Exactly.
Americans generally don't understand the degree to which the rest of the world gets the CNN 5min recap of what's going on in the US, and it's very much the CNN recap and not the Fox one.
"Tourists locked up, school children shot, government defunded, California on fire, tune in at 11 for more".
The fact that ~half the country doesn't think ICE should be locking up tourists without good reason and the other ~half doesn't think ICE should be locking up anyone gets skipped.
Edit: Just to head off the nitpickers, by "good reason" I mean stuff that border guards of any nation would lock anyone up for if they found, regardless of visa type, status or nation or origin.
I think the crime rate is a major concern for every tourist.
Doesn't Florida have a much lower crime rate than California? As a tourist, I rather visit Florida than California.
I don't think that's true—or at least, not a strong correlation. Crime rates were going significantly down since the early 90s, regardless who is in power. There was a smaller spike during COVID years, which has I believe returned to normal.
> I think the crime rate is a major concern for every tourist.
It is, but it isn't the only concern, and ICE sending tourists to prison is by definition not a crime, but is just as relevant to potential tourists.
> As a tourist, I rather visit Florida than California.
I really don't think you really want to look at the state level crime rates, you should look at the crime rate for the place you're going to visit. For instance, the violent crime rate in Florida was 260 per 100k people in 2022 (according to Wikipedia)... but if you're going to Walt Disney World, specifically: it's a whole lot less.
Federally? There's no reason to think the federal government changing hands would impact local crime rates. Overall violent crime has seen steady decline from the 1970s to the present day. [1] That period has seen both Democratic and Republican administrations.
At the state level it's a different picture. 8 of the top 10, and 17 of the top 25 states for homicide rate are "red" states.[2] I think poverty and per-capita income rates in a state are a better predictor of crime rates than which party is specifically in power.
> Doesn't Florida have a much lower crime rate than California?
If you consume exclusively right-wing news media (or your favorite social media ragebait) you'd have that impression. Depending on your source they're either about equal (FBI stats) over the past 2 decades or Florida's murder rate is higher (CDC).[2] Either way it is not "much lower". For "much" lower I'd go to states like Massachusetts, Utah, or Hawaii which have murder rates closer to Western Europe.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Cri...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
> Doesn't the crime rate go down when Republicans hold the power?
Does it? And what about police brutality? As a tourist, I'd rather go to a country where I'm less likely to be treated badly by the police.
> As a tourist, I rather visit Florida than California.
I think this in general has very little to do with crime rates. There are confounding factors. I'd rather not visit Florida regardless of crime rate.
Of course most Americans don't want random people detained. But still, this is happening in the US.
And one thing that I believe is absolutely clear outside the US (whether it's true or not), is that most Americans are perfectly fine with "America First". Americans don't really care about the impact of Trump on the rest of the world; they care about the impact on themselves. Boycotting US products is a way to impact the American people, in the hope that the American people will eventually realise that what's best for them is also better for the others.
Something that I found interesting: when Canadians started booing the US anthem in NHL games, Americans started booing the Canadian anthem. Why? Canada didn't do anything to the US. Does it sound that most Americans are against what's happening, when they defend it? There is this kind of American patriotism where people seem to be like "Yes, my government, is bullying you, but I won't admit it and I will fight against you if you say it. But I'm a good guy, I don't want my government to bully you. I'll just support it because it's my country".
So yeah... pretty sure that it feels a lot different from the outside than from the inside.
I agree with everything you said, except this. Sub “many” and I’d go with it. But at least here, in blue state / more-sane land, there is widespread horror and outrage. We’re only at the “tens of thousands of people protesting” stage and I’ll be the first to say Americans need to do more, but I think it’s going to far to say most Americans don’t care about the impact elsewhere.
Indeed.
Recently in Palo Alto for a few months. Saw lots of people protesting Tesla dealerships, lots of interesting and creative anti-Trump and Elon signs.
Not one word of Canada, of Greenland. Trumps stated goal of destroying Canada's economy to force annexation, or to outright just take Greenland seem not protest worthy.
Most people I spoke to seemed barely conscious of the issue.
To be fair, other matters may be higher pri in their minds, so if other events were not happening in parallel, it may be different.
