I'm Loyal to Nothing Except the Dream

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[quote=“codinghorror, post:1, topic:4882, full:true”]And he signed an executive order that literally, not figuratively, banned Muslims from entering the US — even if they held valid green hards.
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Not a single muslim from the top 5 countries with the largest muslims population is banned from entering the USA. It’s not a muslim ban, it’s a ban based on a list a terrorism linked countries. This list was created by the Obama administration.

Are you aware that B. Obama suspended Iraq Refugee Program for six months over terrorism fears in 2011? how is this any different?

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I suspect - with some regret - that people are more motivated by anti-Trumpism than any real love or care for Muslims and refugees. The only person on the left who I am aware of who consistently protested drone assassinations of Muslims under Obama is Glenn Greenwald.

Just for reference, because likely as not nobody has actually read it, (doubtless preferring our own alternative sources of facts :slight_smile: ) here is the full text of the order:
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/text-of-trump-executive-order-nation-ban-refugees/

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Isn’t it odd, that the two policies cited by @codinghorror are both described incorrectly.

Obama banned immigration from Iraq for 6 months. 1 country 6 months. Trump has put a ban on 7 countries from 3 months to review. Who is more efficient? And as you point out it doesn’t affect the largest muslim populations of the world in India, Pakistan and Indonesia.

As for the wall, how does building a wall stop legal immigration from Mexico? No one is proposing the wall as a means to stop legal immigration. Unless you believe that airplanes can’t fly over walls.

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I can’t tell where that infographic’s numbers came from (the first link used as a source isn’t valid, and 404s if I assume that was supposed to be a new TLD and got munged), but what’s in the infographic is wrong in two ways:

  • It shows ~54-55% of the adult population voted, where the percentage of voting-eligible population that did vote is actually 60% (http://www.electproject.org/2016g), making it on-par with the previous 4 elections (58.6%, 62.2%, 60.7%, 55.3%; same site)
  • The only reason to show the child population is to mislead the reader by making it look at a glance worse than it actually is.

It’s not a huge difference, but it is an important one that makes the rest of your information a bit suspect. Even the media that called 57% a low turnout (they didn’t include late votes, but compared it to previous years that did include late votes) had a higher number than this infographic.

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Whose American Dream to are you loyal to, Jeff? Your dream, my dream, some guy from Cincinnati’s? And which American people do you pledge your allegiance to? The ones who voted Red or the ones who voted Blue?

The only thing I could find in your entire post that made sense was this line:

Disclaimer: I have no idea what I’m talking about.

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This is what makes “Fake news” hysteria laughable. Did no one ever hear of “lies, damn lies, and statistics?”

In real life, ‘facts’ are not as common, nor as easily defined, as people (especially developers and scientists) would like to think. Things can be spun, misinterpreted and misunderstood, even if they aren’t being deliberately misrepresented or fabricated. Is there even a recognised “ethical” method to avoid bias when presenting statistics? Not that I’m aware of. And that’s when we’re talking about numbers! What about the more fuzzy, squishy stuff?!

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I find this very sad because a lot of points in his post are valid and very relevant.
However, it seems that, like many others these days, he gets on the Trump hate bandwagon.

Let the man do his job for Pete’s sake! only after can you judge. Please don’t fall for the PC mass hysteria meme.

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A favorite example: I attempted a Math/CS double major, but dropped the Math side when my statistics textbook said (paraphrased) “Doing this with ___ method will result in ___, but some older purists prefer the ___ method, which results in ___”.

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Jeff, I’ve been reading your stuff with vigorous loyalty over the years, and your wisdom has me helped a lot throughout my career as a developer then and as a manager today.

That sentiment you are presenting is becoming more and more popular as years go by, and usually I keep to myself since I know that my views are usually on the outskirts of acceptable at best, and most of the time I’m viewed as fanatic visionary. But allow me here to express my views as I’m sure that at the very least they’ll be taken at face value rather than being ridiculed for their novelty.

