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We had serious plans to go on holiday to the US this year. I have been in the US at least a dozen of times, and absolutely love the desert states, Oregon, and W

• ItendToDisagree 9y ago
  The majority of US citizens did not vote for Trump. Just thought I'd point out that most people DO NOT want this president.
  • bkor 9y ago
    Around half did want him? That's a significant of people to me, no matter if they have the majority or not.
    • klausjensen 9y ago
      Technically, only ~57% of eligible voters actually voted. Of those, about half voted for Trump. So only about 27% of all eligible voters actually voted for Trump. That is pretty standard for a US presidential election. Those are the rules for democracy, so he is the legitimately elected president. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/10/13587462/trump-election-2016-voter-turnout https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/10/13587462/...
      • danieldk 9y ago
        So only about 27% of all eligible voters actually voted for Trump. The remaining 43% voted for 'I'll take whoever wins'. So, ~72% of the eligible voters can be held accountable for him becoming president. Those are the rules for democracy, so he is the legitimately elected president. Definitely, it is legitimate, even if we don't like the outcome ;).
        • laGrenouille 9y ago
          Not really a fair statement given the oddities of the electoral college. I know a lot of people in big coastal cities (New York, Boston, LA, San Fransisco, Seattle) who don't vote but are very anti-Trump. They know it doesn't matter because their states were always going to go strongly for the Democrats.
          • sgift 9y ago
            I'm not from the U.S., so my knowledge here is a bit sketchy, but wasn't one of the problems Clinton had exactly that some states which always voted for the Democrats fell to the Republicans this time?
            • rco8786 9y ago
              Not really. Both bases stayed pretty true to their colors.
              • dagw 9y ago
                That's a slight simplification. There where over 200 counties that voted for Obama twice and now voted for Trump.
                • rco8786 9y ago
                  Right i wasn't including those in the "bases". 200 counties represents about 6% of the total number of counties in the country, and few of them are from states that "always vote for democrats"
    • DougN7 9y ago
      Yeah, but look at the alternative. There was no winning in that election :(
  • danieldk 9y ago
    Thanks for bringing up, since it is a relevant point. However, it still does not change the fact that he is now leading the most powerful nation, with all its consequences. I have always wondered how hard it would be to switch to direct voting rather as opposed to the system with an electoral college. Is it impossible because the current system is codified in the constitution, or does it 'only' require an amendment. If so, was there ever a serious attempt to change this system?
    • watter 9y ago
      You would have an NYC-LosAngeles government nearly every time. Clintons for life. The system was designed to avoid the concentration of power you desire.
      • sgift 9y ago
        Why exactly would this be the case? As far as I can see most people don't live in this two cities? And saying the US system "was designed to avoid the concentration of power" sounds like a sad joke from an European perspective (First-past-post-system, extreme presidential powers etc.)
        • caseysoftware 9y ago
          Those "extreme presidential powers" were not in the system design. They were submitted as (sometimes secret) change requests by every president post WW2 and accelerated by presidents in the last ~20 years. Unfortunately, the code review team didn't remove the changes and tacked on their own during the process.
          • sgift 9y ago
            Worst code review team in history. But thanks for the explanation, that makes it a bit more clear.
          • boomboomsubban 9y ago
            >They were submitted as (sometimes secret) change requests by every president post WW2 and accelerated by presidents in the last ~20 years. They started way sooner than that, the first major one was the Louisiana Purchase. Basically non-Washington presidents have been trying to expand their power.
  • tomp 9y ago
    Due to the electoral college system, correlation between "voting for Trump" and "wanting Trump as a president" isn't 100%, so you I'm not sure you can make strong conclusions based on 2.2% difference in popular vote.
    • ItendToDisagree 9y ago
      Yet... Depending on how the rules of the game work the outcomes are totally different. Worth pointing out.
      • tomp 9y ago
        No, the point is, depending on the rules of the game, people vote differently. E.g. under the current system it makes no sense for republicans in NY and CA to vote... If the popular vote actually counted, the popular vote would be different (it's like quantum mechanics applied to psychology - if people know that you observe them, they change their behaviour)!
        • ItendToDisagree 9y ago
          Not voting because of being in a red/blue state seems to happen to both parties. A change to the voting system would probably change behavior and (hopefully) increase voter turnout in general. :)
          • deleted 9y ago
            [deleted]
          • tertius 9y ago
            Though if we look at where the majority of the population lives (NY/CA) and how blue those states are he has a point here. Speculation nonetheless though.
