Make America Hate Again

However Trump's supporters either believe that other races/religions are inferior or believe their concerns are more important and ignore it.

So what can someone do if they want to combat inequality/injustice/etc?

It's not like their opponents are arguing with an open mind.

This is extremely superficial, arrogant, even offensive to people who voted for Trump. And that is the reason why Trump won IMO. Opposition couldnt understand (not even recognize) the legitimate and valid thoughtful reasons people had to vote for Trump.

Call it what it is. Everywhere you see it.

Surely Fred Wilson is considered a leader within certain communities.

  I agree with his stance on this, and I think Trump and his latest executive orders are awful, but I also think that at this point, "hatred," "bigotry," and "racism" should be excised from public discourse.

How else do you want to describe the contents (and spirit) of this executive order?

I think getting into mealy mouthed wiesel words and euphemisms for something that's clearly hateful and bigoted and racist helps no one.

I've been working for a while now on having concrete, one to one conversations about race with strangers. Some key principles in this work are to call people in, not out, focus on personal experiences, and build out from shared values. It's hard. But I grew up in St Louis, which is a deeply, deeply racist town, where I was told from a young age that we lived in a colorblind society, and that I should stay away from the black parts of town of I valued my life.

Ignoring racism doesn't make it go away. Ignoring white nationalists, and giving them more acceptable labels doesn't make them go away, and doesn't make their hated any softer. These labels are still useful and relevant, and removing words useful for discussing the worst offenses, and providing a rock bottom which most people are happy to distance themselves from.

White silence enables white violence.

Personally, when I read words like bigot/racist/etc., I instantly associate it with myself and my demographic, as a label that names us, not as a descriptor. I know that I personally meet none of the classical definitions of those words, but I also recognize that, in modern parlance, I "am" those things.

It's pretty messed up.

I think it's also fair to say the executive branch has unique power in security affairs that the judicial branch can overstep its authority in.

I'm not supporting these actions, here. I might go either way on them, honestly, but it's hard for me to get too worked up about constitutional crises now given all the executive actions that have been largely accepted as normal over the last sixteen years or so.

I have faith our process will "manage" this.

But I find myself VERY upset reading your comment as well as many other reactions to exe. order

How much more can I take? I see signs "whatever it takes to remove trump" that has so much negativity behind it. "Trump" is now a word like being "gay" was growing up.

This is quite unhealthy for me.

I compare it to second hand smoke before the surgeon generals report.

I mean, my country has some 140M muslims (India), and my neighbors have some 330M muslims.

As a layman, I just read the order and I thought "oh, so it's all war torn countries...but what's Iran doing in there?" not "oh, it's all muslim countries"

I'm not sure more fracturing of American political discourse would be a beneficial form of 'activism'.

When the hell did people forget that free speech also includes the speech you vehemently disagree with, justifiably or not?

As a non-American, I've always thought the best path forward was to focus on states rights. Progressive states along the coasts could should the way forward, and the rest of the country would eventually catch up (imagine the EU if Sweden had to wait on countries like Poland and Italy to implement their desired policies?). But there's a massive medial focus on federal politics (the executive branch President in particular), and everyone wants to save everyone else in the nation from their perceived oppressions...

Even if others want to disagree with them.

There are the stated reasons why the US government thinks a certain way and there are the real reasons. Saudi Arabia is a big one. I suspect the real reasons is we have oil deals with Saudi Arabia and Iran has oil deals with Russia. Also Iran nationalized US interests in the late 70s with the revolution. The US punished Cuba for the same thing for 50 years (plus the missile crisis). The US isn't altruistic like they want people to believe, the US works aggressively for their own best interests. If they can paint an altruistic face on it, they will.

The US is still can't let go of the cold war mentality, probably justified with Putin. Iran and Saudi Arabia fit into that mentality. Iran and Saudi Arabia are the two powers in the middle east: one is traditionally an ally, one is our adversary's ally.

It's a natural law of geopolitic that the victors of a major conflict split into at least minor adversaries. The victors are the only ones who can threaten each others power and security. We saw this play out after WWII.

Dan Carlin just released an episode where he explores this. I haven't gotten through it yet, but it's very good.

http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-o...

There is a whole Wikipedia page for you to browse.[1]

Has Iran directly committed a terrorist act again the United States? No, unless you stretch that definition a bunch.

Has it supported/funded terrorism against other Western countries? Absolutely.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terro...

The countries on the lists are either countries ravished by civil war (Syria, Libya, Yemen, and to a lesser extent Iraq and Sudan) or countries with US-hostile regimes that are already embargoed (Iran, Sudan and Assad-controlled Syria). In short, the Trump administration chose the most dangerous-sounding names for American ears, picking governments that are either on bad terms with the US as it is, or simply too weak to complain. The direct economic damage will be negligible, while the people who supported Trump's idea of a temporary ban of Muslims (most of his voters) would be satisfied with his actions.

