5 ms·

As a non-American, why do you care about who is in the white house so much? How does it affect your life concretely? Try watching less talking heads/browsing T

by idoby 6y ago

As a non-American, why do you care about who is in the white house so much? How does it affect your life concretely? Try watching less talking heads/browsing Twitter less, maybe, and you'll feel better?

mjayhn 6y ago
A lot of people didn't think the guy in the white house could matter that much until Trump. As a non-American a lot of Americans would likely be envious of your lifestyle right now. The 30 million currently unemployed for sure, the people who also can't get to a hospital if they need surgery or healthcare because they're closed because of our botched (guy in wh) response care as well. The essential workers with no healthcare who are making an extra $2/hour to possibly die. This isn't a vaccuum in America. A lot of us have friends, family and coworkers affected by this. Even if I ignore the president or the news I'm still trapped inside my house for the most part. If I leave my house it's an experience figuring out whether something is open or not, what their rules are, etc. I mean I can go sit in my backyard and ignore the world but I still need to function day to day and right now I can't do half of my chores, errands, etc. So it's something definitely affecting my day to day. And I'm on the lucky end, I can wfh and sit here and respond to you. I can't imagine having to go to work at some gas station to pay rent right now. The guy in the white house isn't doing anything to calm anyones nerves or concerns. He's exacerbating them greatly. He has the largest microphone in the country, it's hard to ignore him or his affect on peoples mental health. Everywhere we look is a reminder of our failure of a government. It's on everyones mouths. Now imagine going to work and fixing bobscars.com database while this stuff is in your face everyday.
- idoby 6y ago
  I'm sorry you feel this way, but it kind of feels to me like you're linking everything back to a political landscape that you don't like, but which doesn't have a lot to do with the current state of things. I'm not too happy with the govt in my country either, but I realize 90% of my situation would have been the same under most possible govts.
  - mjayhn 6y ago
    > I'm not too happy with the govt in my country either, but I realize 90% of my situation would have been the same under most possible govts. We are literally in the polar opposite government than we were from 2008-2016. I don't think we'd be at 100k dead today if our government was different and responded properly. Is this what we're debating? Why did Hong Kong only have 4 deaths the last I looked a few days ago? The government and societal response? Maybe we're miscommunicating. Yeah, 90% of my life is the same but we all have friends and family affected by some part of it (healthcare or unemployment typically). The most mutual thing right now is our combined stress (except for the people partying at the beach).
    - idoby 6y ago
      Sorry to read that, mate. FWIW I don't think your government had a course of action that would have made a lot of difference. It caught everybody on the planet off guard and exhausted already-provisioned healthcare resources pretty fast.
      - mjayhn 6y ago
        When did you quarantine? Most States have only been closed for a month and now they're opening. This "didn't catch us offguard" it is more like "our leader didn't tell us how bad it was for 3 months while the rest of the world shut down so most of our businesses didn't close and it's worse than it should be". That's the government. It's coming from the top. Companies weren't going to close offices until govs/Pres told them to do so, they had NO idea what to do. Most of our Republican Govs will do whatever Trump tells them. That is the problem. I just moved out of a red state that acts like this is nothing to blue state that is almost completely shut down until next week and has had FAR FAR fewer cases. So yeah, I think government matters now.
      - triceratops 6y ago
