There are quite a few Trump supporters in the Valley, but they simply stay quiet because they will get 'racist' yelled at them and it will potentially hurt their careers.
It's understandable how political opinions can affect how we view our peers, sometimes I question how a rational person could, for example, vote for Hillary Clinton. That does not change that persons professional proficiency nor would I hinder their career in any way because of it. It's a shame some people don't feel it inappropriate to cause harm because someone does not subscribe to their world view.
That's how it happens. Even if you try to be impartial, it's hard to give someone the same respect and give them as much of a chance after they have a differing opinion from you. Not that you shouldn't try, but it's difficult.
When you have an 'ugh' moment, you should notice this and put it to work.
Some of my most interesting conversation have come from talking to persons who completely rejected the ideas I consider to be self evident.
There are definite conflicts of interest that cannot be resolved but there are also major spheres of thought that 'the other side' does not even consider because they are orthogonal to their thinking.
Gradually I have incorporated some of the enemy's thinking into my own conception of the world. If an idea is relevant it tends to seep in without you being consciously aware of it. If you've ever read old internet posts or comments you'd have made and thought "who the fuck is that guy and how is he/she so wrong" then you get it.
So for libertarian leaning voters, some might opt for Trump in hopes of less war. I feel that is a bit of a wildcard though. On the other hand, those same voters likely feel that Clinton is more certain of more war and debt.
Not to mention, there seems to be a tendency for third party, or dark horse candidates, to run on non-interventionism. Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, George Wallace, even Charles Lindbergh- I think when one doesn't have previous political commitments to defense contractors and other entrenched pro-interventionist interests, there's no need to suck up on them. Instead, it becomes natural to run on a populist, America first, foreign policy deemphasized campaign to appeal to the common people.
Trump is no longer dark horse, he's no longer fringe. He no longer needs to commit to non-interventionism. If anything, he is currently trying to outmaneuver Clinton as the candidate who can bring terrorism to heel.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/11/18/new_trump_...
Given that he's criticized Obama/Clinton for being insufficiently aggressive in several areas, and praised Putin's aggressiveness, I'm not sure where that conclusion comes from, besides his after-the-fact claims to have opposed the Iraq War before it started (his only public statement on the war before it started appears to have been grudging support, not opposition, on the Howard Stern show in 2002, and stating that a decision on the war one way or another was important on Fox News in January 2003, without expressing support or opposition.)
Surprisingly he even attracted support of Michael Scheuer ( a huge critic of our interventionist foreign policy), although I believe he has pulled back a bit on that recently.
However, yes he has also made somewhat contradictory statements as well. So, it is hard to draw any definitive conclusions what his actual policy would look like.
It will be very interesting of Gary Johnson can succeed in getting into the debates. If he has a good performance, that could really change everything.
I'm no saying that you should like Hillary but congress will probably block gun reform as always and while she spins and dissembles at times it isn't the same outrageous disregard for the truth that I see from Trump.
This applies to Hillary too, you know? The most awful thing about this election is that neither candidate is trustworthy. They are both blatant liars.
At least Hillary would care if she was caught out, that puts some constraint on her.
He makes things up in writing such as who wrote his wife's speech that he really doesn't need to; surely less lies is better than more.
It's just as important as any over constitutionally protected right. With the way the courts are stacked these days I'm not that worried about roe v wade flipping, or a major set back on free speech. Gun issues I only see going in a negative way unless there is a strong pro gun person at the federal level.
They differ massively on energy and climate. Trump makes coal and oil a major focus, and wants to repeal most environmental rules that affect them. Trump would cancel the Paris agreement.
Clinton will be similar to Obama in these areas.
Probably who GP is referring to. Popular conspiracy theory amongst the anti-Hillary crowd (on both sides of the political aisle, actually).
I think this is one of the major intellectual stories of the last decade, largely uncovered by the media.
How does a libertarian become a nationalist? Trump sure seems to facillitate "USA pride" but his politics and economics are not that libertarian at all. How can nationalistic pride win over what I thought was the center of the libertarian philosophy?
An internally libertarian society with strong immigration control solves this problem and would be called "nationalist" by most traditional libertarians.
