunately, even if one adopts a purely utilitarian "whats-in-it-for-me-view" approach, this policy still makes no sense: rather than "protecting" us from the vanishingly rare occurrence of terrorism, these laws inflame tensions between the west and the entire Islamic world. ISIS thrives on division and Trump has just became their all-time greatest recruiter.

Americans all across the world are now in fact placed in more -- not less -- danger thanks to this racist, hateful, Islamophobic and un-American law.

The tariff plan will never pass Congress. It might not even get out of a committee. Except for the most diehard extremists in the Republican party, the tariff plan is an economic non-starter.

Getting out of the TPP affects tariffs. Getting out of NAFTA would have even larger effects. There will be negotiations with China. Tariff changes are coming, and businesses which import and export need to know what they are.

A majority of his voters did vote for Trump because they support his views on immigration. It's why they voted for him. To deny that is to simply deny reality just like Trump does on a daily basis.

Honest question - What will statements by tech CEOs do? Trump has a mandate given to him by the people of your country against the very elites this post is appealing to. The politicians are with him because they want to keep their power.

And am I misremembering all these powerful tech CEOs went grovelling to meet Trump and hoping to have a foot in the door with the new administration with Thiel?

These are turbulent times.

mandate is a strong word when you lose by almost 3 million votes and when only half the country votes at all

He has power, he doesn't have a mandate.

That's why he keeps whining about illegal voters, because he doesn't have much of a mandate when he lost the popular election and won the Electoral College by winning 3 states with margins of tens of thousands of votes.

He clearly stated he would make strong policies regarding immigration. The American people voted for him knowing this and he's following through on it.

I'd say “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” is a fitting name given everything he has said up to this point.

Whether or not you agree, this looks like the democratic process to me. Taking action against his policies after election is obviously fine, but if you cared so deeply then why didn't you do this rallying call before he got elected? He is doing exactly what he said he would do and what the people voted him in for.

* PS: I'm not endorsing Donald Trump's decisions at all.

Sam did take action before the election. This is not a sudden realization on his part. He publicly endorsed Clinton and has given time and money to stop Trump.

> The American people voted for him

No, most of those voting did not.

This is the unfortunate reality that no one wants to face. Trump ran on an anti-immigration platform and won. Contrary to what Sam says I don't think that most people voted for Trump for different reasons. Some did, but for many the anti-immigrant message was what resonated with them. Are these people racist? Probably. Is a Muslim ban repugnant? Yup. But that's how our Democracy works isn't it? Politicians campaign on their platform and if they win they enact as much of that platform as they can. If you're taking a stand against this you should at least acknowledge that you are taking a stand against Democracy. If you don't believe The President should be allowed to ban Muslim immigrants after being elected on a platform of doing so then you might as well be honest about it and say that you don't believe people who want to ban immigrants should be allowed to vote. These people are a part of our country and thanks to our Democratic system they do have a voice, that's the root cause of the problem here.

I agree with OP that there's nothing wrong with taking action after an election has already happened. Although I do think it's pretty futile, Trump has been granted all the power he needs to enact such a ban by our Democratic process.

* PS: I'm also not endorsing Trump's decision.

We've already been through this before though. Interracial marriage was banned far and wide through democracy, but was overturned by the courts. Same with marriage equality. This has been seen as a feature of the system, not a bug.

> why didn't you do this rallying call before he got elected

Before the election, the reported probability of him following through on those actions was 1/3. Now it is 1.

Shouldn't we have been taking a stand against Obama who destabilized the region, was dropping bombs there and arming the "rebels" who had a revolving door relationship with ISIS and other such groups there.

Refugees didn't come from a vacuum and it wasn't some natural disaster. They started streaming in because the West including US has been meddling and destabilizing that part of the world.

Unfortunately it seems profiling to prevent terrorism has worked ok for Israel recently. It is not something pleasant and nice, but so far it seems there have been deadlier and more frequent terror act committed by radical Muslims in Europe than in Israel. People see the news from Europe and they don't want that here. A closer vetting of refugees from that region seems reasonable and letting them in unchecked seem irresponsible.

Hoswabout profiling on "radical" rather than "muslim"? You'd also catch many mass shooters, who (AFAIK) tend to still be radical, but usually aren't muslim.

> letting them in unchecked seem irresponsible

Why do you think they were being let in unchecked? Betcha TENBUX there's plenty of checks.

> Hoswabout profiling on "radical" rather than "muslim"?

You're right probably it should be based on "radicals". From those countries "radicals" would probably be "muslim radicals". From US it would probably be KKK-type militia like the ones from Oregon.

I am not even sure how they would check mulsim vs christian. Wouldn't muslims just say "nope, totally not a muslim, I got to church every Sunday" and they name some church address they memorized?

Then the whole "extreme vetting bit". How would they check? Does US have access to such detailed and exact intelligence about individuals from Yemen to know who did what when there?

> Almost every member of the GOP I have spoken to knows that these actions are wrong.

How about Peter Thiel? What did he say when you spoke to him?

I'd love to hear an answer to this. How is the relationship between Sam Altman and Peter Thiel these days, now that it's becoming clear that Thiel's man is exactly as noxious as the rest of us were saying he was going to be?

This is absolutely nuts.

Green card holders (legal permanent residents of the United States) are being turned back from the US as soon as they get to the airport. They are being forced to file waivers which can be denied.

How can legal permanent residents be denied entry? I mean this has to be breaking So many laws, how can this be ok?

Laws do not enforce themselves. They only have power when there are people with authority willing to stand up and enforce them. Without that, they are just words on paper.

Right now all three branches of the Federal government are in the hands of the Republican Party. Trump has one branch; the other two have no interest in opposing him, so long as he lets them do what they want as well. So for the moment, at least, those laws that all three of them disagree with can be assumed to have gone by the boards.

The problem with this line of short term thinking is that it can backfire badly. Yes, they get 1 term or 2, but then the backlash can bury them for decades. Especially in the context of America's changing demographics.

It's not short term thinking at all. This is the GOP's big chance to roll back the modern American system, which was erected by liberals like Roosevelt and Johnson, and replace it with something more to their ideological liking. Doing so has been their #1 political objective since the 1930s.

Why on earth would they fail to seize such an opportunity? Especially when, as you note, changing demographics mean that another one is unlikely to ever come again?

The judicial branch is not in Trump's pocket (at least yet), but it moves much more slowly than the two others.

How can legal permanent residents be denied entry? I mean this has to be breaking So many laws, how can this be ok?

You have it wrong. The only people that can't be denied entry to the US are US citizens. When I had a Green Card it was made very clear to me that a green card does not guarantee entry to the US.

For example, if you leave the US (and have a green card) for more than 6 months the onus is on you to prove you haven't given up residency in the US.

sure, but of all the people to blanketly keep out, the ones who where actually vetted, did their paperwork and followed the law seems counterproductive.

Former green card holder here. A green card (or a visa) gives you a privilege to entry, not a right.

"The executive order… is tantamount to a Muslim ban" isn't quite true.

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.

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.

The only people the ban will affect will be Muslim people though.

That is not true! My non muslim, citizen brother can't bring in her fiance from Italy because she is Iranian !

Uh.... no?

This ban also prevents any Christians living in those countries from coming to the US as well.

That's not what Trump says. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump...

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.

That's true, it doesn't apply to countries that Trump does business with, including the one that produced most of the 9/11 hijackers.

It actually doesn't include any of the countries the 9/11 terrorists came from.

I keep seeing people repeating this meme everywhere, but I've yet to figure out why it's actually relevant. 9/11 was sixteen years ago.

Because the EO specifically cites 9/11 and terrorist attacks as justification for this ban.

The Iranian Revolution was 37 years ago. What's your point?

> I keep seeing people repeating this meme everywhere, but I've yet to figure out why it's actually relevant

Maybe because the EO explicitly refers to 9/11 not once, not twice but three times.

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]

It's all bullshit.

[1] - https://www.cato.org/blog/guide-trumps-executive-order-limit...

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 think it's shameful to have an open Trump supporter as part of the upper echelons of YCombinator (Thiel).

Everyone is entitled to their opinions. But when you openly support a candidate who likes to "grab [women] by the pussy", and now is making headway into some sort of Muslim ban which was a campaign headline, how will female and muslim applicants feel if they know part of their process might be controlled by someone who finds this acceptable? Might it discourage them?

So only opinions that you deem acceptable are ok. So people are not entitled to their own opinions...

It's perfectly reasonable to kick a toxic person out of your community. Free speech means the government won't put you in prison. It doesn't mean that other people are required to entertain your opinions.

> reasonable to kick a toxic person out

I agree - as long as being "toxic" means hurting the business. But as far as the "community" is concerned, it would be interesting to know what percentage of it might be, if not in favor of, but rather tolerant to Trump being president, regardless of whether he is seen as a "presidential material" (whatever that means) or not.

Or you could get kicked out yourself by the toxic people in your community.

Sure, but don't be surprised when the other half of the country fights back, and starts kicking YOU out of their community because they believe that you are the toxic one.

I could live a very happy life being kicked out of all Peter Thiel's circles. Actually, where can I sign up for that?

Basic human rights are not up for debate. Women and children fleeing a war should not be turned away. In the US, we believe everyone deserves life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I am a life time Democrat, but every time I hear someone bring up the poor taste pussy grabbing comments, I have to ask: do you give Bill Clinton a pass on what happened with Paula Jones? Listening to old interviews as a very young woman, Paula Jones paints an awful image of what Clinton did. There is plenty to criticize Trump for, but nasty comments are not as bad as nasty deeds.

He was reporting a deed. You are accepting Paula Jones comments as fact of a deed, but you are not accepting Trump's own self-report of his behavior as a deed. Remember that the tape also contained him saying things like, "I can't resist beautiful, I just kiss", and "They let you get away with it". These are not abstract tasteless comments, like saying something tasteless about a woman's body. These are self-reported "nasty deeds".

OK, fair enough about Trump. Easy for me to say since I don't like him and didn't vote for him.

That said, it does seem like Bill Clinton's actions were worse. He paid a ton of money to settle the Jones lawsuit, IIRC.

Why does it even matter? Nobody is letting Bill Clinton run the country.

Clinton paid $850,000 without admitting liability to make a lawsuit go away. Jones' lawsuit was bankrolled by Republicans.

Equivocating what Trump bragged about with what Clinton was only accused of is a sad argument.

So, $850K in today's money would be a couple of million? A lot to pay someone, but he got what he wanted in not having to admit liability.

I doubt you have watched the Paula Jones interviews from when she was a young woman, since you don't believe that Clinton behaved shamefully in this instance when he was governor. Clinton was an effective president, but he apparently had his bad sides.

In no way way am I defending Trump, but I am willing to wait a few months to see if he can accomplish anything positive. Then, when I am totally disappointed I will probably get active politically again, probably supporting third party candidates after the DNC fiasco in the last election.

Thank the DNC political hacks for a Trump presidency.