        > I don't think your government had a course of action that would have made a lot of difference. The obvious counter-argument to this are China and India. Significantly larger populations, living in far greater densities, possessing fewer healthcare resources, yet far fewer overall deaths. Even if China had 10x the deaths they're reporting (which would be hard to cover up, but you never know), it's still lower than the US. Their lockdown wasn't for as long. Schools in Wuhan reopened this month. > It caught everybody on the planet off guard. It caught China, and maybe Italy and Iran off guard. Surely after learning that a Chinese province of 20 million people had been put on house arrest, the rest of the planet should have cottoned on.
- adaml_623 6y ago
  I see your points and I don't understand those who disagree with you. 1. Your life is directly affected by the actions of those in power. 2. The future of your country is directly affected by the actions of those in power.
  - ikeyany 6y ago
    "I got mine, fuck everyone else".
tjs8rj 6y ago
This is very true, as an American. There's almost no difference in the vast majority of daily life for most Americans if you just pretended like the president doesn't exist.
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  Scant comfort for immigrants whose residency and livelihood are under threat, or Americans who have lost loved ones indirectly due to bad decisions made by the president, or non-Americans who have to live in a world shaped by American action or inaction on foreign policy.
- freehunter 6y ago
  The president has not had a dramatic impact on my life directly. The people who follow him and listen to him absolutely have. I'm getting real tired of seeing armed protests, nazi/confederate flags, and Make America Great Again signs at my state capitol every other day. I'm tired of his threats to punish my state after a massive flood because he doesn't like my governor. I'm tired of one of his cabinet members riling up these armed protests with nazi/confederate flags. And even if the president hasn't done anything to me specifically, I'm getting real tired of hearing all the stupid shit he does/says every night on the news or the next morning when my coworkers talk about it. If I could figure out a way to block the words "twitter", "hydroxycloroquine", "inject disinfectant", etc... I'm sure he'd make up even stupider things for people to talk about. It's tiring. It's exhausting. And knowing that nearly half of my countrymen agree with what he says just makes it worse. But the worst part of all is having a president who is actively attacking my state and its elected representatives while we're in not one but MULTIPLE states of emergency. Have you ever had your president declare war on your state? It's not normal. And it's really hard to pretend it doesn't exist.
rootusrootus 6y ago
> why do you care about who is in the white house so much He raised my taxes last year, rather significantly. So it's not just Twitter rants.
- sk5t 6y ago
  The cap on SALT deductions is insane. More punishment for having to pay city and state taxes...
  - dsfyu404ed 6y ago
    How is it insane? Allowing SALT deductions at all allows states and municipalities to skip out on federal taxes by taxing themselves. That's money that isn't going into medicare, the VA, etc, etc, (thereby defeating the point of funding those things at the federal level) and instead is going directly into state/local coffers which defeats the point of having uniform federal taxes for funding federal programs. I'm personally paying more thanks to the deduction cap but I understand the principal of it.
tayo42 6y ago
My taxes went up significantly because of this administration. It's sad to see the racist actions they take at borders. Trump is riling up groups of people with the things he says.
vmchale 6y ago
> How does it affect your life concretely? Right now, he has tanked our country. We could have had a plan for the virus, and instead we are muzzling scientists.
op00to 6y ago
Multiple people I know have died, almost everyone I know is out of work. The shithead in the White House killed all the programs that would have helped us.
riscy 6y ago