But when 65 billion dollar defence hardware purchases are being dropped (they are), when future military purchases are not going to happen, when police cars, municipal vehicles are not going to be from US companies any more, when natural resources are going to be sold to the EU and China instead (sadly), the US is going to feel this for a very long time.
Because these are choices for decades. And it's not only Canada making them.
Doesn‘t look much different from Russian, Israeli or Chinese patriotism. When outsiders criticize your tribe for doing bad things, many are standing in support of the tribe, not the values, and they are the most visible.
I don't know if that's strictly accurate. United States citizens are some of the most heavily disenfranchised in the western world. Our oligarchs have spent decades making it more difficult to vote, especially for people of color, who overwhelmingly disapprove of the current administration. In some urban areas, it can take hours of standing in line to vote, and we don't get time off from work to do so. We've also had a decades long propaganda campaign telling us our vote doesn't matter.
More people didn't vote in the last election than voted for Trump. That's not to say they all would have voted against him, but it's not really the will of the American people.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-approval-rating-now-...
As a Canadian who normally travels to the US 3-4 times a year, that tells me everything I need to know about what "most Americans" think.
Granted I don't blame foreigners for not risking ICE abuse. And Hockey fans can just be dumb sometimes. A lot of Americans have severe recency bias, the right is saying "the same people telling you this will be catastrophic were the same ones who locked down schools over a cold and told you inflation would be transitory". These people are going to have to touch the stove to learn it's hot, and then they'll admit that it's hot but deny that it's burning them, and then enough at the margins will start to defect such that they start losing elections, leaving a hard-core to endlessly complain about how if they'd only held on until 3rd degree burns the stove would have turned itself off.
I haven't. I am just telling how I believe it is perceived from outside the US. It seems like Americans here find it a bit excessive for tourists to choose not to come to the US "just because of a mistake at the border". I'm trying to say that from the outside, the US is behaving at least like a big bully, sometimes like an enemy. You don't go on vacation in a country that threatens to attack you militarily.
You would think that a country with a whole department devoted to government efficiency could work that out.
No, it's a small-ish minority of them. Most are government owned and run.
That said, there's a huge incentive to piss away money holding people so you can justify your budget and use poor conditions to justify increases in budget. And on top of that the contractors that supply government jails are pretty evil too.
So it's really a distinction without a difference at the end of the day, it's all a pretty rotten system.
But yes, there are incentives that do reward cells and even individuals for number of imprisonments. And no, they do not check nor punish "administrative errors".
Or maybe in both cases the point is deterrence.
As has been a rising sentiment as of late: "The cruelty is the point"
You're right that it isn't efficient in any sense. But the kinds of people who go into and are chosen for "law enforcement" tend to be the very people that should never be given a weapon. It's just a large scale Stanford Experiment in that regard.
That is not remotely a good faith representation of the controversy.
... not that these things would make it safer to travel to the US. In the short run.
The status quo of power is that it is less safe to be a foreigner in the US than it has been in a long time. Possibly at any point in time the US wasn't actively at war with another nation.
Still wishing citzens manage to get control of the country back, before the administration adopts even stronger control mechanisms.
As opposed to... a news organisation/channel?
I am from Europe. I don't think I look different than an American.
You want foreign readers to read news about how half of the US wants you, the foreign tourist, be locked up in a jail cell? The news is already out there. Everyone assumes it's so wanted, because well... it does actually happen
"ICE goes crazy looking for crimes, hapless tourists caught up in the boondoggle"
and
"ICE detaining tourists for no good reason"
Are both 100% true ways to headline the same events. Which framing is Europe getting?
This is something to watch out for on all issues, not just immigration/foreign affairs.
If you're worried, though, that "ICE goes crazy" is an underrepresented perspective in the rest of the world, I can reassure you on that count...
So ...?
No, Americans generally don't understand that the rest of the world, and the rest of the world's news, genuinely don't see things in this dual "us vs them", "CNN vs Fox", "Democrats vs Republicans" lens.
When Trump does shit, media from around the world say what he did and why it's bad.
When Biden or Obama before him did shit, media from around the world say what he did and why it's bad.
Fox are genuinely deranged hypocrites who themselves claimed in court that nobody sane would believe them. Very few of the world's media reflect their point of views, because they are absurd. CNN is all over the place, so sometimes their point of view matches with e.g. BBC or Guardian or Süddeutsche Zeitung, sometimes it doesn't.
