The 2016 Election
blog.samaltman.com
blog.samaltman.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12716825
> We should all feel a duty to try to understand the roughly
> half of the country that thinks we are severely misguided.
> I don’t understand how 43% of the country supports Trump.
> But I’d like to find out, because we have to include
> everyone in our path forward. If our best ideas are to
> stop talking to or fire anyone who disagrees with us,
> we’ll be facing this whole situation again in 2020.
>
> That kind of diversity is painful and unpopular, but
> it is critical to health of a democratic and pluralistic
> society. We shouldn’t start purging people for
> supporting the wrong political candidate.
> That's not how things are done in this country.
It really does a great job of helping explain Trump supporters.
I think what we're seeing are the results of taking 6 trillion dollars that should have been spent building infrastructure for working class Americans and instead wasting it in Iraq.
I think Trump supporters are regular simple Americans who are looking around and seeing they haven't benefited from the economic prosperity at a rate equivalent to their output and are facing an all out assault on their labor via neo-liberal policies adopted by both major parties. Neither party is going to point back at themselves and Trump has seized their support by blaming common scapegoats and tapping in to populist racial, gender and religious discrimination. Democrats have and do do this too, ie "super predators", etc.
The budgetary cost of the Iraq war was, according to the Congressional Research Service, $815 billion[1]. Even if you would rather model long-term or indirect costs, there was never, ever $6 trillion in the Federal budget over the corresponding period that could have been redirected to "infrastructure for working class Americans".
"I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup" http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
"The press takes him (Trump)literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/trump-ma...
Clinton says different things in public than she does to her friends. She also flip flops. This is not trustworthy.
Trump is unpleasant, but at least he talks straight.
I think this could be the last election of its kind in the USA, a two party system that works to produce these two candidates? Someone (Facebook, google, twitter) will come up with a better way of informing the public how unfair the system is.
How is electoral reform view in the US? In the UK it is very popular and there is often talk of STV or something similar.
[edit] I am losing valuable imaginary internet points! Oh no! Here, this makes my point better than I can:
Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/01/us/elections/n...
As far as voting system itself is concerned, electoral college is the most common issue that is raised, and switching to national popular vote counting is the most common proposal to fix it. There's an ongoing attempt to do this from bottom up, by signing up enough states that they can basically impose this without changing the Constitution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...
Things like STV for presidential elections, or MMP for parliamentary, are mostly under the radar - there are certainly people who are aware of them and push for them, but they're a very small minority, and the public is largely unaware.
Just to give you some sense of how these stack up, the only electoral issue that has been discussed at length in this political campaign by any of the major candidates (including primaries) is campaign finance reform. I haven't heard a peep about electoral college or proportional representation.
So schools, teachers, pupils and parents are all aware that attainment is a complex beast and requires an open, yet complex calculation.
Which leads me onto STV and other ways of counting votes, none of these are as simple as first past the post, but these are all far simpler than what we do in our schooling calculation. So I think people are ready to make voting a little more complex and a lot fairer. If we educate them and give them a chance.
Even those things are immensely complicated politically, because they would upset the existing balance between the parties, and in the current climate of extreme partisanship, whichever party is affected is going to pretty much automatically be against it. For example, if we switch from electoral college to national popular vote, it's pretty much guaranteed to give all future presidential elections to the Democrats, at least until GOP has a massive reform. Obviously, they're going to be against it. Similar issues arise with gerrymandering, and even such normally non-controversial issues as making voting easier (increasing registration periods and making the process easier, increasing advanced voting period, mail-in voting etc).
So I wouldn't expect any progress on that front until the present deadlock is broken. On the other hand, whatever new party will arise on the right from the ashes of GOP (or existing third party take over the spot), is likely to be in the minority for a while - and hopefully, that would motivate them to make electoral reform for a more proportional representation a prominent part of their platform. On the other hand, Democrats are likely to get more complacent and corrupt from a long uninterrupted stretch in power, and a few particularly nasty public scandals could be used to prime the voters for an upset election. So we'll get there; it'll just take time.
> Trump is unpleasant, but at least he talks straight.
You seem to imply that since Trump "talks straight", he doesn't flip-flop?
If that's what you're implying, it couldn't be more inaccurate; he has sharply contradicted himself countless times, straight-up denying things he's documented as saying (on TV, Twitter, etc.)
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-lives-...
[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/09/the-orig...
[1] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/hillbilly-elegy-review-jd...
http://www.stirjournal.com/2016/04/01/i-know-why-poor-whites...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/07/donald...
It's impossible to over emphasize how core to the problem this is. From social mobility to resentment of the "elites" and a dozen others.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-...
Which to me is really interesting because it shows a side of politics that I've personally not seen before. This election has permeated all institutions and if you're not on the right side you're going to have a bad time.
Not to sound too tinfoilhatter, but this is exactly what you would want the masses to behave like as a politician. Neither candidate gives two shits about you me or anyone who isn't part of the ruling elite, they're just in it for the power.
They nurture and encourage distrust, anger, aggression. And use it to fuel enthusiasm and support for themselves.
You see this pattern often in history.
When holding an elected office, this kind of separation is a big problem, because it necessarily seeps into political entities (parlaments, senates, congress) and makes collaboration hard.
The reason it seems that way, to me, is the same reason that abused women tend to step out of their shame when they see other women doing it, or when their anger is kindled into a flame that exceeds their fear. People feel empowered when they realize they're not alone (edit: and someone they identify as a peer has given a voice to their own beliefs, experiences or feelings)
Sometimes, that feeling of empowerment makes them speak up. Sometimes it makes them lash out. It's an unfortunate coincidence that a presidential candidate is directly responsible for catalyzing both groups of people into responding so passionately today.
Realistically, I believe that the electorate has felt disenfranchised (using the more general "deprived of a voice" definition) for many years now, and for various reasons. A republic such as ours can never have an electorate that, in its entirety, feels like their voices are heard. I don't know how to help that; I don't think anyone does.
Dividing the electorate further isn't the solution for any leader. Inciting them to illegal or violent behavior isn't the solution either, unless you aim to dismantle a democratic republic.
I've always felt "us-vs-them", and I believe everyone has, because my peer group has ideals different from others. So we find other groups that share them, and we try harder to be heard, or to exert the influence that the framework of our republic grants to us (i.e. voting) or that society grants to us (i.e. boycotting).
But I do not believe the election itself has caused a divide, it's the candidates (yes, one more than any other, but all have contributed) whose rhetoric has amplified a divide that was there all along.
You're right, the divide has always been there. That's why it always flares up during elections - it's only during elections that the divide is useful to the people who stoke it. Candidates benefit from their electorate being loud and vocal and at arms with the other electorate. It drives press, it drives news, it brings people out to vote. All things correlated with winning an election.
Once an election is won, the game changes. Then it's all about unity and compromise and understanding one another. Because that's what those in power need to stay in power.
Unless of course somebody wants to force an early election or worse. Then all bets are off.
Now, I can't say for a fact that this is how the cycle works in the US. But I've seen it play out numerous times in my home country (Slovenia) where for a period of more than a decade since I started observing, I don't think we had a single government last the entire 4 years. It's a big part of the reason why I left and came to the States.
And I find myself once more in the midst of elections driven primarily by shit up stirring. Perfect.
All I can say is this: you're not wrong that the media coverage of our candidates amplify their voices, which empowers their supporters to amplify theirs as well. And you're not wrong that this election cycle has more shit-slinging than any other in my memory. It's thus made me more than a little uncomfortable, as an American, to ponder what others think of our society. It's embarrassing to me, it truly is.
But here is hope, and even thought you've arrived just in time for this circus of an election, I hope you can find the will to believe that the future is not doomed. Not because the leadership requires unity and compromise, but because once the spotlights shining their attention-focusing beams are turned off, there won't be such a contrast with the more rational among us. I believe many people will have learned that the isolation between ideological extremes doesn't help to move us forward as a society. And many will try, in their own quiet and subtle ways, to effect a positive change.
I'll be honest though: I believe these things not because there is a preponderance of evidence to support them (there's some, but this election cycle is unprecedented) but because I have to believe it to have the energy to try and effect that positive change.
One example I have from someone I disagree with. It was a rich kid about to fully take over his father's company via inheritance, who agreed vehemently with trickle down economics. From his perspective, he created jobs (I'd at least agree with that much). The way that he created jobs was by investing resources on new profitable projects that required labor. In his perspective, how could he ever create more jobs by constraining his resources? He couldn't, but that is exactly the point (someone else creates the jobs, not him). He couldn't see the alternative of government enabling new jobs because the entire sum of his life experience portrayed government as a barrier to investment, not as an enabler of opportunity. The simple fact that he never had to rely on the government as an enabler of opportunity blinded him to the possibility that it could use his resources more efficiently than he could.
I'd consider his opinion falsifiable, but his perspective valid. I would never in a million years be able to tell him his perspective was wrong.
In order to give you the opportunity of gaining a position of sympathy with me; one of the reasons I was asking about 'validity' is that it sounds formal and logical, but it doesn't seem to be being used in a formal and logical sense.
I think you're using it to say that we shouldn't dismiss perspectives, even those that have a high correlation with incorrect opinions (even though I'd struggle to define 'perspective' except as a bundle of opinions). While the intention seems admirable enough, I still find myself wishing for a bit more precision over what exactly is being said: obviously experiences aren't invalidated by the person experiencing them having false opinions, but the opinions formed from those experiences can absolutely be false, and occasionally even in the strict formal, logical sense invalid. If we're not talking about experiences (since the argument is almost never about what the other party experienced, but rather about what it means), and we're not talking about opinions, then I'm not sure what we're talking about at all.
Maybe I should just take this as a shorthand for describing a useful attitude to take rather than a description of something in the world, i.e. saying 'it's worth understanding why people think what they think, even if it's wrong, rather than dismissing it out of hand', and then I could agree with it.
I mean "valid" essentially as a truism. It's a valid perspective because people are able to hold that perspective.
What makes it important to point out, in my opinion, is that it doesn't matter how irrational or ugly or wrong that perspective is, it can't simply be dismissed because it is such. That makes us incapable of fostering an environment in which all parties can grow their perspectives.
My wife's pregnant and she often has incredibly irrational fears. She will even point out that she has no logical underpinning for feeling a certain way. But she does feel that way. Her perspective, no matter what doctors tell her, is that there's so many things that may go wrong. And that's valid. Instead of, "well, if you know it makes no sense to feel that way, then stop feeling that way, right?" we work to understand what might be causing it and use what levers and knobs in life we have to eliminate those fears.
If we dismiss certain perspectives as being an invalid state for one to be in, we close doors on addressing it.
I'm not really much of a writer or persuasive voice, so I hope you're able to pick up what I'm trying to convey. Heck, maybe I'm just using words wrongly. I've been known to cromulate that from time to time.
Even if people agree to buy into this whole "this election is special" premise, I think people would be well within their rights to riot in 2020, if they hear one more time that that election is special, too, and they must once again vote Democrat ("because who else are they going to vote for?!")
Because when elections become "special" all the time, it means they really aren't. And it means the problem is systemic, and it's that systemic issue that needs to be addressed before voting against any particular candidate. Otherwise, these problems are never going to end. "Fix Democracy First" - as Lessig once believed (like until earlier this year) before he also started thinking that people should just shut up and vote for Clinton already.
Neither offer a sane way forward.
Dismissing in such a negative way well thought out view points because they don't match your world view is counterproductive to having good policy discussions.
Ironically, the same complaints apply to both the libertarian and the Green Party, though I have more beef with Jill Stein than the platform itself.
The catch is that said reform requires constitutional amendments, and these are gated on the states, not on the federal government (obviously, ratification requires state legislatures, but the states can also call for a constitutional convention, regardless of what the feds think).
So supporting third parties on the federal level is pointless from that perspective. If you just want electoral reform, vote third party for state legislature.
* Vote Dem, have a reasonable chance at my pick winning
* Vote Repub, have a reasonable chance at my pick winning
* Vote other, have no chance at my pick winning.
In an ordinary election you may be willing to do #3 to 'send a message', etc. But in THIS election almost everyone seems to agree that one or both of the candidates are horrible and will ruin everything. So if you go #3 then you get no say in which major party candidate will win. I'd much rather have A win than B, even if I liked some third party more (right now I don't anyway, they're pretty crazy this year too).
I'd want my vote to count, and I don't think it would unless I voted major party.
As it is my vote won't count, because the outcome of my state is not in question at all.
I'd argue that's why it's a great chance to vote third party. Both major candidates are terrible choices, and quite frankly even though people say Hilary is less terrible than Trump, I don't buy it, just look at her track record. If you vote third party in this election, you might not win this time, but you can start laying the foundation for a strong third party to emerge in future elections.
Assuming that there are future (fair) elections.
I have serious concerns about that if Trump is to become the president.
I've heard many people on the right having the same concerns about Clinton.
Do people try to make tax returns a requirement? Birth certificates? Do we move to a more federal election system so it's not 50 states + 1000s of counties deciding how elections are run? Do presidential powers get reigned in a bit?
Much of that may require amendments, but I have a feeling we're going to have the discussions.
As for whether Trump or Clinton would actively block fair elections, that wouldn't surprise me, but I wouldn't put it past either of them (Trump's already made it clear he wants to make it easier to manipulate the press, and Clinton was clearly willing to engage in underhand tactics to get the Democratic nomination). If you're of the same mindset then it makes no sense to vote for either of them, as it appears neither are interested in engaging in fair elections.
I would dare say that these two things aren't equivalent.
