To set the background, my high school invited prominent speakers from time to time to speak about various issues. Not a single conservative voice ever came to talk to us. When the case for the Iraq War was being debated in public, the school invited a panel of speakers to debate the topic in front of us. They didn't invite a single person in favor of the War. When they invited Daniel Ellsberg to speak, he went into a long profanity punctuated rant about GWB which ended with the entire auditorium (including all the teachers and administrators) standing on their feet to applaud him for minutes. This is just a small sampling.
It was around that time that I began to realize how bad the indoctrination was and started reading other points of view. When I began expressing those views to share what I had learned, I started getting a lot of funny looks or outright hostility. I remember as a member of student government, I was part of a meeting to discuss changing or adding anything to the student handbook. I mentioned that rather than a focus on racial diversity, that perhaps we should readjust the focus to include a diversity of views as well. The dismissive reaction from everyone including the chairman of the school cemented in my mind where everyone truly stood.
It is hard to express how frustrating it is to be surrounded by people who claim to be inclusive and open minded, yet are utterly unwilling to seriously entertain any point of view that comes in conflict with theirs. The totality of their certainty and the violence with which they express it is right on par with the kind of fanaticism you see in deeply Christian communities.
Interestingly enough, while I actually shared many of the same political views as my SF peers, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the open hostility that anyone challenging those views would face. In many ways, I found it harder to be an open minded left leaning atheist in SF than a left leaning atheist in Texas. The hypocrisy I saw on display was very disillusioning.
For all the talk about SF being progressive and tolerant, I found it among the most provincial and closed minded places I've ever lived.
Someone somewhere probably got fired for donating to Trump. Someone somewhere probably got fired for donating to Clinton. Eich donated to curtail civil rights and kept his job as CTO until he gave it up.
As to someone somewhere... Show me someone, somewhere on HN attacked by thousands of commenters for supporting some liberal cause in the US the way Eich was attacked by thousands of commenters (who keep mentioning it every time say Brave is brought up) for supporting a conservative cause. (I'm not saying you SHOULD be able to find this example, whatever "should" means; I'm only saying that you CAN'T, and that "someone somewhere" doesn't cut both ways the way you implied. If it were that symmetrical, then it would have invalidated my point.)
Mozilla is a prominent company and puts unusual emphasis on its social mission. The CEO is the public face of a company and ultimately responsible for ensuring that workers are treated fairly. A donation for a specific issue says something a donation to a candidate doesn't. And Eich/Mozilla handled the situation badly. (You misquoted me, by the way.)
I see Eich mentioned as a martyr on HN more often than I see a word against him. I threw in "someone somewhere" because we actually agree that fear of retribution can keep people from donating to political campaigns. I just don't think Eich is a good example.
On board resignations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10654651
On "curtail civil rights" canard: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721928
"Curtail civil rights" is exactly right, though. Prop 8 didn't nullify existing marriages, but it did prevent new ones. Whatever philosophical reasons you had for supporting the measure, its language and effect were specific.
"Civil rights", if the phrase meant anything at stake in 2008, meant positive rights under state law that were protected by CA's domestic partnership section of its family law code, which an earlier generation of allies (including me) had supported. You could reframe now (post-Obergefell) in federal civil rights terms, but that tells a revisionist account of the history. Back in 2008, state-guaranteed rights were not the issue in front of the citizens of California, and federal bad law (DOMA) was beyond state power to affect.
Remember Obama was also at that time in favor (he said; maybe he was strategically lying but we don't know) of the conjugal definition of marriage.
Yes, I know people find Obama's position then defective and wrong, and some (few) even said so at the time. But I don't see anyone going around arguing that Obama thereby curtailed civil rights, since he supported civil unions or domestic partnerships. If he got off the hook for the "curtailing civil rights" charge by evolving many years later, then what does the phrase mean? It's not a historically or legally accurate description. It's just a rhetorical club to beat up enemies and spare friends.
"Curtailing civil rights" means simply this: marrying someone of the same sex was legal in California, and then it wasn't. A right previously recognized was taken away. It doesn't matter if you disagree with how that right was recognized. It doesn't matter that domestic partnerships provided most of the same benefits within California as marriage. Most isn't all. Even if those deficiencies had been repaired, "separate but equal" isn't equal.
Obama "got off the hook" because he opposed writing his claimed personal beliefs into law. Even in 2008, he spoke against Prop 8 and advocated repealing DOMA. You aren't my enemy, and he isn't my friend; he just had a better position on this issue.
I realize it's easy to speculate unintentionally but I try to draw a bright line around things like speaking for someone else, saying they "declined" an offer where you weren't involved and didn't actually see any offering or declining.
In the link I sent about board resignations (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10654651), I wrote "Alistair Barr of the WSJ was working on a story about Mozilla being in trouble". Barr was getting the "need CEO with mobile experience" line from someone, possibly an ex-executive, even a (soon-to-be-ex) board member. A number of people thought it might be Gary Kovacs, but no one knew for sure.
For my part regarding getting the appointment, I can only say that "mobile experience" line did not come up. Doing Firefox OS (for all its problems) did get us a lot of mobile experience and good partner contacts. I'm engaging with some of those contacts at Brave, so I think the ding from whomever leaked to Barr was not material re: me, then or now.
On where law comes from, why CA voters can override the CA supreme court, see "status quo" on at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721928.
Obama had no skin in the game in California, but he did say (to Rick Warren in public) that he supported the conjugal definition of marriage. He did not explain how he squared this with being against Prop 8, as far as I know (references welcome). It sure looks like strategic lying to me, and nothing against Obama -- I voted for him in the 2008 CA primary. Politians do this kind of inconsistent fence-sitting all the time.
Thanks for writing back.