The system is rigged. It is rigged by the thousands of people who have been part of it for the past 150 years or so, ever since this system became popular. The problem is not the system tho, it’s our inability to create a system that will keep away the power from those who crave it.

It was always the problem. And our current democratic-social-capitalism is heavily ridden with the problem of concentric power. That’s because we rely on one anothers ability to keep a record of the truth, and then we rely on one another to keep a moral standard that we can agree on. Which obviously rarely happens.

Democracy, socialism, and capitalism all came as magic solutions, hailed by their cavaliers as the one true resort to our never ending problems of self governance. The sad truth about it is that at the time it was good, it did sound reasonable, it was feasible.

The problem is every system we’ve built always had exploits. These exploits let those who seek power not only to have it, but the system is designed so that they could continue keeping it provided they are in the system long enough, literally corrupting the system. Not a singular party or a singular leader or a representative corrupted, but the entire system, from our political systems, through our healthcare and workforce systems, all the way to our education and child rearing systems. It’s corrupted to its essence because that’s how these systems are vulnerable, because we’re not good at defining laws, and we’re even worse at trying to interpret them when the simple edge cease end and the exceptions begin to rise.

These exceptions and their edge-case solutions are often used as a virus within the system, corrupting it further providing more power to those who have it and taking it away from those who don’t.

Luckily, thanks to people like you, me, and thousands of other developers and engineers, I think we’ve already devised an alternative over the past couple of decades.

This alternative needs to be non-corruptable, it needs to withstand those problematic exploits we’re experiencing with today’s systems, and it has to be transparent - fully transparent.

Luckily, that system already exists. It has been working steadily for eight years now, and it’s proving to be far more resilient than initially thought of it to be. That system is Bitcoin.

A non-biased machine protocol that we can all agree on, we can all alter together, but we don’t need to trust one another to work with. It’s self governing, and fully transparent (and as a result provides privacy for the first time in twenty-something years to those who seek it).

We need to leverage that system, learn it, and adapt it to fit our governance needs beyond financial/cash regulation - our collective future is somewhat dependent on that - we either take initiative now to ensure that this system continues to be uncorrupted and uncorruptable, and that we leverage it to provide us with proper governance, or as with previously hailed technologies that were thought to give similar qualities to people all over he world, it too will devolve into a submissive system that operates under one law for the commons, and another law for those who have power and wealth.

The time of opaque management systems has to come to an end, our collective management should be absolutely regulated by the entirety of the human race, not bound to a plentiful area with better starting properties or certain skin color dominance.

You and I have that chance today the same way our ancestors had their chances, and as them we might fail to deliver, or as them we might not foresee all the possible exploits, but as so little of them did, I think it’s our duty to do - to take a stand, to take a chance, and act.

And trying to do so by calling the kings and queens or their royal courts and complaining about how their system is not suitable for the pasents - is not the solution, is not the chance that you specifically with your immense qualities and knowledge have, if you chose to act within the limits of the system, to try and affect it by working within its limited area of operation, you will fail because the system is protecting itself - and the individuals within it are not evil or maniacs, they’re just as part of the system as you and I are, they fulfill the same roles that you and I do. They suffer just as much.

Think Jeff, think. You know the answer here. And you know that the initial answer is not correct because it cannot work, because it’s expected and designed to be dealt with.

Think Jeff, think.

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I have a question to tech companies CEOs who make so much noise about Trump latest executive order.

If you really care that much about Muslim countries then explain to me: why the PhD brain drain is so good for these countries?

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Thanks for the post Jeff, It is important that we all speak up, letting other know of our opinions. Whether agreeing or disagreeing with the policies starting to flood from this administration, participate, discuss, think. We must be involved if we are to help shape the future.

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He went there.
"I am subscribing to support essential investigative journalism such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post."
News outlets that have proven to provide fake news and massive bias.
Prorepublica? Soros funded.