You are aware this settlement was only after the court had dismissed the suit. This was just to get her to drop the appeal.

  In no way way am I defending Trump, but I am willing to wait a few months to see if he can accomplish anything positive.

Wow.

Why "Wow"? He has done one thing I like, dropping out of the "trade" deals TPP and TPIP. Who knows, he might actually do something else I like. Who knows.

Trump was bragging, it's something men do under circumstances.

If you would be a famous rockstar and women(or men) would be all over you, would taking advantage of it be a "nasty deed"?

Let's discuss Bill Clinton when he becomes president again, ok?

Right now, the current president gleefully degrades people. Is that ok with you?

> I think it's shameful to have an open Trump supporter as part of the upper echelons of YCombinator (Thiel).

I think it's shameful to bring politics into tech, it also goes against all that inclusivity talks that people give. Are we going to only allow people into tech if they subscribe to a particular political belief?

> Everyone is entitled to their opinions. But when you openly support a candidate who likes to "grab [women] by the pussy"

It's called bragging, it's what people do, and they make stuff up along the way, here is an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oVoJMVsKtk

If you convict every single man in the US who has made such a statement, you would not have many left.

> how will female and muslim applicants feel if they know part of their process might be controlled by someone who finds this acceptable?

How do you think female rape victims who have been raped by muslims feel about this? I also find it funny that you played the muslim and the female card in one paragraph, go on the internet and look up how women are being treated by most muslim countries.

Lots of hypocrisy here today. There are 11 million refuges from Syria all over the world currently. The US gave shelter to about 0.1%. Fucking ridiculous 0.1%. There wasn't any uproar to hear about that shaming fact in the US until now. But when Trump makes it harder to recruit some IT workers from the middle East the HN bubble starts screaming.

I think the more shocking news event has been keeping out US permanent residents (i.e. Green Card holders) -- people we've legally lived here for years, own homes, have children in schools, contributed to social security, paid income taxes, etc.

Billionaire Silicon Valley tech CEOs are NOT sympathetic characters with the general public. (Or pretty much anyone outside the VC echo chamber.) Might as well ask the CEOs of Goldman Sachs and JPM to "take a stand." The only option SV has is to continue introducing bias and propaganda into their already heavily biased products.

I live in Central Europe. It is really hard from my perspective to understand all that mass hysteria in US, especially in California. Maybe overdosing leftist propaganda causes that hysteria.

Many products of Silicon Valley and Hollywood companies are simply blocked in China. Mainly to protect Chinese young companies. As far I known Google is completely blocked in China. Hollywood movies are also not freely distributed in China. And for some reason it is Trump accused of acting against free trade. What should be the right reaction for Chinese protectionism? More know-how transfer to the land of democracy?

And if you really care about Muslim countries then explain to me: why the PhD brain drain is so good for these countries?

> leftist propaganda

The establishment left in the US has been a supporter of Corporate Globalization for many years. And the left in general has replaced class policy with race and gender ideology.

So you have a situation now in the US where liberal millionaires and billionaires protest against the middle and working class and call them racist, etc for voting for populist policy that protect there economic interests by reforming free trade treaties like TPP and NAFTA, immigration limits, lower taxes, repairing infrastructure and so on, (ie much of Trumps campaign platform).

The outrage is from those who have been consumed by this identity politics and the corporate globalism that sustains it. They have forgotten what economic solidarity is and there policy has little or no recognition of class. Identity and Race are placed above all else.

The time to take stand was 3 months ago. Things will get a lot worse now before they can get better and no amount of blogging is going to change that.

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.

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.

You can't change a closed mind. Trump can say the sky is green and his followers will agree.

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.

I'm not advocating violence. You can't have a rational discussion with people who believe the universe is 6000 years old.

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.

Violence is not the only possible outcome when political discussion breaks down.

Would you elaborate on other possible outcomes?

Winning elections. Peaceful protest. Separation. Apathy. Waiting. Acceptance.

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?

Czechoslowakia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_Czechoslovakia

Unfortunately we have Yugoslavia as counter example, it started off well but ended up extremely bloody.

Thanks! It's always good to be able to know when absolutes should be avoided (as they so often are).

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.

That's not quite correct. It happened in 1977 and in 1982.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_general_election,_1977

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_general_election,_1982

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.

>It's about May 1914

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.

Isn't Trump a wildcard? It was pretty hard to predict his electoral victory at any point before he actually won.

In 1914 the world was a powderkeg and Franz Ferdinand's murder was the spark that lit the fuse.

> Had there been a couple decent diplomats left in Europe the war could have been avoided.

Cf Trumps twitter feed.

We were busy having a "no political posts" at HN.

Ostrich behavior at its finest, though I understand what drives it.

Sama, I appreciate your taking a stand on this, but how do you reconcile YCombinator's ties with Peter Thiel? Actions speak loud than words, and so far we've only seen words from you guys. Be the change you want to see in the world.

Indeed, a lot of words from pg and sama, and no observable actions.

If this is a high priority for you, have you personally dissociated yourself from people who hold views similar to Thiel's? Friends? Family? Coworkers? Employees? Employers? Business partners? Customers?

Sam Altman and Paul Graham have spoken out. Sam has also posted specifically about Thiel (http://blog.samaltman.com/the-2016-election). They've donated to campaigns. They've likely done other things as well. If this one issue is this important to you, indeed, actions do speak louder than words, and I'd expect you to take similar actions in your own lives.

For what it's worth, I certainly have. I'm not being hypocritical here.

Yes, I have. As luck would have it, I also ran for a non-partisan local public office for my neighborhood in Washington, DC, and won. I have about a gnat's worth of power, but I'm trying to use it as best I can... and I don't have representation in Congress.

What are you doing?

I'm actively trying to figure out how people can have constructive discussions with each other. The US is effectively split and I strongly believe that further isolating ourselves from one another only increases the polarization that resulted in the kind of election we had—across the board.

I'm glad to hear you're sticking to your convictions and getting involved. Unfortunately those two things alone, coupled with dissociation, can equally describe a lot of hateful groups as well. It can also lead to the "tyranny of democracy", when those in power aren't listening to those who they may disagree with yet still represent. I think all three (conviction, involvement, engagement) need to be blended for a truly fair and good end.

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.

Well, sometimes an idiot is just that: an idiot.

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?

You are drowning in your own bias. Everybody who disagrees with you is stupid?

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?

The fall of Rome comes to mind.

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.

> 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.

> But how can they carpet bomb the US with fake news from Russia?

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.

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.

Btw maybe you can explain the Taiwan thing to me? Why is it the obviously good thing to keep supporting China in their policy of claiming it?

Well, in a nutshell:

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).

See also: Kaliningrad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad

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 why Democrats lose.

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.

Any Trump supporters in YC are probably smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

s/YC/SF/

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 can't say I feel as bad about that as I do for my middle eastern co-workers right now. Should I?

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.

Easiest way to take a stand is to be logically consistent about federal power - which means be against it always and not just when the opposition party is in charge.

If 2/3 of the country can't agree that it needs to apply to the whole country then it's a state policy and not a federal one. Embrace the 10th amendment and make nullification a common act and not some rare that people scorn. It's the agree to disagree amendment. Push it's use and you can unite this country again because half the country won't be able to impose themselves on the other half every 4 years.

You want to unite the country by making divide and conquer a stronger and more effective political strategy?

Nope. I want to reduce the things that can divide people. Otherwise feel free to have the same polarizing debate topics for the next 50 years.

Amusing how Silicon Valley leadership is now bleeding their hearts out when legal immigrants from some countries are discriminated against. This same crowd had stood by silently when many of their workers - legal immigrants from India and China - had been discriminated against for many years in the name of per-country-green-card-quotas.

How is "we chose to discriminate against Muslim majority countries" any different from "we chose to discriminate against populous countries"? Both look arbitrary to me.

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

Are you referring to the families of refugees fleeing indiscriminate bombing and war?

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.

What objective fact are you talking about?

So Trump is a racist homophobe but he also won the elections: straight and fair. At last 45% of American population is like that - if their "economic anxiety" causes them to ignore rights of LGBT people, immigrants, latinos, blacks, and other minorities, then just imagine what they will do when there is no food on the table.

I cannot blame these people: that is how it is. But we need to accept that fact: we live in a very diverse country where there are people who do not share the same moral values as SV, NY, LA, etc.

Did he win straight and fair? According to Trump there was massive voting fraud. If massive fraud against him is possible, as he asserts, then massive fraud in his favor is also possible. Perhaps we should run the election again, just to make sure.

I think that most Americans, even many Trump voters, disagree with this specific action. The problem we have now is that the left and the press have declared every single thing Trump has done both before and after the election as the worst thing that has ever befallen our nation. The press has left both Trump and the country tone-deaf.

Donald Trump is a man extremely concerned with his popularity and public image. If the media were to present a balanced and fair portrayal of the positive (or non-negative) things he does, he would be able to gauge how unpopular actions like this ban are and would probably listen to the message. But the press simply cannot contain itself - CNN, for example, has turned into HuffPo with a cable channel.

In short, the universally negative coverage of every breath Trump takes has actually empowered him. Trump will do some good things, such as making it less punitive for large corporations like Apple to repatriate foreign cash and invest it here, and he will do some bad things, like this temporary travel ban. The media will treat it all negatively, which gives him carte blanche to ignore all forms of criticism and defeats the entire purpose of the free press.

I'm actively looking for things to praise. If he implements an effective carbon tax like Musk hopes, I'll be on the front lines cheering him.

Oh, I just heard that the Director of National Intelligence and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs were removed from regular National Security Council meetings to be replaced by.. Steve Bannon.

I really, really want Trump to start doing (some) good things so that I can cheer him, but it seems like every day is a new horror.

Reading this thread, I see people saying he is implementing his campaign promises. However, going through the thread on his victory (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12909752), most people seemed to be of the opinion that he will implement none of his election promises (eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12911551). It is fascinating to see how people perceive things and how they might turn out to be. I wonder what more is in store.

People like Sam Altman are alarmed now that Trump has shown he is willing to meddle in labor markets and potentially impose protectionist labor policies. As Sam says, "This is not just a Muslim ban." Indeed not!

This order directly affects me.

But frankly I've lost hope in any political process. I know this is a grim message, but perhaps standing idle is exactly what needs to be done.

I fear people now vote out of frasutration, and leave it to someone else to make the right choice and cancel out their vote. Perhaps it's time for everyone to realise the full force of their voting power, and perhaps it's time to trust the powers to be. That breaking social contracts will be detrimental to The society in the long run and hope that voters will realise this.

My pessimistic two cents.

> Guys, Donald Trump might be President. We need to speak out in our support for Clinton.

Donald Trump becomes our democratically elected President.

> Guys, _now_ is the time to take a stand against Donald Trump.

No, the time was 6 months ago. You failed.

It is astounding to me how little respect Silicon Valley elites have for the democratic process. This article is another instance of the continued marginalization of the massive voter base who voted for Trump, and, if it were read by them, would do nothing but convince them that Trump was the right choice.

