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I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream

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Re: I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream

#151

Post by venomsnake »

pg314 wrote: post #132
venomsnake wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the world of realpolitik humanitarian is not a valid reason. Educating the citizens of a country that you may have to go war with soon is also not a way to further your national interest - if we define US interest as unchallenged US might. It all depends on the perspective in which you view the other countries.

> In the world of realpolitik humanitarian is not a valid reason. You're moving the goalposts. First you say there is no good reason, then you reframe it 'in the world of realpolitik'. If you want to support your original assertion, you need to argue why realpolitik is the only valid worldview. > Educating the citizens of a country that you may have to go war with soon is also not a way to further your national inter…

The reapolitik is the only valid view in international relations (outside of one pole empire, but it is impossible on the current scale of the planet with current state). We live in realpolitik world currently - case in point Saudi Arabia on the human rights council. This is possible only in realpolitik world. In any other type of world relations it will be impossible.

Also - any US leaning dictator getting a pass. Like Saddam, Noriega, Pinochett. Which met their demise after refusing to obey their CIA overlords.

For Iran - if Iran us enemy - which the current administration thinks so, giving their citizens education is bad unless you ban them from exiting US after getting said education. And prevent them from taking the know how there.

If Iranian people had the means to overthrow the theocracy they would have already done it.

Re: I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream

#152

Post by varjag »

rdtsc wrote: post #105
varjag wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are arguing strawman. Most people who are anti-ban were also against Iraq war and waterboarding.

The level of outrage doesn't seem to make sense. If they are ready to donate to ACLU, drive to a protest at an airport, subscribe for more media, over a botched travel ban surely they protesting 10x harder when actual killing was talking place. I even got an email from Lyft about it. A driving app on my phone is now telling about this travel ban too and how much they are donating to the ACLU.

We must be from parallel universes, because there were massive protests against Iraq war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003,_anti-war_pr...

Re: I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream

#153

Post by nicolas_t »

jhbadger wrote: post #114
nicolas_t wrote: post #64

While I agree with most everything Jeff says and it's really well written, I'm always a bit irked when I see the the president of the US being called "Leader of the Free World". Especially when it's stated in those terms: "We lead the free world. And we do it by taking the higher moral ground, doing what is right before doing what is expedient." I'm not sure the US can still qualify as leading the free world under th…

The "free world" is pretty meaningless since the Cold War ended. It never really meant "free" anyway -- Pinochet's and Franco's regimes were as much a part of it as Western democracies. What it really meant was the "anti-Soviet world".

Yes, the term "the free world" comes from the Cold War propaganda but it doesn't stop the fact that the US, as an economic powerhouse, has a disproportionate influence on the rest of the world and this is why I would want it to be worthy of the name "Leader of the Free World".

It's unfortunately not and I think that people repeatedly calling them that tends to legitimize the US actions.

Re: I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream

#154

Post by dankohn1 »

zimpenfish wrote: post #74
d3ckard wrote: post #68

Nice post, though there are some caveats. As a Pole (as some of you know, we do have some issues here too, though many would disagree) I feel at least a bit competent to give you a bit of advice, so you can get out of it better than we did. 1. Donald Trump is not your enemy, nor a problem. He is a manifestation of the problem, which is current state of your society and problems you have. Do not believe that you can j…

> It is quite likely, that if Democrats nominated Sanders, he would win with Trump. I haven't seen a single political analysis which shows a path for him to do that. Do you have any examples?

The GOP had a ton of dirt on Sanders that they never used. If they had, he likely would have done much worse than Clinton. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/the-2016-electi...

Re: I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream

#155

Post by redsummer »

pjc50 wrote: post #126
redsummer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find any mention of Islam, Muslims, Christians etc in the order: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/27/donald-trump... And are you suggesting it's wrong to prioritise religious minorities who are being murdered? Would you, during WW2, say no to Jews, because it would be a 'religious test'?

Funny how you should use that example. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-a... The "we'll turn away a whole group of refugees because they come from a war-torn area and some tiny fraction of them might be hostile" was used exactly during WW2 to say no to Jews, and the same argument is used now to turn away refugees from Syria.

