No, objectively. Granted sama doesn't provide detailed references, but you can find factual backing for statements such as these ones easily if you look:
"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."
Not that I want to split hair but in the examples you gave:
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.
A Trump presidency would be an economic disaster: Objectively true because his policies involve reducing taxes, increasing spending, and isolating the country from free trade (eg. withdrawing from NAFTA which has been shown to have created jobs and growth on both sides of the border).
"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.
Except that he made the case for why he thinks Trump is the wrong candidate. Keep in mind, he wrote a blog post earlier giving credit to Trump on topics that he is correct on.
What do you think 'right' and 'wrong' mean ? It will always be a matter of opinion. Especially since one side in this election is adamant to ignore empirical/scientific evidence when it comes to topics like global warming and discrimination.
Sorry, not a good analogy. What it omits is the power factor.
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.
What about Brendan Eich? I don't know if he is a billionaire, but he lost a job. Losing a job for having a particular view is oppression. Next election cycle, should you lose your job if you support Clinton? No. We're losing civil discourse by going this way.
Great discussion to be had, but you seem to be working this towards a slippery slope argument that if we don't choose to do business with billionaires to give millions and stump at the RNC convention, it won't be long before we're firing 43% of the workforce.
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.
Where does it stop though? Where is the line where you say "I disagree with you, therefore I will not associate with you"? There is definitely a line. Supporting a candidate who says a lot of stuff probably isn't it. I knew people who were against Obama because his religious leader had said something that could be construed to be pro-satan. Obama is not a 100% mirror (or even a tiny bit) that religious leader. Not supporting Trump for what he says seems fine - he's 100% responsible for what he says. Not supporting someone else, who supports Trump, is not OK. That other person has separate thoughts, and input from hundreds/thousands of other people. It's like saying if you support someone who supports Clinton, you support top secret emails being on everyone's private servers. It's a tiny slice of the whole. Or, "don't throw the baby out with the bath water".
I understood the argument as "it's OK to blacklist people because of their political views if they are powerful" in which case it's fair to question whether that belief would hold for a different set of political views. As you might have guessed, I think blacklisting people based on their political views is a slippery slope and shouldn't be done even to powerful people (especially for political positions that are actually mainstream). I'm not a fan of Trump/Hillary either.
This seems to imply that all political views are equal.
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?
Can't disagree with that. I guess I should have nuanced my own position a bit, how about: we shouldn't blacklist people based on their political beliefs if those beliefs are shared by nearly half the population and are in no way genocidal? I'd extend the same logic to religion because they both tend to be completely inconsequential at work.
> I guess I should have nuanced my own position a bit, how about: we shouldn't blacklist people based on their political beliefs if those beliefs are shared by nearly half the population and are in no way genocidal?
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.
Well, it's an ethical decision, fundamentally. So the way you approach it should be consistent with the way you approach them in general. If the degree of popular support for some policy or opinion factors into your determination of whether it's ethical or not, then sure. If it doesn't, I don't see why it should be any different in this case.
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.
Bravo to Sam for the endorsement and for calling Trump out for what he is.
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?
Thinking in absolutes is dangerous and anti-intellectual, that's the whole problem here. Rabidly following an ideology where you will entirely dismiss a person because their privately held beliefs don't align with yours.
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.
It depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to do effective business, probably not. If your goal is to signal your political allegiance, possibly to not get fired yourself, then yes get them out.
If your goals are a mix of both, weigh and decide.
We are talking here about 40-50% of the American electorate not some fringe maniac. If you think those people's opinion should be shunned than your world view seems very restricted to me.
People need to understand, about 43% of eligible electorate are going to Vote for Trump. Its better trying to understand them rather than demonize them. What next, no funding to start-ups in Texas since it voted Trump.
Trump is obnoxious but Stalinist purges are not an answer for it.
Funny you should mention Stalin, because it seems that people on Clinton's side are mostly using free speech to express their disgust, while Trump's camp has literally advocated mass deportation and legislating unsympathetic newspapers out of existence.
Yeah, Clinton's side is all rainbows and ponies. This whole post is about Clinton's side wanting to throw Thiel out because of his views! Like happened to Eich. That doesn't clear Trump in any way, but don't you see both sides are the same? That's the problem!
How could you possibly equate a private company disavowing a single billionaire with the president of the United States harassing and deporting millions of people?
I'm talking about the general principle of shaming. Trump's an idiot - no argument there. Shaming and going after someone because they see _some_ amount of value in a person is not OK. And both sides do it. What I'm calling out is all the finger pointing and name calling, when both sides are doing exactly the same thing as what they're calling others out on. Frankly, I don't see how this country will ever again be united in any real, lasting way because of all the demonification.
"Maniac" and "fringe" have no absolute relationship. Look at Hitler. I'm not exaggerating. Let me quote Wikipedia: "On election day, 6 March 1933, the NSDAP's share of the vote increased to 43.9 per cent, and the party acquired the largest number of seats in parliament."
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.
> I'm not equating Trump and Hitler, btw. But Hitler proves that being mainstream means nothing.
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.
David Duke is not a major party candidate, for one. And secondly, it is possible to support some of Trump's positions (say, opposition to free trade, stricter immigration policy, etc.) without endorsing his others. It is further possible to believe that his more extreme racist positions are mostly populist rhetoric that would not actually be implemented.
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.
While I disagree with Peter Thiel's support of Trump, I believe that he is a very smart man, and quite qualified to be a partner with YC. To fire him over his political affiliation would be petty censorship. It's easy to look at somebody like Trump and see the racist, sexist, and xenophobic parts. These attributes aren't naturally shared with Trump's supporters. As Altman said, it would be different if Thiel expressed some sort of bigotry. Also, many states (including California) have laws forbidding retaliation for political practices outside of work.
If someone working for or with YC makes or supports racist and sexist speech, it could easily lead to YC losing credibility among entrepreneurs that aren't white men (and to be fair, among white men as well). In my opinion, that could disqualify him as a partner.