How about, instead of saying "Trump is really bad", we encourage those in power to work with him and find solutions to the problems he has highlighted that work across the isle? Sam is just perpetrating class and party politics with this article, and its infuriating.

Balderdash and blather!

This type of empty outrage and chatter serves little purpose.

Well articulated facts and solutions along with the leverage to put them in to practice or enforce them is productive. Tabeth's comments are appropriate and on point.

Sam has clearly proven he is a bright guy, but this is nothing more than a chant for a march, or a pointless drum circle. I know it feels good, and that's not a bad thing, but a call to action should have more direction.

Disappointing.

aren't the majority of Americans in favor of this ban?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/12/18/fox-news-poll-vie...

https://theintercept.com/2016/07/07/donald-trump-backs-off-m...

Appeals to majority do not make sense when it comes to fundamental human rights; we have a Constition for a reason.

More concretely: majorities of Americans once believed that African-Americans could be someone else's property or that a trans-woman is somehow not a woman. Thus this would not be the first time large numbers of (mostly old, white and privileged) Americans placed themselves on the wrong side of history by opposing logic, facts and basic human decency.

> But 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. I am obviously in favor of safety and rules, but broad-strokes actions targeted at a specific religious group is the wrong solution, and a first step toward a further reduction in rights.

I see this mistake a lot. "Muslim" isn't intended to target a certain religion here; it refers to citizenship status with problematic countries that happen to be predominantly Muslim. I support the "Muslim ban", but would be surprised if Trump tried to target Muslim US citizens(especially 3rd-generation US citizens, to avoid all doubt).

You might oppose the immigration controls, but it's nothing more than a rhetorical trick to say they violate religious freedom, so that you can bring up the first amendment. I don't believe the first amendment offers any protection with regards to citizenship status.

Bravo to Sam Altman for focusing on a way to talk about immigration that will resonate outside Silicon Valley. The full-strength SV mindset plays very well in the 650 area code ... but it's less effective and sometimes downright counter-productive in a national context.

Here's the lead story on Breitbart today, demonizing Mark Zuckerberg for his position on immigration. http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/01/28/sheriff-clarke-im-... I'm sharing it, not because I agree with a single word of it, but because it's in the mix. To convince the current Congress (or the emerging Supreme Court) of the merits of the pro-immigration case, the argument needs to be made in a way that polarizes less and enlightens more.

When did yc became a shill for Democratic party?

Why would having opinions make someone a shill?

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 ™

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.

We can no longer ignore these politics.

I haven't been ignoring it at all. I read the news sections of the NYT almost in its entirety every day. Same with USAT and WashPost.

There's a big difference between ignoring it and wishing that wishing that I wasn't immersed in it.

I understand. It's sad and alarming that this is happening. But it's too late to wish that we could ignore it.

> 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

And that's why I'm sad. It's so bad that there can't be an oasis.

Again, not a commentary on the author or HN, but a commentary on society as it stands right now.

Look at it this way:

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."

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.

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

> I want HN debating politics because of how HN debates.*

That only works because HN mostly isn't about politics. There must be a name for this paradox.

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.

This strikes a personal chord. Shortly after 9/11, I had taken a short trip back to India. I was transitioning from a student to work visa, and got held up indefinitely by the US consulate. It was a grueling experience, but what I remember most is how my employer stood by me. They contacted our local congressman, kept me employed, and even paid me for the time I could not work (two months), at a time when they were a struggling start-up. I know I am not the only immigrant who has experienced the incredible generosity of this country. For beneficiaries like us, it is all the more important to speak up, and take actions to welcome and support the next generation that wants a shot at the American Dream.

A lot of people in the comments below are fussing over whether there is a Muslim ban. Well, think about it for two seconds.

1. This doesn't set a good precedent. 2. Donald Trump is aiming for a Muslim ban. He said so during the elections.

He said it during the elections: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trum...

At this point I'm surprised by how many people are bickering over this. Why don't you guys just say that you voted for Donald Trump? That would simplify the discussion.

I hope I am not downvoted because I have a different view.

I think Trump is a show man to some degree. He has said in the past he wanted to be in Hollywood. This is important to understand what drives him.

I think what Trump is doing is a part of a show, to tell his voters he is credible. But I think his long term policies will not be this drastic even if they are. I think the tech community should work with him to do the right thing, dissenting with him is not the right way at this point in time. It is too early to decide that you are against Trump ( as a Tech community).

I do hope that he'll "soften up", but I don't see what consequences that has for now.

Especially his show-man-ship seems to make it more important to show clearly that a significant portion of the public isn't ok with the policy. Some might argue that he's disregarding that side's positions anyway, but he's doing that to some degree anyway.

Also, this is the period in his government which'll shape the rest of his term. There's more freedom/influence initially (government through reconciliation is time limited, no previous deals weighing you down, key personal brought into place). So even if he "softens" later, the consequences will be smaller.

It's also not like just Trump's opinion plays a role - his current alliance of supporters has their own goals which in some cases is only tangentially aligned with Trump's.

(FWIW: I didn't downvote)

"Almost every member of the GOP I have spoken to knows that these actions are wrong. Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, Kevin McCarthy and James Mattis said so themselves when Trump first proposed his Muslim ban"

NY Times says about Paul Ryan today [1]: "House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said it was right on target."

Which one is it?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/trumps-immigration-ban...

The only thing worse than mixing religion with politics is mixing business with politics.

While you're at it, Sam, you should disassociate HN from Marky Mark for building his racist wall in Hawaii. He should be building bridges, not walls.

US immigration policy became broken long time ago. Why the rage only now? I'm not a US citizen and entering the US used to be a major headache every time. Every freaking time. Nobody cared during Obama's time but now all of a sudden it's "time to take a stand". I suspect it's way more about the despise of Trump than real concern about the current state of US immigration policy.

Why do people call this a "Muslim ban", when most Muslims are unaffected by it? There are 200M Muslims in Indonesia who are unaffected, 180M Pakistani Muslims, 172M Indian Muslims, 150M Bangladeshi Muslims, 75M Nigerian Muslims, 75M Turkish Muslims, 73M Egyptian Muslims...all of these people are unaffected by this "Muslim ban"

OK, but they explicitly mentioned that non-Muslims from the target countries are exempt from the ban. What do you call that?

No, they (well, Trump specifically) announced that Christians (not "non-Muslims") would be given priority consideration ahead of other refugees.

Can you provide the source please? BBC says that the minority will have a priority e.g. Shia in Yemen.

http://www1.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2017/01/27/brody-fi...

Perhaps it is because religious minorities are heavily persecuted in those countries.

If Trump wanted a Muslim ban, why wouldn't he ban Indonesians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc?

As a Muslim, I'm quite appalled by the nonchalant reaction on HN, so I'm just going to downvote and continue following the news.

Exactly. Vast majority of the world's Muslims are not affected by the new rules.

Here's a link to the full text of the executive order:

Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States (January 27, 2017)

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3431228/Extreme-V...

I stopped reading as soon as I got to "Muslim ban". Muslims did not get banned.

A Muslim ban would mean any Muslim coming from any country is banned. Sad that this is the level of discourse and understanding these days.

I care more about correct terms than if you are for or against it. Stoking fears over something that does not exist is childish at best.

Trump is not really a "Republican" and the real Republicans don't know how to handle him. What is sad is that it would only take two Republican senators taking a stand to block his legislative agenda. How more outrageous does he have to be before we get two such senators.

We need to take a stand, but I encourage everyone to look at what is happening with depth. The immigration actions are terrible, misguided and anti-Anerican BUT much like abortion or taxation this is the most distracting and highlighted issue in the media.

Surely, we should stand against such a law, and I will. But let us not do so at the expense of more dangerous and less publicized attempts to curtail freedom. This will be fought on many fronts and is much bigger than immigration. We stand to have surveillance bolstered, restriction in our movements, loss of input in our governments behavior & worse. We are entering into a world war-- which is already being fought publicly; and we need to work as a country & the global community for diplomacy and freedom.

Well, at least I hope this puts rest to one particularly galling argument made by some Trump supporters: "If you take Trump literally, you don't understand him."

(...Well, one can hope, can't one?)

Never vote for a politician if you can't take him literally. He might mean it literally.

I question how effective this policy is going to be in stopping the actual terrorists. Just as a determined hacker will always find a way to break into your server/network, the terrorists will find a way to illegally enter.

No 9/11 or later terrorists have come to the US as refugees or from the nations targeted for specific bans, so the idea that this is about protecting against terrorists is pretty amusing.

Its almost as if it is a set of policies designed to avoid preventing terrorism.

Tech companies must use their advertising networks to influence public opinion on these issues.

Instead of ads for products/services, they should allocate space for ethical and moral issues.

Staying 'politically' neutral is no longer an option when we're dealing with issues which affect a great part of Earth's population, like climate change, globalised economy, aggression and war and so on.

Tech companies must get political - in fact, they must reinvent politics like they reinvented so many other fields.

We have to do this now or these people will slowly shut everyone down, like they did in China, Russia, Turkey, etc..

I just want to say that I appreciate Sam Altman for speaking up - I know that just speaking doesn't change things, but tech/business guys are often very cautious when discussing politics, as they fear that making their political stand public may have negative consequences to their business (which might be true), but in times like these one has to take position.

So kudos, Sam, and please America don't go the route of politics that mimic politics of Europe's 1930s (sadly there are also suboptimal developments in Europe).

And yet HC killed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13506412 earlier today.

Can't wait to see what Altman writes when the voter fraud is investigated and it's over 3 million fraudulent votes.

We already know of 800,000 (http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/26/hillary-clinto...). Detroit was apparent. The rest will come easily.

What else is Altman wrong about??

> We already know of 800,000

Well no. The article you posted, which doesn't provide any data or source to any actual study, just says some researchers EXTRAPOLATED polling data, and they themselves say it is NOT plausible for non-citizen votes to account for all of Clinton's margin.

So not only is this hardly anything to base a conclusion off of, the conclusion that is arrived at is that Clinton still won the popular vote.

Focusing on voter fraud after winning is a weird tack to take, especially when the president has a 36% approval rating, so many people would enjoy a revote.

Focusing on voter fraud is critical to sovereignty, especially with future elections coming up.

A nation needs strict voting laws or it is not a nation. Besides non-citizens voting, there were also multiple votes across county and state lines as well as dead people voting. So I'm not just blaming illegal aliens.

Ultimately, this argument is not going to go anywhere, so how about this: How much money would you like to bet, that IF there is a voter fraud investigation, there were over 2,868,520 fraudulent votes cast across the nation?

Approval ratings are far greater than 36% already BTW.

I agree that strict voting is important. I'm just waiting for evidence of widespread fraud before passing judgment.

Most recounts end up with different numbers just due to human error. This is "expected", and that should be fixed.I just read the book "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" and he mentions that there was an election in Washington State that was recounted 4 times with different outcomes each time. That's crazy. And as far as we know nothing to do with malicious intent.