Within a week of him assuming office in 2017, all of my extended family was (and still is) banned from visiting the country. It was his campaign promise and executive order.
jdavis703 6y ago
Right now the US is the leader in COVID19 cases and deaths. Bigger countries like China have so far performed better than the US. Yes, there are structural issues, like the obesity epidemic. But it doesn't help the government is spending time arguing about masks and drinking disinfectant instead of building out test, trace & quarantine infrastructure.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
JPKab 6y ago
As an American I completely agree with you. The fact of the matter is that the federal government does not have a huge bearing on most Americans lives. I live in Colorado and therefore get to enjoy marijuana whenever I want despite the fact that it's not legal at the federal level. I like it that way. Yet when we talk about this virus that is making everybody so miserable via lockdowns and for some killing them, suddenly everyone talks about it at a federal national level. As if the United States is a small homogeneous country. The virus hit New York City hard and nowhere else in the country. if you remove New York City from the equation the United States is at the top as far as low numbers of deaths per 100,000. if you include New York City the United States is still doing better than the United kingdom Spain, Italy, and Belgium etc. However the news media in this country is in the mode of if it bleeds it leads. they like to scare people to get them to keep their eyeballs glued to their screens and their prescription drug advertisements. The most recent thing that they've been doing is focusing on absolute numbers rather than relative numbers with the deaths. Same for positive tests. The number of tests being administered has gone up radically and therefore more positive cases are turning up. The media in this country has conveniently left out the fact that the positive test rate is the number that matters and that has gone down all over the country. I really really dislike Donald Trump like most of the people on this website. However I'm old enough to remember when a previous Republican president started a needless war that cost thousands of American soldiers their lives as well as trillions of dollars and I'm not even counting the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that were killed. The current president is incompetent and just says dumb s* all the time. That's honestly the extent of it and I have to constantly hear the whining and complaining as if the world is coming to an end. It's frankly very irritating and the media doesn't help.
- JSavageOne 6y ago
  The whole reason the U.S. had to go into lockdown was because of the failure at the federal level to contain this crisis.
  - JPKab 6y ago
    You say that as if it COULD have been contained. What is unique about the USA compared to every other country that locked down? Whose fault was it that Italy, UK, Spain, Belgium, Germany had to lock down? This election year absurdity has warped the reality of this virus. The virus is insanely transmissible with a long incubation period and high percentage of asymptomatic carriers. It couldn't have been contained in a free country. The "had to go into lockdown" is debatable for most of USA. NYC needed a lockdown. Rest of US probably not. Remember when Sweden was going to be a disaster a few weeks ago? Georgia and Florida? Yeah, they ended lockdowns, moron journalists pretending to be epidemiologists predicted doom. All wrong. Sweden is fine. Georgia is fine. Florida is fine. Why? Because they aren't the same as NYC and shouldn't be treated the same.
JSavageOne 6y ago
It's harder to feel optimistic about the future when there's an idiot in office who's actively trying to dismantle everything that's good about the country. Trump still being in office points to a systemic failure of our government, which nobody is really talking about changing. Sad to feel optimism in a country with a failed government.
asdfasdfasdfa 6y ago
The only two Republican presidents in my adult life have both been directly associated with mass death and economic collapse. That's why I care.