The opposite situation was the Interahamwe who had just committed genocide in Rwanda, and skipped over the border to Congo, only to be housed and fed by international aid organisations. They were fleeing, so they must be poor refugees!

Re: I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream

#156

Post by imron »

dingaling wrote: post #142
Patient0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just "a 90-day ban on immigrants coming from war-torn countries" - the fact that Christians from those countries are exempt makes it explicitly a "muslim ban".

> makes it explicitly a "muslim ban". No, 'explicitly a Muslim ban' would say 'this is a ban on Muslims'. Do consider that the list of proscribed countries is compiled between the Departments of Homeland Security and State, not by the President, and is published in the Federal Register. The fact that the majority on that list currently coincide with dominant Muslim populations might have been useful for Mr Trump's in…

It's also worth pointing out that none of the top 5 most populous Muslim countries in the world are on the list.

In fact, you could argue it's just as much a ban on countries the US is currently bombing, as it is on Muslim countries.

Re: I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream

#157

Post by rtpg »

andrewstuart wrote: post #117

Addressing the concerns of the Trump supporters is the only way forward. Why are they angry? Silicon Valley - one of the richest sectors of society, is up in arms because the disenfranchised "have nots" are expressing their anger about being "have nots" by just tearing the whole damn thing down. The "have nots" say - through Trump and his actions - "OK, you got everything, we got nothing, here's the payback". The hav…

The question now: how big is his base?

His approval is in free fall. What's the low point?

40%? 30%? 20%?

The French president was at one point at 8% approval.

Re: I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream

#158

Post by Quarrelsome »

ubernostrum wrote: post #98
Quarrelsome wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its more diplomatic than that. I have very strong opinions I just choose where I present them and where I dont. We're engineers, we're here to share with other engineers and solve problems irrespective of the other engineers beliefs, political alignments or whims. I would not want to turn this place into another spot for activism, there are other fine spots for that sort of thing. Lets talk about code and business pl…

OK. For a while there this weekend, some of your employees/co-workers who had been legally present and working in the United States couldn't gain re-entry to the United States if they happened to have been traveling. But of course that's "just politics". Nobody should talk about it on HN. No business impact whatsoever. Nope. None. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nada. A goose egg. No idea why that suddenly got some tech execs to g…

I'm not from America. This doesn't directly impact me. I am interested in the outcome and I post in my communities about the topic with _strong_ opinions, much stronger than you even manage here. Those communities are clearly labelled "POLITICS".

This is hacker news. We have a job to do, irrespective of what the electorate choose we build solutions to make the world better. We inform each other as to what problems are spawning from the political spectrum and how to mitigate those in our solution building. We fix problems. What we tend not to do is devolve into political activism as that is an orthogonal interest to our skills as engineers and most importantly is often requiring of solutions that run counter to our skill set.

Lets leave the politics aside and stop pushing soap box crap like this to the top of the page please.

Re: I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream

#159

Post by kranner »

moultano wrote: post #145
kranner wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have thought one is not American until one is a citizen.

That's not how Americans view it. The notion of belonging to a nation is very different in the New World, as best exemplified by this map. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jus_soli_world.svg...

This map doesn't say anything about visa holders and green card holders. It is only relevant for persons born in the country, which I'm assuming most visa/green card holders aren't.

Re: I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream

#160

Post by danso »

JBiserkov wrote: post #139
MisterWebz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet people seemed to be awfully calm when Obama was droning weddings. I'm not saying we should've put so much hate towards Obama as well, I'm saying we should put things into perspective.

>droning weddings I chuckled pretty hard at this one, imagining a DJI Phantom filming a wedding. Why not call it what it is, "bombing weddings" - the focus is on what the aircraft was doing, whether it was piloted remotely or locally shouldn't matter in the slightest.

The platform used for bombings is not irrelevant. It's not as if the increase in drone bombings was because the U.S. Military got caught up in the popular consumer drone fad. The very design of drones make it easy to do these operations and to do them in quantity without angering people back home.
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