The difference is that people who support Trump can't be punished like this precisely because there are so many of them. This kind of social shunning doesn't make sense when 43% of the population would need to be shunned. Shunning people creates exactly the kind of political environment where a dangerous minority like this can continue to exist. When people are angry, they want to be heard. If you deny Trump supporters the chance to be heard, they will stay angry (or worse).
I think in this situation the limit hasn't been reached; with 40+% of the nation's support, the Trump movement isn't fringe. Additionally, many voters intend to vote for him for politically expedient reasons, such as capturing 3 Supreme Court justice appointments for Republican judges.
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.
I'm torn on the issue of parting ways with someone over them supporting a despicable person.
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.
> of course, if Peter said some of the things Trump says himself, he would no longer be part of Y Combinator).
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.
If you are claiming that calling a non-trivial proportion of Trump's supporters deplorable requires an apology, you disagree with me about what is deplorable.
The fact that a candidate for President of the United States -- whichever party they represent -- would decide to dismiss a sizeable portion of the country as contemptible or wretched seems to be the issue.
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?
It's not about the number, but rather about the accuracy of the statement.
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.
If a sizeable portion of the country is contemptible or wretched, why on earth would she not say it?
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.
Sure. There are individuals in any large group that stray in philosophy and behavior from what the majority consider rational or acceptable, and that includes Clinton, Johnson and Stein supporters.
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"?
What? Why is money speech? What makes donation different from voting pragmatically? (eg. "I'll put up with an offensive loudmouth for President if it means we get to avoid destroying another Middle Eastern civilization and potentially starting WW3")
A case where it was divided along partisan lines 5 to 4 on the SCOTUS. One of the 5s seat is now vacant and the next president will appoint a replacement.
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.
Remember, that case was about the U.S. government trying to prevent a group of people from showing a film critical of a political candidate. Do you really think that isn't speech?
"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."
"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."
And wasn't this the argument made by those who supported the ouster of Brendan Eich from Mozilla?
I made it then, and I'm making it now. One of the best ways we can fix campaign finance is by holding campaign financiers responsible for what they're funding.
- 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.
"Holding people responsible" means punishing, in one way or another. Not doing business with them, trying to get them tossed out of a group, get them fired, shamed, etc. And who is going to do this to whom? Those with the popular opinion would be doing it to those with the unpopular opinion.
Not really, the minority is anybody who's ever had the wrong opinion on anything that sufficiently socially powerful people think is worth burning the heretics over. If you really need to get at somebody, it may in fact be sufficient to just make something up:
> Not really, the minority is anybody who's ever had the wrong opinion on anything that sufficiently socially powerful people think is worth burning the heretics over.
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.
Haven't looked deep into the thought behind the "money is speech" situation, but it seems extreme to say that giving money is the same as talking.
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.
I think that all you can assume with donations is that the statement is "I think that this is the best candidate" instead of "I endorse everything that this person says". I would then think that it is reasonable to not hold a donor responsible for everything that the person they donated to says
That's just as delusional as the people who gush over Hillary for her social justice stances, but get very angry when you bring up her hawkishness. That's not how it works. You vote for / donate to the entire politician. You can't elect half a President.
True, but presidents (on average) get a remarkable percentage of their policies passed in some form. Maybe you don't support 90% of what Donald or Hillary say, but you have to be careful: it's almost guaranteed that at least something of that 90% is going to happen.
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.
But for these people that are still supporting Trump, they consider that avoiding 90% of Hillary's platform worth the cost of Trump. Bear in mind, when Nate Silver pointed out that Trump would win if only men could vote, women (a small number, mind you) were tweeting they'd gladly give up their right to vote if it got Trump elected.
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.
> But for these people that are still supporting Trump, they consider that avoiding 90% of Hillary's platform worth the cost of Trump.
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.
And it remains your decision how much of your own personal politics you are willing to sacrifice in exchange for a candidate more likely to win.
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.
Ordinarily, I might be more inclined to agree with you, but (as even sama seems to recognize) this is far from an ordinary 'vote my issues' kind of election. This is a more holistic matter of core principles.
It's not an all or nothing, black and white thing though.
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.
No he isn't. Since Trump has donated to the Clinton Foundation (edit: and Hillary's senate and presidential campaigns), does that mean that he is effectively saying everything that Hillary is saying? Does buying an album mean I agree with every lyric on it? If I donate to someone who then incites violence, can I be prosecuted?
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.
1. He has donated to her campaigns as well, several times.
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?
Endorsing Trump or Clinton isn't the same as saying you agree with everything they stand for. It is simply saying that you believe they are a better candidate for the position than the opposition, and unfortunately I feel like this election has turned into a "lesser of two evils" for many people I talk with. Nobody fully endorses either candidate's beliefs or ideals, but they definitely know which one they like the least for the job.
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.
Candidates A and B are for or against (noted as O and X respectively) the following:
Issue: A B C D E F G
A: O O O X X X O
B: O O X X O O X
Noting that they both agree on three issues, disagree on three issues. I have to weight each of those issues to determine which one I am actually for. While I disagree with Thiel's conclusion this year, I have to presume he's done the same sort of analysis (he's not an idiot, he's well educated and successful so he's done something right along the way). His scales have apparently tipped in strong favor of Trump (especially for him to double down with his donation), but that doesn't mean he specifically supports the more abhorrent parts of Trump's character or campaign.
> I have to presume he's done the same sort of analysis (he's not an idiot, he's well educated and successful so he's done something right along the way)
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.
> then he effectively is saying what Trump is saying
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.
You are misreading that sentence. You're talking about money talking symbolically. From context, Sam obviously means if Peter starts saying specific things that Trump has said.
>then he effectively is saying what Trump is saying.
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.
> If money is speech [...] and [someone donates money to a] campaign, then [they effectively are] saying what [the candidate] is saying.
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.