by idoby 6y ago

mjayhn 6y ago

A lot of people didn't think the guy in the white house could matter that much until Trump. As a non-American a lot of Americans would likely be envious of your lifestyle right now. The 30 million currently unemployed for sure, the people who also can't get to a hospital if they need surgery or healthcare because they're closed because of our botched (guy in wh) response care as well. The essential workers with no healthcare who are making an extra $2/hour to possibly die. This isn't a vaccuum in America. A lot of us have friends, family and coworkers affected by this. Even if I ignore the president or the news I'm still trapped inside my house for the most part. If I leave my house it's an experience figuring out whether something is open or not, what their rules are, etc. I mean I can go sit in my backyard and ignore the world but I still need to function day to day and right now I can't do half of my chores, errands, etc. So it's something definitely affecting my day to day. And I'm on the lucky end, I can wfh and sit here and respond to you. I can't imagine having to go to work at some gas station to pay rent right now. The guy in the white house isn't doing anything to calm anyones nerves or concerns. He's exacerbating them greatly. He has the largest microphone in the country, it's hard to ignore him or his affect on peoples mental health. Everywhere we look is a reminder of our failure of a government. It's on everyones mouths. Now imagine going to work and fixing bobscars.com database while this stuff is in your face everyday.

idoby 6y ago
I'm sorry you feel this way, but it kind of feels to me like you're linking everything back to a political landscape that you don't like, but which doesn't have a lot to do with the current state of things. I'm not too happy with the govt in my country either, but I realize 90% of my situation would have been the same under most possible govts.
- mjayhn 6y ago
  > I'm not too happy with the govt in my country either, but I realize 90% of my situation would have been the same under most possible govts. We are literally in the polar opposite government than we were from 2008-2016. I don't think we'd be at 100k dead today if our government was different and responded properly. Is this what we're debating? Why did Hong Kong only have 4 deaths the last I looked a few days ago? The government and societal response? Maybe we're miscommunicating. Yeah, 90% of my life is the same but we all have friends and family affected by some part of it (healthcare or unemployment typically). The most mutual thing right now is our combined stress (except for the people partying at the beach).
  - idoby 6y ago
    Sorry to read that, mate. FWIW I don't think your government had a course of action that would have made a lot of difference. It caught everybody on the planet off guard and exhausted already-provisioned healthcare resources pretty fast.
    - mjayhn 6y ago
      When did you quarantine? Most States have only been closed for a month and now they're opening. This "didn't catch us offguard" it is more like "our leader didn't tell us how bad it was for 3 months while the rest of the world shut down so most of our businesses didn't close and it's worse than it should be". That's the government. It's coming from the top. Companies weren't going to close offices until govs/Pres told them to do so, they had NO idea what to do. Most of our Republican Govs will do whatever Trump tells them. That is the problem. I just moved out of a red state that acts like this is nothing to blue state that is almost completely shut down until next week and has had FAR FAR fewer cases. So yeah, I think government matters now.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      > I don't think your government had a course of action that would have made a lot of difference. The obvious counter-argument to this are China and India. Significantly larger populations, living in far greater densities, possessing fewer healthcare resources, yet far fewer overall deaths. Even if China had 10x the deaths they're reporting (which would be hard to cover up, but you never know), it's still lower than the US. Their lockdown wasn't for as long. Schools in Wuhan reopened this month. > It caught everybody on the planet off guard. It caught China, and maybe Italy and Iran off guard. Surely after learning that a Chinese province of 20 million people had been put on house arrest, the rest of the planet should have cottoned on.
adaml_623 6y ago
I see your points and I don't understand those who disagree with you. 1. Your life is directly affected by the actions of those in power. 2. The future of your country is directly affected by the actions of those in power.
- ikeyany 6y ago
  "I got mine, fuck everyone else".

tjs8rj 6y ago

This is very true, as an American. There's almost no difference in the vast majority of daily life for most Americans if you just pretended like the president doesn't exist.

themacguffinman 6y ago
Scant comfort for immigrants whose residency and livelihood are under threat, or Americans who have lost loved ones indirectly due to bad decisions made by the president, or non-Americans who have to live in a world shaped by American action or inaction on foreign policy.
freehunter 6y ago
The president has not had a dramatic impact on my life directly. The people who follow him and listen to him absolutely have. I'm getting real tired of seeing armed protests, nazi/confederate flags, and Make America Great Again signs at my state capitol every other day. I'm tired of his threats to punish my state after a massive flood because he doesn't like my governor. I'm tired of one of his cabinet members riling up these armed protests with nazi/confederate flags. And even if the president hasn't done anything to me specifically, I'm getting real tired of hearing all the stupid shit he does/says every night on the news or the next morning when my coworkers talk about it. If I could figure out a way to block the words "twitter", "hydroxycloroquine", "inject disinfectant", etc... I'm sure he'd make up even stupider things for people to talk about. It's tiring. It's exhausting. And knowing that nearly half of my countrymen agree with what he says just makes it worse. But the worst part of all is having a president who is actively attacking my state and its elected representatives while we're in not one but MULTIPLE states of emergency. Have you ever had your president declare war on your state? It's not normal. And it's really hard to pretend it doesn't exist.

rootusrootus 6y ago

> why do you care about who is in the white house so much He raised my taxes last year, rather significantly. So it's not just Twitter rants.

sk5t 6y ago
The cap on SALT deductions is insane. More punishment for having to pay city and state taxes...
- dsfyu404ed 6y ago
  How is it insane? Allowing SALT deductions at all allows states and municipalities to skip out on federal taxes by taxing themselves. That's money that isn't going into medicare, the VA, etc, etc, (thereby defeating the point of funding those things at the federal level) and instead is going directly into state/local coffers which defeats the point of having uniform federal taxes for funding federal programs. I'm personally paying more thanks to the deduction cap but I understand the principal of it.