> How much money would you like to bet... I wouldn't bet any money because I have no idea. I assume there is some baseline level of fraud in most elections. It wouldn't surprise me if there is SOME fraud, but as most of the hullabaloo around fraud seems much more ideological than evidence based, I have no idea what to actually expect.

Voter fraud is just one issue with respect to voting integrity. Easy-to-use and understand, verifiable voting procedures are very important as well. The 2000 presidential election made that abundantly clear.

Those people implementing these orders need to also take responsibility for their actions. The concentration camp guards take just as much responsibility as dictators.

So what will you be doing Sam?

I realize this may seem alarmist, but I have to say it, nonetheless. Judging by the pace and effectiveness of policies being implemented, it seems possible that voting might not matter a few months from now. Whatever your action, it must be one of immediate consequences, however small. Call, write, donate, protest, support and spread statements such as sama's today.

I strongly agree and I believe what Sam is doing is essential: People are hard wired to follow social norms, as I once heard a social scientist describe it. If we say nothing, we allow passivity or tacit acceptance of Trump to become a norm. That especially applies to leaders in every community, who have a special responsibility. Thanks Sam for making your voice heard.

If this is a Muslim ban it's a weak one - the vast majority of Muslims in the world live in countries not affected by the new rules.

Does this mean foreign students and foreign workers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen will have to leave America? That's really troubling. I wonder if Canada could step up and take the valuable human resource that America seems to be willing to throw away.

Sama doesn't need to "remind anyone involved in this administration" about how they'll regret the actions of this administration. He simply needs to remind Congress--who can undo an executive order--and he can easily get their attention with lobbying and donations.

I think as a non-US person, I think it may also be time to pay attention to executive powers in the US political system. It is one thing to have a system that will only rarely elect a nutjob but not having any safeguards once a nutjob is elected is too dangerous at a systems level.

To Republican voters: I agree Hillary wasn't the greatest candidate, but there are bigger things at stake now.

You have more power than most of us here to stop this Muslim ban. Call your representatives in Congress before your party allows America to be destroyed by white nationalists.

Maybe under a Trump administration Silicon Valley will also object more strongly to the NSL regime, now that it's "someone I dislike doing something I dislike", rather than "someone I like doing something I dislike."

OK, so take one! Your partner is complicit in this and you still haven't done anything about it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12926843

Google's Pichai had sent an internal note regarding this which got leaked to the press and was covered by the WSJ. What will it take for him/others to make public, target than private, statements?

Why did this disappear off the front page so quickly? It has 934 points and is 4 hours old. Do stories have a customizable weight? Did this one start at the top, like the YC recruiting posts?

It's not a YC post, so it wouldn't have started at the top. It's a submission from an HN member on a blog post by a YC member.

It's likely moved off of the front page for a couple of reasons: it's generated a heated discussion and likely tripped the "overheated discussion detector" algorithm (over 800 comments in 4 hours is quite a few), which will downweight the post. It's likely also attracted a number of HN member flags (though not enough to display the '[flagged]' tag) as there's been a lot of political discussion recently, and from what I've seen in the comments there's a lot of people who are growing exhausted of the politics on HN. The flags will also push it down the page.

in the end only US citizens can decide. as a devotee for freedom and a world in peace i am very worried about those citizens' last decision concerning POTUS. i am not a US citizen. and i never felt the need to be one - just because i was lucky to be born in a country where in my opinion there is at least hope left for a better future.

i hope more US citizens "take a stand" like the OP and show how they want their part of the world to be like.

just my two cents - euro cents (a currency used in another union of only 28 states...)

Tech can also do a lot by stopping moving everyone to California. Winning the popular votes doesn't mean much when those votes only come from states that Hilary already won.

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.

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dGPo9XBIPA

The time to take a stand was a year ago, before the (albeit flawed) democratic process elected a president you now disagree with.

I'm not sure if this will get any response, but figured I'd pose the question since I'm giving it serious thought.

Has anyone considered renunciating their US citizenship? Do you have practical advice on how to go about doing so and handle the ramifications?

Half my earnings going to government through taxes has been a hard to swallow fact, but funding an administration making decisions like this, just seems like something I want to be no part of.

FYI, even if you renounce, you'll need to continue paying the US gov taxes on all worldwide income for awhile (I believe 10 years).

I strongly encourage people who consider Donald Trump to be a threat to consider arming themselves in accordance with the 2nd Amendment. While my hope for the future does not involve needing to use them, if the situation one day comes to that, I would prefer that people who are indifferent to the actions of this administration NOT be the only ones with guns.

But lebanon_tn, guns are scary and you're likely to get hurt if you have one in your house. It's much better to rely on the police to protect you. Why would you ever want to own a gun.

Make sure you also donate to the NRA and support Republican politicians who work tirelessly to protect your second amendment rights...

I generally do. We are a long way from an actual civil war. I am hoping the left is able to view the 2nd Amendment in a more positive light post-election, and hopefully moderate some of the more asinine manifestations of gun control put into place here in California.

If there is one thing about modern liberalism that boggles my mind, it is the simultaneous mistrust of police departments and the government in general, but also believing that ordinary citizens should not be allowed to own semi-automatic rifles. The cognitive dissonance is astounding.

You the people voted for him, so support him. Its a democracy. You dont always get what you want.

And in a democracy such as the US, there are certain inalienable rights to peacefully assemble and protest against perceived injustices.

Blindly supporting a president isn't what a democracy is all about. That's called a dictatorship.

You should boycott every company that kisses the ring: Uber, Tesla, IBM, Exxon.

I have a little private wish that Facebook would identify anti-immigration comments by people who themselves are immigrants and post a big red "hypocrite" banner above their posts.

It's so infuriating how quickly people forget their own past and become entitled oppressors themselves.

Yes, let us shed our puppet democracy for a corporatocracy.

is there an option like "i don't really give a fuck about politics, US especially" anywhere on this site?

He's not a legitimate president any more. This is illegal. Anyone enforcing these illegal orders will be considered criminal as well.

Just because you don't like it doesn't make it illegal. The Immigration and Nationality Act gives him this power.

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump asserts that he still has the power to discriminate, pointing to a 1952 law that allows the president the ability to “suspend the entry” of “any class of aliens” that he finds are detrimental to the interest of the United States.

But the president ignores the fact that Congress then restricted this power in 1965, stating plainly that no person could be “discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence.” The only exceptions are those provided for by Congress (such as the preference for Cuban asylum seekers).

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigratio...

Look how fucking wrong you were, it WAS 100% illegal the whole time. Doesn't really matter whether you like that fact or not, it's still illegal. Sorry kiddo.

It would be a pretty powerful move if the big tech companies all participated in a blackout of their sites/services in protest.

Maybe time to start OpenGov?

perhaps we can use fake / fact based trump tweets to offset his #altfacts? it's asking a lot from the public - but it may help en masse. ~ http://TrumpTweets.io

First, it's not a "ban". It's a temporary suspension until new vetting procedures are put in place.

Second, it's not "Muslim". Muslims from all other countries (some of them pretty large, e.g. Indonesia and Pakistan), will experience no change in their ability to enter the US.

Other than Iran (which imo shouldn't be on the list) we're bombing and droning all of those countries at the moment. It's insane to accept military age males from there for entry into the country, particularly if information about them is very sparse (which in war torn countries it typically is).

But there's another aspect of this that baffles me. Somehow Sam has no issues with democrats totally destabilizing the Middle East, and funding/arming ISIS to depose Assad. Yet the moment Trump attempts to mitigate the negative side effects of that to this country, "it's time to take a stand". The time to take a stand was back when Obama and Clinton armed extremists in Iraq and Syria -- years before Trump.

> First, it's not a "ban". It's a temporary suspension until new vetting procedures are put in place.

He's got his foot in the door. That's all he needs right now.

> But there's another aspect of this that baffles me. Somehow Sam has no issues with democrats totally destabilizing the Middle East, and funding/arming ISIS to depose Assad. Yet the moment Trump attempts to mitigate the negative side effects of that to this country, "it's time to take a stand".

Taking who started it out of the equation, I find it morally repugnant for the USA to destabilise a region then find it acceptable to callously turn away those who were victims of that away.

Trump stated his intention to stabilize the region. So far he has demonstrated very clearly that he intends to keep his promises. All that needs to happen there is we need to stop arming ISIS, and join forces with Russia and Assad's government to destroy ISIS. It'll be over in a year or two.

And if you find the US interventionism repugnant, congratulations, we now have a president who is against it, too.

Simple right? Just destroy them. I'm sure Trump will be able to stablise the Middle East no problem. He's well versed in Middle Eastern politics and warfare and crucially he's got a level head and able to think decisions through properly which he's proven since becoming president.

Destroy the most radicalized, enforce Syrian law for the rest. There's nobody that can do the job better than the Syrian government (which is more "well versed" in local politics than any White House hack will ever be). That's the only way to minimize the body count.

Yeah, supporting an anti-American dictator with a very dubious human rights record couldn't possibly backfire at all.

Wasn't Syria one of ye old state sponsors of terrorism?

Do you think US' persistent attempts to depose him that have utterly wrecked his country maybe have anything to do with that? Moreover, do you think if the US helped him undo the damage that sentiment would change? IIRC, he did say that he would welcome our help.

Syria was on the state sponsors list when it was created in 1979. So, unless the al-Assads are prescient, probably not. More likely factors are the US support for Israel, Syrian support for Palestinians, particularly Hezbollah, and possibly leftovers of the cold war.

As for US attempts to depose him, as far as I know, those only started after his 2011 crackdown on Arab Spring protesters, which set of the civil war. Syrian behavior after hypothetical help from the US to crush the rebellion, that would probably depend on how long a leash the Russians have.

> I'm sure Trump will be able to stablise the Middle East no problem.

Well at least he'll stop arming them, that would be a good first step towards progress.

Oh? When did he sign that?

A few days ago (I think), maybe a week, when Mattis became the Sec of Defense.

You mean the guy who, exactly a week ago, said that maybe the USA will have another chance to "keep the oil" from Iraq?

Here's the quote from his speech at CIA:

"We don’t win anymore. The old expression, “to the victor belong the spoils” -- you remember. I always used to say, keep the oil. I wasn’t a fan of Iraq. I didn’t want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you, when we were in, we got out wrong. And I always said, in addition to that, keep the oil. Now, I said it for economic reasons. But if you think about it, Mike, if we kept the oil you probably wouldn’t have ISIS because that’s where they made their money in the first place. So we should have kept the oil. But okay. (Laughter.) Maybe you’ll have another chance. But the fact is, should have kept the oil. " [1]

Claiming that Trump is against interventionism is just you projecting your own wishes and hopes onto the blank canvas of his mind.

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-cia-speech-transcript/

Who would you rather get to "keep the oil"? The country that sunk hundreds of billions into first destroying and then rebuilding Iraq, or some other country?