It's an effective populist measure, but it's a particularly nasty, considering that the US is closing itself to refugees from countries in civil war.

The excuse I often hear from Trump supporters is that the countries on the list are majority-Muslim countries where it's easy to get fake documents. Of course that still doesn't explain why the origin countries themselves aren't on the list.

I'm not an American but I find it incredibly weird that Iran is always seen as a "terrorist state" when actually the only terrorist organisations I could see as being tied to Iran are only concerned with Palestine and only directly pose a threat in Israel (i.e. they operate regionally). I guess the attitude towards Iran is an artefact of the West's close ties to Israel (especially for the US and Germany).

Off topic, but is it true that Iranian citizenship is difficult to get rid of when you try to become citizen of another country? I heard that one of the reason the ban on Iran was especially dire for green card holders and potentially even US citizens was that dual citizenship was basically the norm for people born in Iran.

Fishing for open wallets while emotions are high and human rights trending.

Just an online take of the city street recruitment, like the Greenpeace people extending their hand for an unwanted handshake from 50 metres away. Cross the road to avoid, and there's another one on the other side.

Please don't preface your comments with this. The guidelines explicitly ask you not to.

Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

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

I suspect that for many people your username calls to mind the KKK, and this leads them to be more critical of your content than they otherwise would be. Sarcastic spellings that include extra K's are commonly associated with right-wing politics, sometimes as endorsement and sometimes as criticism: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-people-spell-America-as-Am....

Why did you choose the username that you did?

This seems to be oversimplified. A massive global supply-chain might still produce less polution than carrying around lots of small quantities of goods locally from producer to endconsumer.

Utterly disgusting, to another European with a completely opposite view. People are more important than goods, services and capital. People should be able to travel and settle down wherever they choose.

The only bad effects of globalization are the ones deriving from the power that corporations and wealthy individuals have of gaming the tax system.

Obama oversees war for every day of his two terms, and we hear nothing, because, I guess, bombing people isn't hateful.

Trump takes office, continues the policies of Obama, and he's hateful. It's the left that is prejudice in assuming that those in the middle and the right can't see through this.

I see zero effort to change strategy or tactic, so we can all look forward to a second term of Trump.

Obama stopped the refugee programm for Iraqi citizens for 6 months - it never affected people with valid green cards or dual passports.

Source: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/158/...

It's not the same thing at all. Obama didn't block people who already have valid visas. Obama didn't block green card holders.

Why do you say it's the same? Do you consider those two things to be essentially the same, or are you ignorant of the actual substance of one or both of these actions, or what?

Speaking as a person who had a very, very big problem with Obama bombing civilians in countries we're not even at war with, I'll point out that what Trump is already doing with respect to immigration does go far beyond what Obama did.

Under Obama, there was never any doubt that a green card holder would be permitted reentry as long as they followed the same restrictions that have been in place for decades (e.g. don't get convicted of a felony, don't stay away for more than six months at a time). That is no longer true.

The same applies to someone who holds dual citizenship with the U.K. and Iran. Under the new policy (which is admittedly in flux and is being actively tested in court), a British Iranian cannot enter. That was never an issue before.

The trolls have entered the conversation.

Stopping new applications from one country for six months is not the same thing as cutting off refugees from all countries who had already passed the process, out of the blue with no warning, stopping people at airports until judges stepped in. halting this process from one country is not the same as cutting off all immigrants from seven countries with no warning, including legal permanent residents who happened to be visiting home. The green card policy was only reversed after already disrupting lots of lives, and the details are all still very unclear and confusing.

Partisanship blinds both sides to the real issues. Many liberals freak out about everything Trump does. Many conservatives, who previously criticized Obama's executive orders, react to this by showing more concern about leftist hysteria regarding abuse of power than the actual extremely concerning abuse of power itself.

I would take issue with the statement that "America" voted for Trump or his talking points. Priorities vary greatly; just look at local politics. For two extremes, California ballot measures (2016) have included things like legalizing marijuana and promoting bilingual school education; Kansas has ballot measures for things like right to hunt and fish (2016) or exemption from nationally mandated health care plans (2014).

That sounds catchy, but isn't true. Think of all the dictators who came to power after a coup (sometimes backed by foreign powers).

https://lawfareblog.com/malevolence-tempered-incompetence-tr...

More likely than not, they just wanted everyone to have a SSN so they required it for kids. But non-residents cannot have SSNs (even if legally there), so they had to make an exemption for them.

In a way, you can argue the opposite. By making sure that kids have SSNs, they get access to credit and much more, while those without SSNs get stuck in a limbo.