With the caveat that most Xs are not open, thus no contradiction by closing society X. So only libertarianism suffers from this contradiction.
This is one critique that has been made and is of course debatable. It's important to not simply evaluate a political ideology by its tenets, but also the demographics of its supporters, to understand the "culture" that grows around a belief system. We often do the same to religions, after all.
Yeah, but its a product of the right/authoritarian side of the libertarians.
The left-leaning libertarians who tactically vote Democrat are fine with safety nets:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/7/17/1314751/-13-Tenets-o...
Right-libertarians in the US already generally were nationalists (nationalism is a very common, if not defining, element of the right-wing orientation), and generally had the least opposition for government action in the same areas where authoritarian nationalists tend to focus on preferring government action, which is why lots of right-libertarians have always been within the Republican fold rather than voting for the Libertarian Party.
A lot of his recent statements have come across as major disappointments to core libertarians.
Such as his support of Hillary over her emails, reluctance to audit the fed, support for basic income and his VP pick which is seen as purely establishment.
However, a lot of libertarians follow a non aggression principle, which says you can't use force or violence against anyone except to protect their liberty.
Basic income isn't compatible with that principle in that you will have to extract that resource by force from other people violating their property rights.
One thing that I've never really understood is why the valley apparently leans so far left. On its face, the sorts of policies that the left tends to advocate for would run counter to the things that Silicon Valley stands for: higher taxes, more regulation of businesses, more intervention in housing markets, higher marginal tax rates on "the rich" (AKA a middle class salary here) etc.
I assume that those who vote on the left either feel there are more important issues at stake, that those aren't really things the left stands for, or have enough money that it doesn't matter... would be curious to hear someone explain their reasoning, though.
> higher taxes
I'm fine with higher taxes for some purposes. As a fairly high income earner, my tax bill hurts quite a bit. Still, when I was a kid I had a single mom. She had to go on welfare for a little while, and it was rough on her. I think it's the first time I ever saw her cry.
Obviously there are some people who abuse the system, but I feel like we have to keep providing anyway. The money that we collected for those few months kept us from being homeless. I like to think it as an investment in my future by the tax payers. I've paid more in now than I took, so it worked out.
> more regulation of businesses
Not always a good thing, but I can get behind some regulations. I think the repeal of Glass-Steagall was probably a mistake (thanks, Bill), and likely contributed to the 2008 bubble burst. Things like the FDA, and OSHA seem like examples of good regulation. They're certainly imperfect, and have made mistakes. On the whole though, I think they've been a net positive.
> more intervention in housing markets
Not much of an opinion on this one.
> higher marginal tax rates on "the rich" (AKA a middle class salary here) etc.
Hillary's plan calls for a 4% tax hike on incomes over $5 million. Software developer salary is pretty good, but I don't think anyone's salary is that high.
Because Peter Thiel, among others, are largely operating on a hybrid ideology with the pillars of Nativism/Nationalism & Libertarianism.
Gary Johnson is pretty much a pure in the middle of the right/left axis among the range that is called "Libertarian". He is too left-leaning for many of the people that call themselves Libertarian but want to be able to enforce their beliefs on other people.
Is there not a more contradictory thing to say? I don't know how libertarians are okay with others using their moniker for something that doesn't seem libertarian.
Its doublethink, yes.
Thiel publicly proclaims he is a libertarian but his genuine, underlying belief is he can change the world and enforce his beliefs upon it.
This is pretty much the antithesis of Gary Johnson who is very much the live and let live libertarian.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education...
> I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.”
> But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. By tracing out the development of my thinking, I hope to frame some of the challenges faced by all classical liberals today.
> He is now not so much a libertarian as a corporate Nietzschean, who believes in the power of gifted entrepreneurs to change the world through the sheer force of will and intellect.
That's why one feels compelled to assume that Trump supporters - the ones we would otherwise assume are reasonably intelligent at least - must have an ulterior rationale for their vote. The most obvious explanation is closet bigotry.
> [Thiel] will become the most prominent public face of a species so endangered it might as well be called extinct: the Silicon Valley Trump supporter.
and
> The danger, then, is that not only could Mr. Thiel’s public embrace of Mr. Trump backfire on him, but it could also become another plot point in the larger story line that Silicon Valley is exclusionary and narrow-minded and that its innovations are advancing global inequality.