It's the white man's burden, after all.

I'm not really sure what you're asking? The oil is in Iraq and by international law belongs to Iraq, not the USA or some other country.

But even assuming that the USA should "keep the oil" -- how would that work in practice? You can't just pump it all out and make a quick exit. Estimates say that there is 140 billion barrels of the stuff. (That's over 22 cubic kilometres!)

The United States would have to maintain an occupation force to protect the wells and pipelines for years while they're enjoying the "victor's spoils", as Trump puts it.

It's unlikely that any other country would purchase oil produced under such circumstances, so the oil would also have to be shipped to America... And the only shipping route out of Iraq goes right under Iran's nose. You can see how this might escalate quickly.

Trump's idea of keeping Iraq's oil would make for an interesting plot point in an alternate history fiction about World War III.

I don't mean just take it for free, that's not going to work. But I don't see why US companies should not receive a modicum of preferential treatment. As things are right now, US spent hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives to remove Saddam, and then other countries (China, Russia, Turkey, etc) moved in and took advantage of the oil. That's idiotic.

How are we arming ISIS?

> He's got his foot in the door. That's all he needs right now.

That's a nice slippery slope you got in there. There's zero mention to muslims in the text of the order, and it's clearly stated that it's temporary, with several revision dates for assesment, the goal being to strengthen the vetting procedures.

I bet most people commenting here haven't read it. Do it. Now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/refugee-musli...

What's wrong with using the slippery slope argument here? Regarding slippery slope logical fallacy:

> This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because there is no reason to believe that one event must inevitably follow from another without an argument for such a claim.

In this instance, plenty of reason and argument to believe this event will lead to another. It's what he campaigned on.

> There's zero mention to muslims in the text of the order

Plenty of Muslim mentions in his campaign.

- A ban is not needed while revising the rules.

- Revision doesn't mean suspension of the ban.

- Temporary can mean indefinitely.

- The overwhelming number of terrorists that commit acts of terrorism on American soil come from people born in the United States of America.

Holy shit, no one has actually read the text. Why do I bother.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/refugee-musli...

> (c) To temporarily reduce investigative burdens on relevant agencies during the review period described in subsection (a) of this section, to ensure the proper review and maximum utilization of available resources for the screening of foreign nationals, and to ensure that adequate standards are established to prevent infiltration by foreign terrorists or criminals, pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order (excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas).

> Revision doesn't mean suspension of the ban

Doesn't mean not suspending it either.

> Temporary can mean indefinitely.

It can also mean temporary.

> The overwhelming number of terrorists that commit acts of terrorism on American soil come from people born in the United States of America.

I can also say, without sources, that, if you account immigrants and children of first generation immigrants, there's a disproportion of immigrant attackers vs the total US population, meaning, there's a far higher chance of a terrorist attack resulting of a poor immigration vetting process.

> there's a disproportion of immigrant attackers vs the total US population

There is a willful ignorance of this among some political groups here. Attack after attack, they refuse to acknowledge the problem and thus refuse to entertain basic preventative measures. We restricted Nazi immigration, we restricted communist immigration, and we should certainly restrict Muslim extremist immigration. There is difficulty in separating extremists from moderates (who are a welcome addition to our country), but in order to create a proper vetting process, we first need to recognize the problem and the need for a solution.

> Holy shit, no one has actually read the text. Why do I bother.

Please don't be rude in comments here.

The HN guidelines specifically ask you not to use the "you didn't even read the article" trope, and you've done that repeatedly in this thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Wait. Did you just tell him to "read the rules" because he keeps telling other people to "read the article"? Why not try obeying the rules yourself, for once.

He did, because (1) he's a moderator on the site, and (2) the rules, which you clearly haven't read recently either, specifically say not to insinuate that other commenters haven't read the article.

Yes, but the more important point (and rule) is not to be rude.

You may not have followed his link, but this isn't a standard case of "you didn't even read the article". By "the text", he means the actual executive order, which strangely isn't linked from Sam's piece. His frustration is that people are reading the blog post, but seem oddly disinterested in the primary source, which he feels contradicts (or at least complexifies) many of the points that Sam makes.

I wonder if the discussion might be more productive if you switched the URL to the primary source: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3431228/Extreme-V....

I know you mean well. Perhaps you could extend me the same courtesy.

I in fact did read the text. Specifically because you pointed it out, not in spite of. If your knee jerk reaction is to assume I'm that dumb (the insinuation I am getting), it's really difficult for me to be constructive. And makes me wonder just who you think reads these forums.

All that being said, forgive me for not engaging in this any further.

Can I be the first person here to point out that armed toddlers killed more people last year than extremists of any variety, and that the armed toddler threat becomes even more terrifying when you factor out right-wing extremists (who represent a significant fraction of terrorist murders in the US) and attacks from US citizens? 21 people are killed every year by armed toddlers, compared to 2 from foreign-born Islamic militants.

A threat that is not overstated is the risk to Muslim minorities in Syria and Iraq. Armed toddlers, lightning strikes, and even lawnmowers (a threat that dwarfs all previously stated causes of violent death in the US) are a trifling concern to a Yazidi in the path of Syrian civil war conflict, either from ISIS or from mortar shelling from the Syrian regime.

And, of course, as we consider who's being harmed by this ban, it helps to remember that the ban also applies to lawful permanent residents of the United States. The spouses of many --- actually, 3 in 4 --- American citizens are LPR non-citizens; they've lived here for in many cases decades but can't return back (or, at this point, ever leave to visit family). No American can look at that situation and call it right or just or tolerable.

3 in 4 spouses of American citizens are LPR non-citizens?

No, 3 in 4 LPR spouses of US citizens don't go on to get citizenship --- LPR status without citizenship is the normal case.

If you accept the premise (that the visa system has holes) then of course you would want to suspend immigration from high risk areas while those holes are addressed. Of course, I'm sure you don't agree with the premise. But you should at least acknowledge that if you did, that a suspension would be needed while revising the rules. To do otherwise would be transparently stupid, since it would basically advertise the vulnerability while leaving it open, giving people a timeline to exploit it.

> 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 vast majority of Middle East refugees are Muslims in the majority in their countries, so here the Secretary of State is directed to prioritize non-Muslims.

> The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law.

What does this mean? Trump is in charge, and he has made it clear that this is how he sees Muslims.

Trump has also specifically stated he will prioritize Christians: http://www1.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2017/01/27/brody-fi...

Finally, there's nothing wrong with a slippery slope argument when Trump has explicitly stated that he wants to get to the bottom of the slope.

> 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 still on his website. We don't have to guess what he'll try to do next, he's already told us.

> The vast majority of Middle East refugees are Muslims in the majority in their countries, so here the Secretary of State is directed to prioritize non-Muslims.

Right, that's because those are the ones being persecuted and killed under dhimmitude by the Muslim majorities.

(Not PC to point this out, I realize.)

I don't care if it's PC, it's wrong. Please look up what's happening to Sunni Muslims around the Middle East.

> It's insane to accept military age males from there for entry into the country

That's why there's a procedure for obtaining a visa. Individuals from those countries can only go to the US in possession of a visa

Yes, and US government is making changes to this procedure.

And if you had read the text, which you clearly haven't, you'll see that there have been issues with the visa process, and the new administration wants to review it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/refugee-musli...

Go read it, now.

Reviewing the visa process is fine

However the lack of concern with Saudi Arabian citizens just shows how this is nothing but smoke and mirrors

Agreed. Given their history, and the involvement of officials of Saudi Gov in 9/11, they should also be included. Obvious reason I can think for not doing it are

- business ties : weak reason - given that, as little as we'd like the country, it's a stable one, and this could destabilize it, and the entire region, even more : weak reason too - US currently engaged in a war with Yemen with Saudi allies : strong reason. You need to undo this first

> shows how this is nothing but smoke and mirrors

False. It's incomplete. But poorly vetted immigration has been a gold mine for terrorism, and general destabilization. Look at Europe.

> False. It's incomplete.

Such an obvious vulnerability as this is either gross incompetence or due to the original action being nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Pick one

Logical fallacy.

"I can't cover 100% immigration threats"

"Thus, I shall cover 0%, instead of 50%"

"Otherwise, it's smoke an mirrors"

Bullshit. The goal is claimed to be reduction of the risk of jihadists immigrating to the US to cause harm to Americans. You claim seems to be that by not including Saudi Arabia this will have no such effect. This claim is transparently false, unless you believe a) there is zero risk of jihadists at all in the first place, or b) that literally every jihadist who would have normally come from their country of origin will now instead fly to Saudi Arabia or another country on the non-suspended list to enter. Surely you can see how both of these is false.

> from their country of origin will now instead fly to Saudi Arabia

The fact that you believe subjects are allowed by flight origin rather than by a proof of nationality document like their passports shows a lot about your lack of understanding of the issue

point taken, bad actors could of course get false passports while still traveling from the countries on the list. perhaps now that i've accepted your point, you can try to resist additional ad hom attacks and actually address the structure of my counterargument as to why your overall argument is wrong?

"Saudi Arabia has long been at war with al Qaeda and its extremist affiliates. In August 1996, bin Laden called for jihad against both the United States and Saudi Arabia with the publication of his first fatwa. The 30-page “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Sanctuaries” prompted the kingdom to revoke the al Qaeda leader’s Saudi citizenship and to divest him of his family fortune.

The kingdom’s conflict has continued in more recent years. In December, the Saudi defense minister established a coalition of 39 Muslim-majority countries with a specific mandate to combat al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Shiite terror group Hezbollah. Saudi counterterrorism security forces are on the front lines every day taking the fight to al Qaeda; hundreds of Saudi security officers have been killed in the line of duty at home, fighting Islamist militants. As recently as April 5, militants attacked and killed a senior Saudi security officer outside Riyadh.

U.S. intelligence and security officials have been particularly effusive in describing the important role Saudi Arabia has played in cutting off the sophisticated global network of illicit finance used by terrorists. According to the State Department, “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s lack of success in Saudi Arabia can be attributed to the Saudi government’s continued domestic and bilateral efforts to … counter terrorism and violent extremist ideologies.”

The truth is plain: Americans are safer today because the kingdom has foiled numerous al Qaeda terrorist plots targeting the U.S. homeland. Adam J. Szubin, Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, recently praised the kingdom’s aggressive stance against terrorism as reflecting “the strength of U.S. and Saudi cooperation on countering the financing of terrorism.”"

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/20/saudi-arabia-is-a-great-...

Our relationship and the dynamics of Middle Eastern politics are extraordinarily complicated. To simply boil down our relationship to the Saudis as "majority of 9/11 hijackers came from there, therefore terrorist state" is reductionist. The House of Saud is not a monolithic structure and there are a lot of differing opinions on how to take the country forward. Deeper reading into the nature of Middle Eastern politics and our relationships to people in the region should quickly reveal that nothing is simple.

