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I'd suspect week one for the Trump administration was a big win

yllus

yllus

Elite Member & Lifer
Not to be a downer to my friends on the liberal left (of which I am a member), but I'd suspect that Trump's "extreme vetting" policy is extremely popular with the general public. You won't hear as much publicly as most know they'll be called xenophobic or a racist or stupid for doing so (a problem in itself), but it's almost assuredly a big win.

I think that in a lot of people's minds, letting tens of thousands of displaced and otherwise needy refugees into their country equates to tens of thousands of jobs potentially being taken away from them and/or tens of thousands of new applicants for welfare. The more complex truth of immigrants and refugees being a hugely positive gain to a national economy and the economy not being a zero-sum game is harder to explain, and thus has less emotional heft that the simple math that first pops into most people's heads.

When it comes time to convince Trump voters to this time vote against him, talking about how America needs to be a moral actor and do its part in helping the displaced of the world is the exact wrong strategy. Appealing to morality will actually only strengthen their resolve that Trump is the right way to go ("if those rich coastal liberals want to take in refugees, let 'em all move to NYC"). That's not to say that Trump voters aren't moral, but America First is very appealing - their fiscal and security concerns first, for the first time in a long time.

Convincing people that his actions actually hurt the fiscal and security outlook of America is the only thing that will defeat him in 2020. And he will be there in 2020; I wouldn't hold my breath on a corruption or procedural issue taking him out of office before that because that means getting Republicans to take part.
 
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It's not a surprise when people are emotionally validated that they'll be happy even if it is total bullshit. Nobody realistically expects Joe six-pack in rural USA be unhappy that the people he's been told for years are ruining America and putting him out of a job are in fact banned from America.
 
MongGrel said:
Morals went out the window in the last election to begin with.
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As far as voters were concerned, I suspect they simply bumped morals to second place in favour of possibly electing a guy who'll do good fiscal policy for them. It's almost understandable. (I stop understanding at the point of realizing it means having a mentally unstable man in charge of a military and nuclear weapons.)
 
imported_tajmahal said:
How many "needy" people are there in the world. One estimate is 1.2 BILLION people.
https://www.theatlantic.com/busines...ber-of-poor-people-in-the-world-wrong/373073/
Where do the loony left draw the line? or will they draw a line until the population in the United States joins the ranks of the "needy"?
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Look at you linking the Atlantic! Are you ill?

Unfortunately, your skills ended at copy pasta. I have not heard anyone, right or left, advocating for letting in all the world's poor. We let in refuges because we recognise special situations in the world where its more dire than just being poor, and we extend a helping hand.
 
MooseNSquirrel said:
Look at you linking the Atlantic! Are you ill?

Unfortunately, your skills ended at copy pasta. I have not heard anyone, right or left, advocating for letting in all the world's poor. We let in refuges because we recognise special situations in the world where its more dire than just being poor, and we extend a helping hand.
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We were going to let in a whopping 110,000 refugees this year. Which is not a bigly number. I think Trump reduced that to 55,000 this year with this executive order.

Anyways, 110,000 refugees is a tiny number vs our population.
 
MooseNSquirrel said:
Look at you linking the Atlantic! Are you ill?

Unfortunately, your skills ended at copy pasta. I have not heard anyone, right or left, advocating for letting in all the world's poor. We let in refuges because we recognise special situations in the world where its more dire than just being poor, and we extend a helping hand.
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I'm a non-denominational linker. Any link that supports me at a given time works for me. I wouldn't reduce the number of refugees to zero, just to a smaller and more manageable number properly vetted.
 
imported_tajmahal said:
I'm a non-denominational linker. Any link that supports me at a given time works for me. I wouldn't reduce the number of refugees to zero, just to a smaller and more manageable number properly vetted.
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Has there been a problem with the current number of refugees admitted? Do you have any proof that they've committed any acts of terror against the US?
 
imported_tajmahal said:
Depends which side of the family you look at, but all came to this country legally, in some cases it took over a decade to be granted legal immigration and citizenship. It's not 1856 anymore, times change.
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So what? Why should America have taken in your family? My family came over when Baltimore settled Maryland. I guess you should be thankful that my ancestors were more charitable to yours than you're willing to be to people today. Times had changed by 1856, after all.

