4 ms·

Planning a couple trips from WA to BC this year - so long as we are allowed in. US border patrol has generally been less than pleasant (coming back as a citize

Planning a couple trips from WA to BC this year - so long as we are allowed in. US border patrol has generally been less than pleasant (coming back as a citizen) at the car crossing for decades.

bluGill 2y ago
Write your congress repetitiveness. So long as they think we are happy they won't do anything. If they think we are mad things will change. Make sure you get everyone else you know to write as well.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  If your Congress person is Republican, they are much more afraid of being primaried by someone who tows the line and is being financed by Musk than their constituents.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    All congress persons are most afraid of voters. If voters do not care than those other people withholding money can cost them an election, but they will betray anyone else if their voters care about the issue. They can find money from other sources - or even beg for forgiveness and get the money anyway.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      The issue is if you are a Republican, you will never make it to the general election if you have to compete in the primaries against someone who is further to the right and endorsed by Trump/Musk. You can’t get enough money to compete against Musk and the true MAGAs who vote in the primaries and forgive anything that Trump does.
      - bluGill 2y ago
        There are very few areas where a democrat can't win with just a small shift in voters. Get 5% of republicans mad enough to stay home (or maybe vote third party) and that changes the outcome - not to mention independents who change their vote, or democrats who might get mad enough to go vote even if they think they don't have a chance.
        JustExAWS 2y ago
        It’s not about a Republican candidate winning against a Democrat. It’s about a Republican beating another well financed Republican in the primaries before the election even happens. Besides with gerrymandering, most Republican seats are safe Republican seats. Even without gerrymandering, there are entire states that are never going to vote for a Democrat. This is map of red vs blue counties. https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*86sURhsiwekHqCuqjbFnkQ.png https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*86sU...
  - SimianSci 2y ago
    This is the heart of the issue. We allowed a single person to gather enough wealth to which they could subvert the process by this one simple trick. The Republican trend has been to worry less about their constituents as Republican voters care less and less about the actions or policy of their representatives and more about what conservative media is focused on. This makes money a far more effective means of deciding who holds seats. Money has always had an outsized effect on who wins their seat come next election, but where some candidates could succeed despite their oponents out-spending them, the republican party has become almost entirely "pay to win." Americans need to expect their living circumstances to continue to decrease as representatives increasingly service wealth holders instead of constituents.
    - JustExAWS 2y ago
      Americans want their living standards to decrease for some odd reason. The vast majority of rural America and the poor not only voted for Trump and Republicans. But are steady cheering DOGE cutting services and programs they depend on. Their major concerns are God, Guns, sticking it to the “college educated elite”, getting rid of “illegals”, fighting against the demographic shift of the US becoming majority/minority, protecting Israel so Jesus will have some place to come back to (no exaggeration) and woke something or other.
    - jyounker 2y ago
      Thank you. This is why wealth concentration and media consolidation are so poisonous to democracy.
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      I think it's unfortunate to just paint this as being a case of Trump being super powerful cuz money. The reality is there's a dark thing at the heart of most people which tends towards an ethic of "might makes right", and holding government over the most powerful nation in the world and then explicitly propagating that as official national religion is absolutely seductive. Americans -- like many others -- crave supremacy. Fate and fortune has given them some form of it, and they've been told their whole lives how they deserve it. But they feel it slipping. "Make America Great Again" is just about that. Others must submit and we will be most powerful. This Canada stuff is just one small instance of it. The Greenland stuff is even more disturbing.
  - sorcerer-mar 2y ago
    They're also afraid of MAGA death threats.
kridsdale1 2y ago
I (used to) make that trip every few months. When I switched from visa to green card, those agents started to say “Welcome home.” and it made me feel good. I wonder if they will still do that. My next time crossing will be the first with US citizenship and passport.
thorncorona 2y ago
the blaine folks are in my experience more chill than the peace arch folks
gpm 2y ago
Canadian here, I'd be pretty surprised to see a change prohibiting americans from coming here. The political discourse here is pretty strongly against the current US government (because of threats of annexation), and in support of measures to protect ourselves against that (disentangling our economy and military), but we are also pretty clear that the average American who visits Canada is not responsible for that, not necessarily in favor of that, and might well be fleeing policies of the same US government we are acting to protect ourselves against.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  I wonder if at some point Canada will start accepting political refugees from the US.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    We're currently in a "oh shit we let way too many people into the country and now nobody can afford a home" moment, and cutting way back on immigration of all sorts. And the definition of refugee is frankly rather strict. So, no, I can't really see it.
    - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
      Yeah I get it. You'd think that home builders would be salivating at having so many new customers and building like crazy, but supply and demand doesn't work like we think it does with housing for some reason.
      - jamwil 2y ago
        Our municipal governments are allergic to densification and have onerous zoning laws that force basically all new development through years of consultation and permitting to get a shovel in the ground. Coupled with a weak currency and extreme land prices in the geographically constrained markets like Vancouver, many projects die on the vine.
gopher_space 2y ago
> US border patrol has generally been less than pleasant (coming back as a citizen) at the car crossing for decades. No matter where I've visited or how repressive the regime, in all of my years of travel, I've never seen worse human beings than the US border patrol in Washington State. There's something fundamentally wrong going on up there and it's been like this for decades.

