Anyone cancelling their trips/holidays to USA

[Petuniaspetal]

Have to be honest since trump won i wasn't going anyway. But anyone cancelling or going elsewhere?
I have a big birthday this year, I would go to the garbage dump rather than support America,/musk in any way. I know therwmis at least half of America that doesn't.support this shxt and for them I am sorry but for the republicans too spineless and self interested to resist their dictator.trump...not one iota of sympathy for the rising prices loss of Medicaid or medicare.

YABU ..to cancel/Not go
YANBU...wouldn't touch it with a bargepole

You know, foreigners have very, very good reason not to visit the UK, judging it by the standards that are being applied to the US. The UK has a deep and long history of child abuse, much of which is still going on. Child sex trafficking rings are/were in dozens of towns, the authorities knew, and did nothing. See Rotherham and others.

In addition to that, almost a thousand people were wrongly accused and had their lives destroyed by the Post Office.

Then there's the police undercover scandal, where police lied to targets, slept with them, and had children with them.

There's the BBC, who covered up child abusers like Savile and Rolf Harris for decades.

Then there's Deepcut, Windrush, and horrific social care failures that have ended with children's deaths.

Foreigners reading about all these things might reasonably conclude that Britain is a disgusting, nasty little island and decline to spend their tourist money here. And I bet the people on here insulting the US wouldn't like that, especially as the UK economy is far more dependent on foreign tourism than the US is.

Judgement goes both ways, and people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

All countries have flaws. The UK and US pages on HRW are hardly rosy.

Japan ranks above both the US and UK in Freedom House’s rankings for political rights and civil liberties. Anyone who cares this sort of stuff can read their report here. 2023 is the most recent full report.

https://freedomhouse.org/country/japan/freedom-world/2024#CL

Japan is a better choice than more than 90% of the world’s countries if you care about rights and freedoms.

Could you give a reason why someone from, say, the US, should not come to the UK because of our government?
How is the way our country is being run affecting them?

Tokyo, and Japan in general, is a great choice. Come join us over on the Japan Planning Thread if you have any questions.

Japan has no LGTBQ protections, is in the top 10 emitters of greenhouse gases, and has an official system that forces accused prisoners to do hard labour in order to coerce "confessions" out of them. Plus it has an exceedingly sleazy side aimed at exploiting women and it glorifies the geisha culture.

Why is it OK to holiday there and not the US when judging a holiday destination on its culture and politics?

Women in Japan are allowed to attend government meetings but may not speak. How will the PP explain that to their daughter? The women in question are law-makers! And they must not speak.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56095215

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210405-why-japan-cant-shake-sexism

Japan ranks 121 out of 153 for gender parity.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/03/international-womens-day-japan-gender-gap/

All this is in addition to its official policy of coerced confessions, giving prisoners no notice before executing them, having no LGTB rights, and being in the top 10% of greenhouse-gas emitters.

But sure, let's cancel a trip to NYC, even though the state didn't vote for Trump. 🙄

There’s some odd cherry-picking and just plain incorrect information there.

Japan has laws against hate crimes, including protection for LGBT and there is judicial recognition of LGBT rights. They don’t have equal marriage yet, but they are moving in that direction. There’s also issues with women’s rights (we’re hardly immune to that here either) but the key is that they have a free and open democracy in which people can vote to change the laws. The US president shows open contempt for the courts, the rule of law and the constitution.

Just on the point about LGBT rights.

Freedom house say about Japan: “LGBT+ people face social stigma and in some cases harassment. In June 2023, the Diet passed a law obliging the government to create a plan to address anti-LGBT+ discrimination and “promote understanding,” though observers said the law was not comprehensive. In July, the Supreme Court ruled that a government ministry’s regulations restricting a transgender female employee’s access to restrooms were illegal.”

The US section (2023, so before Trump’s election) read: “Violence motivated by racism or other forms of group animosity is a frequent occurrence in the United States. Despite a drop in violent crime rates, hate crimes have risen markedly, increasing by more than 7 percent between 2021 and 2022, according to the latest FBI data. These figures included a 16 percent increase in anti-LGBT+ hate crimes.
In general, LGBT+ people have made strides toward legal equality in recent years. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that federal civil rights legislation includes LGBT+ people as a class protected from workplace discrimination. The Biden administration lifted a Trump-era ban on transgender people serving in the military in 2021, and it has taken other steps to affirm the rights of transgender people. However, a June 2023 Supreme Court decision limited the reach of public accommodations laws, affirming the right of certain vendors to deny services to LGBT+ customers on free-speech grounds. Over the past two years, lawmakers in several states have adopted laws that ban discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in most primary-school classrooms, and states continued to pass legislation that negatively affected transgender people in 2023.”