America is built on the idea of immigration and people from all over the world coming here to make their lives better. One of our proudest monuments literally has this engraved on it.

People like you are an embarrassment.
 
fskimospy said:
So what? Why should America have taken in your family? My family came over when Baltimore settled Maryland. I guess you should be thankful that my ancestors were more charitable to yours than you're willing to be to people today. Times had changed by 1856, after all.

America is built on the idea of immigration and people from all over the world coming here to make their lives better. One of our proudest monuments literally has this engraved on it.

People like you are an embarrassment.
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Half of my family came over on the Mayflower. I don't recall approving your family's entrance! :colbert:
 
Brainonska511 said:
Has there been a problem with the current number of refugees admitted? Do you have any proof that they've committed any acts of terror against the US?
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What does terror have to do with it? It's the 21st century, time to change old rules and regulations in a changing, more modern world. Why not rethink numbers and types of immigration? Why not be more like Switzerland or Austria or New Zealand?
 
The OP is exactly correct. Trump won the election by promising jobs and economic growth. All the morality and virtue signalling in the world won't change the fact that his supporters have been tricked into believing that immigration doesn't do anything but take jobs from natives. Trumpers will just look at liberal moral outrage and cluck disapprovingly that they are misguided fools who will cost people jobs.
The cruel irony is that the opposite is true, that immigration leads to economic growth which creates jobs. And that drastic cuts to immigration will slow the economy and kill jobs. But this is counterintuitive, so the Trumpers aren't going to get it until it actually happens.
Which, I am sorry to say, it will. Liberals need to make sure that Trump is held accountable when it does.
 
imported_tajmahal said:
What does terror have to do with it? It's the 21st century, time to change old rules and regulations in a changing, more modern world. Why not rethink numbers and types of immigration? Why not be more like Switzerland or Austria or New Zealand?
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Including things like increased gun control and socialized health insurance?
 
yllus said:
I think that in a lot of people's minds, letting tens of thousands of displaced and otherwise needy refugees into their country equates to tens of thousands of jobs potentially being taken away from them and/or tens of thousands of new applicants for welfare. The more complex truth of immigrants and refugees being a hugely positive gain to a national economy and the economy not being a zero-sum game is harder to explain, and thus has less emotional heft that the simple math that first pops into most people's heads.
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This might be true in Germany, a country where trade deals are so strongly in their favor of being a net exporter that they routinely bail out poor European countries just so that they can continue dumping their products. Very low unemployment rate too. How does this apply to the many parts of Europe that don't have low unemployment rates?

And even then, a quick Google is telling me that refugees in Germany have a 40% unemployment rate even after being in the nation for ten years (figure 5).

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2016/578956/IPOL_STU(2016)578956_EN.pdf

That, of course, refers to the relatively small number of refugees Germany had prior to the Syrian crisis.
 
imported_tajmahal said:
Sorry, it's a stupid Canadian type question. I support the Constitution which I believe is the law of the land here in the United States. So 1. I oppose gun control and 2. I oppose socialized medicine.
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The Constitution opposes socialized medicine or universal health insurance? That's interesting
 
imported_tajmahal said:
Why not be more like Austria, New Zealand and Switzerland in regards to their immigration policies?
I fixed it just for you, but please show me where the Constitution requires us to allow immigration?
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If you want to live with mostly just white people, and clearly you do, why not move to Austria, NZ, Switzerland or anywhere in Scandinavia. Mother Russia is another option.
 
imported_tajmahal said:
10th Amendment- "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
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the supreme court ruled that Obamacare - which was was a medium step in the direction of universal healthcare - was constitutional. Social security, medicaid and medicare are also all constitutional as defined by the courts. Those are all administered on some level at the federal level.

The constitution is also a living breathing document, if we adhered to it completely colored's would be slaves and women couldn't vote. I think that it leaves room for interpretation.

Plus if Trump shut down some of the media, which you'd probably defend, that would be violating the 1st amendment.
 
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