Not like I really supported Clinton either, but better than Trump.
Good old Alaska.

It's crazy how much outright hatred there is for Clinton down south. She's been vilified and persecuted for decades, and held to such a double standard compared to other politicians. A lot of the lightweight criticisms of her seemed to center on a perception of un-trustworthiness and cynical political calculations, but a lot of that stems from the hell that she was put through.

Honestly, Trump as president is going to cause so many problems everywhere, not just the economy, treatment of minorities and such, but also emigration (how many will flee to Canada, the south, or Europe?), military actions (that code for those nuclear weapons should definitely not be in his greasy paws), and criminal rates (violence against women especially and police brutality. If those are allowed will the official criminality stats lower just because the actions aren't punished by law?).

As a Texan:

1. It's the freakin Baby Boomers that are causing most of this nationalist kick. It will start dying when they do (as horrible as it sounds)
2. I really doubt they will successfully boot everyone out (particularly Mexicans). I will even go as far to predict many of them will even still retain public taxpayer benefits/services. I am going to enjoy watching the fallout and despair that campaign promises aren't going to be properly met

But give a few years too see I suppose.

All the Latinos at my school were making comments about it yesterday, and joking over the fact that they hadn't been deported yet. We laughed along, but it was more of a laugh-so-we-don't-cry sort of thing.
The general mood was somber, but perhaps that's because I'm from a very liberal area.

Some of the criticisms of Trump's positions have been really blown out of proportion by rhetoric from Democrats and liberals at large.

So for instance, the deportation policy has never been about kicking latino-americans out of the country. It has been about removing non-Americans living illegally in the States. Most countries, sensibly, want to have control over their immigration so they can make decisions that make sense for their economy and strike the right balance between compassion and need. Illegal immigration is inherently semi-uncontrolled.

That said, implementing the deportation of millions of people is going to be a messy affair, especially where illegals have had children who are American citizens at birth, and Trump has been especially undiplomatic in his language around this topic. I don't blame anyone for being nervous, but it is disheartening when people scream 'racism' and 'xenophobia' whenever the topic of immigration comes up.

As for the routine "He'll blow up the world in a nuclear feud on Twitter", is that really any different than the claims of crazies who say Hillary has ordered the deaths of 50 people and personally created ISIS?

My concerns with Trump's immigration policy aren't so much about what he's actually going to achieve in terms of policy - plans like "we'll block Muslims from entering the country" or "we'll make all Muslims register" are evidently unworkable and/or unconstitutional, and more generally he's going to bump into the exact same problems controlling immigration that everybody else who've ever tried has.

It's more that it signals to racists and assholes that their beliefs are acceptable. Even if the majority of voters aren't specifically doing it out of racism, for those who are it signals that's fine. We had the same thing happen after Brexit - incidents of people demanding that all the foreigners here legally be kicked out immediately and so forth, even though that's never going to happen.


As for blowing up the world in a nuclear feud on Twitter, I don't think that's going to happen. But I do think his tendency to lash out at people who slight him is a really poor character trait in the leader of a nation, and I do think his attitude to Russia and the like is dangerous and likely to provoke further war in Europe.

Exactly. Hate crimes have shot up already, just like they did after Brexit. I know a number of people in the US who are afraid for their safety, now. For immigration specifically, yeah his plans are pretty much impossible to pull off, hopefully we'll see some backlash from his supporters when that happens. Also a number of cities (like Seattle and New York) have declared themselves 'safe zones' for immigrant populations.

And Russia? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 02136.html It's pretty troubling.

Best hope is that they deliver on as few of their promises as possible. They back of the Paris Agreement though, and we might all be in serious trouble. Unfortunately, the Affordable Health Care Act is probably gone, and the new VP literally thinks that you can shock people out of being gay. Oh, and that smoking does not cause cancer. Y'know, the one thing that medical science has agreed on for the last half century.

Because 60 million people don't understand what a fact is.

(sorry, I'm trying not to be gloomy, but the last few days have left me feeling pretty anxious and sick)

Honestly, I think we've all been doomed for a decade or more, Paris agreement or no. The time to take serious action was probably Kyoto in 94. But that's probably a discussion for another thread.