Pakistan is another good example. Supporting them is necessary for a variety of defense/political needs. Logistics with Afghanistan, pressure to be placed against the mujaheddin that use Pakistani tribes as a base of support, counter balance against China, etc. Yes Pakistan has a murky relationship with terrorism due to their use against India in proxy warfare. That doesn't change the reality that opting to alienate the Pakistanis just makes life worse for us.

These are not one subject issues. Like anything else involving millions of people, our reasons for taking action are multi level and multi issue. It is an immense disservice to career diplomats and policymakers to reduce concerns down to a single thing. There are no clean answers.

Thanks for this comment. But the issue is more complicated w.r.t SA https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/world/middleeast/saudi-ar...

Agree with your Pakistan comments

Oh I agree about SA. They are not fully our allies and they aren't fully our enemies. I linked the article mainly to illustrate that things are not so clean cut. I just constantly see "9/11 hijackers" parroted with no other considerations of the ramifications of a SA ban and what it would mean for us.

My primary goal right now in these discussions is to expand the minds of the people on HN who seem to be overly myopic. These are complicated topics that have many moving parts.

> military age males

What that even means? A 30 years old PhD student researching quantum computing was barred from entering the U.S. You broad brush painted him too.

A 30 year old male is a military-age male, PhD or not.

I mean, if we're already going to use faith-based targeting, might as well throw a little sexism in the mix for full effect.

But it's true, men have borne the brunt of war in antiquity and in modernity. There is no sexism and frankly it's disheartening to hear people reach that far when the facts stare you right in the face.

If we're going to take things to their logical conclusion then we'll have to accept re-inviting WWI into our collective consciousness -- an entire generation of young men were be wiped out then.

The language is important because it exemplifies a state of total war[1] where the citizenry is divided into combatant and non-combatant, and all things considered that usually means men -- all young and old -- and everybody else are separated. Once separated we have a go at each-other and the last man standing wins.

The term "military-aged male" offers insight into what we will have to face and hopefully whenever you see that it will be sobering for you.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war

> First, it's not a "ban". It's a temporary suspension until new vetting procedures are put in place.

A 90-day suspension and a ban are the same thing. ban is defined as "officially or legally prohibit." -- duration is irrelevant.

> Second, it's not "Muslim"

The executive order specifically exempts people of minority religions in those countries "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".

All of the countries in question have Islam as the primary religion. If it was targeting nationality only, they would not provide an exclusion for minority religions.

The ban is targeting Muslims (and only Muslims) of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

You completely failed to address the OP's comment about the largest Muslim countries in the world (Indonesian and Pakistan) not being a part of the ban.

If Trump was targeting Muslims, wouldn't he have started there?

Perhaps because he has business interests there? Pakistan is particularly interesting because the San Bernadino shooters were from there. Saudi Arabia is also not on the list, despite being the home of Wahabist terrorism. I'm totally against the ban, but these inconsistencies are revealing.

http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2017/01/26/countr...

The inconsistent treatment of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is bipartisan and predates Trump's presidency by a long time. Remember how a number of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and their role was basically ignored? How the Saudis donated large sums to the Clinton Foundation? How we've provided large sums of military aid to Pakistan since 2001?

> If Trump was targeting Muslims, wouldn't he have started there?

He campaigned on a Muslim ban. Why try to randomly guess at his intentions, when he stated them over and over again, clear as day?

Let's focus here. The claim is this is a ban on Muslim's, yet the vast majority of Muslims in the world are unaffected.

It is a partial fulfillment of the goal Trump explicitly stated repeatedly during the campaign: "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the country".

He has taken a very large concrete step toward this outcome, explicitly and obviously in service of it. To claim otherwise requires both being obtuse about the wording and the belief that Trump won't do what he said he was going to do. After the events of the past week, the latter claim seems indefensible.

There are a lot of people who will happily accept a temporary suspension of immigration from countries full of ISIS fighters who are trying to exploit our immigration system based on the president's word that the various security services need 90 days to tighten things up. There are a lot of people in this group who also will go out and protest if literally anything more aggressive is done from here (and who also vehemently opposed the original proposal during the campaign.)

The slippery slope fallacy falls short.

> There are a lot of people in this group who also will go out and protest

Trump, of all people, has given no indication at all that his policy decisions will be swayed by protest.

> The slippery slope fallacy falls short.

It's not a slippery slope when Trump said that a Muslim ban was what he was going to do! It's not "oh, he might bring up banning all Muslims from entering at this rate". He already said he wanted to do that. Explicitly.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-a...

You're being selective in your quote of Trump. What he said was...

* “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.” *

That is a very different statement from you said.

We who oppose this ban are not opposing it because we think it will be permanent. We are not OK with a temporary ban either. (Few think that this xenophobic era of far right blood-and-soil nationalism will last forever, after all.)

That's your prerogative to oppose the ban.

However, stopping all immigration from countries that have been deemed "high risk" until the security of the US can be improved does not seem like an outrageous move to me.

Not so clear to me:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/13/politics/donald-trump-muslim-b...

He seemed to backtrack. At this point in May he even called it temporary.

Flipping the question, if it's against extremism then where is Saudi Arabia on the list? How can you invoke 9/11 as your justification and not have Saudi on the list?

> The executive order specifically exempts people of minority religions in those countries

I'm sorry, but are you actually upset by a provision that makes an exception for those being actively persecuted because of their religion?

Regardless of what you may think of the executive order, I'm not sure how you can find fault in that.

I'm not taking a stance here, I'm using facts to prove that this ban is targeting Muslims (and only Muslims) of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

But not Muslims from the 189 remaining countries. So maybe it's not, in fact, about Islam per se? Do you think there is such a possibility?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country

It's about Muslims (and only Muslims) from the 7 listed countries. I'm not sure how to make this any more clear.

> It's about Muslims (and only Muslims) from the 7 listed countries.

Emphasis mine. Why those 7 countries specifically though? Anything special about them?

We don't have close economic dependencies on them?

No. We're actively bombing the shit out of them using drones and have been for a while. All except Iran, I think that one is there to send a message.

All the banned people are Muslim, but not all Muslims are banned.

Person who enacted the ban campaigned on banning Muslims. Perhaps it's not some sort of big coincidence.

> Emphasis mine. Why those 7 countries specifically though? Anything special about them?

I dunno. Is there?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/refugee-musli...

"The visa-issuance process plays a crucial role in detecting individuals with terrorist ties and stopping them from entering the United States. Perhaps in no instance was that more apparent than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001"

So the EO cites September 11 and other terrorist attacks. Yet most of the 9/11 attackers came from Saudi Arabia. Why is it not on this list?

Is ISIS trying to export fighters through Saudi Arabia? Perhaps there are other constraints we have in our relationship with Saudi Arabia that would prevent such a ban? Perhaps this would be a bad move diplomatically? I'm sure if you think hard you can probably come up with more reasons, but I don't think you're interested in it, you just want to try to point out hypocracy. Or, maybe you are suggesting that the suspension did not go far enough?

> Yet most of the 9/11 attackers came from Saudi Arabia. Why is it not on this list?

Regarding those attacks, Al Qaeda deliberately sourced the majority of the attackers from Saudi Arabia because the strategy at the time was to drive a wedge between that country and the USA.

The response to that tactic was quite clever, between April and August 2003 the USA moved its based military forces from Saudia Arabia to Bahrain. On the face of it this seemed to meet one of Al Qaeda's primary demands and seemed to validate their choice of attackers' nationality, but it actually served the Saudi Royals very well in that it pulled the rug from under those in their country who were leaning towards Al Qaeda's message of 'occupation'.

The USA and KSA still have very cordial relations so there's no realy surprise as to why it's not on the list.

Then there's that oil thing.

What this is really about for executives like Sam is Trump's meddling in the free movement of labor.

Where the action goes wrong is in its banning of our Kurdish and Iraqi brothers and sisters who have fought alongside US & NATO troops for years now.

> What this is really about for executives like Sam is Trump's meddling in the free movement of labor.

Bingo. It would substantially increase the cost of labor in the short-term.

Notice how there's no outrage over a dozen other outrageous things done by Trump over the last week ... just this specific one.

> Where the action goes wrong is in its banning of our Kurdish and Iraqi brothers and sisters who have fought alongside US & NATO troops for years now.

Agreed.

Obama is the only President who has been in war for everyday of his 8 year presidency. Bombing several countries at the same time. Obama's actions also created the vacuum for ISIS. At least he has his Nobel Peace Prize.

No outcry or marches against Obamas actions, but goodness me when Trump has to clear the mess 'well take a stand against him'.

One of these things happens abroad - out of sight, out of mind - another happens at home.

One of these things happens as part of a (relatively) few "outrages", one of those things happens as part of a consistent torrent of outrages.

One of these things is a fact and an action, the other is an interpretation. In case that isn't clear: The interpretation is "clearing the mess"; I sure as shit don't agree with you that that's what's going on, and I doubt Sam does, either - which is part of why he's posting this.

We've been killing Muslim families in these countries for years, even under Obama (a Nobel Peace Prize winner.)

Like or hate Trump, I'm surprised that now is the time to be outraged. It should've been ages ago.

I suspect the outrage has less to do with a rational analysis of polices and world events and more to do with virtue signaling and groupthink.

I'd respect some of these people (like SamA, and Zuckerberg, and others) much more if they were consistent in their views. These millionaires/billionaires who supported Sec. of State Clinton during her election, fully knowing the loss of Muslim life her actions caused abroad, now virtue signaling about Trump -- I just don't know how to take them seriously.

I'm glad I'm not the only person that picked up on this.

It's a little hypocritical to get outraged when the opposition does it and keep silent when your own party does the same thing.

Another way to look at it is the problem that many people rely on the news to tell them when something bad is happening. If you don't analyze your sources constantly due to a variety of reasons, then you are suspect to being rendered blind simply by omission. If you don't realize how badly the media sphere has gotten polarized since the 2000s, it is easy to dismiss valid critiques as bad faith partisan smears. Consumption of the news in a single source method is a great way now to turn yourself into a partisan.

In the age of a non stop stream of content with an unprecedented amount of choice, it can be difficult people to exert the discipline needed to consume in a method that creates a nuanced world view. People have jobs, kids, and things they'd rather do than confronting and synthesizing opposing viewpoints. It's just easier to wrap yourself in a bubble rather than change your worldview. The destruction of the era of responsible, sober journalism due to the economic realities and consumption habits of people is wreaking havoc in our political system. It doesn't help that there are inherent biases in many journalists themselves.

We've placed an increased burden on the American population to sort through a cacophony of bias to create the truth. Is it a small wonder than considering people never had to before, we're falling so short now?

Another way to look at it is the problem that many people rely on the news to tell them when something bad is happening.

That is really true. The media doesn't report news, it interprets news for you as well.

Whenever I see an outrageous headline I always think "That sounds like BS. There is probably a pretty good reason for this happening."

A great example was the man who found a line on his hospital bill for "holding his baby". The outrage!! Those greedy hospitals!