So...the author thinks that there are almost no Trump supporters in the valley, and also thinks that a single public supporter of Trump will lead to people believing that Trump is the problem with Silicon valley...
Tech workers already receive quite a bit of hate from some people (harassing at shuttle stops has become a semi-regular thing, I've been called a "fucking techie" when bar hopping, etc.) The last thing we need is the same people associating us with a political candidate who openly demonizes immigrants, insults women and disabled people, and who repeats "I'm RICH! SO RICH!" every time he's given an opportunity.
I'm all for Peter Thiel supporting whoever he wants, but I definitely don't want him to be the representative for the majorly progressive Silicon Valley population.
2) Curiels parents were illegal immigrants, and exactly the kind of people that Trump says he would deport.
3) Curiel has mentioned in the past (in a NYT article from the early 2000s, I can find a link if you like) that his Mexican heritage has had an impact in his practice of the law.
4) Curiel isn't a robot. Imagine if he ruled in favor of Trump...how popular would he be at the next family gathering?
5) Was it racist when Justice Sotomayor said that a "wise Latina" could make a better judicial decision than an old white man?
I don't like Trump's talk at all, but how would anyone with illegal immigrant parents would have comfortable family gatherings after supporting Trump? Job or not, family is strong.
Is this just an example of herd HN behavior?
The point is that bigotry is no better than racism, so the reader/listener should just substitute the words and see whether the argument still makes sense rather than offering a vacuous counter-argument.
EDIT> French isn't a race, but if I want to round up French people and put them in camps, I'm still a shit-bag.
It isn't a great start when people leveling criticism at someone don't even understand(or care) about the meanings of the words they say.
Progressives going after this specifically was misguided overreach. There's a reasonable basis to assume someone may be biased by their racial heritage. There's so much else Trump has done that is totally egregious that I find it mind-boggling to call him on this specifically. If anything, it gives ammunition to the anti-PC crowd.
Specifically on issues of race or gender discrimination, she holds out that her background -- largely through life experiences, though she is expressly less eager to completely discount the possibility of an inherent or cultural contribution than a particular other commentator -- provides an advantage in the quality of her decisions, sure.
Extended quote from the 2001 speech in which the "wise Latina" remark appears (it was later repeated, on the same issue, several times in other speeches by Sotomayor.):
---
In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
---
Certainly, I don't think its particularly controversial to say that, with otherwise equivalent general "wisdom" (insofar as that can be quantified and compared, something that Sotomayor correctly points out is not necessarily realistic), a person with deeper relevant life experience on the subject being addressed might do better.
I don't think it's fair to argue that gender/national origin can only make a positive impact on judgement, and not a negative impact as well.
Sotomayor does not argue that. She only argues that personal experience and perhaps cultural/innate differences (she doesn't argue for the latter, just notes that she is less opposed to the idea that it is possible than another who has addressed the issue) make a difference in judging, while stating that she hopes that the difference in the experiences she has due to her background (from those of a white male) would lead to a positive outcome on a particular class of issues.
Not sure exactly what you mean by anti-trade, and how it relates to racism.
Mexican is a nationality, not a race. There are Mexicans of all races, including white(which latinos are classed as, but lets say western european ethnicity too)
Islam is a religion, not a race. There are Muslims of all races, including white.
A border wall is (independently of whether it is good policy) not inherently racist.
Using racist rhetoric to sell a border wall is, OTOH, racist.
> Mexican is a nationality, not a race.
I'm not sure its particularly productive to argue that a ancestry-based bigotry is technically distinct from racism because it is based on national origin rather than classical races.
> There are Mexicans of all races, including white(which latinos are classed as, but lets say western european ethnicity too)
Hispanics/Latinos aren't necessarily White; in theory, Hispanic origin "ethnicity" is orthogonal to "race". OTOH, the way it is usually broken out into statistics reflects the fact that "Hispanic" is the only "ethnicity" used along US "race" categories specifically because it reflects a new basis of quasi-racial exclusion in the US which became important after the classical racial categories were established, which is why the categories broken out are, almost without exception, "White (non-Hispanic)", "Black", "Asian/Pacific Islander", "Native American/Alaskan Native", and "Hispanic" -- while on forms that you fill out its treated as an orthogonal category to race, its really in the common thinking exactly another racial category.
