Spoiled Americans want to flee what they created

These reactions make one pause and wonder how long these same people would last under the Arab and African dictatorships and occupiers the US has propped up and maintained positive ties with over the years.

That article irritated me several times, starting with this dumb comment.

zn wrote:

Zooey wrote:

These reactions make one pause and wonder how long these same people would last under the Arab and African dictatorships and occupiers the US has propped up and maintained positive ties with over the years.

That article irritated me several times, starting with this dumb comment.

I actually agree with that comment. What do you object to there? Honestly curious.

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It’s just stupidly convoluted. Let me count the ways.

First off, it’s like saying, “Shut up, or I will REALLY give you something to cry about” which is one of the stupidest things some parents say to their kids.

Secondly, “these same people would last under the Arab and African dictatorships and occupiers” exactly as long as the people who are under those conditions. People are people, and they put up with a lot of adversity in life…like genocides and whatever…because people hang onto life no matter what, generally speaking. And there is no reason to think Americans would give up any faster than anyone else.

Thirdly, the people who are thinking out loud about emigrating are doing so because they object to oppressive politics, and are likely opposed to the US support of those regimes in the first place, and in any event, have nothing whatsoever to do with them because those kinds of decisions are made by politicians and CIA types. They aren’t campaign issues that we vote on. So their search for a more preferable political climate to live in is not hypocritical, as he is implying. There is simply no connection. It is a total non-sequiter from the get-go.

Finally, some of those people looking to leave ARE people who left those oppressive situations in the mid-east, came HERE to get away from it, and fear the rise of oppression here.

So it’s hard to weigh all the stupid in that one sentence alone, and it didn’t get any better for me as I read on.

That what you wanted?

zn wrote:

Okay, I hear you. And I still agree with the original comment. The hell we inflicted on several client states by propping up dictators really does come to mind for me when I hear people wishing to leave because they get a president they don’t like.

I say, if you don’t like it, do something constructive about it.

See, if I were the family of an El Salvador citizen who got his eyes gouged out by US-backed (and often US trained) torturers, I would say “yeah tell me about it.”

I understand that they would well think that.

But, by that logic, no Jews should have emigrated to Palestine in the 30s because the German government was rotten to East Africans. I bet Elie Weisel wished his family had pursued the option of moving. Or maybe they should have done something constructive about it.

zn wrote:

Zooey wrote:

zn wrote:

Okay, I hear you. And I still agree with the original comment. The hell we inflicted on several client states by propping up dictators really does come to mind for me when I hear people wishing to leave because they get a president they don’t like.

I say, if you don’t like it, do something constructive about it.

See, if I were the family of an El Salvador citizen who got his eyes gouged out by US-backed (and often US trained) torturers, I would say “yeah tell me about it.”

I understand that they would well think that.

But, by that logic, no Jews should have emigrated to Palestine in the 30s because the German government was rotten to East Africans. I bet Elie Weisel wished his family had pursued the option of moving.

Jews emigrated because they were a persecuted minority.

There are americans who face prejudice, and it has its own death count, but it has not reached that level.

It’s better IMO to stand with your allies and reclaim the place.

…

Okay. But once it reaches that level, it will be too late for many of them. By definition, once you are a persecuted minority, you are already persecuted. And for some of them, that will be devastating.

It may be better to stand with allies and reclaim the place, but some people feel it is better to leave than be arrested or killed. And I don’t blame them.

In Weisel’s case, the first warning was that foreign Jews were deported.
Then a Fascist government comes to power in Budapest.
Then Jewish leaders were arrested.
Then there was a 3-day curfew for Jews.
Next, authorities seized their assets.
Then, 3 days later, the yellow star.
Then came ghettoes.
Then…

So, tell me, when would you have left?

And remember, it wasn’t just “ethnic minorities.” As I recall, communists, socialists, and labor union leaders were among the first to be rounded up. And Habeas Corpus has already been effectively suspended for years.

Zooey wrote:

Okay. But once it reaches that level, it will be too late for many of them. By definition, once you are a persecuted minority, you are already persecuted. And for some of them, that will be devastating.

It may be better to stand with allies and reclaim the place, but some people feel it is better to leave than be arrested or killed. And I don’t blame them.

In Weisel’s case, the first warning was that foreign Jews were deported.
Then a Fascist government comes to power in Budapest.
Then Jewish leaders were arrested.
Then there was a 3-day curfew for Jews.
Next, authorities seized their assets.
Then, 3 days later, the yellow star.
Then came ghettos.
Then…

So, tell me, when would you have left?

And remember, it wasn’t just “ethnic minorities.” As I recall, communists, socialists, and labor union leaders were among the first to be rounded up. And Habeas Corpus has already been effectively suspended for years.

I am actually interested in your response to this because the thought of leaving has crossed my mind. Mostly like a lot of thoughts I have that blow through my mind like autumn leaves, but I have thought of it.

Habeas Corpus is already gone. Without a peep, btw. Mind-blowing. A 800-year old “take it for granted” right reaching back to the Magna Carta was wiped away without a murmur, and not even the Warrens and Sanders mention it.

We have a president who has openly admired authoritarians, expressed hostilities towards groups that he has offered as scapegoats, turned his back on them as his supporters harass them, and has promised to spy on mosques, and get busy deporting people. He has talked about the desirability of limiting the press (this is a press that is largely a PR firm for government as it is). We have a heavily militarized police force, and I don’t think the new government is entering with the slogan Black Lives Matter.