Planning a couple trips from WA to BC this year - so long as we are allowed in. US border patrol has generally been less than pleasant (coming back as a citizen) at the car crossing for decades.

bluGill 2y ago

Write your congress repetitiveness. So long as they think we are happy they won't do anything. If they think we are mad things will change. Make sure you get everyone else you know to write as well.

scarface_74 2y ago
If your Congress person is Republican, they are much more afraid of being primaried by someone who tows the line and is being financed by Musk than their constituents.
- bluGill 2y ago
  All congress persons are most afraid of voters. If voters do not care than those other people withholding money can cost them an election, but they will betray anyone else if their voters care about the issue. They can find money from other sources - or even beg for forgiveness and get the money anyway.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    The issue is if you are a Republican, you will never make it to the general election if you have to compete in the primaries against someone who is further to the right and endorsed by Trump/Musk. You can’t get enough money to compete against Musk and the true MAGAs who vote in the primaries and forgive anything that Trump does.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      There are very few areas where a democrat can't win with just a small shift in voters. Get 5% of republicans mad enough to stay home (or maybe vote third party) and that changes the outcome - not to mention independents who change their vote, or democrats who might get mad enough to go vote even if they think they don't have a chance.
      - JustExAWS 2y ago
        It’s not about a Republican candidate winning against a Democrat. It’s about a Republican beating another well financed Republican in the primaries before the election even happens. Besides with gerrymandering, most Republican seats are safe Republican seats. Even without gerrymandering, there are entire states that are never going to vote for a Democrat. This is map of red vs blue counties. https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*86sURhsiwekHqCuqjbFnkQ.png https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*86sU...
- SimianSci 2y ago
  This is the heart of the issue. We allowed a single person to gather enough wealth to which they could subvert the process by this one simple trick. The Republican trend has been to worry less about their constituents as Republican voters care less and less about the actions or policy of their representatives and more about what conservative media is focused on. This makes money a far more effective means of deciding who holds seats. Money has always had an outsized effect on who wins their seat come next election, but where some candidates could succeed despite their oponents out-spending them, the republican party has become almost entirely "pay to win." Americans need to expect their living circumstances to continue to decrease as representatives increasingly service wealth holders instead of constituents.
  - JustExAWS 2y ago
    Americans want their living standards to decrease for some odd reason. The vast majority of rural America and the poor not only voted for Trump and Republicans. But are steady cheering DOGE cutting services and programs they depend on. Their major concerns are God, Guns, sticking it to the “college educated elite”, getting rid of “illegals”, fighting against the demographic shift of the US becoming majority/minority, protecting Israel so Jesus will have some place to come back to (no exaggeration) and woke something or other.
  - jyounker 2y ago
    Thank you. This is why wealth concentration and media consolidation are so poisonous to democracy.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    I think it's unfortunate to just paint this as being a case of Trump being super powerful cuz money. The reality is there's a dark thing at the heart of most people which tends towards an ethic of "might makes right", and holding government over the most powerful nation in the world and then explicitly propagating that as official national religion is absolutely seductive. Americans -- like many others -- crave supremacy. Fate and fortune has given them some form of it, and they've been told their whole lives how they deserve it. But they feel it slipping. "Make America Great Again" is just about that. Others must submit and we will be most powerful. This Canada stuff is just one small instance of it. The Greenland stuff is even more disturbing.
- sorcerer-mar 2y ago
  They're also afraid of MAGA death threats.

kridsdale1 2y ago

I (used to) make that trip every few months. When I switched from visa to green card, those agents started to say “Welcome home.” and it made me feel good. I wonder if they will still do that. My next time crossing will be the first with US citizenship and passport.

thorncorona 2y ago

the blaine folks are in my experience more chill than the peace arch folks

gpm 2y ago

Canadian here, I'd be pretty surprised to see a change prohibiting americans from coming here. The political discourse here is pretty strongly against the current US government (because of threats of annexation), and in support of measures to protect ourselves against that (disentangling our economy and military), but we are also pretty clear that the average American who visits Canada is not responsible for that, not necessarily in favor of that, and might well be fleeing policies of the same US government we are acting to protect ourselves against.

amanaplanacanal 2y ago
I wonder if at some point Canada will start accepting political refugees from the US.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  We're currently in a "oh shit we let way too many people into the country and now nobody can afford a home" moment, and cutting way back on immigration of all sorts. And the definition of refugee is frankly rather strict. So, no, I can't really see it.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    Yeah I get it. You'd think that home builders would be salivating at having so many new customers and building like crazy, but supply and demand doesn't work like we think it does with housing for some reason.
    - jamwil 2y ago
      Our municipal governments are allergic to densification and have onerous zoning laws that force basically all new development through years of consultation and permitting to get a shovel in the ground. Coupled with a weak currency and extreme land prices in the geographically constrained markets like Vancouver, many projects die on the vine.

gopher_space 2y ago

> US border patrol has generally been less than pleasant (coming back as a citizen) at the car crossing for decades. No matter where I've visited or how repressive the regime, in all of my years of travel, I've never seen worse human beings than the US border patrol in Washington State. There's something fundamentally wrong going on up there and it's been like this for decades.