Clinton "rigging" the primaries didn't involve preventing people from speaking out, or excluding them from voting. It was mostly about the system itself being "pre-rigged" by design, so to speak, and then some coordination with the DNC behind the scenes. All bad juju, but not the kind of thing that causes lasting damage compared to the current state of affairs. Compared to Democrat "machines" of the old, it's practically peanuts - and the country and its political system survived those.
OTOH, Trump's talk about expanding the libel laws and otherwise targeting the press, if implemented to its logical completion, would take a lot of time to dig out of. That's not even taking into account his threats to "investigate" his political opponents if elected.
Some would argue that there's evidence that she is engaged in that activity:
https://m.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/4wa5ue/clinton_bo...
Whether you want to believe this or not is up to you, but I'd suggest doing a bit of research before dismissing it.
It's interesting to see people calling for more alternatives and more viable political parties in the US. It's not clear to me that having more political parties would be better since many European countries, where more parliamentary style representation is common, is also dealing with their own xenophobic and nationalist movements.
FPTP also greatly increases the effect of gerrymandering, especially in single-member constituencies.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_Stat...
[2] http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-48-prophet...
I've tried to find evidence supporting these claims on my own, only to discover that there have been fewer terrorist attacks in the last, say, 16 years than in the years before, and better economic standing for minorities in the same period versus before then. I've been able to find a slow but consistent improvement to the overall quality of life of Americans by any objective measure I could discern. It's still subjectively and objectively bad for some groups, but even there, I can only find evidence of a slow but consistent improvement over time.
What am I missing? If I and others can understand that, maybe we can make a difference.
Which candidate are you referring to? Both major candidates are aiming to pick up votes by spreading fear of the other candidate. I'd argue that's pretty much their strongest argument at this point.
> The way we got into a situation with Trump as a major party nominee in the first place was by not talking to people who are very different than we are. The polarization of the country into two parallel political realities is not good for any of us. We should talk to each other more, not less.
When it comes down to it.. its become clear to me at least that a large percentage of the country simply put, is not 'getting ahead' - the anger that drove the Trump and Sanders campaigns is very real and must be solved if we are to prosper.
The key there is that they _feel_ like they're not getting ahead - a very different thing than not actually getting ahead, and much more dangerous.
I certainly wouldn't try this tact with your significant other.
A large majority of these folks are in actual fact falling far behind, and that fact is not easily observed in many of the metrics people often use for measurements (like 'household income', and 'unemployment')
Health? Number of close friends? Lifespan? Addiction rate? Income? Unemployment rate? Labor participation rate?
By any of those metrics, life in a lot of rural-red communities is getting worse, and has been for years. I'm aware of the "better but it feels worse" pattern - crime rates are the prime example - but it's far too glib to say that covers everything. Inconvenient as it is, sometimes you have to actually improve things to make people feel better.
I suspect that most people will not accept any definition of 'ahead' which leaves them sicker, poorer, lonelier, and dying younger. And I don't think there's any reason that they should accept it.
There is another observation I have too - and some point everyone became offended at everyone - when I was younger, merely having a different opinion was never offensive, now in certain circles, it sure appears to be. (HN may be one of those circles)
In the end.. we need to remember time doesnt stop when this election is over - the morning after we're all still gonna wake up and get on with business - I fear the level of vitriol may be damaging the fabric of my country.. and that makes me nervous.
It's a nice sentiment, but it implies that both sides have walked away from the middle more or less equidistantly, and the way to fix it is to walk back. The reality is that American left is still mostly center-left, while the American right has been steadily radicalizing over the past two decades.
Study after study shows the same thing: the average right wing voter today is more prone to groupthink (i.e. believing in party orthodoxy of the day), more likely to select news & information sources pandering to his agenda regardless of their adherence to truth, and views political opponents more negatively.
(This isn't to say that any of these behaviors are exclusive to the right - of course not, and the existence of HuffPo etc is the evidence to that. What's different is how strong and widespread it is.)
So for the left, walking back to the middle is not going to solve this, since the other guy walked much further away. To "meet them in the middle", you'd need to cross over to the right, to the point of abandoning the core platform values that have been there for a very long time. That's not going to happen.
This is a self-correcting problem, though. The side that goes on a quest for ideological purity at the expense of practicality, inevitably diminishes its own ranks by repeatedly purging those deemed as not pure enough (and on every iteration, the criteria become tighter and tighter). You can see this in practice - if you ask some Republican voters, more than half of their own party are "RINOs". And there's a positive feedback loop here - the smaller the party gets, the harder it is for it to hold onto political power, and the less incentive for someone who wants to actually do something (which requires power) to join or stay.
So that bubble is well on its way to bursting, and the best way to resolve matters is to help it along the way. Once it bursts and the right deals with the fallout, then we can talk about meeting in the middle etc.
On the right, it ran away a long time ago.
EDIT: added quote to clarify what I'm saying. My point is the model isn't quite right, a better way to explain it is rather than points on a spectrum, there are policies that we might place on a spectrum but that different movements have no problem adopting. Both the Sanders and Trump campaigns are for protectionism and anti-globalism. Trump in my opinion pretends to also be anti-elitist while Bernie is somewhat close to that too. These groups don't really care about where on the spectrum we end up, it's mostly that we have policies that they think will help them eventually.
Person thinks 40% of people are crazy, racist, hates women etc. Maybe the person who thinks that is the one not understanding the situation.
Clinton: Read Wikileaks, study Clinton Foundation (Haiti) Trump: Read news from both sides msm and Breitbart & similar. Scott Adams blog gives you some sense what is going on.[1]
The immorality of slavery was recognized hundreds of years before the founding of the US. It was abolished in France in the 1300s, in Sweden in 1335, etc. It was never really legal in England and that fact was recognized in 1706, about 40 years before Thomas Jefferson was born. The founders' condoning slavery was a deeply immoral political expedient that was recognized by many as immoral even contemporaneously.
But that's besides the point. The fact that the founders were individually contemptible people doesn't mean their ideas were wrong. You can agree with many of the things Thomas Jefferson said without personally condoning slavery and rape.
Using the same logic all democrats are now x.
Hillary's record has shown a strong commitment to civil rights activism. Robert Byrd did do some horrible things, but he changed and apologized. The NAACP actually honored him after his death. Supporting the the KKK would prevent me from voting for any politician. But Robert Byrd actually changed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/0... http://thegrio.com/2010/06/28/the-evolution-of-robert-byrds-...
Whereas Trump has a history of racism. There have been accusations going back years, and his public statements support those accusations. He accused a federal judge of not being able to be impartial because the judge was Mexican. And David Duke is still a leading white nationalist, and said that voting against Trump is treason to your heritage.
People can change, but you can't claim they have changed if they've ignored what they did in the past and have not done anything different.
Do you think that Hillary is just as racist as Trump? And are you voting for Trump because you actually want him as president, or because you think Hillary's worse?
"Last December, after the council refused to lift the restrictions, Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Palm Beach, alleging that the town was discriminating against Mar-a-Lago, in part because it is open to Jews and African-Americans. The suit seeks $100 million in damages."[0]
Like back in 80's when Trump was fighting for blacks and jews. Read the wikileaks. Clinton campaign's gameplay memo is to create Trump is 'crazy racist' narrative through media.
From what I can gather by reading below[0] he does not like Clinton raising taxes. The rest of his points are such insightful gems as:
"I don't know the best way to default ISIS .. negotiate trade policies .. neither do you but you probably think you do... Given the uncertainty about each candidate – at least in my own mind – I have been saying I am not smart enough to know who would be the best president. That neutrality changed when Clinton proposed raising estate taxes"
what kind of convoluted logic is this? since we as voters are not sure how to fix all these problems that somehow makes these candidates equal? and tax policy breaks the tie?!
Then he regurgitates the usual Trump arguments about Clintons health. And then cites Trumps superior persuasion skills. His comments have been "temporarily disabled" so no way to respond to this nonsense. I've lost all respect for this guy
[0] http://blog.dilbert.com/post/150919416661/why-i-switched-my-...
Tocqueville, almost 200 years ago, begs to differ:
"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.... in America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases; but woe to him if he goes beyond them." [1]
What's changed this year isn't that Americans are being purged for having the wrong political ideas. That's been happening not for 200 years, but well over 300. Roger Williams, anyone? [2]
What's changed this year is that the major candidate of one of the main two parties holds beliefs that would get any normal American purged. Added to this is the velocity of change: 50 years ago, most normal Americans held these same beliefs. (Heck, not 10 years ago, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were swearing up and down that "marriage is between a man and a woman.")
So you're seeing two processes: an increase in the speed at which America's governing class can evolve its beliefs, and a decrease in their ability to drag the rest of America along with them. No surprise that the latter group wants to respond to an existential threat with an existential threat.
[1] http://dailyprincetonian.com/opinion/2001/10/alexis-de-tocqu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Williams
This has been more recently termed as the "Overton Window"
Most Americans 50 years ago would be stunned that someone who has been married three times, and who has been caught on tape saying he wants to cheat with other women, is still running for President. That alone would be disqualifying.
However, how does one bring forward the 43% that appears to agree so strongly with Trump there isn't really any common ground to have a reasonable discussion around? How do you go about working with someone that is uneducated, and often proud of this fact, raised to believe all other races are a blight against life as they know it, and often are proud of this, truly believe global warming/climate change is a hoax? Etc etc.
I'm not trying to be coy, I just think that fundamentally those that support Trump are different. My father is a huge fox news watching old-school Italian. He is a die-hard Trump supporter. He isn't educated, he isn't interested in learning why Trump is wrong. He isn't ever going to change his mind and when (hopefully) Trump loses, will be part of the 43% calling the election 'stolen'.
I love the man, he is my father after-all, but I have noticed that he (a life-long Republican) simply doesn't have empathy for others the way I do. When I ask him would he rather have more homeless or no homeless, his first reply back was 'well how much is it going to cost?'. And this is how 'they' think, there is a distinct difference in how he, and i suspect most 'hardcore conservatives' view human life (unless of course it fits their pro-life agenda, then of course they are suddenly lovers of 'life' above all else). Money is more important to them, it always will be, and the idea of helping others is never going to be acceptable (unless, maybe they find themselves in a situation where they need help).
I'm sorry to be so negative about this but I'm quite a bit older than most around here and in my experience it's a losing battle to try to convert anyone to a more reasonable position. The only thing that seems to help is more eduction, more exposure to diverse cultures, and generally not focusing only on one self above all else. But then look at Thiel, and then you have to wonder if it's something more.
Empathy and Personality Disorders: http://www.healthyplace.com/personality-disorders/malignant-...
This is a myth. [0]
>with someone that is uneducated, and often proud of this fact, raised to believe all other races are a blight against life as they know it, and often are proud of this,
>I'm not trying to be coy
I can assure you no one is about to accuse you of that :) [1]
[0]: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-...
[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=define+coy&oq=define+coy&aqs...
That someone isn't uneducated just because she/he doesn't align with one's thinking.
The Economist: Where Donald Trump’s support really comes from:
'However, averaging out his support in all state primaries (where exit polling is available) shows that richer and better educated voters form as big a part of Mr Trump’s support base as those at the lower end of the income and education scales.'[0]
[0]http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/04/daily-c...
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...
> [Hillary] shows little respect for the Constitution, the Republic, or for human decency, and I fear for national security if [she] becomes our president.
Other sentences would just exchange antonyms and not make it sound any better. You call Trump isolationist, they call Hillary interventionist.
I fear that your reasoning for why you endorse Hillary and not Trump doesn't really speak to someone who likes Trump in the first place. Calling Trump racist, for instance, isn't going to flip anyone's voting bit.
The only very cogent Hillary endorsement (or rather Not-Trump endorsement) I've read that would actually speak to conservatives is this one: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/28/ssc-endorses-clinton-jo...
Which is fairly long and not the kind of thing I'd suggest sharing with your Grandma or Thiel, but I think you could distill more convincing talking points from it that would appeal to people much more conservative than yourself.
Note: My own opinion is too wordy for the small margins here, I'm just relaying sentiments of people I've talked to. I'm from New Hampshire, and people here, especially up north, have had Trump signs from very early on in this campaign, way before anyone in the media seemed to take him seriously.
> > [Hillary] shows little respect for the Constitution, the Republic, or for human decency, and I fear for national security if [she] becomes our president.
Except one is based on a set of statements made by the candidate and his own campaign, the other is mostly built upon the massive pile of conspiracy theories and mountains-made-from-molehills that constitute the argument against Hillary.
Like the "conspiracy theories" that Hillary's campaign was behind the violence at this year's Trump rallies?
Seems like they're no longer 'theories'... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY&feature=youtu.be...)
Trustworthy.
It's not supposed to. It's a bunch of feathers to convince hillary fans that he's on their side, and to soften the blow of telling them: You're categorically wrong if you want him fired.
Now, I realize that Trump supporters really don't get why it's bad to put your rival in jail. But, that objective fact does actually matter to people who care about a functioning government.
At the end of the day, I don't think you can converse with Trump supporters. They are like creationists in their utter disregard for reality.
actually he said he would appoint a special prosecutor to the case which honestly should have been done a long time ago and based on the context of it is perfectly reasonable.
Clinton: "it's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country."
Trump: "Because you'd be in jail."
Maybe, (surprise, surprise) Trump wasn't thinking it through and just wanted to get that quip in on Clinton but the language is clear: If Trump was in charge of the law in the US, Clinton would be in jail.
Parse it all you want, but Trump has continued to say that in his stumps and is fine with selling merchandise that says Clinton should be in prison.
Clinton is becoming vaguely reminiscent of Julius Caesar, who had to repeatedly duck lawsuits by taking up governmental positions that carried freedom from prosecution.
Again, there's reality and there's a belief that Hilary murdered someone.