A report came out today that says hate crimes are up 7% this year, and Trump isn’t even in office yet. And we have all seen the outpouring of ugliness since election day.

And to that the fact that 1/2 the people in this country sat out the election, and choose to just not get involved in anything, and 1/4 of people who actively support this turn in the tide, and live in denial that anything is wrong with it.

Even in the ghettos, the Jews had their own “government” and police force, and they stood together as allies. “We can bear this. It’s not so bad. It will pass eventually.”

They even got on the trains to move to “another ghetto,” leaving everything behind them.

Now, I don’t think we are headed to concentration camps.

But…you know…things can get very bad for people. I would lay money we are going to see beatings and worse of Latinos and Muslims increase in 2017.

This isn’t leaving the country because they got a president they don’t like.

When would you have left?

zn wrote:

Well except I don’t think that the people claiming they want to leave are the minorities.

I don’t think they are either, nor do I believe the number of people who actually leave is going to be a significant number, and I bet a lot of those who do leave have additional motives thrown into their decision in addition to disaffection with this election. But that is all 100% speculation. I doubt there is any real data on this, so it’s all guesswork and assumptions, probably.

However, I do sympathize with a perspective that just says, “Eff it. The entire political climate here is regressive, and the systemic pressures from money and the media discourage me to the point that I just don’t see any way that the values I hold are ever going to get a shot at emerging in this culture. I wanna live in a country which has more community oriented values (i.e. socialized medicine, maternity leave, retirement, vacation time…egalitarian quality of life), and this country just isn’t going to be that place. I want a better place for my family, and this degraded political circus is not part of my Quality World.”

zn wrote:

Zooey wrote:

“I wanna live in a country which has more community oriented values (i.e. socialized medicine, maternity leave, retirement, vacation time…egalitarian quality of life), and this country just isn’t going to be that place.”

Well you can pine for your pie in the sky, “imagine all the people” utopia all you want, but aside from all the other developed democracies in the world, no such place exists.

…

It amazes me – when I bother to think about it – how Americans, who want to be #1 at everything in the world, ignore clearly superior ways of organizing society in the name of the myth of individuality and the belief that “government screws everything up.”

We pay far, far more for health care than ANY country with national health care, and get worse results: worse infant mortality, shorter lifespans, people going bankrupt because of illness or accident, and on and on. And we won’t change it. We fight against it. Fight against making the system better AND cheaper. Because we simply won’t believe it. Won’t believe the facts right in front of us that dozens of countries have had national health care for 60 years with better results.

Paid vacation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country

Yes. We are behind Albania, Nepal, Afghanistan…. The richest country in the world cannot afford to guarantee paid vacation.

Parent leave? Forget it.

One of the greatest outcomes of the propaganda system in this country is that the richest people have convinced the poorest people that pursuing their own interests is disastrous.

How many Trump supporters believe unions are bad in principle? How many oppose universal health care? How many think paid vacation is an outrageous idea that would bankrupt businesses, or make them flee? How many believe that increasing the minimum wage is bad?

And they wonder why their economic circumstances suck. All the money is going up, but they elected a guy who is going to cut taxes for the wealthy so that even MORE of the money goes up. Because wealth disparity wasn’t bad enough.

The thing on health care is that there are many, many countries with variations on the same thing. I think the key ingredient is basically the government is the insurance company. And we cut out the middle man. Aetna, Humana, Whoever…none of them actually deliver health care. They take your premiums, and then they reimburse health care providers for their services while keeping a cut for themselves. They are delivery boys for your money.

So the government acts as a non-profit insurance company. Then there is only one payer, and all the hospitals, doctors, etc. have only one set of rules and forms to fill out for compensation instead of dozens of companies to deal with, each with different rules and so on, and it streamlines the whole thing. Plus eliminates a bunch of advertising expenses (those geese in the commercials are expensive!), expense accounts, and CEO bonuses etc. It’s cheaper. Studies show that health care would cost 1/3 less than it does now, and…EVERYBODY would be covered.

So I dunno what the taxes would be. But whatever the taxes are, you wouldn’t be paying premiums. And right now, 1/3 of our premiums go to overhead whereas Medicare operates at about 7% overhead iirc. (Understand these numbers are ballpark). Our premiums also include the hidden costs of paying for ER visits by people without insurance. ER visits are MUCH more expensive, and those costs get past on to the consumers. So we are paying for the uninsured anyway as it is.

I heard a guy on the radio the other day talking about how the repeal of ACA would affect him, and he told about how crappy he had felt for a couple of years, and then he signed up for ACA, saw a doctor, and found out he has diabetes. He got treated, and feels better. He said if he loses ACA coverage, he will hold out as best he can, but he can’t afford the medication, and he would eventually end up in the ER where we will all pick up the tab anyway. And he will probably die sooner, and leave his family without his income which will make them dependent.

I once saw most of a documentary somewhere that visited 5 different countries – Taiwan, Germany, Japan, and 2 others that I missed – and looked at how they structure health care. Quite different approaches to it. All with better results than what we get, at lower overall costs. I can’t quite understand why we wouldn’t send some people out to study a bunch of these different systems, come back, and piece together some kind of proposal that would make sense in America. There are a lot of successful programs out there.

The devil is in the details, of course, but there are a LOT of countries doing better with health care than we are by any empirical measurement.

I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.

I do know that dozens of countries are doing it successfully.

Let’s go there and ask those questions.