I think it’s pretty clear where LGBT people are safer, violence of all kinds is so much rarer there.

The emissions point also feels somewhat cherrypicked. Japan is a relatively wealthy country with a relatively high population. They only rank 48th by per-capita emissions.

I would love to go to Japan. I'm balanced enough to know that everywhere has its problems, although I wouldn't go the really bad places like Saudi and China.

My point is that if you're so focused on politics that you won't go to NYC, then Japan is an odd choice. Cherry-picking - yes. Like PP here are cherry-picking everything that's wrong with the US while taking no account of all its many good things, even cancelling a holiday to a state that has never voted for Trump. Swapping that for Japan makes no sense!

As for incorrect information, those links are the BBC, the Human Rights Watch, and the Freedom House. I doubt very much that their info is wrong, but if so, you really need to write and tell them!

Regardless, the idea that New York State and NYC is a worse human-rights and politics choice than Japan is absolutely barking.

@ThisFluentBiscuit We’re all allowed to draw our lines where we like. If you care about the rule of law, democracy and respect for individual rights then Japan is by far the better choice.

I don’t refuse the visit places because of their government’s policies, however I won’t go somewhere where there isn’t respect for press freedom, individual rights, democracy and the rule of law. I would have visited the US during Trump’s first presidency, even though I despise everything about him, but this time I feel differently. Banning the AP and Reuters from the press pool and packing it entirely with friendly news outlets, attempting to override the 14th amendment by executive order, circumventing congressional oversight and senate confirmation processes are what i care about. It’s not his policies that trouble me, it’s the fact that he’s bypassing normal democratic process to achieve them. He doesn’t even need to, he has both houses of congress. This is a deliberate pushing of boundaries, doing things he knows to be unconstitutional and waiting to see who’ll stop him.

I agree; it's complete madness.

But NYC didn't vote for him.

@ThisFluentBiscuit The links are fine but it’s just not true that there are no LGBT rights. The Freedom House report doesn’t say that.

And the people of China, North Korea and Saudi Arabia didn’t vote for their leaders either. They are still firmly on my list of places I won’t visit. The reason I won’t be visiting is not to punish the people of New York, my concern is that the people of New York may not get to vote in a free and fair election again. That’s not a system that I will choose to support with my money.

Well I wouldn’t be booking any national parks visits.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czx7kez4vx2o.amp

It’s not about seeing it. I have done many road trips around the US. I have travelled across most States. As things are, I am not willing to put my tourist pounds into their economy, nor do I want to spend time there being pissed off by MAGA idiots.

Not only did he ban Reuters and AP, but he had TASS (Russian News Agency) there 😮

Why do you say that as an American?

The fact that you think the national park rangers are what keeps the bears away from people is laughable!

The bears are reading the New York Times and are going to figure out it's a fucking buffet "all you can eat" at Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Smoky's.

Sometimes, I just have to shake my head and wonder about people.

Don't forget about the roaming rape gangs.

I don’t want to give them my money under that crazy MAGA regime - but I remember most Yanks did not vote for the Orange Man and Commander Waterford in Eyeliner.

Also most of my family lives there which makes it annoying.

But for now happy to stay away - there are plenty of more reasonable and stable places to visit. Like North Korea, Iran, Yemen….

I will not return to America in the foreseeable future. It doesn't represent any of my values and I will but siebd my money there

Fuck off then, eh?

What you waiting for...?

The return of Truss, Johnson, Williamson, Braverman, the chancellor who made up his own amount of tax to pay, the one who watched porn in Number 10, the one who lay down on the benches of the HoC, Patel, ...need I go on?

Off you fuck.

So, in order to not be a hypocrite, you will be stopping using Apple and Microsoft, correct?

Or is it only "the easy stuff"?

I love the hypocrisy on display here. We hate America, but we will keep our American stocks, our Microsoft and Apple computers, iPhones, etc. Because, only if it's easy, but we will still kvetch as if we were being ardent.

What part are you going to see? Spring is the perfect time for Florida. It gets too hot for me come June/July/August.

Make the most because Reform may be well be in next elections. Glad most of intelligent people would have fuck off by then.