You might find yourself supporting Trump. And you still might not like what he says sometimes. And you might not be a horrible person to your core.
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 agree that this is not a good thing. No one should be fired for having controversial opinions or even being accused of a crime. I believe that "morality clause"-style firings should only occur when a) the employer is among the aggrieved parties (e.g., the employer accuses the employee of theft or other unlawful conduct); or b) the employee is convicted in a criminal court.
I've had way too much of people getting fired for petty personal disagreements or baseless accusations.
> 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.
This impresses me. That is exactly what I was trying to explain to somebody else in the other thread, and I was starting to feel like it was a position that nobody else held.
> 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.
Without the war there would not have been 6 trillion dollars to spend...
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 think this is basically the major and effective meme/emotion that Trump plays into: Nostalgia. Thiel also voiced concerns about the state of the infrastructure at a GOP Convention. Nostalgia is a strong emotion and it is often based on false memories or weak comparisons. Sure, large parts of our infrastructure are worse than they were 50 years ago, but on the other hand we had very different problems back then. We used to consume goods that turned out to be toxic. Today almost everyone has access to extremely fast transportation via air travel. Almost everyone has access to the world's knowledge at any time. Medicine has improved a lot. "Make it great again" is the central lie and people are dumb enough not to question it and to believe his financial independence would make him a superior leader, when in fact he only displays characteristics that are opposed to the ones we should expect from a good leader, for example decency and intelligence.
If you found the Cracked article insightful, an even deeper discussion of this "dark matter" phenomenon ("I don't know anyone who supports candidate X, but I can measure their gravity, so they must be out there somewhere") is in this essay from Slate Star Codex.
I spent my high school years in rural Arkansas (after living a more urban existence for most of my life). This article does a fantastic job of articulating exactly what I've observed.
For a more formal look at this, I'd suggest looking at Sarah Kenzidor's work over the past year. She's a journalist in St. Louis with a PhD in... sociology? (I think?), specializing in the Uzbekistan country & regime. She's brought that knowledge to bear on the Trump campaign and has spent a lot of time trying to explain to the 'coasts' Why Trump. Her book on this is called the "View from Flyover Country". I haven't read the book, specifically, but I've read most of her articles on the matter since the spring.
I'm not from the US, so take this as an outsiders view.
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
Electoral reform is a hot topic, but what people usually mean by it is not a change in how the votes are counted. The most popular issue is campaign financing (with the current arrangement being that there's no practical limit a private party can pour into the elections, so long as they do the Super-PAC dance). Another big issue of concern is gerrymandering. For Democrats, the way their primaries function (superdelegates etc) has been in the spotlight.
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.
Interesting. I work in education in the UK and the way we assess pupils is a relatively complex calculation based on a number of factors.
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.
I think it's mainly that there are other, more obvious problems to tackle before getting to STV etc. One thing at a time and all that.
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.
I think in an era of the populace vehemently hating at least one politician that is running for office (whatever that office may be), and sometimes hating all the candidates a voting system that actively targets least regret should be used; such as condorcet voting, or full preference method.
Clinton talks like a professional politician, Trump says whatever comes to mind at the time. I'm not sure I like how professional politicians talk, but I'm a little nervous that "comes to mind at the time" might lead us into a very bad place.
Yeah - I do. Look at any politician with more than one term of anything under their belt and you're going to find similar problems. I'm voting for Gary Johnson anyhow.. not because I expect him to be more consistent, but because I very much want a viable third party.
> 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.
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.)
I feel like this deserves a link to the rebuttal. I'm not embracing it (or Jacobin), but it's a plausible indictment of Elegy. On a related note, it should be noted that the average Trump supporter earns more than the average white American. There's a more subtle grouping here than "rural poor".
That article is rough around the edges but very insightful. I keep this in mind a lot. I think to just go ahead and label all Trump supporters as idiots or degenerates is very unproductive. There is some message that speaks to the people left behind that maybe the Democrats are ignoring.
The Guardian also published a really good article explaining how blue-collar workers are hurting because of their jobs being off-shored, and how Trump's promise to end free-trade agreements and bring those jobs back to the US is the biggest reason behind his appeal:
It's a great article, but only describes a very small minority of Trump supporters. The median household income of a Trump supporter is $72,000, well above that of the median voter, or the median Clinton supporter.
That surprises me greatly. I'm assuming that the fact that the poor themselves don't vote anyway skews the medians of voters up anyway, as they hint at in that article. What a way to dash "established facts."
It's definitely not a popular position. Just take a look at Twitter and you'll see people from both sides nearly calling for the death of the other. While not super surprising I've seen little discussion around the fact that your chances of being fired for supporting one of the candidates (you can guess who) publicly are pretty good. Especially when you work in the tech field.
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.
> you'll see people from both sides nearly calling for the death of the other
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.
It's exactly how populists want the voters to think and behave.
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.
I don't believe that the occurrence of an election is itself causation at work.
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.
Thank you for putting it into more and clearer words than I did.
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.
> 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.
Not gonna put words into someone else's mouth, but here it is from my perspective: We come to the opinions we have based on the experiences we have, and everybody has different experiences. Equally as true is the opinions that don't form due to the experiences we don't have.
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.
For 'valid' to mean anything interesting there has to be the possibility of something not being valid. If the criteria for 'valid' is merely that 'someone thinks it' then it's starting to sound like it's not a useful distinction to make.
The distinction being made isn't valid vs invalid, but rather perspective vs opinion. An incorrect opinion does not invalidate the perspective that helped form it, and the perspective is still worth understanding if you want an actual solution to a problem instead of just the self-righteous satisfaction of being right.
I'm completely in favour of understanding why people think what they do - apart from anything else, it's almost impossible to persuade them of anything different if you don't start from a position of sympathy.
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.
Thanks for the comments. Yes, this deserves more explanation.
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.
