Ask HN: Best way to oppose Trump?

[pduan]

It's been only 8 days since Trump was sworn in as president and every passing day I find myself more and more disgusted and appalled by his racist and idiotic actions.

As a common citizen, what are the highest impact things I can do to oppose his actions?

Edit: Sorry about bringing up politics here but this is something that I feel cannot be ignored any longer. The reason I ask here is because I feel like there are some of the smartest people in the world who read HN and would love to get everyone's opinions.

[masondixon]

Trump supporter here.

Get less of us to vote for him in 4 years.

Pick objective ideologically-neutral metrics that we can all agree are good for the country when optimised. Focus on these.

Things like GDP growth, unemployment, child mortality, life expectancy, crime rates, terrorist attacks, etc.

If unemployment is going up, GDP growth is faltering, and there are continued terrorist attacks, then he will certainly lose support.

You need to test your beliefs with objective facts. And these tests need to be applied equally to avoid bias.

Everyone is susceptible to bias. You should have some objective measures for which you would admit Trump was good for the country. If you don't have these, then you are not be rationale.

The President has a job with performance targets, and if they are not met they are gone.

[sawmurai]

Just out of curiosity and without judgement: are you still supporting what he does?

[masondixon]

Yep.

Looking back after four years: what numbers do you expect to point to showing that he was as bad as everyone made out he was?

[savvides]

What objective measures did you use to vote for him in the first place?

[masondixon]

Why does that matter?

Now that he is elected, there is an easy way to evaluate whether he is as bad as everyone says he is.

Looking back after four years: what numbers do you expect to point to showing that he was as bad as everyone made out he was?

[grep2]

Vote with your feet: Germany for example has a strong democratic culture, vibrant economy, (nearly) free education system, functioning public healthcare and - best of all - people speak German. To be fair, just with English you'll also get already pretty far.

Drop me a line in case you're interested, I'd be happy to help where I can. Same holds for companies.

[candiodari]

Best way: take away the reason Trump got elected.

I know this will sound somewhat out of reach for most people, but realistically, we want to stop the isolation wave, this is what needs to be done.

We need to have 3x minimum wage + benefits zero-skill jobs and we need something like 20 to 40 million of those in the US, and half a billion of those worldwide. Note, we don't need the jobs themselves, we need to actually have those people do something economically useful.

I realize this is not easy, and you can't just cheat, so shouting basic income will not get anyone anywhere. But if we could do that, worldwide, the "wave of conservatism" will stop dead in it's tracks. Trump will be opposed, borders will open, Europe will stay whole, ... And the best part of it is: if you do this, you'll probably yourself get to be in the top10 richest people in the world.

The alternative is that we get into ever more debt. Now debt requires interest to be paid. So when people say debt is now 100% of GDP that means there is effectively a transaction tax of, let's say on average twice the Fed's interest rate. This is extremely inaccurate, but it's not totally off of the mark. Right now that's a tax paid to the 1% of about 1% of every time you get paid, every dollar you spend, every dollar you give your landlord. If the FED raises rates 3x (or more) this year, as they've promised to do, by the end of 2017 it will be 2.5% or more. So in order to pay the interest on it we'll need systematically more austerity measures. Pension cuts, unemployment cuts, healthcare cuts, everything cuts.

(Now do you understand why countries going bankrupt is such a big deal and why debt restructuring is so unacceptable to the American rightists (democrat or republican) ? The 1% has a huge problem here. That amount of tax towards them is too much. It risks bankrupting entire economies, but there's soooo much money to be had. Every year from now on they can delay the inevitable debt collapse and avoid asset/property/wealth taxes they get 3% of all wealth on the planet. Every year. Real leftists, of course, are proposing that income taxes be abolished and replaced by a) wealth tax b) import tax c) asset taxes)

[orionblastar]

The Democratic party needs new leaders. Trump was voted for because he is not Clinton and promised to undo what Obama had done.

Obama promised but didn't keep the promises to help the poor, shelter the homeless, fix city or state issues like the Flint lead water crisis going on since 2014 and the water is still undrinkable.

Look they got record numbers in BLM and women march protests if they can organize large groups of people like that and go out to vote in two years they can make Congress a Democrat majority again.

Trump won on many factors, but the big reason was that people for Hillary did not even go out and vote. So find a way to get more Democrat supporters to go out and vote and make a difference.

[grzm]

This has been recommended a number of times today: https://www.indivisibleguide.com

[douche]

Be a not-terrible human being and roll with the punches. Realize that your agenda might not appeal to all of the other people in your nation. Try to understand the people who do not share your worldview and why that is.

[DenisM]

Set up recurring donations to the charities fighting a good fight - ACLU, EFF, Planned Parenthood, you name it. Make sure your friends do likewise.

If you feel anxious, go volunteer. Doing something physically will calm you down and support the cause at the same time.

[guest0467]

Volunteer for campaigns of candidates that are running counter to Trump's policies. There's ALOT that goes into campaigns and not just in the weeks leading up to an election. Plus, ring the phone off the hook of your congressman.

[Neliquat]

The best way is to be rational. Hate, disgust, etc have no place in a reasonable argument, only facts. If you argue based on feelings alone, you are not going to advance your cause. This post is case in point.

[grzm]

Read Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

[basicplus2]

Vote

[chaggy]

To remind everyone, Trump lost the popular vote by around 3 million votes.

[grzm]

Trump lost the popular vote by around 3 million votes.

As a statement of fact, this is true.

If by this your intent is to point out how split the country is, great. It shows that there's likely a lot of common ground to draw on, and that Trump by no means has a mandate.

If it's to point out that the discrepancy between the Electoral College and the popular vote is problematic and the process should be amended to fix it, fine. In either case (or both cases), you should say so. Reforming the election process, perhaps even removing the Electoral College is likely a worthwhile goal, and a lot of work needs to be done to make changes like this.

If your intent is to imply that Clinton should be president because the popular vote went to her, that goes to far. The campaigns and GOTV efforts were run understanding how the existing election process with the Electoral College works. If the popular vote determined the outcome of the election, the campaigns and GOTV efforts would have been run differently. Voter behavior would have been different as well. The popular vote result would have likewise been different. That's not to say one candidate or the other would have been elected, that the end result would have been different or the same. Just that the popular vote results would have been different if the campaigns/GOTV were run differently.

[pduan]

What an useless and asshole-ish response. I did vote and that ship sailed Nov. 8th. I'm obviously looking for ways to fight this now.

[grzm]

Sincerely, you're asking for ideas, and there are other opportunities to vote besides the past presidential elections. If you don't find that suggestion helpful or think it was offered in bad faith, just ignore it. Getting heated or snippy isn't going to do much to encourage others to submit ideas.

Edit to add: And being able to not react reflexively to every perceived slight is itself a good suggestion as it's going to make you more effective in dealing with a lot of the polarization that's out there.

[pduan]

It's not being snippy or heated. I would love to know what else I can do between now and 2018 and 2020.

Voting is the bare minimum we can do and I don't really need to post a HN thread to figure that out.

[simonbarker87]

While the previous poster is being a little flippant I don't think he's being totally unhelpful. If you want to send the message you are unhappy with Trump then on top of any protesting you do also make sure you get people to vote, when they can, against his policies. There are mid terms in less than two years so make sure the Republicans who support him take a hammering at the polls.

[basicplus2]

http://avc.com/2017/01/make-america-hate-again/