In a properly functioning country, status as "opponent" or "non-opponent" has nothing to do with going to jail. Right now we don't seem to have that; destruction of evidence is one of many things that would put any normal person in jail.
Given that Trump's opponent actually committed crimes, Trump is actually showing respect for our system of government. To let the powerful go unpunished is to disrespect it.
That is what saddens me the most from this election. The fact that someone running for a high profile position can get away with such abhorrent remarks as Trump's made.
Maybe the real issue is the 2 party system. Both candidates have signifiant flaws, so the electorate is selecting on the attributes they dislike less.
- Thiel is passionately against all forms of political correctness, just like Trump.
- Thiel believes that the 19th amendment destroyed democracy, because women vote in favor for anti-libertarian welfare measures. When faced with the choice between saving democracy and capitalism, Thiel chooses capitalism. Trump shares this antidemocratic sentiment.
- Thiel: "A startup is basically structured as a monarchy. We don’t call it that, of course." Trump shares this authoritarian leadership style.
- Thiel wants to restrict immigration to highly educated people. Just like Trump.
- Thiel is the (primary?) backer of Curtis Yarvin, the alt-right (read: white supremacist) thoughtleader about "human biodiversity" (read: why some races are biologically inferior). Trump has proudly declared his biologically superior ancestry.
- Thiel is a climate skeptic: "The idea that human activity alters the climate is "more pseudoscience" than science". Trump famously called global warming a hoax invented by the Chinese.
- They're both billionaires that want to lower taxes for the 1%.
Thiel supports Trump because Thiel agrees with Trump. Really.
Funny how the "binders full of women" seems so tame today.
I'd be the first to criticize Romney's campaign, but that 'gaffe' was trumped up from the word go. It's a fine way in colloquial English to describe the experience of having collected large stacks of women's resumes with the intent to populate state government with qualified female candidates, which, in fact, Romney did.
It wouldn't have been racist if he said "binders full of minority candidates". It would make just as much sense and be just as anodyne if he'd said in a similar context "binders full of recent graduates", "binders full of men", or "binders full of lost pets".
It blew up because it was a fun way for the media and the opposing campaign to play with his decidedly "square" image by suggesting it had some sexual connotation, which was, frankly, pretty juvenile. Also the '80's called and they want their foreign policy back.
"- Thiel is passionately against all forms of political correctness, just like Trump." - unless he determines that the political incorrectness in question happens to affect him in some adverse way. See: Gawker.
And yes, I think outing someone without their express consent is a form of political incorrectness, in addition to a personal violation. I also don't think that financial bankruptcy is an appropriate punishment for doing so.
"- Thiel wants to restrict immigration to highly educated people. Just like Trump." - But also believes higher education is not so worthwhile that it should be required or even considered important for all Americans. See: Thiel Fellows
Striking back at Gawker wasn't about political correctness, it was about the boundaries of public/private life. He doesn't care if people hate him / judge him for his sexuality, but he believes it's nobody else's business and the press should be kept from revealing similar private info in the future. This reconciles well both with the specific case he chose to attack them through (Hogan's sex tape) and with a vague 'yearning for the past.' Past presidents had extramarital affairs as sort of public secrets with the press corps, because exactly this sort of thing was considered immaterial.
The second one is even easier to reconcile. Thiel believes there's a significant variance in the fundamental capabilities of different humans. The Thiel Fellowships are for exceptionally capable people, but he could still think the 'middle of the pack' needs higher education to maximize their contribution to society. He wants to make startup kings, not pull everyone out of school to start co-ops.
I'm not sure whether everyone should be banned or required to read Heinlein in high school...
I'd be inclined to suppose that Thiel might say that he wants to restrict immigration to highly educated people because education correlates with intelligence. If you've already identified intelligence, you don't need to use education as a proxy rule-of-thumb.
what tangible evidence do you have that he is anti-democratic?
And that's just what he's said. The fascist overtones are present in a variety of other ways. He makes minority groups scapegoats in order to appeal to ignorant masses.
To object to that is to beg the question of whether she belongs in jail or not. I won't take a position on that, but it should be obvious that being a political candidate doesn't grant one immunity from prosecution for improperly divulging classified information (or for sexual assault, for that matter; I can't remember a previous where folks could legitimately debate whether both candidates should be in jail).
To object to literal fascism is to acknowledge that we live in a Constitutional Democracy and have an actual legal and judicial system which is not to be subverted by a unilateral Executive branch actor who has a short temper and a grudge. You know, basic separation of powers principals that are fundamental pillars of our Democracy.
But then again, this is the party that has illegally obstructed the nomination for the Scalia's replacement for the last 9 months, and will continue to do so for the next 3 _AND_ has already proclaimed that they will obstruct HRC's nominations as well...
So it's nothing new to disregard the Constitution for the Republicans at this point, I guess.
His ideology is actually the other extreme - it's mob rule with a strong leader who can do whatever they want (phrased as "whatever needs to be done"), having the mandate to do so from the mob. Very similar to the current arrangement in Russia, for example (yes, elections are rigged, but Putin would still get a large majority even in fair elections), or now also in the Philippines.
Trumpism is anti-democratic in practice, because it doesn't have actual popular support, and so has to resort to conspiracy theories to explain it away by claiming that elections are rigged etc, effectively trying to disenfranchise its opponents. But its adherents don't see it that way - they genuinely believe that there's a conspiracy against them, and they would have won in fair elections; so from their perspective, they're fighting for democracy.
- Thiel wants to restrict immigration to highly educated people. Just like Trump."
Why is this repugnant?
One would expect a country to institute immigration policy that benefited that country. If it is the case that some immigration restrictions are beneficial, isn't that a fair and reasonable policy?
Is the only acceptable immigration system random selection? Or are no restrictions acceptable?
This is implying that less educated immigrants are not beneficial? Almost any migration only happens because there are resources to be acquired on the other side. It is exactly like the drug war - you could ignore the causes of demand and try to somehow crush supply which has objectively failed (because supplies will arise to meet demands) or you implement policy to get the demand you want.
And the immigrant demand takes many forms. Some times, welfare programs are too lax and give immigrants easy ways to avoid working. And other times, there is work to be done nobody is doing (often under minimum wage) that immigrants are willing to do because even below regulated standards of income they make way more here than they would back home.
Both reflect on failings of policy that crated the demand, and those failings could be addressed in many ways and all political ideologies tout their own ideas as the solution, which is the point of debate. Most can agree the status quo is unsustainable globally, when states are trying to consistently stop the supply of immigrants rather than resolve what is causing the demand.
I think that we are largely moving to a world where the vast majority of human labor is unnecessary. Increasingly, hiring one smart person is more productive than hiring 10 or even 100 below average intelligence people, because what is needed increasingly is brainpower, not manpower.
This needs a citation, because whenever I've seen people say this, they cite this this essay https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
And frankly, if you think he opposes women's suffrage, you didn't read it. He clarifies further in an addition:
But the most intense response has been aimed not at cyberspace, seasteading, or libertarian politics, but at a commonplace statistical observation about voting patterns that is often called the gender gap.
It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us.
>>-Thiel is the (primary?) backer of Curtis Yarvin, the alt-right (read: white supremacist) thoughtleader about "human biodiversity" (read: why some races are biologically inferior).
Moldbug is explicitly not a white supremicist. You can read his explanation here: https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam...
He disagrees with you about factual matters of human population genetics, but not about the moral issue about how people with different genetics should be treated.
>>He isn't fooling anybody with ...
What prevents you from taking him at his word about what he believes? Why would you distrust his own explanation of his own opinions? I don't think we're doing civilization any favors by speculating about people's "true" beliefs in order to ostracize them.
Moldbug has said many absurd antidemocratic things, but you don't need to misrepresent them to convey that.
If you want to debate someone seriously, do it like this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-fa...
but it is the literal definition of racism...
The fact is that when you plot the results of IQ tests, the accepted measurement of intellectual capacity, along with race on a chart, a strong correlation is present. I don't think we should ostracize people who've performed this experiment and noted the results. It's not "racist" to perform this experiment, and it's not racist to acknowledge the widely-repeated results.
People usually say that the correlations demonstrate that the IQ test itself is racist. Maybe that's true. But just plotting race and IQ on the same graph and noting the outcome is not.
This is precisely where your whole argument fell apart. If money is speech (and SCOTUS tells us it is) and Thiel donates over $1 million to Trump's campaign, then he effectively is saying what Trump is saying.
Money talks. In our society, it's almost always even louder than the calm reasoning of a rationalist.
Apparently the apology was over "half" rather than "deplorables".
Mitt Romney dismissed 47% of the voting public in 2012 and was roundly criticized for dismissing the people he supposedly wanted to lead.
If Clinton had said 46%, would that have made it ok?
I don't have any problem with what Clinton said. Based on the numerous polls, she is absolutely correct. It may not be a politically prudent thing to say, but that's not an ethical matter.
It's not dismissing them, it's saying they hold contemptible views. Just as, at one point in time, I'd imagine 50% of the population were in favour of slavery.
It's not a good political move, but it's telling the truth.
Which is fair. It's impossible to deny that there are white supremacists (who are deplorable) that support Trump. They're very candid about it.
So what is the acceptable number? "Almost half"?
And what does that say about the rest of the group? Are they too to be damned by association, for standing too close to the "real deplorables"?
This is the primary reason I am so frustrated with friends of mine who are content to see Hillary and Trump as 'the same'. One of these two people will tilt the court away from the majority that decided on Citizens United. The other will tilt it further in favor of the side that decided on Citizens United.
Even if HRC was ideologically opposed to my own views I would vote for her since 4 or 8 years of HRC trumps (pardon the pun) the 40 years of SCOTUS seating the next president will set.
> If Thiel donates ... to Trump's campaign, then he effectively is saying what Trump is saying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo
"The majority, in a per curiam opinion, contended that expenditure limits contravened the First Amendment provision on freedom of speech because spending money, in its view, was the same as written or verbal expression."
It amplifies the speaker's message at a point in time when it may still affect others who hear it.
By the time you vote, in secret, your choice affects no other voters.
sort of yes, sort of no. this seems like it could be an all-or-nothing statement, which could be unrealistic.
every candidate is flawed and ultimately one has to make a decision on which will be the most beneficial wrt the issues you care about.
And wasn't this the argument made by those who supported the ouster of Brendan Eich from Mozilla?
- Voters holding candidates responsible for where their support comes from, and whether that will influence their actions in office. - Consumers / collaborators / whatnot holding financiers responsible for what they are funding.
I, as a voter, do choose to take into account who is funding a candidate's campaign.
I, as a consumer / potential employee / human, take into account the speech funded by someone I'm intending to conduct a transaction with / form a friendship with, as evidence of their character.
1) Germans forced to march through an extermination camp because their cowardice in not stopping Hitler made them responsible for his actions.
2) Osama bin Laden justifying 9/11 by saying citizens are responsible for the actions of the US Govt.
Do you like either interpretation of your statement?
How is being uninvited as a keynote speaker being burned at the stake? Or even remotely comparable to the policies that Donald Trump has advocated (killing the families of suspected terrorists, jailing political opponents) or bragging about sexual assault, which is illegal?
I can see why folks had an issue with Eich being forced out of Mozilla, but the world isn't black and white when it comes to "free speech". Allowing free speech doesn't mean that you should be shielded from the consequences from the world at large.
Let's assume Alice supports a candidate not because of their general positions but because of a certain niche position that person A thinks is really important.
If you hate a certain position the candidate believes but person A might feel ambivalent about, is it fair to redirect that anger to Alice?
The major difference I see between the candidate and Alice is simply that if another candidate that came along without the position you may hate but still having the niche belief, they may switch quite quickly.
Also, there are varying degrees of agree-ability. I do not agree with many of Hillary's policies, but there aren't any that I would take a firm stance against. Most of Donald's policies are different: I don't agree with them, and I believe it'd be awful if they were to actually happen.
You have to understand that that is how some people feel about Hillary. That losing their own vote forever, for their entire gender, would be worth it to them to keep her out of office.
I think the problem is that's not true. From what I've read, people don't support a candidate because they agree or disagree with the opposition on real-terms. They support because of "fake terms."
I consider these fake terms to be one I hear a lot from Trump supporters: "Hillary Clinton wants to take our guns away."
> women (a small number, mind you) were tweeting they'd gladly give up their right to vote if it got Trump elected.
There are plenty of women that think women shouldn't vote, regardless of Trump! There are men who think men shouldn't vote, etc.. etc.. fortunately, the internet gives them a platform: unfortunately, sometimes these groups aren't keen on reason.
For a lot of people, this year, you are basically on a scale from yourself with no chance to the major nominees with at least 99.9% of the chance and almost nothing you agree with.
1. A rich and powerful person parroting Trump's evil statements --> ban from YC.
2. A rich and powerful person helping put Trump in a position to turn his evil statements into reality for an entire country --> No ban from YC.
Has this happened yet?
It's possible for someone to agree with some things a candidate says, and disagree with other things. If I agree with more things Trump says than things Clinton says (or does, or believes, etc...) then it makes sense to support that candidate. So money is not speech. Even votes are not speech.
Also, the Supreme Court does not believe money is speech. If they did, campaign contribution limits would be obviously unconstitutional.
1. Donating to the Clinton Foundation is not the same as donating to the Clinton campaign.
2. Buying an album is not the same as donating money to a campaign or voting, both of which can meaningfully affect a large number of other people, unlike buying an album.
3. If you knowingly fund criminal operations without actually committing said crimes yourself you can definitely be held accountable for it by the law.
4. The US Supreme Court did rule that donating money is a form of free speech in Buckley v. Valeo, but this doesn't imply that free speech is limitless. As with other forms of speech, Congress has the power to place reasonable limits on it.