            • croon 9y ago
              He has half a point. The other half is that a lot of democrats avoid voting as well, since their state is already blue. And vice versa on both counts for red states.
  • TheArcane 9y ago
    That's irrelevant in this case, isn't it?
    • ItendToDisagree 9y ago
      In reality. Yup.
  • Jare 9y ago
    You could say that ~70% of the voters did not try to prevent him becoming president.
    • ItendToDisagree 9y ago
      Exactly! But this seems like a feature of a Two Party system rather than a bug? What happened to the Free Market and competition?
      • path411 9y ago
        The natural "free market" tendency to form monopolies as dominate parties buy out smaller ones.
    • hollander 9y ago
      Trump voters of course didn't prevent him becoming president. They wanted him, so they voted for him. That doesn't count in my book. So with 55% turnout, that leaves 45% who didn't vote. Still a large portion.
  • Markoff 9y ago
    you can say that about pretty much any Democratic government with few countries exception where it's voting mandatory and actually enforced which is very rare combination
  • pferde 9y ago
    But that is US' problem, not the world's. It's up to you to clean up in your own house and not make excuses. The who-voted-for-whom discussion in one of adjacent subthreads just sounds like airing dirty laundry in front of everybody - nobody cares, it just makes you look bad.
  • averagewall 9y ago
    He won according to the system that's been in place for 100-200 years. You don't get to support it until it works against you and then complain about it.
    • hobs 9y ago
      "That's been in place for 100-200 years" The gerrymandered system with even more party control is not the system that has been in place for anywhere near that amount of that time. The parties in place dont have that kind of history either. Our voting laws are different, even non-white men can vote now! (though they are disenfranchised as much as possible.) Basically, the system is constantly in flux, ad yes, we get to complain about it all we want and change it (again.)
      • hueving 9y ago
        Nope, gerrymandering has no effect on the presidential election because states are not having their borders redrawn. There are maybe two states that have large electoral college districts that could be impacted by it, but they are irrelevant in the larger picture.
    • panglott 9y ago
      The electoral college system has obviously been a terrible idea for years. Plenty of people also vocally complained about it in 2000, for example. But changing it requires changing the Constitution, which requires a supermajority of state legislatures—and the electoral college shifts power from citizens and the federal government to states.
      • sbov 9y ago
        It actually doesn't require changing the Constitution. States are allowed to allocate votes however they want. Several states have passed laws that say: when enough states pass a similar law to determine the presidency, all of our electoral college votes will go to the winner of the national popular vote. This hack lowers the barrier, but not by enough, at least yet.
    • 9y ago
  • ChairmanPao 9y ago
    I wanted him. What's your point?
  • ChairmanPao 9y ago
    @DANG Moderators! This person is trying to hijack a thread into a political rant against our President. Off topic! Destructive! Ban Him!
  • loco5niner 9y ago
    And others (such as myself), voted for Trump only because he was the only alternative to Hillary. (Better option than Hillary, but not by much. There were other options of course, but they did not have a chance at winning). I should also specify that I voted for someone else in the primaries.
    • TheRealDunkirk 9y ago
      I don't know what it's going to take to break the 2-party system in the US, but people continuing to vote for "the other" candidate just because they hate "the one" certainly isn't going to influence change. I've been voting Libertarian in (almost) every race I can, for at least 15 years now, and I'll keep "wasting" my vote to send the signal that I want more parties in the system. (As in, I want to see BOTH Jill Stein and Gary Johnson at a podium in the debates, and given equal time.) I'm willing to "waste" my vote in order to tell BOTH the D's AND the R's that they do not represent my desires for governance.
      • szatkus 9y ago
        We also have 2nd turn of election in Europe. Basically people need to choose between 2 candidates. I'm under impression that most of libertarian voters would vote for Hillary if they had to choose between two options.
• belorn 9y ago
  I had hoped a bit that the security checks would actually go down during the Trump administration since he has property in the tourism sector. Maybe it will take until the last few years when political points weights less than personal wealth.
• Markoff 9y ago
  what's wrong with Japanese and Korean cars? according ADAC Japanese are by far most reliable cars beating all European brands, top 10 most reliable cars usually consists of half normal Japanese cars (eg. Toyota Corolla) and half niche European cars you will hardly see on road (think Porsche)
  • danieldk 9y ago
    Nothing. We also considered some Japanese cars, but we found that they were generally more expensive (than e.g. similarly spec'ed Skodas or Seats).