Turns out that the hospital needed to have nurse in the room and that's just how they bill for that time. Completely innocuous and reasonable. But did the media dig that up? Of course not. No one would click on an article that said "Hospital bills man for nursing services."

It's still outrageous.

Why the nurse? Were these people out on parole/probation/bail for child abuse? No, they were not. They are adults. They can hold their own baby without supervision, and obviously do as soon as they go home.

For eight years, Obama's detractors have been ranting how he's a spineless Muslim sympathizer because he's "afraid" of bombing his way through Iraq and Afghanistan. I can't think those internet warriors would have voted for Hillary Clinton.

So where are they now, and who are all these peace-loving people who suddenly came out of the woods in the last year to denounce Clinton for "loss of Muslim lives"?

If I had to rationalize their stand it's to signal to potential foreign startups that YC is taking a stand on their behalf --YC relies on a lot of foreign talent to drive their portfolio, so it stands to measure that they would have concern about any potential impact on their business model.

If they were concerned about poor immigrants, the ones without anything beyond basic elementary education, they'd be taking a stand against Japanese policies, Singaporean policies, Korean policies, Brazilian policies, etc. (given they project internationally). Of course they'll say they are an American company so they can only affect American policies -well, but obviously they care more than just for Americans given their display of concern, so it should not be a reason not to express concern abroad as well but they don't because it does not impact how potential foreign talent view them (i.e. the poor Indonesian trying to get a visa to work in Japan, Taiwan or China, is little concern of theirs.)

People in the US have been outraged since Bush's response to 9/11. To torture, to Guantanamo, to black sites, to the invasion of Iraq, to drones, to all manner of things. If you're going to cherry-pick items, be honest about doing so, or come up with a supported thesis as to why your chosen points are different from all these others.

(deleted)

There are a couple of things at work, here. One, you're restricting your view to only those on the internet. There are plenty of other places people express their outrage. Two, use and reach of the internet has only increased over time, amplifying the response you're seeing.

As for what you expect or would like Altman to express in his post, do you agree with his post and your issue is that it doesn't also address other points you'd like it to, or do you disagree with it entirely?

(deleted)

I suspect you'll find that it's a minority of people who hold all of the same values and prioritize them the same as you. Don't feel bad, I'm sure I'm in the same boat. That's why it's important to figure out how to work together on our common goals. Expressions like "I can't fathom how" lend themselves to a very close-minded view. On some level, you have an expectation that Altman is reasonable, otherwise I don't think you'd be expressing yourself the way you are. Even if you disagree with him, strive to understand him so you might better be able to engage with him and others who hold similar views, especially if you hope that they, in turn, will take you seriously. Dismissing those who don't toe the line on each and every issue is a great way to get nothing done.

Edit to respond to the above edit: I understand how the points are related in the larger picture, though they are separate points. Altman likely has reasons why he hasn't coupled them in a single blog post. It's not unreasonable for him to address them separately, even though you may wish for him to do so.

Obama or any of his predecessors campaign on drone strikes because Muslims? Anyone think Obama carried out drone strikes in order to attack Muslims? Or carried out drone strikes in order to exploit xenophobia for self-interested political reasons?

So what? Don't be outraged because we weren't outraged enough before?

This is a de facto Muslim ban dressed up enough to make it constitutional.

Please don't well-actually right now.

Then why are Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, UAE, and Malaysia missing from this list?

Serious question.

Because the buy a shitload amount of weapons from the US.

It's not that simple.

"In the realm of extremist Islam, the Saudis are “both the arsonists and the firefighters,” said William McCants, a Brookings Institution scholar. “They promote a very toxic form of Islam that draws sharp lines between a small number of true believers and everyone else, Muslim and non-Muslim,” he said, providing ideological fodder for violent jihadists.

Yet at the same time, “they’re our partners in counterterrorism,” said Mr. McCants, one of three dozen academics, government officials and experts on Islam from multiple countries interviewed for this article.

Saudi leaders seek good relations with the West and see jihadist violence as a menace that could endanger their rule, especially now that the Islamic State is staging attacks in the kingdom — 25 in the last eight months, by the government’s count. But they are also driven by their rivalry with Iran, and they depend for legitimacy on a clerical establishment dedicated to a reactionary set of beliefs. Those conflicting goals can play out in a bafflingly inconsistent manner."

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/world/middleeast/saudi-ar...

Because he's got business interests in those countries.

200 million from 7 countries temporarily suspended. 1.3 billion from the remaining 189 -- unaffected. Tell me again how this is a blanket Muslim ban?

I wouldn't call it that. But what this is, is Trump is testing the waters for a more extensive Muslim ban in the near future.

Democrats totally destabilized the Middle East?

Alternative facts, alternative reality.

Both parties have had a _significant_ hand in it, dating back to GHWB and Clinton. Don't you forgot that either, lest we remember Obama as anything other than a President who liked droning brown people.

You're shifting the goalposts, from the ridiculous assertion that Democrats destabilized the Middle East to "both parties have had bad policies in the Middle East." But let's run with it.

Let's say that Obama killed 5k people with drones. This is a large overestimation, but let's compare.

GWB killed over half a million Iraqis for no reason, and counting. He's indirectly responsible for the rise of ISIS in a way that no other President or SoS is.

No other President except Clinton.

That's just with drones, and I'd say it's a very conservative number. He also funded and armed "moderate opposition" in Syria, al quaeda associted groups (Jabhat al-Nusra and others) there, and helped topple several governments. This displaced millions and killed hundreds of thousands.

Here's Hillary laughing about it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y

> Second, it's not "Muslim". Muslims from all other countries (some of them pretty large, e.g. Indonesia and Pakistan), will experience no change in their ability to enter the US.

I think that's an overly positive reading of what's happening. If this were an order from a president without a history for explicitly calling for muslim bans, you might be able to read it that way. I think it'd be very debatable even then, but in this situation it's imo a pretty clear step. Not mentioning "muslim majority" in the text itself is just an attempt to make it harder to legally challenge the order (establishment clause and that).

> was back when Obama and Clinton armed extremists

Why did you leave out Bush and Bush?

Yet Peter Thiel is still a YC partner. It's nice that Sam is speaking up but he needs to display some actual backbone here. Words are not enough.

How do you expect us to take Ycombinator and the tech community seriously when you have a large number of persons within the tech community organizing grassroots initiatives for the purpose of having California succeed the from United States. It's a bit hypocritical to lump the tech community into your narrative to fit your narrative of how you believe America should operate and which values it should uphold.

I voted for Trump, and am very happy with the ban- I don't see the benefit of bringing in Muslim refugees.

I like to see this opposing voice here. Discussion is good. Please though, don't use a throwaway: it makes me think you're a government person or bot.

Uhhhh, bad things happen to people who publicly support trump in liberal bastions. A throwaway account is perfectly reasonable.

I cannot count the number of times I hear supposedly tolerant people yell "Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences." Where the consequences is usually violence. But thats OK, because it is not the government doing the violence.

Being coy about being a Trump supporter is a necessary precaution.

That's because they are tolerant towards personal choices, not political ones. There's a big difference, and sticking them in the same bucket so you can shout 'hypocrisy' doesn't constitute a useful analysis.

There are plenty of voices of all different political persuasions here on HN (and some in each group feels they're in the persecuted minority). I don't think your parent is suggesting that they need to connect their HN account with their true identity. It is useful, however, to maintain a relatively consistent, if pseudonymous, account as that benefits the HN community as a whole.

It sounds like you're interested in targeting him for harassment.

This is why I'm considering closing all of my social media accounts even remotely linked to my real identity -- reprisal is a very real threat.

Unlinking nicks from your real identity is fine, but for example the user I'm using is fairly verifiable not to be a government account. There's way too much effort and original content in my account. Or if I'm a government bot (it's still possible), I'm a very expensive one that wouldn't scale because of all the on-topic original content that's required.

As for harassment: no, that was never my intention.

I have a couple coworkers from Iran. Would you be willing to look them in the face and explain to them how they're banned re-entry into the country?

I am curious what your ethnicity is. At what point did you ancestors arrive in the United States, or are you perhaps an immigrant yourself?

Did any of your ancestors, at any point, belong to a group of immigrants that was considered by a portion of the US populace as "undesirable", but were let in nonetheless?

Would you consider your own presence in the United States as a benefit of such immigration which took place a while back?

I'm ethnically European, so my ancestors shared the same race and values as the demography of the United States at the time. More so, the country at that time did not strive to provide government funded food, shelter, or healthcare, so no financial burden was required to support them.

I don't think it would have benefited, say, Israel or Japan to have extended my ancestors citizenship.

Which part of Europe? Polish, Italian, German, and Irish immigrants at one point or another were frowned upon.

This is meaningless grandstanding until:

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.

>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?

People have a right to their beliefs, and those beliefs sometimes have strong social consequences.

I'm not sure of any nominal principle that says we have to do business with, work for or to invite to things people who behave abhorrently.

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 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

There is a significant difference between voluntary association and compulsory exclusion through use of force.

It's not even partially hypocritical to claim one is ok & the other isn't.

Are you really comparing divestment to segregation?????????????

You realize the reason segregation was wrong was because it was based on someone's skin color, not the actions they've taken?

That's true.

However, people were sent to concentration camps for their actions and beliefs, and we all think that's wrong...

You are now literally reprising a joke from Season 1 of Silicon Valley.

Am I? Huh.

Also, does that invalidate my point? I mean, I don't think it does, but I figured I might as well ask...

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".

That's different from being exiled from civil society.

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.

For the third time, that's different from being exiled from civil society.

He's fixing the mess we're in.

I disagree...

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.

That's different from saying he should be exiled from civil society.

> 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.

Yes, but it's a starting point we shouldn't loose sight of.

> YC voted Thiel off the island

The hypocrisy of being anti-Trump but accepting Thiel is all over the valley.

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/

Just the one will suffice for Thiel.

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.

Thiel is not some distant nodding acquaintance of Trump's. He is a close advisor and Trump's lead point of contact with the tech community.

So how many degrees of separation? Let's start with "more than one, please" and go from there.

Yeah, where IS Thiel?

> 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.

> the greatest threat to humanity

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/

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 have to take responsibility for your vote

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 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?

You're not very good at this.

Explain.

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.

"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"

We don't work like that. If we do the next one exiled will be you.

It's interesting Trump's administration has brought political threads to HN -- in fact they're becoing the most-upvoted threads

You have directly caused my wife's parents to miss the birth of their first grandchild, and worse things I won't name because they would personally identify me, by electing an idiot who is terrified of fictional terrorists. You are a bad person, and I don't care whether you appreciate knowing it or not. I don't really give a shit what you think of Hillary, because she did not needlessly block my family from coming to me. Your guy did that. And he is capable of doing it because of you.