2. If money that supports speech is equivalent to making that speech, isn't this just a matter of degree?
3. I understand. Doesn't my specific example seem absurd, though?
4. But there are many more limitations on money than there are on speech. There is no limit on speech in support of a campaign. There is a limit on money in support of a campaign. Is that not enough evidence that money and speech are not equivalent, at least legally?
What about yelling "fire" in a crowded polling place?
:P
In that regard, donating really isn't saying much. It is simply saying "I think Trump will do a better job as president than Clinton."
That all said, I have no idea what Theil's political beliefs are so he might really agree with everything Trump says, but you can't infer that off of a donation to his campaign.
Issue: A B C D E F G
A: O O O X X X O
B: O O X X O O X
Being well educated and successful doesn't mean he acts rationally at all time. Some persons get extremely passionate and dogmatic when it comes to politics. I'm just speculating but maybe Trump's personality and style appeals to him in an irresistible way.
Disagree.
Thiel is making an investment. He can likely separate his emotions from his actions. I imagine Thiel doesn't agree with a lot of what Pence says about homosexuals, but that certainly didn't stop him from making the investment.
This is a very dangerous way of viewing politics, and exactly the kind of black-and-white thinking we're trying to get away from. Just because you donate to someone, just because you vote for them, just because you campaign for them does not mean you agree 100% with everything they say. If 100% agreement were a prerequisite for voting for someone, nobody would ever vote. There has never been a candidate that has held all of my views, and there never will be, because my views are a pretty peculiar mix based on my experiences and exposure to information.
No, they're just saying they support that candidate. Maybe they support every position they hold, but that's not a corollary. Maybe they just really dislike the alternative candidates, and maybe they made this decision solely based on comparing two candidates on a single issue.
This rant isn't directed at you (or the article for that matter), but I have a disdain for people who decry single-issue voters. For whatever reason, being a single-issue voter is seen as this taboo that any educated and cultured individual ought to stay away from. I think that's bullshit, especially in a political realm as polarized as ours. In my eyes, there's nothing "wrong" with being a single issue voter. For any given individual, certain topics in politics affect them disproportionately. The idea that people shouldn't account for that when making their decision comes entirely from an ego-driven world of journalists, politicians, and academics who need to convince themselves that they consider politics from a hilltop, above and beyond the mere peasants who only care about themselves and their personal life.
And to bring this back to the topic at hand, if you agree with what I'm saying about single-issue voting, I think it's inconsistent to think that it reflects personally on someone to support Trump.
If you are a single issue voter that is:
* against foreign intervention
* concerned about the federal budget
* against the ACA
* against common core and the department of education
* for allowing marijuana legalization by individual states
* etc. etc. etc.
http://fortune.com/2016/07/21/peter-thiel-gives-full-throate...
The only way that this could be anything less than a full support of the Trump platform, would be if Thiel had specifically rejected large chunks of the platform are bad, and he's not supporting them, but there's some things there in particular that he finds so important that they override all the bad stuff. In other words, the "lesser of two evils" endorsement, such as some Republicans have made for Clinton this year.
Thiel didn't do that. In his speech, the only reference to that was decrying the "fake culture wars".
Ergo, he fully supports not just Trump, but the entirety of the Trump platform.
I've had way too much of people getting fired for petty personal disagreements or baseless accusations.
David Duke is running for senate. Does that make Holocaust-denial a political issue?
There was a time when women having the right to vote was a political issue. Today it is not (though Thiel has raised concerns about what women's suffrage did for capitalist democracy[0].)
There was a time when slavery was considered a political issue. Today it is not.
I don't think sexual assault is in the realm of "personal politics". I don't think racism is either. Can I take the time to understand people who might advocate for these? Sure, but that doesn't mean I want them as leaders.
Having Thiel as a partner in YC, when Silicon Valley has tremendous issues with diversity already, sends a strong message. It's not about supporting a political party. I'm sure the YC partners have a wide spectrum of political views. This isn't about politics.
[0]: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
Of course not - it's about religion, and burning the heretics.
In reality, I believe Trump is much more likely to start WWIII, which is yet another reason to be opposed to him, but it is extremely uncharitable to assume that all of his supporters support everything that he does. I think most Republican voters simply believe he's the lessor of two evils. I strongly disagree with them, but respect the democratic process.
I completely agree that being a single-issue voter on "preventing WW3" is the most moral thing possible. It's just really hard to tell which is less likely. And maybe if it is 0.00000001% vs. 0.000000011%, some other issue should have priority.
Every election the media brands the Republican party candidate the devil and stupid (Romney was tagged as a racist last election and stupid for thinking Russia might be a threat). They also read all the leaked e-mails calling them stupid and see what the Clinton Foundation has done. They aren't ignorant or stupid and see when a fix is in. Never mind the various people that Sec. Hilary has declared she will put out of business.
I said it in another thread, "if you keep demonizing a group, expect them to send an actual demon eventually".
I honestly believe if you cannot understand why people support Trump, then you just don't want to understand or believe that they are full of hate. They aren't full of hate. Most just don't believe the media anymore. Take the media outlets this morning blaming Trump for the burning of a GOP office. I think the quote that comes up most often is "If he were really that bad, NBC would have had to fire him during his time on TV and besides Bill is worse". The media outlets didn't do themselves any favors by holding onto tape from 2005 until after the convention and using it as an "October Surprise".
As for me, I didn't get to vote in the primaries because of issues with the GOP and the ND GOP. My candidate didn't get in (Rubio), and the Libertarian candidate is a disaster. I was hoping the Libertarians could get that magic 5% like Perot's party did in 1992. I might still vote Libertarian. I really doesn't matter as far as electoral split. I am more interested in the governor's race. I won't vote for Hilary since she is an actual demonstrated threat.
Amen.
This should be written in double quotes.
Except if you do believe the latter, and in that case any discussion is moot.
"A Trump presidency would be a disaster for the American economy."
"He has no real plan to restore economic growth."
"His racist, isolationist policies would divide our country, and American innovation would suffer"
"He's erratic, abusive, and prone to fits of rage. He represents a real threat to the safety of women, minorities, and immigrants."
"Trump shows little respect for the Constitution"
1) Subjective
This is an opinion, not a fact.
2) Objective
I agree. But that does not make him "objectively" wrong.
3) Subjective
Without starting a discussion about Trump alleged racism, whether or not a somewhat isolationist policy would either divide our country or make American innovation suffer is a matter of opinion, not facts. Some other prominent investors seem to disagree.
Besides, examples in our history would tend to show the contrary (I am referring to Roosevelt policies after the '29 crash).
4) Subjective
Unless SCOTUS rules that his stands are unconstitutional, it's only a matter of interpretation.
"American innovation would suffer": Because of economic consequences, so see above.
"He's erratic, abusive, and prone to fits of rage": I don't even know how you can argue against this, just watch one of his speeches.
"He represents a real threat to the safety of women, minorities, and immigrants": He personally is a threat to women, and his policies, such as they are, are now stiring up racial hatred. Again, an objective truth.
"Trump shows little respect for the Constitution": He announced several completely unconstitutional plans, such as suspending the right of US citizens to return to the country if they are Muslims. You don't need a ruling from the Supreme Court on this.
Were Mr. Thiel a founder, and a powerful VC blacklisted him because of his political views, we would have the powerful trampling the weak.
If HN banned everyone who defended Mr. Thiel, we would have a purge.
But choosing not to do business with a billionaire that is actually spending money to support Mr. Trump is not a case of the powerful oppressing the weak, nor is it a case of the powerful purging voices from discourse.
It's a choice, simple as that. Agree, disagree, fine. But it's not a purge, and it's not oppression.
I can accept that YC may choose not to cut Mr. Thiel loose, but I'm not convinced that there is a moral imperative not to cut him loose.
It's a lose/lose situation but the potential losses are large on one side than the other.
They're not.
For example, "Jews are a race of parasites that should be exterminated" is a political view, very popular in some countries back in the day (and in some other countries even today).
I don't have any problem blacklisting people who believe in that, and act to make those beliefs a reality, even if the acts themselves are legal (e.g. funding a political campaign to gain power). Do you?
So the millions of Germans who supported Nazism make it okay?
Honestly, I don't think it would be a gigantic stretch for Trump to push for genocide against Muslims.
Sometimes I think saying that is really an empty platitude.
No it's not. If enough people who are voting Clinton purely to stop Trump voted 3rd party, 3rd party would actually have a chance.
In this overflowing toilet bowl we call the 2016 Presidential Election, your best bet to unclog it is to use a plunger, now throw another turd in. Vote for the plunger, not the turds.
It's also worth noting, what third party candidate? There isn't a perfect option there either.
It's a first past the post system - third party candidates are never going to happen because of the psychology, number of ingrained voters, and the way electoral college votes work.
If you are in that situation, the best thing is to vote Clinton, then instantly start putting as much pressure on her and other Democrats to change that system once she is in office. Start now, and get support for a candidate so in the next election you can have one you actually like standing, or at least push towards one. The biggest problem is people getting worked up in the presidential election, then when it's over, ignoring politics for four years.
Change in politics does not happen quickly - generally it involves waiting for old people to die, because people are bad at changing their beliefs. I'd love to believe a third party vote was worthwhile, but the truth is, in reality, it's not. We know that. The system is broken. Work to change that.
First past the post simply isn't democracy. It's a vague semblance of. Until you change that, you'll have two parties and your choice between a turd sandwich and a douche.
> what third party candidate? There isn't a perfect option there either.
As long as you acknowledge the double standard implicit in your language: For a non-third-party candidate, it suffices to "not be as bad as the other person"; for a third-praty candidate one must be "perfect".
> the way electoral college votes work.
Electoral colleges don't work that way. In order to win, one need only get one state (it's unlikely, but McMullin seems to have a shot at pulling that off; less likely: Johnson).
Really a smart campaigner could grab one state, and then use the momentum (as you might say, "psychology") to continue grabbing states.
Now, to be fair, part of that is a product of the electoral system--people who are likely to be competent for the office are unlikely to run as a third-party candidate, given that they are likely to understand how the system works.
The momentum thing, I don't buy. It might technically be possible, but it's practically never going to happen, because FPTP is broken.
More than two parties will never be stable unless elections are other than FPTP. But which two parties has changed more than once through US history. I don't see a reason it couldn't possibly happen again.
I agree that it's not implausible. I'm just not convinced of it, on a time scale of "never".
That said, if control shifts anytime soon to a current leading third party, I (weakly) expect electoral issues would be addressed - it's hard to drop something you've made so much noise about (though certainly not impossible).
It's actually the other way around though. When including 3rd parties in polls (Florida, for example), Clinton has consistently done worse.
This is why you're not seeing any mainstream media coverage of Johnson or Stein -- it hurts their golden goose.
They are killing civilians with weapons made in the USA.
So, I find it particularly interesting that this somehow has become a partisan election issue. Maybe the world will get lucky and this will stick as an issue after the election.
My first tech job was at Lockheed, I started there on 9/1/2001.
Hilary didn't say she wants to nuke Syria and Libya. She made a decision because she thought that conflict there was the lesser of two evils, and has applied mostly proportionate response, and attempted to limit collateral damage.
Trump has said he wants to completely ban everyone who shares a religion with the most prominent terrorists of the moment.
The two, in my eyes, are very, very different. One is a decision made in the understanding that we have to make difficult choices, one is a naive, dangerous blanket policy as a knee-jerk response that will cause more harm than good.
It's easy to say 'killing vs banning' and make it sound the way you did, but when it's 'carefully directed killing to try and reduce overall killing vs overreaching banning that will be ineffective and punish innocent people'...
Trump winning will also really underscore how broken the US political system is and I'm hoping that him winning could be a catalyst for some change.
I would prefer 4 more years on congressional deadlock to the dystopian nightmare that Hillary will unleash.
Force the DNC to address its shortcomings, and push a real progressive in the next election.
What specifically will happen?
Not to mention her abysmal record on war, cyber security, election rigging, and media manipulation.
After 4 years of Trump we will have a country that is willing to acknowledge its mistakes, and two parties in disarray looking for fresh candidates to invigorate the masses.
After 8 years of Hillary we will have seen the trend of villifying the opposition reach its obvious conclusion.
If you don't toe the party line you are racist/sexist/actualHitler. I voted for Obama twice and I regularly get called a racist online because I don't support Hillary.
Hillary controls the media, is backed by all the money in the world, and is a war hawk.
What will happen is whatever she wants to happen, and I can't think of a single positive impact she has had on my life.
For one, Trump could do a huge amount of damage in four years - destroying peoples lives through taxation and repealing rights, destroying international relations, filling the supreme court with hard right wing candidates.
Not to mention the damage that would be done in terms of social norms. Trump getting elected is a massive signal to the right that it's OK to be racist, sexist, and trample other's beliefs, identities and cultures. Those people will be more vocal, which means more kids will get sucked up into that ideology.
Also, why would the left move left if Trump wins? The message there is someone as crazily far-right as Trump can get 50% of the vote. They'd move right, not left.
I honestly can't believe that anyone who supports Sanders - someone who is so strongly in favour of the things Trump intends to trample, and such a strong pragmatist, would want to follow a course of action that is so clearly shooting your own nose to spite your face.
YC: Can't bring itself to even censure a billionaire who only works with them "part-time" for supporting actual hatred and sexual abuse.
I await this thread filling up with "but how you can be tolerant if you don't tolerate intolerance?!" and other Phil-101 Do You Sees
If you look at their respective Tweets they seem to agree.