What I don't understand "even more" than that (literally, by the numbers) is how 49% of the country is registered independent and yet keeps voting Democrat and Republican. Worse yet, 76% of the country "wants to see alternatives" in the debates...but still keeps voting Democrat and Republican.
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.
I keep seeing this argument, and just because you disagree with libertarian principles doesn't make them more "insane."
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.
To me, they are insane. I don't know what to say. They don't bring much to the table I take seriously. I like some of the principles, but it's not a coherent platform.
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 important part is that both support major electoral reform that would enable third parties in general to be viable and to get proportional representation. If they can actually pull it off, I couldn't care less about the rest of their platform - the country can survive 4 years of libertarians or greens, it's seen much worse.
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.
With the current one-tier election system, you will severely cripple the chances of your second best candidate to win, if you vote you your first choice independent candidate.
Perhaps it's because the two leading independent candidates have terrible policy proposals? (Not to say that both major party candidates have great proposals, either)
Johnson thinks we should eliminate income taxes and replace them with high consumption taxes and Stein thinks we should cancel student debt. I've admittedly cherry picked some things I don't like.
Let's say I was independent and lived in Ohio or some other swing state. What choices do I have?
* 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.
> "But in THIS election almost everyone seems to agree that one or both of the candidates are horrible and will ruin everything."
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.
> 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.
Whoever wins I'm VERY interested to see what election/campaign/voting reform laws get proposed or passed.
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.
Improvements to the fairness of elections won't come from those who benefit from the status quo, it'll come from those at the grassroots level. Boosting the electoral performance of third party candidates builds confidence that grassroots movements can make a significant political impact.
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.
> rump'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
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.
So that's the tradeoff. Would you rather that the X party might get a seat at the table next time or would you rather that you do your best NOT to elect the person you don't want by voting for their opponent.
I'd take the first option. Look at the shitshow that's been unleashed by continuing to vote for the lesser of two evils. We'll only stop things getting worse by making politicians earn our votes, rather than winning by default by being slightly more palatable than the other candidate. Voting with your conscience means you want to hold your politicians to higher standards, and whilst that might not have an immediate impact, it is the type of action that can make a noticeable difference over time.
Any first past the post system like we have will trend towards a two party system as people vote strategically for the most tolerable mainstream candidate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
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.
> Any first past the post system like we have will trend towards a two party system as people vote strategically for the most tolerable mainstream candidate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
FPTP also greatly increases the effect of gerrymandering, especially in single-member constituencies.
I'm surprised that more Americans don't spoil their ballot. Imagine if 20% of the ballots cast were spoiled. That would certainly wake up the media & politicians to the problems inherent in this 2 party system.
If Teddy Roosevelt couldn't break up the two-party system, I'm not sure anybody can[1]. Political parties aren't even necessarily about policies at this point, I'm afraid; they seem to have turned into badges of identity such as religions once were. We're not quite there yet, but calling oneself a Republican or a Democrat is starting to feel like identifying as Lutheran vs Catholic during the wars of religion in the 16th century. For an example of how awful that kind of dynamic can go, particularly with an extra-radical fringe element stirring up populist sentiment, I would suggest Dan Carlin's podcast on happenings in the city of Muenster in that era[2]. It's thought-provoking.
This is what demagogues do, they raley and gain power through uniting groups of people over fear. The extreme political tactics by the GOP lead to the scenario we have today, and Trump is building off of what the GOP laid the groundwork for over the past 40-50 years.
lot of accusations but maybe there are reasons that half the country believes in what he's saying? we've had more terrorist attacks, more foreign policy disasters, and more cultural and racial unrest in the past few years than in modern times yet you shut down the conversation by attributing it to "fear" as if people don't have a right to be fearful... nice
I don't mean to troll here, but I've never gotten anyone to give evidence of these claims. I'm an open-minded person, and evidence speaks loudly to me to change my mind. I fear that there are many who won't allow evidence to change their mind unless their feelings are acknowledged and compensated for first, and I think that's a difficult circumstance to manage and get past, because often that acknowledgement is seen as an endorsement.
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.
I too look for evidence and I have to be careful not to put emotions in front of rationale but one thing that strikes me about the rise of isis and the ensuing terrorist attacks from Europe to California is the media coverage. I honestly feel like the same media that is actively trying to destroy Donald Trump also can't get enough of him. Do you remember when all of those journalists were having their heads cut off? Or the many bombings and attacks after? The media created the term "ISIS" and blanketed 24 hour news cycles with it. The same has happened for the police shootings. You may be able to say that based on the numbers things are looking up, but if you turn on the TV the past few years you wouldn't know that. I also think that is why many Trump supporters are sick of the "media". They've been spoon-fed a teaspoon of fear a day and now that they chose their candidate whom they feel will lead them to higher-ground and that same media tells them they're racist/bigot/stupid for supporting him, they no longer trust media outright.
> "This is what demagogues do, they raley and gain power through uniting groups of people over fear."
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.
You made the comment I was going to make. Though I would have included the following too:
> 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.
>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.
This sounds like the type of thing that is being advocated against. Telling a large section of the country that what they feel is not true. I'm not certain from what vantage that statement could ever accurately be made.
I certainly wouldn't try this tact with your significant other.
Don't just assume they only feel like they're not getting ahead.
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')
A lot of them actually aren't, though, by any reasonable metric.
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.
On some level I feel like my country is unwinding, like somehow over time we have developed these parallel economies and social institutions, and now we don't know how to talk to ourselves anyhow.. and it scares me. The fact that one side can't see the other is struggling is an example of this.
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.
There is most likely a large portion of voters that are also voting 'against' Hillary. The only realistic vote against Hillary is unfortunately a vote for Trump.
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.
>middle more or less equidistantly, and the way to fix it is to walk back.
That supposes that there really is only one degree of freedom. For example, both Trump and Sanders were for protectionism.
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.
The unfortunate reality of the present US political system is that in inter-party politics, there's only one degree of freedom. Other fights have to be fought on the inside to get anywhere, in the primaries etc. And if your side wins, then you take the entire party for the ride along with yourself in national politics.