Planned parenthood -> Google "Malthusian Eugenics"
And while you’re at it Google “confident idiot”

Someone sure did their due diligence - NOT

Unsubbed, I’m done with people like you. You did nothing when Obama dropped 100,000 bombs with drones but NOW you’re concerned? What the F.
(I’m not from the US btw)

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I appreciate (but don’t fully agree with) your post, and I also appreciate the subsequent commentary.

I and my wife are “flaming libertarians” when it comes to classical politics – not the libertarianism that’s been hijacked by well-meaning folks who want to legalize drugs – the libertarianism that is essentially laissez-faire in terms of a government that is a disinterested third-party that is fundamentally needed to resolve disputes between multiple parties under its jurisdiction.

While others have commented on certain aspects of your post, I’ll put in a few thoughts that might be missing from the overall discussion.

Regarding the national popular vote initiative, realize that since the Electoral College is a constitutional system and thereby legally holds over anything that any number of States might declare against it, in the event that a requisite number of States actually did claim one winner against the results of an Electoral College winner, the States aligned with such a national popular vote winner would be null and void. One cannot simply amend the US Constitution by virtue of even a majority of States declaring their own law to supersede that of the US Constitution. Furthermore, by pushing for a national popular vote initiative, I believe that one does not fundamentally understand the purpose of the Electoral College.

Understand (to the point of agreement is your choice) that the Electoral College is not about numbers, per se, no matter how you reckon them (in fact, numbers are an ancillary aspect of the Electoral College, to the extend that those numbers represent the outcome of the relative size of States). It is about a federal election that is held at the State level. We in the United States do not have “national” elections, even though national media coverage might make us feel that way. We have federal elections whereby each State controls and has responsibility for how it chooses its federal officeholders (incidentally, there is a SCOTUS case against term limits on the grounds that States determine the constraints of federal officeholders, not Congress).

In this system, a national popular vote calculation is, politically, utterly meaningless. Why? Because the Electoral College represents the majority vote of each State, not the national popular vote. Why is this important? Because the Electoral College gives smaller States a proportionally (based on federal officeholder numbers) larger voice against the bigger States, while at the same time allowing bigger States a limited sway in politics. It is a “check and balance” against each State.

As I mentioned before, it’s your choice whether you agree with what’s been stated. I’m simply reiterating how I understand the bottom-line importance of the Electoral College. After all, the federal government was formed by the States, not the other way around.

Regarding other social issues you’ve mentioned, we’ll agree to disagree. I tend to be quite conservative when it comes to most issues, so there’s really no point in going on about those things.

Regarding Donald Trump, he represents a fundamental phase change in politics. Clearly, it appears you’ve bought into what I call the narrative of “anyone who isn’t ‘establishment’ is someone to be feared,” especially when personally aligning yourself with the likes of former Gov. Mitt Romney or Sen. John McCain, both of whom are essentially establishmentarians and, more importantly, globalists.

With this anti-establishmentarian in office, a true nationalist (“true” in the sense that he espouses an exceptionally parochial view of the United States, in thorough contradistinction from those who’ve practiced decades of globalism from both parties) is he. Regarding immigration, he has merely reinstated law that’s already on the books (considering that Executive Orders cannot create new law). Further, the hubbub of what’s occurred in the media over the past weekend is, fascinatingly enough, based on immigration directives that President Obama exactly promulgated while he was in office (same countries impacted, different time span (I think) in terms of restrictions). My wife and I had a discussion about this very topic last night, in fact. What’s really going on here is that decades of non-enforcement have suddenly been reversed, and all of a sudden people are freaking out (legitimately or otherwise). President Trump has not changed any laws; if he did, the singular court case that was brought up this weekend would have completely stricken the entire EO that President Trump signed into action. That’s not what actually happened. Also, where’s Sen. Chuck Shumer in all of this? I can almost guarantee that no Legislative branch federal officeholder is going to say anything about a fundamental law change because the law is already on the books – it’s simply not been enforced.

