French scientist denied US entry after critical phone messages found

[Lookinagain]

I've travelled to Europe and back over 100 times over 20 or so years and never once has anyone every asked to see my phone. But I'm a citizen. Does this only happen to non-citizens? I know anything can happen in the future, I'm just wondering if non-citizens had this happening in the past.

 

[Avondale]

What does holding people accountable for their votes look like in your view?

Not for their votes. For their choices. I understand the way I worded it might've made it look like I was talking about voting for elected officials, but that's not what I was thinking.

At the very least, we can never truly know with certainty whether a vote for one or another candidate was the correct or wrong course of action. There is no way to play out all scenarios, to live through all futures where different candidates won, in order to be able to compare. It's all speculation. It's very easy to say "well if people had voted differently, things would be better". And I'm not referring to US politics here, this is true for all democratic societies where voting is the main way to form a government.

But to be accountable for your choices, that means you can't go blaming others for the results of your own actions/inactions. And since we were talking specifically about choosing ignorance, if one chooses to believe something they've been told without at least making an effort to check it themselves, see whether it's true, then one has absolutely no right to complain about being deceived.

How that looks like to me, personally? If someone came to me with such a complaint, I would point out that they bear responsibility in this, too. They don't just get a free pass, a pat on the head, and an "oh poor you, this is not your fault, you were treated badly". They had the opportunity to prevent being deceived by merely taking enough interest and some initiative.

Will it feel bad for the person? Undoubtedly. The point isn't to be unnecessarily cruel or insensitive. In fact, you can be entirely empathetic, but still, the mere realisation of any mistake is very unpleasant by default, for anyone. And the sad reality is that, for all the intelligence human beings boast, we still learn best and most efficiently through negative experiences. You eff up once and feel the full weight of it, you're never effing up in the same way again.