    • Markoff 9y ago
      uh, Seat is very well known for being very unreliable and by far the most unreliable brand of VW concern, Skoda is decent but pretty bad value against Koreans, if you equip Skoda same way as Korean you end up for sure on higher price. Japanese in general cost slightly more, but it's worth it for better engines, high quality, low risk of stealing and decent resell value, while Seat has zero value I can't really imagine someone in US butting any of brands you mentioned, Seat is pretty bad deal even in Europe
      • danieldk 9y ago
        Sorry, but the ADAC had excellent reviews for the Skoda models that we considered and good reviews for the Seats. I'd rather take their word than hearsay. Again, these models were cheaper than similar Japanese models, that we had also looked at. Admittedly, we haven't looked much at Korean models. That's mostly because my wife (I don't have a driver's license) had no experience and consequently no opinion about them. At any rate, we ended up buying a Skoda ;). And I see Porsches here nearly every day :p.
        • Markoff 9y ago
          skodas are decent cars, it's just they are priced too high compared to Korean or even some Japanese brands which are better in all aspects
• petre 9y ago
  The Ford Focus sold in Europe is assembled in Germany [1]. The current US border control security climate dates since the Obama Administration. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_of_Europe#Facilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_of_Europe#Facilities
  • beedogs 9y ago
    > The current US border control security climate dates since the Obama Administration. That is demonstrably and absolutely false.
    • dx034 9y ago
      Then Bush? Because most of what Trump tried to change in terms of border security has been sacked by judges. Travelling to the US now isn't harder than a year ago (except for the laptop ban).
      • pyvpx 9y ago
        it is vastly different and more difficult because of the way border agents are performing their job, not because of any change in law.
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
    • Canada 9y ago
      Yeah, travel to and inside the US really started to suck during the first term of the GWB administration.
      • bluejekyll 9y ago
        To point out the obvious, that was when 9/11 happened. Most of this stuff is a reaction to that, and it still lingers.
      • 9y ago
• prawn 9y ago
  I hope that this sort of decline puts downwards pressure on flight and accommodation prices so it's cheaper to visit.
• ptaipale 9y ago
  Is there any real change in the entry procedure to the US after Trump became president? I wouldn't think so. If you were happy to visit Obama's US, you will hardly find any difference in Trump's US.
  • beedogs 9y ago
    It's like you haven't been reading the news for the past four months. So much has changed, and it is so much of an anything-goes clusterfuck right now that it's hard to keep up.
  • maxerickson 9y ago
    Obama never tried to revoke visas while the people holding them were in the air. I think there can also be a big shift in who is given a visa, without there being much visibility. Time will tell. That's not part of the entry procedure but is part of border policy more generally.
    • ChrisBland 9y ago
      I really try to avoid political discussions on HN, as I dislike both of the major parties. I would suggest you read a book called 'Operation Troy', what Obama did IMO is much worse than revoking a visa, he extrajudicially killed an american citizen with a drone strike not in the field of battle.
      • maxerickson 9y ago
        So if I read a book about Obama abusing the power of the US presidency, how will that impact my thinking about whether the approach to border policy has changed under the new administration?
      • jsutton 9y ago
        You avoid political discussions by bringing up a completely unrelated subject that attributes negatively to an ex president?
• briandear 9y ago
  Did the travel ban affect you? Are you from one of the six affected countries? I read a lot of commentary about how the travel ban has influenced travel decisions, but I'm not seeing much practical impact to the vast majority of travelers. Everyone has a right to vote with their euros of course, but I am curious if a single traveler has avoided France because of their policies in French Guyana, the Magreb or Sub-Saharan Africa or avoided China, Turkey or most Middle East countries because of human rights records? How about avoiding Italy or Greece because of widespread corruption or the U.K. because of the Brexit vote. Avoiding travel because of political disagreements would mean that people would only visit places that are exactly like they want. It's geopolitical inbreeding. Just a point of fact: Trump isn't denying climate change, he's skeptical of the impact from human activity.
  • submeta 9y ago
    I think it has mostly to do with how the TSA treats us non Americans. We don't have to be from one of the banned countries. Every non American has to fear being asked to hand his laptop / cellphone and whatnot.
    • Vivtek 9y ago
      If it makes you feel any better at all, we Americans are also treated like dirt for the disloyalty of leaving the country in the first place.
    • plandis 9y ago
      TSA are not the people who would ask you for your cellphone and laptop.