SNL writer Chris Kelly 'How bout instead of an “I Voted” sticker, everyone who votes Trump gets to wear a scarlet T for the rest of their lives?'[0]
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]
Thinking there is a possibility someone is crazy, racist, or sexist is definitely reasonable if that person is stating they agree with a crazy, racist, sexist. I'd wonder if someone was racist if they supported David Duke.
No "we" don't. Not all of us. Many of us hold the Founding Fathers in deep contempt. There is now DNA evidence showing that Thomas Jefferson raped Sally Hemings. That means that all of Thomas Jefferson's writings, including the Declaration Of Independence, needs to be re-evaluated and perhaps put aside.
DNA provides evidence of paternity of Sally Heming's children. Which appears to be that the father was Sally Heming's owner Thomas Jefferson.
Sally Heming may have been head over heels in love with Thomas Jefferson. But on the balance of probability I would guess there might have been coercion (hence rape) from a slave owner to a slave. Evidence, not proof.
Hypocrisy of Jefferson's personal conduct doesn't change the validity (or lack thereof) of the logical arguments he made in his writings. If they held to rational scrutiny before, they still do after.
If we're going to look at historical figures through modern lenses and discredit their works if we find they don't measure up to our modern morality, we're not going to have much left. It's more than likely that Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle engaged in sexual acts with young boys, for instance - in our world, these philosophers would be on a list and couldn't live within 500 yards of a school, let alone found one, but in theirs, pederasty was common, accepted, and even lauded.
That's a popular misconception, like "everyone thought the world was flat before Columbus reached America."
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.
The founders were not "individually contemptible" because they couldn't destroy the institution of slavery at the same time they created an independent American nation. In fact, everyday slaveholders were not automatically "individually contemptible". Involvement in widespread cultural norms like slavery should not, in itself, be seen as a personal character indictment.
It would depend on which position of Duke's they were talking about. If they say they agree with his stance on race, then yes, they're a racist. If they agree with his stance on tax policy (I assume he has one), then no, there's no evidence that person is a racist. EZ-PZ.
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?
Trump specifically attributed it to Curie's "Mexican heritage" when he made the comment. The organizational link is an after-the-fact rationalization. (And, also, mostly false; that is, he's a member of a lawyers group with "La Raza" in the name, but that group isn't connected at all with the advocacy group -- the National Council of La Raza -- that right-wingers who don't recognize that "La Raza" as a name element is about as distinctive and unique as "People's" think of us the organization called "La Raza".)
"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.
Scott Adams blog has turned into sensless propaganda.
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
Adams is very responsive on Twitter and he hosts daily Periscope streams where he takes questions. He disabled the comments on his blog because they were being swarmed with racism and spam. I'm sure if you write a counterpoint and tweet it at him, he'll at least see it.
There are 'wrong political candidates,' and there are fascists.
The question is all the more urgent, but the conclusion that there is neither justification nor need to drawn clear bright lines is not.
Support for Trump is not something about which reasonable people can disagree.
People who do so should be called out, isolated, and challenged.
That goes double in environments like the Valley, given to libertarian hubris, over regard for one's own talents and discernment, and undo concentration of wealth married to an unjustified sense that it results from genius...
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.
> 50 years ago, most normal Americans held these same beliefs
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.
"Most Americans" at the time had no idea about JFK's personal flaws in that regard. If they had, I can't imagine he would have reached the point of being nominated.
The change is.. we know far more about our leaders than perhaps we should. No one is, has ever been, or will ever be, as saintly as our ideals require.
I don't think that's true actually. The media had a policy on not reporting on candidates infidelity. People didn't think it was relevant to politics and that it was a cheap way of attack. As far as I can tell reporting on and outrage over sex scandals has only become more popular over time. Our culture is much more sensitive to it now, instead of the reverse.
I get why you're using examples from centuries ago, but I don't think those alone can prove your point. Tocqueville might have been right 200 years ago, I have no idea, but I strongly disagree that his statement is true today.
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.
>How do you go about working with someone that is uneducated
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]
Indeed. How does education and income correlate though? We're talking about millions of people here, not a handful, so the chances of it being a bunch of above median high school drop-outs seems exceedingly unlikely, no?
> 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.
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]
Source? I'd legitimately be interested to see how it has changed. I haven't seen much movement in my particular bubble; it's the same people now as back then.
The Washington Post[0] has it broken down by demographics since June. As you can see, as of October 13th, Trump's only lead in education is among voters who have completed "some college", with Clinton having a huge lead among those with college degrees and postgraduate degrees. She even has a narrow lead among those with a high school education or less.
Might as well just copy-paste my comment from yesterday:
"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."
> Trump thinks all Mexicans and Muslims are violent madmen who should be barred from entering the United States.
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"
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.
I mean, I see the difficulty. Ostensibly, Peter Thiel has a lot of value to the tech community. SOPA does not.
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.
Seriously I feel like I'm taking crazy pills on HN the way people are apologizing for Trump in this thread. This is a man that has sexually assaulted women and actively campaigned on kicking out all the "others".
Because no one has pressed charges? I don't see how that's relevant. People can be guilty of things they haven't been proven to do in a court of law. I'm not saying he should be thrown in jail without due process, I'm pointing out that he himself has admitted to committing sexual assault, so it seems wrong to have a caveat of "allegedly".
What at all does Clinton have to do with these women pressing charges or not?
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.
You want her to insert herself into these women's personal choices? Can you imagine the outrage from the right if she tried to convince these women of anything? You're not making any sense, it just sounds like you're looking for an excuse to put down Clinton over a situation she has zero involvement in.
So, you're angry at her for not doing something you don't want her to do, but you feel like she would do it, even though she's not doing it. And you're throwing in random accusations of lying. You're reinforcing my thought that you are just trying to find an excuse to be angry.
