Livestream: Peter Thiel Speaks at Republican National Convention
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> This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?
I guess in the 1950s and 60s all those people complaining they couldn't use the bathroom they wanted were just distracting from the real issue of the Commies.
This is just such a baffling, nonsensical statement that I can only conclude Thiel is pursuing some kind of hidden agenda and this is all part of a massive con.
Firstly, history shows us that who uses which bathroom is actually quite important. We used to have bathrooms with "Whites Only" written on them. We don't any more.
Secondly, Thiel has a JD, so presumably knows that this issue is a fairly significant constitutional one, and a lot more nuanced than he lets on.
Thirdly, the only people raising this debate are Republicans in right-wing areas. Nobody in Silicon Valley is debating this issue. Nobody. Who does Thiel think is "telling" us this is the "great debate"? It's just pandering, plain and simple.
No. The recent attention started when Democrats in the Charlotte city council passed a law that "would allow transgender residents to use either a men’s or women’s bathroom, depending on the gender with which they identify."
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/ar...
This is, of course, the same legislature that's so pro-freedom that they've actively suppressed local (city/county) run broadband services where companies like Time Warner wouldn't go.
Maybe I missed something, though!
I think Repubs should see Trump as somewhat a liberator of Repubs from the tyranny of their previous ideology.
Whether he wins or loses, he's freed them from the shackles of social conservatism which would ultimately make the party less relevant, over time. I mean, that was a dead end.
More directly pertinent to HN, I think, is Thiel's lament that America was once "high-tech everywhere." How many investments, I wonder, has Thiel made outside the Bay Area?
The Christian base has been an important pillar to GOP power. The GOP used to / still treats Christians as first-class citizens, whereas the Democrats treated Christians with a secular attitude ("your religion is no more important than any other religion, and secular concerns should always be higher priority above christian concerns"). In individual states, such as Texas, the GOP is more brazen about including the unqualified God as an important pillar of their party platform.
And the only high-consensus Christian issues since George Bush Jr. have been entirely about sexual issues, the top two being abortion and homosexuality. George Bush set a tone for the GOP party, and he sent a message to Christians that they would be #1 in the GOP, when he discussed a constitutional amendment restricting the definition of marriage. In that year all candidate from both parties discussed their favorite bible verses, and presented evidence of their small town church credentials.
Peter Thiel might want economic and domestic policy to be the focus of the GOP party, but the GOP is not going to win without Christian energy. They will need to show that the top Christian consensus issues (entirely about sexuality) are going to receive the first-class attention that is worthy of the only true religion. That assurance, true or not, is what Ted Cruz brought to the table.
We can worry about bathrooms AND be builders.
"I don't pretend to agree with every plank in our party's platform. But fake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline"
Would the world be free, democratic and capitalistic OR under totalitarian oppression OR a radioactive unpopulated wasteland?
I agree that the bathroom issue is not entirely unimportant, but does anyone seriously claim it is of similar dignity? Or that there aren't more important issues in 2016?
Clinton is a known quantity, yes. But I know that a Hillary Clinton presidency will be 8 years of investigations and recriminations into crimes, real or imagined. I also know that very little will change going from an Obama presidency to a Clinton one.
Trump is an unknown quantity that has said some scary things when taken out of context - but speaks the things people won't say, but think. Is probably equal to our current president in the ability to sell a message. The worst case I see for a Trump presidency is something ineffectual. The middle case, he's a wrecking ball, and breaks up enough to the deadlock, fake culture wars, and stupidity in politics to unite our country against him and on to further greatness. The best case, he's a very effective president and can break down walls, modernize the executive branch and shave off trillions in waste.
In short, if you think things are fine as they are - and only incremental improvements are needed, Clinton is your lady - if you think the system is broken and needs a wrecking ball, Trump is your guy.
I'm confident enough in the fundamentals of our system of government, that I'm not concerned about the future of our country with either outcome.
It's also relevant to the discussion at hand: a non-democratic vote in the state of Washington, due to the electoral college winner-take-all allotment, will not have any impact on the final outcome of the state. I'm not attacking him for where he lives; it's merely pointing out a fact of life.
I'm sure you didn't mean any harm and agree that doxxing would be worse, but it still degrades the quality of discourse when people do this. So please don't do this.
Someone who is at least thinking about inefficiency and waste is sure gonna do a better job getting rid of it than someone not thinking about it at all. The exact figure is unknown, it could be billions or just millions or even trillions - trillions is perhaps however in this case speechifying hyperbole.
Hmm... I thought he had been talking about building walls
If people wanted real, substantial change in a positive direction (in the sense of having a positive program: things the candidate stands for rather than against), they'd have voted for Bernie Sanders.