"Taking the high road like this is only possible when it's not your neck on the chopping block. Thiel thinks giving women the right to vote was a mistake; Trump thinks all Mexicans and Muslims are violent madmen who should be barred from entering the United States. Hacker News can gregariously see past these faults because they're not in the crosshairs, but if Shanley Kane were a YC partner and saying "all men support rape culture, even if indirectly", there's no friggin way this comment section would be so sanguine."
ok honestly this is just outright wrong. you're just reciting false talking points from your liberal tv when you clearly haven't actually taken the time to listen to what Trump actually said. He never once called all Mexicans rapists yet you say he did. He never once said he wants to ban ALL Muslims from entering the US yet you did. For your information, the FBI notified congress and local governments that they currently are not confident that they can properly vet all incoming refugees. If the FBI is saying that, how on Earth can you claim it's wrong for Trump to call for a temporary stop until the FBI says it has a handle on it?
OK, that's correct as far as I can tell. He didn't say "all Mexicans are rapists". You might still want to reflect on how what he did say was nonetheless offensive, not to mention factually incorrect.
However,
> He never once said he wants to ban ALL Muslims from entering the US
this is plainly false. From his website:
"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on"
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-...
It's clear that he's not asking for a permanent ban. The parent poster did not say "permanent ban". It's still clearly a "ban" by the plain meaning of the word.
If you're going to defend Trump, at least read what he puts out on his own website.
kthx.
But.... this post does censure Peter Thiel. sama is completely disavowing Thiel's support of Trump. Maybe I don't understand what "censure" means though, if you meant something else.
That's pretty weak sauce, and also isn't an official YC position. YC needs to distance itself from this donation and this support.
I don't support trump, but the hyperbole is getting exhausting.
Trump is not worthy of defense.
As for why a woman might not press charges after a sexual assault, there are a multitude of reasons that have been discussed in plenty of related literature, I urge you to seek them out.
Smells like bullshit to me.
She is already playing dirty, why stop at convincing a group of women to lie some more for the cause?
I have just seen what happens when unfounded claims of sexual assault get taken seriously.
Insofar as the offenses are criminal rather than civil then, even if they aren't barred by statute of limitations, it's not their decision but that of a public prosecutor.
And, in some cases, they can't file civil charges because they sued in the past and already reached settlements.
Yeah, Trump is a frigging billionaire who officiated at Miss Universe contests. If it had turned out that he had never made a pass at any of those beautiful women, I'd be suspecting that he's really a closet case, or else he is the saintliest man in human existence. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it doesn't fit his brand.
One candidate has sexually assaulted women. One candidate has most certainly not.
If you don't see a moral high ground to seize there you are being deliberately obtuse. In fact I'd go as far to call you a hateful moron.
Person -> SOPA
Person -> Trump -> Sexism/Racism/etc
Thiel doesn't support Trump because he's racist/etc, he does it in spite of that. That doesn't make Thiel right, however it is an important distinction. If Thiel said or did anything racist/sexist/etc, he'd be out of YC. It's a slippery slope to start firing people because someone they support supports something you don't like.
After all, Clinton supports SOPA, and Sam just endorsed her.
How do you know that?
Here's a great article: http://theweek.com/articles/638051/why-does-peter-thiel-supp...
Some bullet points:
* He believes we've stagnated (see http://blog.samaltman.com/trump)
* He sees a unique opportunity to buy into politics at the highest level for a mere $1.25MM
* He likes being on CNN and on stage. He's famous, but not politics-famous.
* He found a way to get Republicans to cheer for the phrase "I'm gay"
At the end of the day, we shouldn't be surprised that a guy who's famous for asking "What's one thing you believe that no one else does?" is supporting the most contrarian candidate we've ever seen.
Thiel supports Trump for his economic policies, which seems utterly bizarre to me, but I don't see any double standard in terms of YC's behavior.
On the other hand, he did endorse Trump.
If you endorse someone, without pointing out what you believe to be their flaws, when you know those flaws (and, really, I don't think Thiel could claim excuse by ignorance here), you implicitly support those flaws.
Had to take a pause right there. (Disclosure: I am a Muslim, naturalized American citizen that emigrated to US in '79.)
Critiques of Trump's positions are as exagerated as the candidate's own verbiage, perhaps even more so.
I will not touch the "racist" item :) but as to "isolationist", this is false at face value. Non-aggression is not isolationism. Very clearly stating that US should work with Russia, Syria, and Iran (!) to finish ISIS -- oh, the irony -- is not an "isolationist" position.
There is a very clear choice on the table: Will US continue as one of the principle entities pushing for globalism, or, will we revert back to pre Bush '41 and let the globalist deal with their collapsing house of card in EU and elsewhere, while we reboot substantial industry (read: not "service" industry) in this nation.
[p.s. I am endorsing Jill Stein, per my evaluation of the entailed Karmic risks in this election. /g]
In that instance not racist since Islam isn't a race however that complete lack of nuance and the absolute torrent of shit he has said makes him incredibly dangerous.
To be perfectly frank, sometimes I wonder if DJT is not the establishment's strawman designed to keep us with the globalist agenda.
The globalists' agenda is directly responsible for the death of millions of Muslims and likely a substantial number of Iraqi and Syrian Christians, with Sam's choice of president being very much in the loop, starting with her husband's policies (that resulted in the official toll of 500,000 dead Iraqi children, which WJC's secratary of state famously considered as "worth it"), to the destruction of Libya and its attendant miseries, and in Syria with millions of dispossed, and yet another nation in ruin.
As a Muslim, let me assure you, if I was the president, I would make sure every single person arriving from these war zones is fully vetted. Given that I am from West Asia (the so-called Middle East) you should note that neither racism nor aversion to Muslims would motivate that approach. It's just common sense.
Further, while I fully agree that since we have instigated this global crisis and thus even beyond the call of human empathy are responsible and must sleep in the bed that we have made, let it be noted that the best way to help Syrians and refugees is to STOP THESE WARS so they can live in peace in their own homeland. Again, this is just common sense.
Clinton and her fellow travellers (and they are quite a few of them!) are ideologues. And ideologues are dangerous, imo, since it is their ideological framework that does the thinking for them. You can practically substitute any other neo-con/liberal for Hillary Clinton and it would not make an iota of difference.
That said, note, I am voting Jill Stein. I agree with the 10 Nuclear officers that in their recent open letter noted that the psychological profile of Donald Trump is that of a man that can easily be provoked (gamed).
In a straight choice I'll take Hillary over Trump because as you mentioned the man is dangerously unstable and incredibly easily provoked (see his reaction to SNL today..).
> the threat posed by Hillary.
The Americans who are clued into the geopolitical equation recognize that either America accepts getting demoted from world hegemon to ex-Anglo-Empire Deux, or, the "world" will need to duke it out "one last time" ... again.
I have a feeling The Donald will not react pleasantly when Putin and company (not who you think, imo) tell him "You're fired!"
Making exaggerated, hyperbolic statements that appeal to the emotional cortex is an intentional strategy employed by Trump to dog-whistle the media, and his masterful ability to bait the media is the only reason he's won anything up to this point. Showmanship is part of the game.
You need to look at the consistent elements in Trump's statements, which are abolishment of free trade, tight borders, and American protectionism. That's what he's serious about.
I concur.
I will be downvoted, I am already looked at as if I'm less intelligent than all the others at work. But I honestly think the 3rd world war is less likely to happen under Trump. He wants to talk normally to Putin. He represents a more US focused US imho and I am convinced the mainstream media hates him because they are in the pockets of the current rulers.
There are other candidates besides Trump, but I feel like I am taking crazy pills trying to educate people on Hillary's history.
The better question is how this election became an election of the Unthinkable vs the Unelectable.
The one thing I do like is that you make me feel like at least the UK isn't the only basketcase at the moment in terms of politics.
If you look at actual history, World War 2 happened exactly because some countries were unwilling to defend other countries, and let the Germans effectively try to conquer Europe. From a game theory perspective, you really, really want to pre-commit to not letting other countries do things that will cause war. So you pre-commit to protecting allies and other countries against e.g. Russian aggression.
The years of the cold war, while hard psychologically, were relatively peaceful, exactly because of these pre-commitments and threats to use force.
I think it's wishful thinking to assume that the world is at relative peace, and that can't change. That's not the default state of the world. And without knowing a hell of a lot more about international politics than I do, I'd be incredibly remiss to throw out the current establishment and say "yeah let's bring in someone new who wants to rewrite the rules". The chance that things will be worse is huge - that's what usually happens when you change things.
There's a lot more warmongering in Russian state funded press than anywhere in the West. I haven't seen any Western news outlets talk about how "US can turn Russia into radioactive ash" in prime time. Technically true, yes, but you don't bring such things up routinely. It's as if you were talking to a guy, say, arguing about something, and every now and then he'd mention, "by the way, I have a loaded gun, and I could shoot you... but I won't, yet".
with that logic we should throw out our two-party system entirely and turn into a constitutional monarchy of bush and/or clintons...
I think both the OP and others are talking about Trump as "let's get rid of the current political establishment and get an outsider". That's fine, but an outsider that threatens a lot of the foundational international strategy of the US is a threat to world stability.
I also think Trump is threatening the very system of democracy int he US by calling the elections into question and threatening to lock up his political opponent. That's a very direct threat to democracy.
He'd take us to WWIII in a heartbeat.
Your reference to the "Rothschilds" also seems like dogwhistle anti-semitism to me, which has no place here.
Which is why I find the squabbling over the candidates so interesting. They are both _deplorable_.
The irony is that what Trump supports, the Clintons have always supported for the last 20 years if you look at their old debates. They are nothing but crowd pleasers. Saying yes to anything, but rarely following through. Not sure how people don't see that.
The characteristics that define clinical psychopathy are many of the same that make effective leaders
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/the-startl...
(I certainly don't want a psychopathic criminal in charge, but psychopath != criminal)
I think most people who gain such a high office are much more psychopathic than average anyway.
Aren't those, pretty much by definition, the traits of a poor manipulator? A great manipulator wouldn't seem so false.
Let me put it this way: How natural do you think you would seem if you were spending hours of every day in front of dozens of cameras, knowing that the slightest misstatement or weird facial expression is going to spread across social media to the entire country and be analyzed and picked apart and turned into memes and used against you by your opponents? I think anyone who seems like a "normal person" in that situation is anything but.
This is a good point and it baffles me to be honest. I said "great" manipulator because it seems to be working so far. Great manipulators don't necessarily need to be great with everyone all the time. Or maybe she intentionally wants us to think she's a poor manipulator so that we trust her more? But that surely fails Occam's razor.
To answer other comments, I didn't get this impression solely by watching her on TV, it is corroborated by her history as a politician and recently leaked emails.
I mean, even leaving aside all issues of substance, campaigns spend a lot of money hiring people specifically for their manipulation skills; even if it's all about manipulation, the candidate's skill isn't the only weapon in the campaign's arsenal.
In 2008, Clinton declares she's opposed to gay marriage. Now it's 2016, and the majority of the American people are in favor of gay marriage. And guess what, Clinton is in favor of gay marriage. The battle has been won and now Mrs. Clinton proudly jumps on the barricade.
Now you may say this is just the reality of politics, but at some point you wonder what she really stands for except saying whatever it takes to maximize her vote count.
There is no evidence to suggest she opposes it now, and a little evidence to suggest she was lying in 2008.
During a debate in 2008, she said marriage was between a man and a woman. So no, she wasn't lying in 2008 -- nor did I ever imply such a thing -- that was likely her true sentiment.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/2631#efmAdFAfY
At this point, you literally don't know who is putting what into her mouth, or what she will really do once in office. That's an absolutely scary thing.
> He's erratic, abusive, and prone to fits of rage.
There are a slew of former Secret Service agents from Bill Clinton's detail who say the same exact things about Hillary. One even cites being hit in the back of the head with a Bible by Hillary.
Also, is anyone even the slightest bit concerned about the revelations in the Podesta emails? One in particular that comes to mind is a conversation about Hillary hating the 'Everyday American.'
To me, having done hours upon hours of intense research into the two major candidates, this post sounds more like a regurgitation of the narrative put forth by the mainstream media rather than a well thought out and informed point of view.
In a "normal" election, this would be pretty cut-and-dry: it'd primarily be a political disagreement over taxes or something, and letting someone go because of their political beliefs would be viewed by many as being pretty extreme.
Many people — myself included — view support for Trump today as an ethical problem. When you see him and his followers advocating misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, aggressiveness, and basically all the other -isms and -obias, it becomes much harder to "see the other side" of the debate. It's not political for many people who will see — and have seen throughout this election cycle — very real repercussions in terms of discrimination and hostility that affects them every day in their lives.
So yeah, there's a lot of anger with YC supporting someone in a leadership position here. I know YC keeps mentioning that Thiel is in a part time position, but he's still in an advisory position, which brings with it a lot of responsibility and ownership that we'd hope YC would be much more understanding about the impact of such a position.
I appreciate that it's a tricky situation for Sam and others to be in, but I do hope that they'd reconsider their stance in the future. Until then, on a personal level, I'm not interested in applying to Y Combinator. That's one small thing that I can do in the meantime, at least.
What's the counter argument to this?
As a thought experiment, I've thought what a modern-day civil war would look like. Assuming it wasn't crushed instantly by the military, I think it would look like the vast areas of fly-over-country besieging the urban areas, with huge chunks of the current command structure and rank and file joining the rebels.
Of course, if you fire people who are supporting your opponent, then you will have caused 'very real repercussions in terms of discrimination and hostility' that effects them.
That's what creates the cycles of radicalisation and polarisation: he-said, she-said, tit-for-tat, eye-for-an-eye politics.
Billy Bush wasn't fired for the things Trump said, he was fired because his association with Trump during that incident caused real damage to his company's brand.
