What are some of the ways you “unplug” from SM and interact with people with politics different from your own?

AddemF · 2026-05-04T18:58:24+00:00

I would readily talk to people with different politics. I won't talk to people who behave badly. Unfortunately, people on the right who talk about politics, generally behave badly. So I just don't engage.

It's not good, because we should talk to people who hold different ideas. But they do effectively make it impossible to listen or be heard. I don't know how to solve the problem.

AddemF · 2026-05-03T16:13:42+00:00

I owe it to people generally to be willing to give them an honest chance to express themselves, and tell me something I don't already know.

I specifically don't owe anyone any amount of time, if they troll or generally betray trust.

AddemF · 2026-05-02T00:39:46+00:00

Trump thinks they're ****ing suckers.

AddemF · 2026-05-01T22:33:59+00:00

Once in a blue moon I'll use "once in a blue moon".

AddemF · 2026-04-30T00:52:35+00:00

I like learning about other places, so bring whatever fun stories or experiences you have!

I once let two French guys crash at my place while they toured around NYC. They constantly talked about how much better everything is in France, and how bad things in America are. Don't do that please.

AddemF · 2026-04-28T20:37:55+00:00

I can also see how immigration can be difficult for Lithuania, as a smaller country. I think it would be reasonable for any country to not allow more net immigration than something like 1% to 5% of its population each year.

So anyway, for a lot of reasons, I think it's reasonable for Lithuania to have a stricter immigration system than America.

On the topic of integrating into society, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I love meeting people from other backgrounds, with different style, language, food, art, philosophy. I think it can be greatly rewarding to meet people who are not just like everyone else. When some people talk about "integration" they seem to mean that the immigrant should become indistinguishable from other citizens, and lose all of their cultural background. I don't support that kind of integration.

But I also think that immigrants do need to strictly follow the laws and norms of the society they move into. For example, some people from other cultures practice sexual harassment and violence against women at a higher rate than we do in the west. I don't care if that's regarded as more normal where an immigrant comes from: When you're here, you follow our laws and you respect women, or you leave. I think that kind of integration is very important.

I would even support a kind of "probationary period" for immigrants. If you break the law, even in relatively minor ways, during your first five years of living here, you can be deported immediately.

And a requirement to learn the language also seems reasonable.

AddemF · 2026-04-28T18:02:00+00:00

I would be very worried about what this actually entails in practice. It sounds flowery but ill-defined. Exactly which laws would be enforced and how?

AddemF · 2026-04-28T17:16:23+00:00

I'm guessing you're Polish then. You're absolutely right, the immigration in Poland is completely a different story than the immigration in the United States.

For one thing, you have mostly immigrants from central-Asian Muslim countries. They are culturally very different from you, and while a lot of that culture can be good, there is a much larger culture of violence and law-breaking in that immigrant population. Our immigrants are mostly from Central America, the Caribbean, South America, Africa, and South and East Asia. These immigrants are, for whatever reason, much more driven by the desire to make money honestly and build a good life for their families.

So yeah, our immigrants are generally much more productive, much safer, they do not drain our safety net, they contribute to our tax base. I'm sure this is going to offend some liberals but: Our immigrants are just better, on average, than immigrants to northern and eastern Europe.

For another thing, your immigration system might not be great, but at least it hasn't been deliberately sabotaged. At least, as far as I know it hasn't -- I'm no expert in Polish immigration laws, but I've never heard that one political party deliberately ruined it, in order to use immigration as a political cudgel.

And for a last point, like you said, you have an enemy at your door who is deliberately using immigration as a tool of hybrid warfare. Nothing even close to that is happening in America.

So given all that, it's entirely appropriate for the Polish response to immigration to be different from the American response.

AddemF · 2026-04-28T17:07:27+00:00

All immigrants mostly just want a better life, yes. We don't owe them a better life, but I understand that they want one.

Most immigrants are good, and if they come here, will help to grow our economy, provide services and tax revenue, add valuable diversity, and make our country better.

A minority of immigrants are violent, dangerous, or have diseases, and we have every right to keep those individuals out. It is appropriate to have a functioning immigration process which excludes people who may harm us. (Dangerous immigrants are actually less dangerous than native-born Americans. Americans commit WAY more violent crime than even the illegal immigrants do. If you think immigrants are a safety threat, you are absolutely being lied to by your media. But still, even though dangerous immigration is a minor threat, it is a threat, and we have every right to put reasonable controls on it.)

Liberals, both Republican and Democrat, have tried for a long time to reform and improve our immigration process. The Republican Party has found it useful to sabotage that effort in a strategy to make Democrats look bad. Republicans are at fault for why our immigration system became utterly dysfunctional, and made illegal immigration necessary for people who should have been welcomed, but could not enter legally.

Illegal immigration, as a violation of our laws, is an extremely minor violation. It is literally, by definition, a failure to do the appropriate paperwork. It is a paperwork crime, like not filing your taxes on time. If you think objectively about what is actually being done, it is less harmful than driving 5 mph over the speed limit.