Ah yes, the racism difficult to notice in my city. But then again, the Mexican population is high enough here (legal and illegal) that the only viable option would be to nuke this city, which I don't see happening.

But for other states in the south and also the Midwest it's probably terrible.

Also, just a question from genuine ignorance. Wasn't Brexit spurred by the desire to not be accountable for less economically productive countries like Spain and Greece? Or was it really all over immigrants?

I remember being in London the day before Brexit results came out. We were discussing the voting, and there was a drunk man on the Tube that overheard us. He started ranting to my family about how immigrants were stealing all the jobs, and that it was "about time" for the UK to leave the EU.
It was just one man, however, and based on the stony expressions of everyone else on the train, most of them disagreed.

Of course, the governments in the US and the UK are not actually inciting violence against minority communities. Racists can feel emboldened by promises of tougher immigration policy, but that's no reason to forbid any rational changes to immigration policy altogether.

Roo wrote:I remember being in London the day before Brexit results came out. We were discussing the voting, and there was a drunk man on the Tube that overheard us. He started ranting to my family about how immigrants were stealing all the jobs, and that it was "about time" for the UK to leave the EU.
It was just one man, however, and based on the stony expressions of everyone else on the train, most of them disagreed.

It's not just immigration, it's also the large number of EU citizens who are free to live and work in the UK, right? People who would be forced to leave should the UK exit the union?

The guy on the train is bitter, but he's not completely wrong. Immigrants DO take jobs, but they also create new employment opportunities and are a new market, and are especially vital in countries where the natural population growth rate is low.

Sentynel wrote:Honestly, I think we've all been doomed for a decade or more, Paris agreement or no. The time to take serious action was probably Kyoto in 94. But that's probably a discussion for another thread.

Aww don't worry, we can adapt to the changing climate for quite a while, even if large swathes of the natural world cannot. If and when it becomes truly critical, we might very well have the technology to filter CO2 and other greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere, or failing that, make massive algae plantations or something.

Anyway, the most frustrating thing is the reversal of the progress much of the world has been making. Canada, for instance, has been vowing to implement a nation-wide carbon pricing scheme, but with an anti-science party in the White House, implementing that policy would ruin Canadian competitiveness and hurt the economy with little benefit.

Given how little we even know about the climate, there's a lot that's up in the air. I mean, I study this stuff, and I've never had a ton of hope in the first place because people simply refuse to realize that without a properly working environment their precious economy cannot exist, but I wouldn't say it's over. Out of control feedback loops seem like they're going to be the worst problem though, the ice is already melting faster than people thought it would. *sigh*

Yeah, I just voted out an anti-science party, only for the Americans TO VOTE IN ANOTHER ONE. Jesus. I'm so angry about that. People don't realize that their precious manufacturing jobs are. not. coming. back. You decided that when you wanted to exploit third world countries for cheap products. That happened. And it's not going to get reversed, especially when you put a rich businessman in charge.

Anyway, if it does end up dooming us, I'm going to be pretty flooping 'ecking pissed that 60 million people decided that for the rest of us.

Tell me again how Brexit wasn't about immigration?

I mean, of course that wasn't the only reason. But a significant chunk of Brexit votes were definitely about kicking the forrins out.


On climate change - I have no faith that we will successfully geo-engineer our way out of the hole. I don't think we have much hope of fixing a complex system with a lot of poorly understood feedback loops by upsetting it in a different way than we have already. Love to be wrong, of course, but I don't see it. Early geo-engineering experiments have all turned up unforeseen consequences.


And I think the economic changes required to limit warming to a level our civilisation can likely survive are already too drastic for anyone to actually implement them. Paris was maybe a step forward, but it's still too little too late.

Well that's encouraging. Eventually, though, any unintended consequences of geo-engineering will become necessary risks.

Well yeah, the farther back we push it, the worse it gets. Worst thing is that clean energy is literally nearly at our fingertips if not for a few idiots blocking any progress.

Incidentally, what is happening with UKIP now that their signature policy plank is achieved?

Barely heard about it with the little internet coverage I got while hiking... what actually happened?

Unfortunately I don't know a thing about politics :unsure: ...but I just read up on the assassination. There's certainly a connection to everything that's going on in Syria. It also looks like the assassin wanted to die right there...

Days without an act of war: 3