tayo42 6y ago

My taxes went up significantly because of this administration. It's sad to see the racist actions they take at borders. Trump is riling up groups of people with the things he says.

vmchale 6y ago

> How does it affect your life concretely? Right now, he has tanked our country. We could have had a plan for the virus, and instead we are muzzling scientists.

op00to 6y ago

Multiple people I know have died, almost everyone I know is out of work. The shithead in the White House killed all the programs that would have helped us.

riscy 6y ago

Within a week of him assuming office in 2017, all of my extended family was (and still is) banned from visiting the country. It was his campaign promise and executive order.

jdavis703 6y ago

Right now the US is the leader in COVID19 cases and deaths. Bigger countries like China have so far performed better than the US. Yes, there are structural issues, like the obesity epidemic. But it doesn't help the government is spending time arguing about masks and drinking disinfectant instead of building out test, trace & quarantine infrastructure.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

JPKab 6y ago

As an American I completely agree with you. The fact of the matter is that the federal government does not have a huge bearing on most Americans lives. I live in Colorado and therefore get to enjoy marijuana whenever I want despite the fact that it's not legal at the federal level. I like it that way. Yet when we talk about this virus that is making everybody so miserable via lockdowns and for some killing them, suddenly everyone talks about it at a federal national level. As if the United States is a small homogeneous country. The virus hit New York City hard and nowhere else in the country. if you remove New York City from the equation the United States is at the top as far as low numbers of deaths per 100,000. if you include New York City the United States is still doing better than the United kingdom Spain, Italy, and Belgium etc. However the news media in this country is in the mode of if it bleeds it leads. they like to scare people to get them to keep their eyeballs glued to their screens and their prescription drug advertisements. The most recent thing that they've been doing is focusing on absolute numbers rather than relative numbers with the deaths. Same for positive tests. The number of tests being administered has gone up radically and therefore more positive cases are turning up. The media in this country has conveniently left out the fact that the positive test rate is the number that matters and that has gone down all over the country. I really really dislike Donald Trump like most of the people on this website. However I'm old enough to remember when a previous Republican president started a needless war that cost thousands of American soldiers their lives as well as trillions of dollars and I'm not even counting the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that were killed. The current president is incompetent and just says dumb s* all the time. That's honestly the extent of it and I have to constantly hear the whining and complaining as if the world is coming to an end. It's frankly very irritating and the media doesn't help.

JSavageOne 6y ago
The whole reason the U.S. had to go into lockdown was because of the failure at the federal level to contain this crisis.
- JPKab 6y ago
  You say that as if it COULD have been contained. What is unique about the USA compared to every other country that locked down? Whose fault was it that Italy, UK, Spain, Belgium, Germany had to lock down? This election year absurdity has warped the reality of this virus. The virus is insanely transmissible with a long incubation period and high percentage of asymptomatic carriers. It couldn't have been contained in a free country. The "had to go into lockdown" is debatable for most of USA. NYC needed a lockdown. Rest of US probably not. Remember when Sweden was going to be a disaster a few weeks ago? Georgia and Florida? Yeah, they ended lockdowns, moron journalists pretending to be epidemiologists predicted doom. All wrong. Sweden is fine. Georgia is fine. Florida is fine. Why? Because they aren't the same as NYC and shouldn't be treated the same.

JSavageOne 6y ago

It's harder to feel optimistic about the future when there's an idiot in office who's actively trying to dismantle everything that's good about the country. Trump still being in office points to a systemic failure of our government, which nobody is really talking about changing. Sad to feel optimism in a country with a failed government.

asdfasdfasdfa 6y ago

The only two Republican presidents in my adult life have both been directly associated with mass death and economic collapse. That's why I care.