• alphapapa 9y ago
  > Semi-related: we were in the market for a new car. One of the factors we decided to go for a European car this time (we had a Ford Focus before) is that we'd like to support Trump America as little as possible. What an exciting new world we live in, in which, before we do any kind of business or trade with a company which has a presence in a foreign country, we must consider all of the policies of that country's current, democratically elected leader--and if we don't agree with them, we refuse to do any business with that company, thereby attempting to punish the citizens of that country for exercising their right to democratic self-rule. How dare they have a different opinion. We'll buy local instead. That'll teach 'em to disagree with us. What a sad state of affairs our world will be in if we all stop doing business with those who don't agree with us on everything. We might as well organize ourselves into separate entities and only do business within them. That would be...something like nations, without trade, no? But then here we are trying to force these other nations to do what we want, thereby erasing the distinctions between them. And that's the real goal here, isn't it? The world becomes smaller every day.
  • rapind 9y ago
    Sounds to me like voting with your pocket book. How is this a bad thing? Would you also object if I didn't want to purchase clothes that are manufactured in a way I find morally deplorable? Hey it's not the workers fault right?
    • alphapapa 9y ago
      > Sounds to me like voting with your pocket book. It's very interesting that you would compare it to voting, because that means we're talking about citizens of one country "voting" for the leader of another country--which would mean interfering with another country's elections. Are you sure you want to stick with that analogy? :) This is in contrast with the traditional definition of "voting with your wallet," which refers to refusing to do business with companies you don't like. > How is this a bad thing? In a nutshell, it's bad because it further contributes to polarization and division. This becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, leading to ever more "us vs. them" thinking. Eventually it's what leads to wars. Isn't it fairly basic political theory that nations which are economically interdependent are less likely to go to war with each other? If we can't do business with anyone who has different political opinions than we do, that's a recipe for...well, war. > Would you also object if I didn't want to purchase clothes that are manufactured in a way I find morally deplorable? Hey it's not the workers fault right? You're comparing apples to oranges. This is not a question of a company mistreating its workers. By the same token, I could ask you why you would punish the innocent workers who didn't vote for the candidate you dislike. By refusing to do business with them, you are hurting them, and it's not their fault the candidate got elected. Even from a purely pragmatic standpoint, this is likely to drive them away, toward your political opponents, who can tell them, "See how nasty the other side is? They won't even trade with us anymore because they disagree with how we run our own country!" That attitude is essentially a large part of why Trump got elected: the Democrats' constant condescension toward a large swath of the population alienated them. If you mistreat people, they aren't going to thank you for it, they're going to hate you for it. Or, colloquially, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
• panglott 9y ago
  Remember that a minority of Americans voted for Trump—a majority voted against him. He is president because a majority of states voted for him, not people.
• mtempm 9y ago
  Trump is not that much worse than Obama, it's mostly the media, politicians, people in power that are able to convince you of that. Remember, Obama droppee 26,000 bombs on Muslims last year, but I bet you'd never heard about a single one. Climate Change is mostly about politics, just like the War on Poverty and War on Drugs. Yes it's real, just like people have real problems with poverty and drugs, but people starve and suffer in 2017 because of greed, which leads to politics, not because of resources. Climate Change will likely worsen the resource situation, but it's not actually the real problem with humanity. We need to get over our little egos and figure out how to get off this earth and keep exploring.
  • mamon 9y ago
    Obama droppee 26,000 bombs on Muslims last year Strange, for someone who received Nobel Peace Prize. To be fair, he received it just for being black, nothing else (it was just after he won his first term, he hadn't even had time to accomplish anything of significance).
    • silverbax88 9y ago
      He won it for not being George Bush, not for being black. Neither reason is enough to win a Nobel Prize, but you just attempted to revise history. Of course, even if he had 'won it for being black' (which he didn't), that would be no difference than the hundreds of thousands of white men who got 'promoted for being a white man' or 'elected for being a white man'. But, sure, let's make an ignorant claim about racism as opposed to the (still stupid) choice the Nobel committee made to give the Peace Prize to a man who simply hadn't invaded the wrong country for oil. What, the real reason wasn't stupid enough, that we needed to make up a lie to make it even stupider? Hey, since we can change history to be whatever narrative we prefer, let's say flying cars were invented in 1971 and humans cured cancer in 1989. Why not. No need to stick with what actually happened.
  • silverbax88 9y ago
    Well, Trump's economic policies are much worse, significantly worse, and climate change is not 'mostly about politics'. This is why we ended up with a reality TV star as leader of the free world. You just sat down at a computer and wrote multiple things that are easily proven false, proving complete ignorance of those subjects, but you chose to type them out anyway. And no one will be able to explain to you why that was a bad idea. You'll just get angry as I or anyone else points it out.
• plandis 9y ago
  So you're going to not support a country with a product you like because of a president that the majority of Americans didn't want?