> When you see him and his followers advocating misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, aggressiveness, and basically all the other -isms and -obias, it becomes much harder to "see the other side" of the debate
The exact same argument could be convincingly used to discriminate against members of the two largest organized religions. Are you also going to ask potential hires who they voted for at the last election too?
I see it differently than Sam here. My father is also a vocal Trump supporter. His path, and the path shared by his friends, appear to me to be driven not by what Trump says he will do, but by what they feel the government has not done. These people feel disenfranchised by their own government who appears unresponsive to their concerns and dismissive of their point of view. And in their world view, by reflecting their fears, Donald Trump appears to be listening to them.
When you overlay this perception of listening, and the historical divide of the role of government (Is it there to take care of you or is it there to enable you to take care of yourself?) It surfaces a lot of Trump supporters.
Hillary is an unprecedented threat to the world. But I guess Americans are so cut of from the rest of the world, it's hard for them to see things from others perspective. As a citizen of third world please don't unleash Hillary on us.
Serious question.
The US military can break a lot of things in 48 hours never mind 60 days.
> During the 20th Century, forces were sent by various presidents into countries such as Nicaragua to suppress rebellions without asking Congress. During the Cold War, dodging Congress not only continued, it increased. For example, the Korean War, which the U.S. was involved in for three years, was never officially authorized by Congress.
> In 2011, President Obama's failure to get Congressional approval for U.S. military actions in Libya raised accusations from both parties.
http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/war-without-congress...
I see lots of talks from Trump about "negotiate tough" (sounds good), but then a lot about "smash them up" (sounds not so peaceful). Doesn't seem very peace like.
I can't think of a better way to start WW3 in current climate.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/18/politics/russia-jets-buzz-u-s-...
I find it surprising that Trump is portrayed as an isolationist candidate when personally I think the likelihood of him getting involved in a serious war is probably higher than that of Hillary doing so, despite her being a hawk. Trump repeatedly talks about getting tough and the importance of being strong.
"The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families." - Donald Trump
This sounds like a deliberate policy of collateral damage.
"With Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn't be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water" - Donald Trump
"We're going to have to do something extremely tough over there, okay? ... Like knock the hell out of them. And we have to get everybody together and lead for a change. Because we're not knocking them, we're hitting them every once in a while, in certain places, we're being very gentle about it, you have to be very tough, and there are countries that are getting hit harder than we are, and you have to get them together and show leadership. And you know, you have to fight, the battle's over there. And you have to fight the battle." - Donald Trump
That sounds like a plan to escalate attacks abroad rather than reduce them.
He's literally saying that the current policy (of the Obama administration, that for a while featured Hillary Clinton) is too gentle.
Elsewhere you said that your concerns were drones and missiles that miss their targets. Trump has explicitly said that he's in favor of collateral damage when attacking terrorists. He's also said that he'll bomb oil wells and put boots on the ground to take oil. Transparency maybe, but if so he's being transparent about the fact that he'll do all the things you said you dislike.
I'm curious what do you fear most that she would do as president that would harm third world countries?
As a citizen of Russia, I would vastly prefer Clinton on foreign policy. For all her flaws, she can keep Putin in check. Trump is more likely to prop his regime and keep it from collapsing for a while longer.
But when you see kids dying on beaches you become wary of America interventions. Which will only increase with Hillary. http://www.salon.com/2016/02/05/in_debate_hillary_clinton_bo...
Either YC is an organization that takes political stands or it's not.
It does a lot to make sure this doesn't come off as "YC won't take a stand on political actors unless it directly affects almost all of our founders."
This is the attitude we need. Not the name calling and shaming. Instead, go grab a beer together, talk about the issues, agree to disagree and in 9 out of 10 cases you will usually find out the person voting for $theOtherCandidate isn't a huge asshole and probably cares about other people just as much as you do.
I doubt my endorsement, coming from an anonymous commenter on HN, has much weight but I'll put it out here for one reason in particular: As a message to anybody else who's feeling the same but feels that even announcing something like this will cause you to be shamed.
Hillary means more drone strikes, corporate appeasment, global interventions, weapon sales to Saudi Arabia, and a complete lack of transparency into government.
I will not vote for a candidate that represents so much of what is wrong with this country, solely becuase she wants me to believe the other guy is worse.
Fear tactics are the last resort of tyrants, my mind was made up after the DNC Leaks.
When you honestly consider that prospect, does it not terrify you? I don't mean that question rhetorically.
Hillary however has a paved road ahead of her, and what will be branded as a "mandate".
I am truly scared of what this country will be after 8 years of her rule.
Trump supports drone strikes and wants to go further, including torturing the families of terrorists. Trump supports nuclear proliferation (e.g. Japan). Corporate appeasement? The guy runs a billion dollar business and benefitted greatly from the housing crisis. Transparency? He won't even release his tax returns.
What makes you think Trump is going to be any different than the right-wing status quo which essentially still supports all these? Trump has NO serious political connections outside of Gov Christie, he is becoming anathema even among his own party, how could he possibly reverse any of the "business as usual" even if he wanted to?
>Fear tactics are the last resort of tyrants
Like claiming the entire election is stolen before a single vote is cast? Or threatening to jail your opponent?
This is why people think Trump supporters are delusional and dumb. So many people in this thread posting about what they think Trump will do, despite the fact that it flies in the face of what he stands for and has said. They take the candidate seriously and ignore what he is saying in favor of their own imagined reasonings. I get it. You don't want Hillary to be president. I don't either. But to act like Trump is a political savior is a very very disturbing and strange move.
Also, I never said I was voting for Trump.
May your vote bring you everything you hope for in proportion to the extent it is made wisely and with only good intentions in your heart.
You mentioned you'd like to understand Trump supporters. Have you considered asking people in your network to confidentially contact you to explain, and then publishing the anonymized findings? With your reach, it seems like you could really help build this bridge you want to see exist, and the results would probably be interesting to read.
I can get behind that.
> of course, if Peter said some of the things Trump says himself, he would no longer be part of Y Combinator
sama should address the weird things Peter has said about women voting.
"I'm not saying that darawk's down/up-voting should be revoked, but he sometimes upvotes things that aren't the best for our country."
The above (wrong) sentence would be an example of this type of implication.
My reading of what he said is more akin to recognition of a marketing problem. That he thinks libertarians haven't presented themselves sufficiently well towards women, and there is room for improvement there.
Pretty it up in some rhetoric, but not matter how you slice it, at the end of the day he _IS_ saying that he regrets the 17th amendment.
1. He regrets the 17th amendment.
2. He thinks libertarians haven't marketed themselves well towards women, and they should work on that.
3. A simple observation of fact and narrative of history, mentioned casually in a long essay otherwise unrelated to women's suffrage.
My personal interpretation is #2. But we can't know unless he clarifies it, and until then it would be wise to reserve judgment.
On a serious note, discussion of the Thiel/Trump topic has been flagged and reposted many times this past weekend and finally permitted to remain on the front page. The HN commenter community has been overwhelmingly interested in a statement from YC regarding this controversy. I share your wish that political party advocacy stay off of the HN front page. Yet we were both drawn to this article and commented on it. I don't know the right solution to this.
Uh, what about the if "People acted the same way Hillary did while in office they would be in jail."
This is not hyperbole. Perjury is still a crime (one that got her husband impeached). Her lies weren't to the public, they were to the Justice Department - not knowing that the red "C" stood for classified. Furthermore, her concealment and destruction of her emails were federal crimes (plural).
Not only would this end in discharge for military personnel or removal from office of a government official, but criminal charges and restriction of civil liberties. Of the millions of federal employees, she's proven herself to be in the distinct minority as disqualified to hold a position of authority.
See:
18 U.S. Code § 2071 - Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally
(a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2071
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I don’t see how anyone could support Hillary, based on her actions.
I feel that way about them both. Who can legitimately be excited by any of this? It's just degrading to see our republic reduced to these depths.
Reddit, Twitter, HN, and Facebook have all shown heavy bias and a willingness to stifle conversation that they didn't agree with.
I would like to see ad free communication platform that supports content creaters through donation and patronage.
So when he wrote that giving women the right to vote has been eroding capitalist democracy ... ?
You can disagree with the statement, but why do you think it is punishable?
i don't understand how engineers that were horrified by the wage-fixing pacts of apple, google, etc. can vote for open-borders. is this the tech version of 'everyone thinks they will be rich someday'? at this rate we will end up in childless marriages with flatmates.
some serious gaslighting going on. don't let them steal your future :(
Thiel is not merely one of the 43% of Americans who supports Donald Trump. There are degrees of support, and there are different reasons to support him. Thiel has chosen to serve as a surrogate for the Trump campaign, appearing on stage for him at the RNC in a nationally televised event even as many of the leaders of the Republican party (including all of their previous Presidential candidates) refused to do the same. His support for Trump has continued even after Trump pivoted his election to run against the legitimacy of the US elections themselves.
I strongly agree that we must avoid ostracizing Republicans because of the actions of a few monsters in their party. We should continue the work HRC and Obama started earlier in this election, to de-normalize Trump and separate him from the mainstream Republican party. The country needs a loyal opposition and a voice for limited government, the strengths of our private sector, and humility in regulation. HRC and Obama have stopped this work, believing that the outcome of the election is a foregone conclusion, and are now trying their best to tether the party to Trump in an effort to win downticket races. As a loyal, lifelong Democrat, I think they're making a terrible mistake.
But that does not mean we should forget that the Trump campaign itself is truly monstrous, nor does it mean we're required to tolerate the least tolerant members of our society --- the white nationalist fringe that, according to Sam Wang at Princeton, has been within striking range of the Presidency for much of this election cycle.
Thiel isn't just a supporter of this campaign; he's a part of it. We should recognize that, and not gloss over it, or pretend that the discussion we're having is the same as the kind we'd have with John Fund and Jonah Goldberg at The National Review. Thiel isn't William F. Buckley. He's a man that just last week mustered $1.25MM in an attempt to rend the fabric of the American political system, a system which he has repeatedly argued against.
I don't ask that Altman sever formal ties with Peter Thiel. Shit's complicated. But as someone who has, yet again, acknowledged in writing the grave threat Trump poses to our country, I do ask that he live up to his own words and recognize publicly the role Thiel has played in this election.
This post was a good start.
As Katy Tur has frequently reported - and others as well - a significant portion of Trump supporters firmly refute easily provable facts (re: Birtherism) or outright believe lies (re: Actual Border Wall). It's unfortunate to sit back and reflect on this segment of the population, because, unlike the level-headed, rational post by Sam, such tactics are ineffective. These people are walking Poe's Law conundrums, and as nice as the intention is to include them in the big picture, that's a genuinely problematic proposition. It's why Donald Trump is such a ridiculous candidate - he's like a child, and his immaturity doesn't allow adults to have adult conversations.
Fortunately, I'm quite able to sleep easily at night knowing that the mistakes of the political and journalistic mainstays (GOP in primaries, media enabling Trump) are quickly being rectified - the cannons are melting with how much ammunition is being shot his way and hitting over and over. It's a deluge, and I don't think it's over even as of this writing. This will be a lopsided outcome due to an extremely motivated voting populace by 2XXX standards. Glenn Beck and Michael Moore voting for the same person? I, um, didn't see that coming, but hey, here we are.
What's wonderful about the US, as I learned from extensive study of both Hunter S. Thompson and Mark Twain, is that freedom of speech is great: People are free to speak their minds and show the world if there's anything inside of worth.
But the IT aspect is interesting. It seems that now, if you do not follow a specific political ideology, you will be automatically excluded from the american tech community as people will try to get you and ruin your career, your business and the lives of your families, prevent you from speaking at conferences, insult you on Twitter/Facebook and co because you broke the "ranks" and didn't follow the SF bay "political mindset" so you're fair game...
It's exactly the same things as the handful of idiots who tried to paint Doug Crockford as a misogynist and kicked him out of Nodevember conference. These people don't have the best interests of the technology community in mind. For them getting the head of this or that prominent guy is just about collecting trophies.
Citation needed. I expect better for a top story on HN.
I'd also add that the US electing Clinton will show that corruption is now openly allowed in the US at the highest levels. That it simply doesn't matter. This sets a far more damaging precedent around the world than whatever it is people think Trump will do (like not starting a war).
The real problem is the current political system. I would like to see some innovation here on HN, what can be done to unleash the potential of the wisdom of crowds, also in politics, similary what open source, stackoverflow, github etc. did for software engineering.
PS. East Germany producted two awful cars: Trabant and Wartburg. But car owners were not offending owners of the other brand. Everybody knew that the socialist system was bad.
1) Anti-Free trade. Bernie and Trump both were very popular with working class individuals who are out of work. Trade deals have definitely caused job loss for many workers. Many anti-NAFTA people blame it on causing the immigration from Mexico
2) Anti-Immigration. Job loss and racial identity are both at play here. Lack of homogeny in the country. Too much diversity etc.
3) Disgust with career politicians. They like how brash he is.
4) Lower taxes
etc.
FWIW, this is exactly the kind of post that shouldn't be on hacker news.
The more comfortable you are with complexity in society the less you need Trump.
Lee returned to his men and said: "Go and be as good a citizen as you were soldiers".
And Grant went to his: "Stop the firing. The Rebels are our countrymen again."
Lincoln later remarked: “To be harsh or spiteful, or punish them, or throw (the Union's) win in their face, was not going to do anybody any good.”
If these great men could so magnanimous after a vicious and bloody war, what does it say about us that we are so spiteful and triumphalist in the course of ordinary politics.
That could be scary to employees of Y Combinator... what things fall on the blacklist? To me it's obvious that you will fire someone for saying racist or sexist remarks but it's not clear exactly what I can or cannot say to avoid being fired.