For one thing, statutes of limitations would be a factor in many cases.
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.
...well, because the statute of limitations has run out on a lot of the things we know he's done? I mean, among about a billion other reasons why women don't report sexual assault by powerful men who can ruin their lives.
Well, I'm not saying this is why, but it's not like he hasn't quite visibly paid off prosecutors when charges were being considered against his organizations, so it's not implausible he'd do the same thing when he was in personal jeopardy.
The whole sexual assault angle is bizarre to me, because there is no moral high ground to seize here. It's not like Bill Clinton was a monk and kept his Johnson in his pants during his years in the limelight. And it's not like Hillary didn't discredit and do her part in persecuting women who stood up and blew the whistle on his indiscretions.
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.
I'm sorry I'm replying 7 days after your post but I came back to this comment to check something and noticed you'd posted a reply. I say all this to say...
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.
There's a degree of separation you're missing. SOPA is a specific belief, Trump is a person who has many beliefs.
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.
* 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"
Again, doesn't justify him... but potentially explains him.
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.
I didn't say we should assume he's racist, but you assumed he isn't. In fact you assumed his motivation very explicitly. I was asking how you made such an assumption.
I think you are overstating the case. Thiel didn't support Trump's hatred and sexual abuse. Presumably he said "I'm proud to be gay" at the republican convention precisely to put those issues aside. (Apparently he was the first person to do this, which shouldn't be underestimated.)
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.
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.
I highly doubt that Thiel supports sexual abuse anymore than I think all my friends who are going to vote for Clinton support foreign interventionism, the need to regulate video games like narcotics, etc.
It's not a big step to think he supports sexual abuse. He has already made it clear that he doesn't respect women enough to think they should have the right to vote.
Why would Sam not go for a third party who was less problematic? There are third party candidates available. Is it because they are unlikely to be elected? If so, this thinking keeps on trapping us into voting for the least bad of the bad.
To be fair, this pretty much describes why the two party system remains dominant despite increasingly fractured and contentious primaries. Take a look at how aggressively Hillary campaigned against Obama in the 2008 primaries, for example.
If you really care about improving the viability of third parties in this country, please do that in local and state elections where it is actually possible to elect third parties.
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.
I initially was upset at mr Nader, when Gore lost. I got over it and, in retrospect, the blame is fully on Gore. He simply didn't convince enough people with his message. It wasn't Nader's (or anyone else's) responsibility to make Gore more electable, it was Gore's responsibility.
Extremely well said. The point of multiple candidates is to offer voters a choice, and it's the job of a candidate to convince voters to choose him or her. Just because a candidate won a primary in a major party does not entitle the candidate to votes from people who find another candidate more appealing. If you want to vote strategically, fine. You have that option. If you like one candidate best, but the major party candidate is close enough that you're willing to vote for them in the interest of protecting against another outcome, that's also fine. But to the people arguing that voting third party is throwing your vote away: this is the argument that is used to convince otherwise reasonable Republicans to vote for Trump.
>There is no right or wrong way to vote for third parties.
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.
In most social and business circles, especially wealthy ones, supporting a 3rd party presidential candidate puts you in the "out out group", a severe career limiting move (TM).
If Trump were to win, Dems would for sure do a reshuffle and look introspectively. If Hillary were to win, there will be little introspection.
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.
My view is Trump is an existential threat to our way of life and society. His authoritarian trigger-finger views and sheer lack of understanding of anything related to governing a nation will yield a world war and erase many decades, if not centuries, of progress.
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.
I honestly don't know a ton about Taft's presidency, but what made him such a bad executive? I really should invest in some books about him, since on the surface, he's pretty interesting: only dual President/Supreme Court justice (which, even if it's inarguable that he was great there, seems completely at odds with the ostensible non-partisanship of the Supreme Court), Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Presidential run was a somewhat direct outcome of his tenure, all on top of the many apocryphal stories about his girth. If you've got any recommendations for learning about his weakness as a President, I'd appreciate them.
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.
> 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.
No, it's because the mechanics of the voting rules themselves lead to a stable two party system.
Right, it doesn't count as doing anything about the electoral 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.)
Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.
You can disagree with the statement, but why do you think it is punishable?
He didn't say women shouldn't be able to vote. He said that giving women the right to vote has eroded some of his libertarian ideals, because women tend to oppose those ideals. Which is a true statement.
It's not really fair to hang someone by what you infer from a truthful statement. You could say "Ending slavery caused enormous economic problems for the south" without supporting slavery. In reading the full context of what he said, it doesn't seem to me that he's implying we should take away women's suffrage.
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.
> if Peter said some of the things Trump says himself, he would no longer be part of Y Combinator
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.
I don't think it's that controversial a statement. Trump is basically a walking HR nightmare and would never be employable at a typical company given any of the things he says about (or does to) people.
then let me clarify for you: don't say things that literally any HR department would summarily fire you for, don't make a public position of condoning sexual assault
What is really bad here is that we have to vote against a very bad candidate, not for a good one. Hilary needs to commit to certain priorities for all those groups that decided to vote for her - potentially compromising what she has promised so far - simply voting against Trump. Otherwise voting for her is a lost vote...
The image I like to remember is the victorious Ulysses S. Grant telling the defeated Robert E. Lee and his officers to keep their horses, keep their sidearms, and go home to their families, but not before being fed from Union rations.
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.
Except Thiel is saying many of the repugnant things that made Trump popular.
- 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.
Right, we aren't talking about Mitt Romney here. If this were the 2012 election I would be defending him, but this isn't some "standard" GOP candidate.
Funny how the "binders full of women" seems so tame today.
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.
I agree, it was political theater. Romney in many ways to me reminds me of Hillary as far as style is concerned and I would say Hillary's "basket of deplorables" comment is far worse politically.
Assuming all of this is accurate, Thiel's thinking and actions are so full of contradictions and irrationality it's hard to understand how he became a billionaire.