While I am pleased to see our justice system work vigorously to rollback what it can, the administration showed a strong disregard for the law with these orders. It is unclear yet whether the Deparment of Homeland Security is even complying fully with the stays (the TSA administrator for Dulles refused to meet with a Democratic congressional delegation that went to the airport to make sure the judge's ruling was even being followed).

The Department of Homeland Security's own press release was scary in its own right claiming that they were deciding "at the moment" to comply with the court's ruling.

It's important to remember how much our system relies on tradition to operate effectively. The law/government is not a perfectly reactive state machine. It assumes a certain level of good faith and judement from all the nodes, and the executive is a powerful node in the graph, it has the ability to clog up its edges and render a lot of the other nodes feckless.

I think a lot of what Trump has done has been horrifying, but I, like you have felt that it has been in line with what he campaigned on and legal. In this case I simply have to disagree. This is over the line.

I know, I think everyone knows this. I didn't vote for him because I was afraid he would follow through on his promises, not the opposite. I don't get why people keep bringing this up as an argument in favor of the order. The fact that you promised to do something does not mean it's a good thing to do.

If you think the submission is inappropriate for HN, flag and move on, as the guidelines ask.

Your criticism of HN being US-centric sounds like you believe it's deliberate and curated. For as much as it is so biased, I think it's an understandable consequence of something that falls out of the demographics of the members and their interests. A lot (not all, though likely a plurality) of the members are in the US. While the community isn't entirely tech and start-up focused, there is a large interest in these areas. A lot of interesting tech companies are US-based. Silicon Valley is in the US. Y Combinator, affiliated with HN, is in the SF Bay area. It makes sense that a lot of submissions would also be US-centric, and, unfortunately, what might get flagged.

I don't see a large number of members actively arguing that HN doesn't have a lot of US-focussed content.

Perhaps the submissions and which get flagged don't completely align with your own interests. And I can understand how that could be frustrating. That's not necessarily because of some cabal actively keeping things focussed on the US.

Personally, I think HN has too many political discussions regarding US politics, prompted by the recent US elections. And I'm doing what I can as a member to shape HN just as any other member can. And a lot of the political submissions are getting flagged. People are complaining about that as well. (Look just in this thread!) It's the nature of the demographics and interests of the members.

Edit to add: A lot of the HN submission and comment data is available via the HN APIs. I've often thought it would make an interesting study to dig into that data to confirm or disprove perceptions of bias like this (though, in this case, I'm sure there is an unsurprising, strong US-tilt to submissions). If you chose to do so, please share the results on HN. I know I'd be interested!

Trump can say will serve to persuade those who are prejudiced against him.

nothing that Trump can say will serve to persuade those who are prejudiced against him.

Add to these the many conflicting statements Trump has made during the campaign. It's hard to figure out whether to trust that we understand what he means when he speaks, whether we are inclined to believe him or not. Even now, I've read comments from people who support Trump and those who don't expressing "Yes, it's a Muslim ban! Just like he said he'd do!" and "No, it's not a Muslim ban! Look at the Executive Order!"

I'm pretty unsophisticated. I'd like to be able to trust what people say, and that they say what they mean. With Trump I'm left very confused. I want to be able to trust what he says, so I can evaluate that against what actions he takes, and that it allows me to predict what he intends to do.

This is all independent of what's being added by the media.

If I'm left with not being able to trust what he says, where does that leave me? What's my rational response? Trust that his intent is good for American's as a whole (not just those who voted for him)? Given government in general, and the past actions of Trump himself and those he's chosen to govern with him, it's not clear that that's a rational choice.

Simply calling someone "hateful" is an emotional argument at this point, and hurting discourse.

Do you though? If you can't distinguish the difference between fear of the unknown and hatred, then you are fortunate enough to never have experienced hatred.

Since everyone likes to compare Trump and Hitler. Hitler hated the Jews, which resulted in genocide. I've talked to several people who support what he did with the ban and it has nothing to do with hating Muslims or immigrants and its all driven by fear (statistically irrational) of attacks like the ones in Germany.

I vote against allowing children to drive not because I hate them, but because I fear the thought of them driving on the same road as me. Do you see the difference?

I ask because after seeing babies being defined as racist, I have no idea what racism means.

I'm told I'm racist because I think blacks and whites are interchangeable, and because I don't care about one over the other.

I'm told I'm racist for thinking the opposite.

I'm told it's racist to discriminate on the basis of race.

I'm also told it's racist NOT to do so.

The closest principle I can find that predicts who is considered a racist is "republican = racist". Can you provide a clear definition of racism that you'll endorse, even if I can derive conclusions you dislike?

We are talking about people who went around, even here on HN, telling that half the American population were dumb racist haters because they either voted Trump or IIRC just because they respected the election.