No it doesn't.
If you want to argue that security cordons and fences are not a "wall", then fine. There is no wall on the southern border of Mexico. Just a security cordon and fences.
Of course, several centuries in to the era of the nation-state as a dominant form, lots of people confuse states and nations.
he has settled suits for racial discrimination about not renting to minorities
he advocated the death penalty for the since exhonerated "central park 5" in a full page ad in the daily news
he was the leader of the "birther" movement against president obama.
Re central park 5: Yes, that was a huge blunder(as was that entire case for that matter). Is there any indication it was based on their race, and not the savagery of the crime they were accused of?
Re birther: What does that have to do with race? "American" isn't a race.
Was that because of his race too?
I suspect we stopped hearing about McCain, and kept hearing about Obama, because Obama became president.
Anyway, you asked for examples of situations where Trump has encouraged racial division, so I'm going to try to present some examples without any name-calling or hyperbole.
In addition to Gonzalo Curiel, he's made a few other remarks to which some people have taken offense.
The republican party is mostly pro-legal immigration. The official party stance is that legal immigration is good for business and increases the supply of labor. Trump distinguished himself early on in the primary by supporting a border wall between the US and Mexico. To explain his position, he stated that "Mexico is not sending us their best people." He went on to say that many people illegally crossing the border are rapists and murderers. Undoubtedly some people who illegally cross the border have committed such offenses, but it seems unlikely that a significant portion of the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the US are rapists and murderers.
Trump has also voiced support for deporting all 11 million illegal immigrants in the US. This is much more hard-line than most other recent republican presidential candidates. The amount of money and resources that would be required to locate, round up, and deport 11 million people would likely be very high. Furthermore, many of these illegal immigrants have given birth to children since they got here, which makes their children legal US citizens. Trump has yet to clarify how he is going to deal with these split-citizenship families.
At another point, Trump supported a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the country. He initially said that we would ask people if they were Muslim, and if they said yes, we wouldn't let them into the country. He has since changed his plan to only involve stricter checks on people who are emigrating from war-torn areas.
I'm not entirely sure if this is due to Trump doing something to alienate African American voters, or if Hillary is just extremely popular with them (her husband was the president who signed Affirmative Action and a handful of other anti-discrimination bills). Regardless of the cause, Trump has very low approval among African American voters. According to an NBC News/Wallstreet Journal poll last week, Donald Trump is polling at literally 0% with African American voters in both Ohio and Pennsylvania, which are critical swing states.
There's also the issue of Barack Obama's birthplace. Donald Trump was one of the most famous proponents of the idea that President Obama was born in Kenya, and was therefore not a US citizen, and not eligible to be president. He demanded that Obama provide his birth certificate, which was eventually made public. Trump then argued that this was a short form version, and he didn't believe it was authentic. Trump has also stated that he does not believe President Obama graduated from Columbia University. Trump has distanced himself from these positions lately. He hasn't apologized or said that he no longer believes these things, but he doesn't talk about them and refuses to answer questions about it.
Should employers use whatever public records they have available to punish employees who donate money to the wrong party or candidates? Perhaps they should use this information in hiring?
If political support is fair game for attacking people in other aspects of their lives, why as a society should we allow for votes to be made in secret?
Maybe we should force people to vote on public record so we can really punish or reward each individual for his or her political choices.
We should not harm people's livelihood just because we don't like their politics.
This formulation implies they are victims of people irrationally yelling 'racist' at them. They just said they supported a particular political candidate! How unfair of the mob to slur them!
You elide the underlying cause: they keep quiet to avoid having 'racist' yelled at them, because being a Trump supporter is supporting racism.
Both arguments are increasingly why so many people are supporting Trump. They are emotional appeals based on presumptions that aren't necessarily true - and are more irritating than compelling. It also hurts the image of legitimate social issues. When everything is racist/sexist then being racist/sexist no longer holds any meaning.