Just two that stick out right away:
"- 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
I'll play devils advocate here and unify both those points with Thiel's apparent views:
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.
This public/private dichotomy reminds me sharply of a novel I read at one of those late teen-age formative periods, For Us, the Living[1], by Heinlein. In that story, it was a norm that you could declare "private sphere", and journalists et al would have to ignore the ensuing events until going "public" again. In that world, it had basically put the papparatzi out of work. There are some other gems in there, like a future law where if a country was to go to war, it was put to a popular vote, and if the measure passed, those who voted for war were moved to the head of the draft list.
I'm not sure whether everyone should be banned or required to read Heinlein in high school...
"- 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
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.
The human biodiversity crowd aren't white supremacists. They claim that different races have different average IQ scores and that these scores are meaningfully correlated with intelligence. These first two claims are extremely well accepted by the relavent fields. They further claim that these differences are largely genetic which is much more controversial but strongly suggested by twin studies - nonetheless this will be settled by cognitive genomics soon.
They do not think white gentiles are the most intelligent race. Rather what they claim is Ashkenazi jews are the most intelligent ethnic group with an average IQ of 115, followed by Hans Chinese,high-cast Indians and descendants of the African Igbo tribe at 107, followed by white gentiles at 100, hispanic whites at around 90 and African Americans at 85.
Their claims are descriptive not normative, are not flattering to white people, show many ethnic groups (including some African tribes) have much higher average IQs than white gentiles, and the fact that Ashkenazi Jews are found to be the most intelligent doesn't seem particularly white supremacist.
He's repeatedly threatened to throw journalists in jail that wrote things he didn't like. He threatened, on stage, in a Presidential debate, to unilaterally throw his political opponent HRC in jail. He is already contesting the results of the Democratic election weeks before it has even happened.
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.
> He threatened, on stage, in a Presidential debate, to unilaterally throw his political opponent HRC in jail.
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).
No, it's not. First of all, just like Benghazi, she's already been investigated by her political opponents and they've come up empty-handed. Second of all, Trump didn't call for her to be prosecuted; he claimed he would single-handedly lock her up of his own authority.
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.
I would actually agree with OP that Trump is not anti-democratic, ideologically speaking.
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.
"Except Thiel is saying many of the repugnant things that made Trump popular.
- 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?
> institute immigration policy that benefited that country
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.
The grass is always going to be greener somewhere else. Trying to attack that demand is, in my opinion, a fool's errand. If there is work to be done that isn't viable at rates allowed by regulation, then either it isn't that valuable, or its price is being suppressed.
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.
>>- 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.
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).
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.
Moldbug believes that white people are the intellectual superiors of black people. That's supremacy. It's on his blog and in the medium post you linked. He isn't fooling anybody with his explanation of how that belief isn't racist or supremacist.
He also believes that Asians and Jews are on average the intellectual superiors of "white" people, so it's not clear to me how that's "white" supremacy. He's very clear that he separates the scientific question from the moral one. The belief that intelligence is largely genetic is fairly mainstream and supported by a large body of evidence. If he is committed to treating all groups of people with equal respect, that satisfies me.
>>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.
>He also believes that Asians and Jews are on average the intellectual superiors of "white" people, so it's not clear to me how that's "white" supremacy.
Is it also the definition of racism to acknowledge that some races may have higher incidences of certain diseases, like sickle-cell anemia or cystic fibrosis? There are differences between the races. One of those differences is skin color. That doesn't mean it's the only difference.
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.
Usually, when one is reading a text, especially one written for persuasion, the first question to ask is, "what is the author trying to say?" Reasonable people can disagree about what that is, so to suggest that we're not doing society favors by applying critical reasoning is wrong at best, disingenuous at worst.
You wouldn't accuse someone of reading The Raven as not being literally about a bird as failing civilization.
Moldbug believes that some ethnic groups are genetically predisposed to being better slaves. If you think he came to that conclusion after a dispassionate evaluation of all available evidence, I have a bridge to sell you.
* Thiel is passionately against all forms of political correctness, just like Trump.
* Thiel: "A startup is basically structured as a monarchy. We don’t call it that, of course."
* Thiel wants to restrict immigration to highly educated people. Just like Trump.
sound too easy to take out of context. Forgoing that, they may be mistaken or misguided; I don't know; but are they really repugnant?
I already made this point today but Hillary Clinton, whom sama is endorsing, has directly contributed to starting two wars (in Syria and Libya). While Trump threatened to ban Muslims from entering the US, her actions have already led to thousands of Muslims being killed. Isn't that strictly worse?
Yeah I'm not quite sure I understand the whole "I'm voting Clinton because it's the only way to stop Trump" argument.
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.
They probably wouldn't. I think you overestimate the number of people voting Clinton just to stop Trump. A lot of people truly like her the most. (Not me, I'd like to note - not that I will be voting as an Englishman).
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.
IIRC, Surveys consistently show that 40-50% of people would like to have a third option besides clinton or trump, which is rather high. That should be enough to get at least a plurality, except for "psychology" (people don't want to lose; network effects; with-me-or-against-me-ism)
> 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.
Lots of people like the abstract idea of another option. There are, on fact, other concrete options, and people don't tend to like them as much as the abstract idea of an alternative, even before factoring in tactical concerns.
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.
Let me restate: I don't see a third party candidate that is that much better than Clinton. Most are better in some ways, worse in others. I used the word 'perfect' because I think that, for a third party candidate, you would need to get the perfect mix to inspire enough support to break through. If I'm throwing my vote behind someone for ideological reasons without an expectation it will work, I want it to be someone I can truly support without reservation.
The momentum thing, I don't buy. It might technically be possible, but it's practically never going to happen, because FPTP is broken.
> third party candidates are never going to happen
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.