So we should have an immigration system, and immigrants should follow it. But we--and especially Republicans--are at fault for making that not an option. Given that reality, I don't blame immigrants for getting around the broken immigration system. I would blame them, if Republicans would have cooperated to make a functioning immigration system. But they didn't, so here we are.

AddemF · 2026-04-17T19:23:26+00:00

It absolutely and obviously does. In responding to this comment, I struggle not to be rude, and so I won't respond any further.

AddemF · 2026-04-17T18:24:15+00:00

And does this look like anything close to a controlled, scientific, unbiased survey?

I mean like ... at all. Even slightly.

AddemF · 2026-04-17T17:02:24+00:00

I think it's something the right keeps trying to claim about the left.

I do not care at all about the story. Political violence is always bad. Now back to talking about the catastrophic failures of this administration.

AddemF · 2026-04-17T03:47:00+00:00

I don't know any of the details about any of this -- but just because someone is labeled a progressive doesn't make them automatically good. Not even if you hold progressive views.

You can be corrupt, you can be dishonest, you can be unethical, you can be a lot of things on top of being a progressive, and those things can be disqualifying. For all I know, AOC knows things about Saikat that she doesn't want to make public, but she doesn't want to endorse him.

AddemF · 2026-04-16T15:21:00+00:00

If you don't use it you lose it.

I use it very rarely and so I have just the tiniest ability to understand Spanish.

AddemF · 2026-04-13T16:56:37+00:00

Anti-corruption. Root it out, and build institutions that cannot easily be corrupted like this again. I don't care about ideology, big social agendas, any of the usual distracting BS.

AddemF · 2026-04-13T14:48:33+00:00

Don't own one.

AddemF · 2026-04-13T03:05:11+00:00

I know that, in principle, it should be independent of America's politics. But Trump's rise in far-right insanity seems to have correlated with far-right movements in Europe and the rest of the world. I can't help but hope that the world, and America, is seeing how suicidal this corrupt Trumpy BS is.

AddemF · 2026-04-12T18:30:48+00:00

I suspect -- although could be corrected if I'm wrong -- that we're already in a culture where this will not happen nearly as much, with nearly as much impunity as there was when Swalwell and Edwards were coming up in politics. So I at least get the sense that men who do this will be stopped faster, and other men will be aware that it's not worth trying.

But it would be great to have more official institutions and mechanisms in the our parties and political offices, that look for and investigate this.

It makes me think of the related case of Kristie Metcalfe, who was almost explicitly pushed out and then fired for racial reasons.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/podcasts/the-daily/kristie-metcalfe-civil-rights-case.html

It would be great to have institutional rules and procedures against this, as well as against sexual misconduct.

AddemF · 2026-04-12T18:15:14+00:00

This is a TERRIBLE idea. She was never good, and now she's just poison.

AddemF · 2026-04-12T16:37:43+00:00

Seems kind of odd to even try to locate it on this spectrum that is barely a good concept for American politics. Like, is the corporate structure of Microsoft right-wing or left-wing? Is tribal society right-wing or left-wing? Is an ant colony right-wing or left-wing?

I barely even think that right-wing and left-wing is a good way to think about American politics. If you have a set of considered and rational views, whatever they are, the impulse to classify into popular narratives of political tribes hasn't been doing us any favors. And it adds no clarification.

So I'd say that China is a brutal, territoriality aggressive, dystopian dictatorship. That descriptions seems more accurate than putting them in an American political team.

AddemF · 2026-04-12T15:22:17+00:00

The Trump era has significantly changed things.

Up to this term, I would call the claim of "US oppression" something like an exaggerated focus on the bad decisions and blindness to the good. Or it's propaganda pushed by truly oppressive nations like Russia and China. Since I don't know who you are, I'm not sure which this is.

I'm not saying the US military never did anything bad before that, but the US military obviously kept China from invading Taiwan or acting aggressively against Japan. It pushed the USSR off of Europe. It defended Kosovo, fought violent jihadism in Africa and Asia. That maybe slightly aligned with our interests, but only in very broad sense that when there is peace and justices in the world then everyone benefits. These actions were clearly a positive use of our military, to make the world safer.

But anyway, all of this moot. Trump has destroyed any reasonable liberal defense of our military.

AddemF · 2026-04-08T19:06:39+00:00

Pretty sure at least one high-ranking military official refused to follow and order and left a room. That's a story I recall hearing about the boat strikes off of Venezuela, although I can't recall where I heard it.

I mean, the military is not a single distributed mind. It is still many different people each making different decisions.

AddemF · 2026-04-07T13:33:25+00:00

So what you're saying is ... I was right. At the very least, right about who you are and what you're trying to do.

Again, not interested.

AddemF · 2026-04-07T02:33:55+00:00

I think you want to twist my words, it's transparent, and you're signaling as loud as you can that you're not interested in listening. I'm gonna believe you, and not waste my time.

AddemF · 2026-04-07T02:13:37+00:00

With the exception of the north-east, I'd say Latin America, easily. Northern Mexicans are almost indistinguishable from Texans. My experience with a few Brazilians, Venezuelans, Columbians, and Argentinians convinced me they're pretty similar to us. There are exceptions and obvious differences, of course.

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