There is nothing 'mindlessly nasty' here. The central theme of the Trump campaign, and now the Trump administration, is right-wing virtue signaling with no consideration for the effects those actions would have on real actual human beings. This shitty situation is exactly what everyone said would happen if he got elected, and you elected him anyway. There is no room for interpretation here. Hillary is a straw man. You elected a man who is causing American citizens active trauma and the best I can hope for you and those like you is that one day you at least realize what you have done, and take responsibility for it, instead of this weak-kneed "well I only support SOME of his policies" apologetics.

You won. The least you can do is develop a fucking spine.

I didn't vote for the rights of your wife's parents to enter the country. Sorry.

I had other issues in mind.

> I don't really give a shit what you think of Hillary, because she did not needlessly block my family from coming to me.

I don't really give a shit what you think about Trump, because he didn't call 25% of the american electorate deplorables and widened the gender gap in the United States by running an awful campaign?

People like you who gloss over the marginalization of large swathes of American citizens because you think they are 'bad people' sicken me.

You're the ones that stoop to personal attacks and you claim the moral high ground? Pathetic.

It's this kind of language that hardens people's positions, myself included. I fully support his policies despite your family being affected, gotta break eggs to make an omelet.

The campaign was about targeting and isolating the harmful effects of globalization as well as terrorism. The message of his campaign is loud and clear -- America is for Americans. No more siphoning off of resources and no more half-measures.

"America is for Americans" ironically sounds extremely un-American to me. Isn't this on the statue of liberty?

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I think accepting the downtrodden and giving alms are (were?) core values of America - but maybe the problem is that we didn't focus enough internally and were left with a lot of people next door getting left behind.

> terrified of fictional terrorists

Fictional? Really? Look at what's happening in various parts of Europe.

It sounds like you have legit personal reasons for strong feeling, but we can't let that translate into personal attacks on HN. That's the equivalent of setting our own neighborhood on fire. Please don't do it here, regardless of how wrong others may be.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508560 and marked it off-topic.

I'm disappointed I'm not a citizen and couldn't vote for Trump.

I wonder how opinion-widening it would be if a terrorist attack victim's family member came on here to respond to you. There are bigger things to consider other than minor inconveniences.

I wonder how much your opinions would be widened if you learned about the extent of terrorism during the troubles in Northern Ireland[1], and how that conflict was ended[2].

In many ways the Good Friday Agreement is incomprehensible to people outside Northern Ireland. How could they forgive the other side for what they did? Release prisoners that were know to be paramilitary murderers?

The cries of Trump supporters are not the cries of victims of terrorist violence. They are the cries of people who have never seen terrorism in their lives, never mind the kind of repeated and sustained terrorist attacks that threaten the entire fabric of a country.

If you want to respect the victims of terrorist attacks then you should let them speak for themselves and don't assume to know what their response would be.

You say there are bigger things, but it's peace and compassion that is the biggest thing of all. Tit for tat violence isn't something we should aim for, it's something we should aim to rise above.

[1] the graph here should put it into context: https://www.statista.com/chart/4093/people-killed-by-terrori... much all the UK deaths on that graph are related to Northern Ireland, with the exception of Lockerbie in 88 and London in 05.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement

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.

Not interested in politics - even if it's from Sam.

Flagged.

The guidelines ask us to flag and move on without comment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yeah, Altman is a hypocrite. Zero respect for this guy. "Let's ban certain types of speech unless it's from me, of course."

The guidelines say don't comment on flagging. It's just not constructive. You're free to express other thoughts as long as they're civil and substantive. Why is this unreasonable?

You really do need to demonize Trump voters. Most of them are in favor of his horrible policies, and are malicious themselves.

You're never going to get anywhere without recognizing the source of the problem.

> You're never going to get anywhere without recognizing the source of the problem.

So... Demonize the voters that naively thought Trump would help them more than Hillary? What comes next after they're alienated?

Pragmatically: where are we going to get with you proposed tactic?

You could actually do things to punish them, like boycott their states. Being punitive towards these criminals is perfectly valid.

Liberals have the wealth in the country that the Trump voters want. You don't have to give it to them.

If liberals want to keep the wealth for themselves and not share it, are they still liberals? Sounds like a koan.

You're right. We liberals are supposed to give our money to criminals.

And other people's money too.

Only if they're hard workers, and are sweet and innocent.

It's very simple: make it socially unacceptable to promote the ethnic cleansing of a religion comprised of nearly a billion people, 99.999% of whom are decent, peaceful people who share the same types of dreams, goals and values as the rest of us.

This wouldn't be the first time we've had to confront bigots who want to eliminate entire groups of people because they have a different skin color or pray to a different sky-man. And we didn't get rid of them by playing nice or trying to split the difference.

Rather, whether we're talking about slave-owners in the 1860s or fasicists the 40s, we've faced this menace before and stamped them out the promotors of hate and division. And we will do it again.

It is already socially unacceptable to promote ethnic cleansing of any sort. Sure, it's important to continually affirm this, but can you name anyone in the Trump administration who is promoting ethnic cleansing?

> can you name anyone in the Trump administration who is promoting ethnic cleansing?

All of them, since that's the purpose of this administration

Just as every one of Hitler's cabinet-level ministers was deemed at the very least complicit in that regime's crimes against humanity, so it every single one of Trumpf's cronies guilty for being an enabler of these disgusting, hateful, racist and un-American violations of fundamental human rights.

Every last one of them needs to be brought to justice and called to account for their inaction in the face of ethnic cleansing once this illegitimate "president" is finally impeached (and mark my word, that day is coming much sooner than you think). Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

Seriously, a green card is a fundamental right now? I know plenty of people that were denied Visas to the US all of them are "white privileged" and most of them are "males", all of which either studied in the US or wanted to work there after completing a master's program or a PHD, all of which have successfully passed interviews and some of the most rigorous hiring processes in the industry.

By using this infantile rhetoric and making every statement at best a hyperbole and at worse a complete fabrication you are doing a great disservices for your cause.

You talk about ethnic cleansing like you know it, while ignoring the true horrors that go around the world, you gladly ignore what is happening in Africa, Asia, heck I would also take a big presumption and assume you were in the camp that was against a no fly zone and intervention in Syria.

From all your statements you seem to ignore the plight of millions in favor a the privileged few, because give me a break a honor student from Iran that can't get back into the country and now is facing with having to switch her PHD from MIT to another uni if it's not resolved isn't a 9 year old schoolgirl sold into slavery. Even the true "refugees" that come to the US are the privileged few that could afford spending as much as 50,000$ to get to the US and to have their asylum request processed. Is this right, no, is this unfair yes, is this sad yes, but this isn't tragic, this isn't a travesty, what is a travesty is the likes of you shaming artists on twitter that commit the greatest sin of scheduling gigs in Israel while ignoring the rape and murder of 100,000's of people around the world.

There is a book I recently read:

https://www.amazon.com/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-De...

This is a book about negotiation written by a hostage negotiator. It was an eye-opener that I needed.

One of the key principles is that you don't accuse or attack (something I still need to work on myself).

In sales training seminars, that would be one tactic. Other valid tactics include the frontal attack.

How well do you think the aggressive tactics work in long-term relationships? How well do you think they work when you're in the weaker position (e.g. when your side controls neither congress nor the white house)?

And more specifically, how well do you think they worked in this election?

I hope you mean "Peacefully Protest" I shut my eyes and ears once protesting becomes violent.

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?

A little violence never hurt anyone.

The victims of violence?

What about the victims of fascism?

I think there's a definition problem. If it doesn't hurt anyone, it isn't violence. It is is violence, it hurts people.

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.

"What harm has violence ever done?" - Ali G

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 issue with the Hitler argument is that he too lost an election. Start from there.

I don't understand the "he too". Are you referring to someone else who lost an election?

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.

You're right, 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.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-neo-nazi-stabbed-20...

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.

But some states are trying to make that "peaceful but overwhelming mass civil disobedience and protest" even harder.

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".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur

>I shut my eyes and ears once protesting becomes violent

A lot of the freedoms you take for granted were achieved by "violent protests", including the "Boston Tea Party".

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.

Once people so upset that they become violent, you stop listening? Doesn't sound like a great plan.

I realize you meant well with this comment but these discussions easily veer off-topic and into unproductive places.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13508050 and marked it off-topic.

What Trumpf has done here is so far beyond the pale I think you have to look toward tinpot dictatorships to find a comparison. This is not a disagreement about tax policy, trade, healthcare, etc. Rather, this is an illegitimate, unqualified con-man who due to our anachronistic electoral system wound up as president despite the majority of Americans opposing him.

It's now clear that Trump wasn't kidding and actually intends to follow through on his promises to ethnically cleanse America of Muslims, latinos and various other scapegoats.

Therefore, the solution is extremely simple. Trump cannot continue to be President and we need every institution of our society -- our courts, congress, businesses, media, schools, etc -- to put aside petty partisan differences and unite on this point.

Now that we have full knowledge that Trump is every bit the white-supremacist fascist he campaigned as, it cannot remain socially acceptable to continue to support him.

The people who have supported him are complicit in ethnic cleansing and their beliefs are absolutely incompatible with the our core American ideals of multiculturalism, freedom-of-religion, equality and diversity.

Trump needs to be removed from power and in our personal, familial and professional lives we need to make it our mission to stamp out the hatred and intolerance which fuelled the rise of this white-supremascist cancer which we if turns out we never fully excised.

Silicon Valley should let go of politics and look inward; only supporting one party leaves you without influence when the other party wins.

Is targeting religious groups in refugee admittance actually a bad thing? How would this guy feel about favoring Jewish refugees in the 1930's?

I agree. If people are being persecuted for their religious beliefs then there should be a process to accept those refugees in a timely manner.

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.

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/mobile/en/article.php?ModuleId=100...

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.

Exactly. Doesn't it make sense to prioritize those people who are under the most persecution in those countries?

Yes, and those under the most persecution are primarily Muslims who oppose Assad, or just happen to live in areas of Syria that oppose Assad.

> 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.

And if they did, they'd probably lean Democrat, like Hispanics for example.

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.

Citizens of other countries are not our problem. This insane modernist belief that all humans are entitled to protection on our dime is poisonous.

It's not modernist to me, in my opinion it dates back to the 1st century. And refugees generally aren't "on our dime." They get jobs.

I think that one of the main issues of politics is the lack of real time data. There should be a website where people can vote every day (I'm not sure what exactly I mean by vote, I guess the bare minimum would be "i'm content with current political situation" and "i'm not content with current political situation").

Idk if this could take off but i feel like it could become a tool for voicing discontent and seeing some of these numbers of how many other people are voting could lead to something more.

One of the fundamental instruments of dictatorships is deceiving the public about how many other people are dissatisfied with the regime. If you know for a fact that 9/10 of the population is extremely dissatisfied with the regime, you can topple these regimes.

This only works in a system where every citizen has perfect, unbiased information on what is happening in our government. Unfortunately, this is impossible, and humans are emotionally-driven creatures, so whatever memes get the most emotional traction in both traditional media and social media spread the quickest, regardless of logic or reason.

> ... 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:

NYT Op-Ed: Trump’s Immigration Ban Is Illegal: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigratio...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com