It happened twice, both in the first century of US independence; whole there have been subsequent realignments, the identity of the two nationally-competitive parties have been stable for more than a century and a half. It's not implausible that the basic factors which promoted the relative fluidity of the party system in the early Republic are gone. (Direct election of senators and the near universal norm of assigning Presidential electors based on public elections both are factors which make the national parties more responsive to changes in the mood of the electorate, which reduces the risk of either being replaced.)
It would be possible to consider the post-Nixon Southern Strategy flop of anti-civil-rights Democrats to form the new-look Republican party a third occurrence. That fundamentally changed the direction and outlook of both parties.
There's actually several major realignments since the Republicans displaced the Whigs, but they differ from the changes from the First to Second and Second to Third Party System in that the identity of the two major parties did not change in those realignments; IIRC, the realignment you refer to is sometimes considered the third of those post-Civil War realignments (the one involving the New Deal Coalition is the second, and the first was in the Progressive Era.)
Sure. And? Swapping a party around doesn't really solve any of the underlying problems. It may help a little in the short term, but FPTP encourages not only two parties, but the kind of polarisation that leads to the republican party as they stand now, pushed incredibly far to the right.
Fair point. I think people often underestimate the benefit of short term help, but short term help that only arrives on a long-term timeline should rightfully be discounted.
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 is truly Giant Douche vs Turd Sandwich. Unfortunately, we don't have a real candidate who is effectively Drain-O. I wonder why Romney, or McCain, or Biden, or, to be partisan to my birth state, Susan Collins, didn't try to be a reasonable option.
Let's also not forget the recent Podesta wikileaks email, where they openly admit to Saudi Arabia and Qatar donating to the Clintons while simultaneously funding ISIS.
The US has been the largest arms exporter for as long as I can remember. For much of this time selling directly or indirectly to some very bad people.
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 counter to that would be that we accept that sometimes war is necessary and can be the lesser of two evils, while judging every Muslim by the actions of a few should never be necessary.
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'...
It's easy to call it 'carefully directed killing' when many people called out that sort of activity in general, and those specific actions (syria, libya) and even constructively suggested alternatives that would avoid bloodshed and blowback - and those alternatives have been repeatedly ignored.
I'm not saying I agree completely with the actions taken - but they still hold up far better under the 'who do I want making the decisions' test - the person who at least tried to make a good call, or the person who wants to make a clearly terrible one.
Could I please, pretty please with a cherry on top, have one sanctuary that isn't infested with "Vote for X, because Y is unacceptable"? It's already been done everywhere else ad nauseam.
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.
People can think what they want about Prop 8 he shouldn't have been forced out of Mozilla because of this. There is absolutely not 1 proof that he behaved inappropriately at Mozilla. His track record was almost flawless there. He was pushed out by people who clearly don't care about Mozilla, just about unrelated politics and of course ,nobody can ignore the cabal right here against Eich on HN. It was despicable back then it still is now.
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.
The polarization in politics has gotten worse and worse. A lot of people are feeling marginalized and unheard. The echo chambers we find ourselves in make it difficult to even perceive how the other side could hold the views that they do. Yellow journalism is worse than I've ever seen. Viral social media posts that are more click bait than fact are spreading more misinformation than valuable insight. It's more than anyone can sort out. Even intelligent people are susceptible to bias and believing stories that align with their preconceived notions. What are we to do, as technologists, to alievate this problem?
It's a slippery slope to not associate with people based on politics. It is also a slippery slope to continue to associate with people because the views they support are those of a politician.
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.
If I believed that Clinton was going to start World War III, and that Trump would stop it, then I would vote for Trump despite all of his nastiness.
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 think Clinton and Trump would each start WW3 in different ways, which makes it harder to directly compare. He would do something stupid/impulsive which couldn't be walked back (most things can, thankfully), or would cripple long-term alliances making war more likely later. She would get involved in some situation (no one thinks Trump is competent enough to let him actually engage in an intentional expansion of a conflict), which then escalates out of control.
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.
Some consistency would be nice. If it's OK for the boss to talk about this, then bring back the Thiel piece out of flagblivion. If this is a politics-free forum, then absolutely flag the boss.
> I don’t understand how 43% of the country supports Trump. But I’d like to find out.
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.
645 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 433 ms ] threadAmen.
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.
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.
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/
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"?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
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?
https://twitter.com/nodevember/status/771520648191483904
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo
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.
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:
You might find yourself supporting Trump. And you still might not like what he says sometimes. And you might not be a horrible person to your core.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.
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".
[1] https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf
"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]
[0]http://archive.is/NiRJ4 [1]http://blog.dilbert.com
http://allthetropes.wikia.com/wiki/Hitler_Ate_Sugar
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.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4wo9nqWrwE
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.
[0] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB862335923489989500
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-...
The question is all the more urgent, but the conclusion that there is neither justification nor need to drawn clear bright lines is not.
Support for Trump is not something about which reasonable people can disagree.
People who do so should be called out, isolated, and challenged.
That goes double in environments like the Valley, given to libertarian hubris, over regard for one's own talents and discernment, and undo concentration of wealth married to an unjustified sense that it results from genius...
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"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/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...
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:
Again, doesn't justify him... but potentially explains him.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.
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."
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
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 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 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.
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.
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.
- 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...
[1] http://amzn.to/2eemScq
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.
They do not think white gentiles are the most intelligent race. Rather what they claim is Ashkenazi jews are the most intelligent ethnic group with an average IQ of 115, followed by Hans Chinese,high-cast Indians and descendants of the African Igbo tribe at 107, followed by white gentiles at 100, hispanic whites at around 90 and African Americans at 85.
Their claims are descriptive not normative, are not flattering to white people, show many ethnic groups (including some African tribes) have much higher average IQs than white gentiles, and the fact that Ashkenazi Jews are found to be the most intelligent doesn't seem particularly white supremacist.
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.
You wouldn't accuse someone of reading The Raven as not being literally about a bird as failing civilization.
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.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3774 http://heavy.com/news/2016/10/wikileaks-podesta-emails-guide...
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'...
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
(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...
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.