Wow, that’s a wall of text, and I haven’t covered nearly as much as I’ve wanted to. But that’s OK. I’ve said what I think needs to be said at this point in time and we’ll all go from there.

In conclusion, am I for President Trump? I am for anyone who is sincerely looking out for the best interests of Americans, where America is always considered first when it comes to any policy, treaty, etc. I’m not a friend of globalism, which essentially puts America on the proverbial back-burner by other countries (who, interestingly, are busy making sure they’re first in line). If President Trump fails at being POTUS, then I’d fully expect consequences to that. On the other hand, if he succeeds at being POTUS, I think you’ll see a fundamental sea-change in American politics by the time 2018 – much less 2020 – rolls around.

Enjoy.

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If you blame the top leader for being elected instead of blaming the people who were voting or middle leaders (ministers, main mass media channels, etc.) who make people to get opinions that you suppose to be wrong, you only make the situation worse. Such posts only weaken the peace and order, leading to such things as revolutions – just like the one in Ukraine that made nazi to take power and still be with it, bombing already for three years those native Ukrainians who speak Russian language for centuries. Because few millions of haters were blaming the Yanukovich for bad ecomonics while it was not really his fault – it was fucked up by previous president Yushenko, but even while people realised that choice of 2004 was wrong they were still not enough clever to realise that they should blame themselves for election mistake (actually Yushenko didn’t really win that 2004 election – he being officially sponsored by US just captured the election commission building with armed troops and didn’t allow them to go home until they count the 51%, but that’s another story that everyone forgot because mass media was under control). Keep blaming the result of your choice only if you want to increase the chaos.

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If you want to support a real group of politicians that actually want to change things then support Brand New Congress which are putting together people to run for congress who are not career politicians but every day ordinary people. It will only be funded by small donations. No corporate donations aloud!

Also the Washington Post is not to be trusted. The obvious favoritism they did with Clinton was disgusting and is one of the reasons Sanders didn’t win the Primaries. The only thing they will do is confuse the message. Follow news agencies that have done ethically well researched news like The Intercept, The Economist and The Nation.

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Thanks Jeff, for bringing this to light to your large audience. Try to ignore the (expected) naysayers, and continue to press on.

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Yes, ignore the debate of argumented ideas amongst open minded and educated people, great idea.

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I think part of the problem is that people focus on policy instead of process. When same sex marriage was legalized people reacted based on their opinion of it. Too few people were shocked by the fact that the federal courts overruled state laws and voter backed initiatives. When President Obama created DACA too few people who were in favor of DACA as policy were horrified that a President unilaterally changed immigration policy. We need to change the process not necessarily policies.

One of the best ways to do this on California is with ballot initiatives. It’s a great way to do things that are good for the people and bad for politicians.

One interesting policy, inspired by StackOverflow that we could pass by initiative is Instant Runoff Voting / Preferential Voting. This would eliminate the 3rd party spolier effect. It would also prevent an extreme pularlity from beating a moderate (but fractured) majority which, arguably, happened in the GOP primaries.

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I think your assessment is spot on Phil_GA. The unfortunate thing in all of this is how the globalist elite so easily manipulate many of the masses by speaking in half-truths. Couple the twisted narrative with the fact that many American citizens are so uninformed about our history as a constitutional republic and we have a serious problem. In one sense it’s good that more are paying attention now but if the globalist elite continue to control the message it’s going to be a long slog regardless.

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Try to ignore the (expected) naysayers

I don’t think you know what that word means.

Naysayer - a person who habitually expresses negative or pessimistic views

If you ignore people who don’t agree with your opinion what you have is an echo chamber, which leads to extreme views if both sides take the same approach. Stop labelling and start talking to people who have different views than yours. Chances are the differences are more subtle than the bullshit labels talking heads spew on TV, “news” and blogs.

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