Instead of trying to demonize Trump, perhaps it is important for you to advocate for your candidate. As the president said, go work for your candidate. People are not dumb. The contrast will be clear and then people can make their own choice.
I know its hard to compare, but would you say, "Buy my product to stop the other product from being successful because the other product makes claims that are outrageous". Rightly everyone then says, "Why buy any of the products?" Or "Let me try a third product".
I think this video by the Guardian helps to clear up why some people are Trump supporters: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/oct/12/west-v...
On the issue of Peter Thiel, for those of you that believe it's wrong to fire someone based on their political actions, is there any limit? If David Duke ran for office, or the Ku Klux Klan fielded a candidate for president, and someone gave a high profile speech endorsing them and supported their campaign with a million dollars, would it still be wrong to part ways with that person?
There should be context to all decisions making. If the person has extreme views and, most importantly, they are very vocal about it to the point you don't think they'll fit into the culture of your organization, then I see no problem with not hiring them on that basis.
But at the same time if the person is able to treat others respectfully, not force their views on others, and keep personal life and business separated, then I don't see the problem with hiring them regardless of their views.
I'd be more concerned hiring a moderate democrat/republican/green/etc who forced their views on other people on the job, than hiring someone holding (what mainstream society considers) extreme views[^] and rarely talks about it at work.
[^] Note: calling for violence and coercive behavior is another story.
If your goals are a mix of both, weigh and decide.
Trump is obnoxious but Stalinist purges are not an answer for it.
millions of illegal immigrants, as a candidate to immigration myself, following the rules, I see no problem with that.
Not the same thing at all.
I'm not equating Trump and Hitler, btw. But Hitler proves that being mainstream means nothing.
Separately, it is also my perception that both men's source of power are somewhat similar. They both have supporters that want an aggressive, authoritarian leader to change things drastically because the current direction isn't working for them. I think that's a dangerous thing to wish for.
It means that you better take the position serious and engage in a real discussion. By labeling one side good and the other evil you just drive both sides more into towards the extremes.
Now, I don't particularly believe those things. But it is possible to hold those views and support him, despite not agreeing with his more racist, misogynistic ones.
Censoring people by expulsion in this way is a very dangerous path to start down. Especially when you don't even really know what Thiel's views are. Support of a candidate is an extremely broad brush.
Despite the objectively horrible viewpoints advanced by the Trump campaign, they do not approach David Duke's viewpoints.
From some points of view, pro-abortion advocacy is an unconscionable violation of human rights and outweighs religious (Muslim profiling) and racial (seizing remittances from Mexican nationals) concerns; it is a rationally-approached choice of a lesser of two evils.
This isn't strict cultural relativism; the argument has merit. I assert that including alternate viewpoints (but prohibiting bigoted / wrongful actions) strengthens institutions. The best demonstration of the strength of a world view is to accept discussion of alternate viewpoints. If we're right, we shouldn't be afraid of the alternative.
And Peter Thiel might be one of them.
On one hand, supporting someone who's genocidal or something is bad.
Trump, on the other hand, might be the exact terrible thing this country needs to reign in government. Lets say he wanted to detonate a nuclear bomb off the coast of North Korea. (Borrowing from the most recent Dan Carlin/Common Sense podcast [0])
This would be objectively bad. We should not be nuking anything, anywhere, ever. Period.
If trump-the-president wants to do this, you might really quickly find people talking about the constitutional limits to declare war that Congress is supposed to maintain.
So, they might step in and say "Actually, presidents cannot unilaterally declare war. Oh, and they cannot create internment camps, or do deep packet inspection on the entire internet, or collectivize businesses, etc."
In other words, when a terrible guy gets into office, everyone else might wake up and try to roll back his power. So, it might be a net win, though it's a hell of a gamble to get there.
So, by that line of reasoning, I could see the GOOD that a trump presidency could bring about.
Even if I couldn't, I still don't know what the limit is for donating money to a cause and forcing separation with a company. The free-speech guy in me says it's fine, but... I really don't like trump.
[0] http://www.dancarlin.com/common-sense-home-landing-page/
Much of intelligence is a natural ability gifted at birth, and it's often easy to lose touch with that when you are surrounded by highly skilled and intelligent peers, as many in Silicon Valley or cities often are.
As an example, if you are an unskilled laborer looking for work, which is a large portion of the population, it may be directly applicable and not necessarily racism or xenophobia to be upset if illegal immigrants do indeed take those jobs. I have not been in that situation nor seen it directly, but I can envision scenarios in which it might be a valid frustration. If you wish to understand that 43%, you might not immediately dismiss the views that resonate with them as racist or threatening, and try to understand why they are agreeing with those ideas.
Many of those people also likely do not use computers or have effective typing or competitive communication skills, and may be very frustrated by their inability to voice their complaints in intellectually competitive online communities. I think it's possible that Trump has employed many manual laborers or "blue collar workers" in the construction of his properties and he may been been exposed to certain types of complaints which are uncommon in other corporate environments, which he is now championing to address. Given these circumstances, I can understand how to a large group of people Trump would not appear as a monster or dangerous, but rather as a legitimate hero.
Likewise, I believe Trump should do a better job of addressing how those policies might affect immigration as it applies to tech companies, and I can completely understand the emotional reactions to his policies from the tech industry.
You mean, like how he did in his previous blog post acknowledging how Trump and his supporters are right on some issues?
BTW, you should know that, at this point, the election is basically over and Clinton has won. This election is far too polarizing for the kind of swing Trump would need to win (people who still have hope for Trump are basically hoping for a Brexit scenario where polls significantly underestimate his support). So their strategy worked, even if it was risky.
I actually think that Clinton was the best choice against Trump because she is so thoroughly vetted. There's effectively nothing that could come out that we don't already know. Any other candidate could have a myriad of skeletons in their closets that would only come out with well resourced oppo. That's not even including Sanders' proposals that would result in a decent tax hike on middle class families. Republicans would have pushed that HARD and you have no idea how that would have been received.
Yes, poor people are more likely to be criminals and racists but let's be real, mainstream pols have been speaking racist language in a more coded and subtle way for a long time. It has always been ugly. HRC has done it herself when it benefits her.
What irritates me about this essay and the "stop Trump" argument for HRC in general, is that it supposes that it is not necessary to hold one's chosen candidate accountable and that we should just get on board and be grateful someone is running against Trump.
I could never vote for either candidate. But Trump's stark and unthinking narrative is matched by a similarly stark and unthinking anti-Trump narrative.
Comparing the Democratic platform over the past several presidential cycles side by side does not support this assertion.
Indeed, it has steadily moving left since Obama, and Clinton was pretty much forced to follow in the primaries. She didn't move as far left as the Sanders crowd (myself included) hoped, but we still got a pretty good platform this year.
I'm not sure you could possibly be serious.
- Obama continued and escalated GWB's wars and ramped up the war on whistleblowers and the use of drone assassination and terror campaigns.
- Obamacare was a big corporate giveaway, ushering in the new Halliburtons of Healthcare. The Mylan epi-pen fiasco is one example among many of how the program catered to corporate interests and profits extensively. Ironically this was one reason Obama beat HRC 8 years ago, his healthcare plan was much more open to compromises with incumbent pharma and medical supply companies. He signaled this effectively through a few minor differences with HRC's plan way back then, and it got him elected.
- The only trending leftward has been inevitable changes in social values (support of gay marriage, marijuana legalization, etc.) that are an inevitable part of the oldest generation of social conservative voters dying off. Both Obama and HRC lagged by about 4-8 years on gay marriage (both opposed it until it was abundantly safe to support it).
- There has been no serious reform of Wall Street, no serious GSE reform, and Obama has called for the significant expansion of student loan programs... which are the only kind of debt not discharged when someone declares bankruptcy, making them extremely socially regressive and akin to debt slavery. Someone who is 18 taking on massive debt to attend college is not an informed consumer and does not deserve debt that they will be straddled with no matter what circumstances befall them later.
These are just a few examples. There is a reason why so many Republicans (including the Bush family) has endorsed HRC -- she's essentially running a Republican platform, with a few easily broken promises to the left thrown in.
GWB ran on the idea of "compassionate conservatism" which was another way of saying that the Federal government should spend more money on social welfare programs. For GWB, it meant ensuring the support of a wide variety of faith-based organizations who saw it as an opportunity to get some free money, and when it worked to help get GWB two terms, the GOP realized it was a winning strategy. It helped counteract some of the appropriations championed by Democrats that resulted in lots of loyal voters.
Similarly, post-911 the neoconservative faction of the GOP took a strong hold on power. The older generation of Republicans, many of whom had served in combat, were far more weary of costly foreign wars, but the young generation, most of whom had not served, were eager to seize upon the opportunities left around the globe after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The invasion of Iraq was neoconservative: It was sold on the basis of its alleged humanitarian objective (freeing women who were oppressed under Saddam) but also on the basis of the grand existential threat of terrorism. Americans had to be sold on the idea that the war made sense, and GWB and his neoconservative team created a villain out of Saddam, Hans Blix the UN weapons inspector, the European countries that urged restraint, etc.
Of course, this was all so that the US could invade a country that had once been part of a proxy war with the USSR and was now essentially available for the taking. We've seen US dependence on Israel decrease post Iraq invasion, as we now have our own territory for bases and our own projection of force in the region. The current situation with Syria is Russia's latent attempt to retaliate and not lose its last foothold in the middle east. The Iran deal was (seemingly unsuccessfully) intended to be a carrot preventing Iran from aligning with Russia, etc.
Neoconservatism has been described as "liberals with guns" because there is an element of a moralistic crusade behind the war, and the war often does not involve direct threats to national security. Post Saddam, the US doled out the Iraqi oil industry contracts to American and coalition firms, effectively redistributing Iraq's trillions in oil wealth substantially, cutting out French and German companies that had won these lucrative contracts before.
In spite of campaigning against Bush's wars, Obama has generally kept the same ideological approach. For all the ranting about Obamacare, the GOP largely supported it, mainly because there are enough firms in GOP districts to result in the required number of votes.
At this point, the main reason the GOP would want to change Obamacare is to make it more lucrative for specific firms, not because of any sort of philosophical disagreement with the program.
So both parties are converging on what I'd call corporatist neoconservative centrism. It generally preserves the status quo, the broad policy strokes are bold plays to enrich massive industries through public/private partnerships (middle eastern oil, US healthcare, US housing, US financial services, etc). Foreign policy is heavily propaganda-based and heavily moralistic in its tone, foreign leaders are subject to ad hominem attacks, and existential evils are spoken about with the wide-eyed seriousness of children discussing fairytales.
When you think about, say, Jeb Bush's platform and HRC's, there is little difference when you filter for issues that would ever actually come to a vote. Notable in the leaked emails was the HRC team scrambling early on in response to a speech by Jeb Bush which they described as "HRC agrees with all of this". They were fearful that his messaging approach was better than what they'd come up with.
The biggest beneficiaries of the idea that HRC is "extremely liberal" or that Jeb is "extremely conservative" are the candidates themselves. They create the illusion of difference were little exists. Many of the other leaked HRC emails show that she holds or recently held many socially conservative views to go along with her free-trade pro-wall-street economic views. These things aren't a surprise, but they do provide actual evidence of the profound similarity between the two parties.
And I wondered what Thiel's peers thought of his support, so this clarified it a bit for me.
But I also agree that the anti-Trump crowd should recognize that people in this country are angry, and Trump says what they want to say. Trump's not the solution but he's calling out the problems in a way that resonates with people.
(Of course, even if he had the right solutions, to me it seems clear he wouldn't be able to execute... but that's a political argument.)
That is, the Democrats are looking further left/liberal, and the Republicans are looking more right/conservative.
Neither is looking after the centre, they only seek to appease the more vocal within their ranks... the extremists.
Typically when the pendulum swings things average out, but politicians have learned over the past several decades that if they want to gain 10 miles of political position they should negotiate for 100 miles from the outset and beat the other party into submission before settling on 20 miles (everyone's a winner).
The entire system seems to promote seeking an extreme position even if such a position isn't desired by anyone.
Bernie was pretty far left and he got crushed by neo-con Hillary.
True, but misleading without comparing the degree of the same on either side.
For example, on the right, the manifestation of partisan polarization was the emergence of the Tea Party, which had successfully ran many candidates across the country, and significantly redefined the party platform at its peak of prominence.
What's the left equivalent? Sanders? He came later, and his successes were far more limited.
Here's a very simple exercise you can do. Look up Democratic and Republican platforms for every electoral cycle in the past decade. Observe how much each has changed.
There's a ton of value in this sentence, because I find especially amongst the tech crowd, people are so isolated in the echo chambers created by their local populations, their choice of friends on social media, etc. We seek out likeminded people, and eventually, once we surround ourselves with them, suddenly other views, even popular views, seem crazy and radical. But they do come from somewhere, and generally those people have legitimate reasons for feeling the way they do.
You're not adding anything of value to the conversation here.
We are in a thread that is debating the merits of a political purge in the workplace, the "value added" isn't up to you.
I understand that a good chunk of the country supports Donald Trump. I also don't understand why, and I would also like to understand why.
However, there are too many parallels between what Donald Trump publicly supports with things of the past that I cannot ignore. An example that some may believe to be an exaggeration but I think is a close parallel. Segregation. There was a time in which a person running for office would be in full public support of segregation. I did not live through those times. But I imagine that those that privately frowned upon those views regret not publicly distancing themselves from those that did support that view.