To paraphrase a past PT quote "It's easy to be easy to be contrarian, it's much harder to be contrarian and be right". But I would personally add to that, "it's yet quite harder to be right and know why you are right."
That's the problem with backing Trump. While it's not impossible he'd be a good president, it is impossible to know this today given his inconsistent, incoherent, and volatile statements. Not to mention his wildly incorrect past statements.
There's a weird grin PT has during this speech that I have never seen before. It's like the world's worst poker face. If he has a broader plan I am not sure it's off the right start.
I don't know the man, but from looking at Google Images that doesn't seem to be outside his normal range of expressions.
For example, http://dde39d2gc4th3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/...
People vote based on their hope that the candidate will follow through with their promises.
Good evening. I'm Peter Thiel.
I build companies and I support people who are building new things, from social networks to rocket ships.
I'm not a politician.
But neither is Donald Trump.
He is a builder, and it's time to rebuild America.
Where I work in Silicon Valley, it's hard to see where America has gone wrong.
My industry has made a lot of progress in computers and in software, and, of course, it's made a lot of money.
But Silicon Valley is a small place.
Drive out to Sacramento, or even across the bridge to Oakland, and you won't see the same prosperity. That's just how small it is.
Across the country, wages are flat.
Americans get paid less today than 10 years ago. But healthcare and college tuition cost more every year. Meanwhile Wall Street bankers inflate bubbles in everything from government bonds to Hillary Clinton's speaking fees.
Our economy is broken. If you're watching me right now, you understand this better than any politician in Washington. And you know this isn't the dream we looked forward to. Back when my parents came to America looking for that dream, they found it—right here in Cleveland.
They brought me here as a one-year-old, and this is where I became an American.
Opportunity was everywhere.
My Dad studied engineering at Case Western Reserve University, just down the road from where we are now. Because in 1968, the world's high tech capital wasn't just one city: all of America was high tech.
It's hard to remember this, but our government was once high tech, too. When I moved to Cleveland, defense research was laying the foundations for the Internet. The Apollo program was just about to put a man on the moon—and it was Neil Armstrong, from right here in Ohio.
The future felt limitless.
But today our government is broken. Our nuclear bases still use floppy disks. Our newest fighter jets can't even fly in the rain. And it would be kind to say the government's software works poorly, because much of the time it doesn't even work at all.
That is a staggering decline for the country that completed the Manhattan Project. We don't accept such incompetence in Silicon Valley, and we must not accept it from our government.
Instead of going to Mars, we have invaded the Middle East. We don't need to see Hillary Clinton's deleted emails: her incompetence is in plain sight. She pushed for a war in Libya, and today it's a training ground for ISIS. On this most important issue, Donald Trump is right. It's time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country.
When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. And we won. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom.
This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?
Of course, every American has a unique identity.
I am proud to be gay.
I am proud to be a Republican.
But most of all I am proud to be an American.
I don't pretend to agree with every plank in our party's platform. But fake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline.
And nobody in this race is being honest about it except Donald Trump.
While it is fitting to talk about who we are, today it's even more important to remember where we came from. For me that is Cleveland, and the bright future it promised.
When Donald Trump asks us to Make America Great Again, he's not suggesting a return to the past. He's running to lead us back to that bright future.
Tonight I urge all of my fellow Americans to stand up and vote for Donald Trump.
Modernization efforts are error-prone and only bandaids in many cases.
And new efforts have seen production and development issues that are just embarrassing (F-35).
[1] Taking this too far let's us say horses and oxen "worked" at tilling fields --but very few people would argue modern agricultural machinery is superfluous.
Did you read the speech???? It's right there:
"Tonight I urge all of my fellow Americans to stand up and vote for Donald Trump."
How could you possibly think that's not an endorsement?
Are you sure you're not confusing the New Deal with something else?
To his credit however, if theres ever been a case to be made against our current democratic system then Trump sure takes the cake.
Pretends that party agrees with everything he's saying.
The Soviet Union no longer exists, and the United States of America does.
So, yeah, most people would call that winning.
Oh, I think the Cold War certainly counts as something. It's a dead certainty that, without U.S. nuclear force and somewhere around half a million U.S. troops in Europe, the Soviet Union would have eaten Western Europe as thoroughly as it ate Eastern Europe. Also, as I type, I'm within a few miles of three former nuclear missile sites. Those didn't magically appear by themselves, dude. How does that count as "nothing"?
I also think that (contrary to your claim that increased trade brought the downfall) if the U.S. hadn't sold the Soviet Union vast amounts of grain beginning in the 1970s, the fall of the USSR would have been much faster, and much, much uglier. Nonetheless, I'm glad that didn't happen. Millions in the U.S.S.R. would have starved to death.