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Time to Take a Stand

blog.samaltman.com

61–70 of 1001 posts

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#61

Is targeting religious groups in refugee admittance actually a bad thing? How would this guy feel about favoring Jewish refugees in the 1930's?

>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...

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#63
post #8

> 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 vo…

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.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#64
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?

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#65
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/

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#66
post #11

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.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#68
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.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#69
post #11

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 choose who they (do or don't) associate with. And people have a right to judge those based on who they deem worthy of association. Thiel can believe what he wants. He can say what he wants. Mostly it shows he's a cowardly little narcissistic shit. And it's damn telling when folks still keep him around.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#70

Is targeting religious groups in refugee admittance actually a bad thing? How would this guy feel about favoring Jewish refugees in the 1930's?

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.
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