Let's take that example into today. Where is the line that we draw when we talk about political opinion vs moral opinion? If Donald Trump was a public defender of segregation, would you then make an effort to publicly distance yourself from his associates? If so, what's the difference between segregation and xenophobia? Is the difference that many had to loose their lives and sacrifice their well being for years for us as a country to realize what an awful mistake we made?
I'm not asking rhetorically. I'd like to understand where the line is drawn, because frankly I don't see this as a political difference but a moral one that I'd like to understand, but not to excuse it.
I find this logic is similar to the logic some GOPs use to support Donald Trump. Even though they condemned him for saying lewd/racist comments (or even committed to), they still give him the support. I don't know how you would continue dodging this for Peter when Donald Trump is being sued for actually committing to a criminal offense. YC needs to draw a line instead of playing this blurred line.
He's clearly investing in his vision for your country to turn them into reality, and therefore should be dealt with accordingly and not just dismissed as just some politically uninformed and misguided guy on the street who happened to espouse dangerous and vile political views but he'll grow out of it in due time.
1. YC banning companies that supported SOPA was a mistake. I'm sure they now acknowledge that.
2. Mr Thiel donating $1M does not mean he believes or endorses in everything Trump stands for or says. I don't happen to agree he should have made the donation, but please use common sense.
3. Mr Altman used his personal blog not the YC blog. This is important. But the line is blurred between this being a personal statement or a statement on behalf of a corporation (YC).
4. Nobody should be persecuted or fired a political belief that a large part of a country endorses. This point is clearly stated and easily defended. Those attacking it should have a deep think about representative democracy - both the good parts and bad. Representative democracy is a decent, practical system but it is not perfect and America's flavor of it could do with a lot of refinement. This election cycle should make that pretty clear to the average HN reader.
Not anymore. We need to restructure if we the people are ever going to have say in government again.
Ignoring the Thiel stuff in this particular comment to focus on the grandma part. If you read this, sama, is her support based on anything more than him being the Republican nominee? I ask because my grandparents (from a very rural upbringing, and lifelong Republicans) are also the only Trump supporters I'm close to. It's been illuminating to me, as they vehemently opposed him in the primaries, and his policy positions (if you can call them that) are at odds with everything they've ever discussed believing in. Their justification seems to be based on a simple assumption that once he's elected, he'll just become a generic Republican, and that everything he says during the election is irrelevant bluster. It honestly has made me question if they'd vote for Hillary had she run as the Republican nominee.
This really resonated. It's hard to overestimate how isolated we are from The Outgroup and how rarely we actually do anything about it.
If anyone is genuinely interested in talking to someone who is very different than themselves, I'm volunteering to play recruiter/matchmaker and coordinate some (hopefully) interesting conversations. I started a Ask HN thread to discuss so please let me know: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=12729057
I personally have gained nothing out of reading all of this and I suspect that this is the case for the majority of people here.
- racist
- erratic, abusive, and prone to fits of rage
- a real threat to the safety of women, minorities, and immigrants
- shows little respect for the Constitution, the Republic, or for human decency
I would conclude that my employee has bad judgement. Very bad judgement. I would fire said employee immediately. I would also likely shun said employee on a personal level.
I don't think people get a pass on this one just because this decision is being made in the context of politics.
- erratic, abusive, and prone to fits of rage
- a real threat to the safety of women, minorities, and immigrants
- shows little respect for the Constitution, the Republic, or for human decency
As major faults of Clinton.
Movements don't exist in a vacuum. A massive trend like roughly half the country making a choice you don't agree with is pressing back against _something_, and one of the things it's pressing back against is attitudes like this.
I'm critical of supporters of Trump not because of his (Trump's) politics but because of his personal characteristics.
If I was interviewing someone for a job at my company, and I saw a video of them bragging about how they like to sexually assault women, I would not hire that person. No matter how bad-ass a coder he/she was.
Would you?
Trump supporter = racist is now a fact?
Would you hire a person for your company who brags about sexually assaulting women?
I wouldn't.
That is called discrimination btw.
Is there still time for a do-over?
I have to assume that there were a LOT of uninformed voters that had their anger whipped up by Trump. I suspect there was a lot of cross-over voting in open primary states.
Perhaps we've made it too convenient to register to vote, and the misinformed/lazy have stolen the show.
He said them $1.25m times. Cut ties or lose deal-flow. It's on you.
> That kind of diversity is painful and unpopular, but
> it is critical to health of a democratic and pluralistic
> society. From The Education of a Libertarian [0]
---
"I believe that politics is way too intense. That’s why I’m a libertarian. Politics gets people angry, destroys relationships, and polarizes peoples’ vision: the world is us versus them; good people versus the other. Politics is about interfering with other people’s lives without their consent. That’s probably why, in the past, libertarians have made little progress in the political sphere. Thus, I advocate focusing energy elsewhere, onto peaceful projects that some consider utopian." - Peter Thiel [0]
[0]: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
---
Leaving aside all the drama surrounding YC and Peter Thiel, this is where it all breaks down for me. How am I supposed to take Thiel at his word today, when less than a decade ago he was convinced that politics is "too intense" because it angers people, divides them into us-vs-them groups, and tears them apart.
Is it simply that he's changed who he is in that time? I mean, that's a legitimate reason, and one I could respect even if it means I don't agree with who he is today. I'd want to know what changed his mind.
Or are there different Peter Thiel personas? I can understand this, too. As Hillary Clinton pointed out, Abraham Lincoln believed that politicians have a private and a public persona, because most of the electorate would shudder to see how our tasty, democratic sausage was being made.
Or is he a capricious man who doesn't stick to his principals when motivated by financial or political need? That would be disappointing, but the cynic in me says it wouldn't be surprising.
Without knowing who he truly is, and why there is such a divide between just 7 years ago (still fully within his adult life) and now, his whole persona just doesn't compute with me and I'm left with the inescapable conclusion that he's too chaotic to trust.
Does anyone have any insight?
https://np.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/579v4z/head_of_iow...
Not understanding each other is how we got into this mess.
Surely, you jest.
Edit: Ah flags, just reading about what they are. We have to be protected from ourselves then.
it's a descent into tribal warfare where reason and logic give way to misunderstanding and escalation of perceived wrongs.
ban politics.
Voting for 3rd parties in Presidential elections is fine, but really doesn't do much really and if you actually dig deep into 3rd party Presidential candidates, they're usually not great either.
Sure, I agree with you.
However, if your goal is to make third parties viable long-term in Presidential elections and not dependent on having very unfavorable candidates from the major 2 parties, I would argue that strong local and state 3rd parties are important.
If Clinton wins, the Repubs will go into a tailspin and introspect, if Trump were to win, Repubs and Dems will have to both look inwardly to figure out how their machinery failed so miserably in the face of a hack -a blowhard with no political experience who will say anything to win and who likely, if elected would make Taft look like a good executive.
Democrats and Republicans are already, and will continue, to investigate the failure of their machine. That much is true regardless. It's whether or not we're still here to do that introspection that I'd prefer to save.
Sometimes things need to get worse before they can get better.
It's more than unlikely. There is effectively zero chance of a third party candidate getting elected president in 2016.
Voting for one is throwing away your vote. Worse than that, it's throwing away an opportunity to indicate your second choice preference.
The US's first-past-the-post electoral system is not great, but voting for a third-party candidate does not at all address that problem. Instead, it plays exactly into the agenda of the two dominant parties by effectively disenfranchising yourself.
If you don't like the US's voting system, great, work to change it. Probably start by pushing for more small scale and local elections to switch to smarter voting systems. That way, citizens can used to them there and the venues are easier to change. Maybe eventually that will percolate all the way up and we can change the Constitution and change how the president is elected.
In the meantime, vote strategically for which of the two options to choose from that is most closely aligned to your interests.
No. It is not. The reason the two party system continues to exist is because so many people insist on there not being other options, despite there literally being other candidates on the ballot. There's a reason why Democrats have continued to spend money on turning Texas blue for years, despite the argument that they are "throwing money away." Momentum matters. Please don't listen to this. It's the absolute worst outcome of the two-party system: they've effectively convinced people that they're stuck with them, and it's why there are regular Republicans voting for Trump. Someone told them that not voting for him was throwing their vote away, and they listened.
No, it's because the mechanics of the voting rules themselves lead to a stable two party system.
There are ways to do things about the electoral system, both within the parameters of partisan politics and outside of them (at least, in the latter case, in the states with direct citizen initiative.)
Case in point : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3O01EfM5fU
So, have you not sat down with Thiel and asked him why he supports Trump? If so, what were his reasons.
Didn't Clinton "explain" that a few weeks back?
On some glorious day, notorious vampire Peter Thiel will be hoisted by his own petard, find himself stranded in the sunlight, and turn into a column of ash.
In the meantime, this was an appropriate stance to take.
> (of course, if Peter said some of the things Trump says himself, he would no longer be part of Y Combinator)
One of the best ways to fix our broken campaign finance system would be to hold asshats like Thiel responsible for what their dollars are funding.
Does it single-handedly win an election? Probably not. Does it win some # of votes? Most certainly.
I don't understand how 43+% of the country supports Hillary. A lot of what Trump says makes sense to me - questioning why the US military is involved all over the world, questioning TPP etc. Hillary is more militaristic, historically more pro-TPP etc.
It seems more sensible to get tough on people illegally crossing our border than to get tough secretly bombing Syria as she suggests in Wikileaks e-mails. She's picking a fight, he is not.
Also, 43% of people don't fully support Trump. Some see him as the lesser of two evils. They may not like aspects of his personality or policies, but they prefer it to the alternative. The congress that will be elected will more accurately reflect how Americans think, with Trump and Clinton the choice is binary.
I don't support Trump, mainly because I think he would increase tensions between Latinos and non-Latinos in the US. However I also don't like Hillary's desire for military adventurism, how she leaned towards TPP etc. before polls quieted that down etc.
Trump is not the creation of yahoos from rural Indiana. He is the creation of the museum and concert hall sponsoring Koch brothers, whether their calculations include funding him or not. He is the creation of one of our media oligopolies, News Corp. He's the creation of neutered government regulators which allow scams like Trump University to exist.
Rural white workers voted for FDR, Truman, LBJ, Carter and Clinton. They haven't changed, it's the Democratic party which changed. Soros and company have destroyed the decentralized, grassroots Democratic machine and replaced it by a centralized, technocratic, machine learning targeting party focused on fundraising, not voters, and the interests of wealthy and upper middle class urban liberals.
From 1932 to 1996, West Virginia was a fairly reliable voter for the Democrats. Overwhelmingly white, poor and working class and rural. The Democratic leadership started writing them off, and the Republicans courted them, and now they vote Republican. Why do you think Trump and Pence drop mentions of supporting coal?
I have weighed the issues in reference to the interests of myself, my family, my community, and my country. As an independent, I kept seeing the same pattern: people on the right are open to discussing issues, people on the left want to alienate me and act hostile and throw around pejoratives without providing substantive evidence. That's honestly enough for me.
But here's the real kicker - it is going to take an outsider to deal with corruption. This was the tipping point for me: https://i.sli.mg/jozAB1.jpg
This site has been shit for a while. Every now and then I pick up some new tech, but it is mostly news about SV housing market and self important "technologists" stroking their ego.
(not because Trump but because the Thiel NY Times story was so mercilessly flagged)
Reminds me of the song "Orgasmatron" - "Hypocrisy made paramount, Paranoia the law."
Peter Thiel funds World's Worst Startup: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/technology/peter-thiel-don...
Then you're really not gonna understand how he will win by a large margin.
Here are the facts: people don't want to vote for Hillary. Trump supporters are extremely passionate. Consider the following online metrics:
Facebook likes: Trump: 12.17M Clinton: 4.39M
Recent Live Stream Videos (Oct 14): Trump: 135K likes, 18K shares, 1.5M views Clinton: 9K likes, <1K shares, 121K views
Average Views Per Live Stream: Trump: 160K Clinton: 400 (5000% more views for Trump)
Instagram Followers: Trump: 6.2M Clinton: 0.8M
Reddit Subscribers (to their main subreddits): Trump: 230K Clinton: 21K
"Do you plan on voting Hillary Clinton for President in 2016" 84% NO Source: MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/poll-hillary-2016)
EVEN WITH Clinton's "Correct The Record" online (and PAID) team of internet jokeys, she can't come close to competing with the passion of Trump supporters online. The key point: you cannot honestly believe that this disparity will not correlate with the popular vote. If you do, you're in denial and your candidate will probably lose. "Oh it's just online raids" - do you not think these people will be passionate enough to vote, but waste hours of their time for free discussing and liking the other candidate?
One final comment:
> I am endorsing Hillary Clinton for president.
You mean the one that wanted to drone strike Julian Assange?
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/782906224937410562/phot...
Trump's said mean things, has different policies than typical liberals, and has had a ton of personal accusations conveniently come up 3 weeks before the presidential election -- after over 30 years in the public eye.
Given how corrupt the democrats are and how they treated Bernie Sanders, how can one trust Clinton and the Dems at all? Many people think Bernie was cheated out of the nomination. And there are more than emails, some interesting studies, to show this as a strong possibility as well:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6mLpCEIGEYGYl9RZWFRcmpsZk0...
Disclaimer - before HN goes on a witch hunt, I do find Trump repugnant. But I'll defend his constitutional right to say it.
Citation Needed.
Edit: Here's a link on the front page of a google search for 'firing people for their opinions is illegal under the constitution' that refutes your claims.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/21/your-money/speaking-about-...
A private company certainly can fire people for their articulated political views (edit: under the constitution).
"Activity outside work: Some states and localities prohibit employers for firing or disciplining employees for legal activities outside work. If you’re involved in a political campaign and you work in one of these states, you can’t be fired for your political activities as long as they are legal activities."