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Marcos understanding of this situation is extremely telling for a fundamental problem with many americans relationship with politics. Most only get involved around election. After that their political interest is non existing.
It's easy to get lured into the idea that politics is a simple choice between the moral good and the moral bad, that the choice is simple and that there is a one to one relationship between what you vote for and what you get.
In reality however it's much more complicated. For all the crazy things Trump says, for all is egoism he has some very important points which needs to be addressed and discussed and he represents a group of people who haven't been represented for the last 40 years.
A group who are themselves excluded from society. A group who experience their own form of discrimination by the likes of Marcos, me and everyone else who are benefitting from the progress of technology, globalization, taxation rules and so on.
Marcos is all about form. Trumps form is admittedly not pretty but there are some important issues and for Theil a different political goal than Trump which isn't represented by Hillary. If you can't understand that then you make the mistakes of Marco et all. You confuse rhetorics with whats at stake.
If you don't want dissent, fine just admit it. That way at least you are being honest. Don't wrap your lack of political understanding into some claim of decency.
Racism is not just racism, sexism is not just sexism. These are complicated matters by the very nature of them being about human relationships.
So don't be the very thing your object to.
And no I don't want to defend Trump or Theil but rather the fundamental principle that no matter what in a democracy everyone have the right to say and mean what they want without having to fear the repercussions. Life is complicated and it happens all the time not just around election. There are many good reasons to be against Trump or Peter Theils endorsement of him, Marcos reasons just arent any of them. They are purely superficial understanding of what's really at stake here.
That is in fact not a fundamental principle of democracy. There is no work of political philosophy anywhere that suggests we should be able to say whatever we'd like "without fear of repercussions". What is a principle of liberal philosophy, though, is that we should be tolerant of the beliefs of others (in the sense of not intervening to suppress them), including intolerant beliefs, until those intolerant beliefs threaten society.
You may not believe Trump is a real thread to society. I disagree. So far, so good. The issue here is: Sam Altman and Paul Graham disagree too. Both of them compare Trump to a dictator. Paul Graham compared him to Stalin. Both Altman and Graham believe, like I do, that Trump is an existential threat to our democracy.
Sam Altman cannot coherently believe this while supporting Peter Thiel, who is not just a Trump supporter, but an important part of the Trump campaign. Even most leaders of the Republican party refused to get on stage at the RNC to support Trump. Thiel did. When he did, he used his time to claim that Donald Trump was the only honest candidate in the race. He bundled millions of dollars of donations for Trump. And, just last week, after Trump pivoted his campaign as a crusade against the legitimacy of our elections and of the black vote, Thiel donated $1.25MM more.
Nobody denies Sam Altman's right to support Peter Thiel, or, for that matter, Thiel's right to support Trump. But we are all very much entitled to criticize what Altman is doing, and we would be doing Altman no favors by withholding that criticism.
I don't know if you followed what happened to the Atheist community in the US, but its downfall was essentially the kind of witch hunt you're trying to incite. The level of virtue signaling demanded gradually increases until no one is left in the community. This invariably happens because the question you're asking ("does intolerant belief X threaten society?") has no absolute answer, so there is always a higher level of purity to declare a community standard.
When I was younger I used to watch The Daily Show and laugh at how dumb the conservatives where -- they were trying to suppress rock and roll for fear of the devil's influence, etc. As I grew older I came to realize it wasn't conservatives generally who were the awful/dumb ones, it was a particular kind of person in a context where they felt they could dictate to others what was ethically right. Moral fashion police if you will.
I've lately seen more and more Moral Fashion Police on the democratic side of the isle, and I find it considerably more awful (it's closer to home). You might even say that I view these people as intolerant to the point that they threaten society.
However I wouldn't in a million years fire someone or yell at them, hate them, etc for being fashion police, even though I think they threaten society. Experience is the best teacher, and sometimes a person needs to make mistakes / destroy something beautiful in order to find the next level of understanding. Maybe for you that means destroying YC (though I hope you fail), and maybe for Trump voters that means (in a small way) destroying the US Government. I just wish you both wouldn't.
> more and more Moral Fashion Police on the democratic side of the isle
This hits the nail on the head. It's a moralistic sort of righteous indignation and it's profoundly, dangerously illiberal.
In addition, many of these are the same people who are pleased that HRC is not being challenged over the revelations in the email leaks so far.
I want whoever takes office to have been vetted as much as possible by journalists. How could anyone want their "side" to win so badly that they'd prefer their own candidate evade accountability (or vindication!) for alleged wrongdoing?
There has been very little adversarial press behavior toward either candidate... the press in this election has simply focused on stories that will get lots of clicks, such as those about sex, money, etc.
People keep claiming that this sentiment is "profoundly illiberal". Those people should read more liberal philosophy, because it is not as if this is the first time this issue has come up. You can bring it back to John Stuart Mill if you like, but (very unsurprisingly) it's also one of the major themes of post-World-War-2 liberal philosophy. We are not required to tolerate intolerance when intolerance poses a threat to society.
If you don't believe Trump's intolerance poses a real threat, you're on safe ground arguing against appeals agains Trump. But Altman and Graham do not agree with you.
I do not believe Trump is significantly more intolerant than HRC or any other likely presidential candidate, he simply focuses his rhetoric on populist ire across all of his positions. It's the only trick he knows so he does it again and again.
Additionally, HRC has in the past advocated a nearly identical "wall" policy but used softer rhetoric:
GOP candidates for several elections have said much the same stuff Trump is saying only with a rhetorical style more like HRC's. Trump borrows economic populism (and its racist undertones) from the rust belt rhetoric of democrats.
> If you don't believe Trump's intolerance poses a real threat
This is not my belief. I believe both Trump's and HRC's intolerance both pose a major threat. I also believe that the trend toward unabashed executive power is the biggest threat to stability. HRC and Trump both show a similar chance of abusing this, and fortunately congress would be more vigilant about preventing Trump from abusing it, since he has not spent years aligning interest groups in preparation for his day in power.
I could not vote for either of the two major party candidates, my position is not to defend Trump but to apply some of the same criticisms to HRC which seemingly exist in the blind spot of Altman, Graham, and other HRC supporters.
That's fine. I mean, again: I would urge you to reconsider. But we otherwise don't have a live debate, I don't think.
I am not here to argue that people who oppose Hillary Clinton should change their minds (they should, though!). I'm here to urge Sam Altman, who does not agree with you, that his continued support for Peter Thiel is harming the goal he shares with me of preventing a Trump Presidency now, or in 2020.
Do you realize how despotic that is? Whether or not you and Sam Altman share the same goals I'd consider it deplorable if he used his power to punish Peter Thiel for his political views. Just because you agree with the underlying root issue doesn't make it any more just -- consider the reverse, if you would. Should Thiel remove acquaintances who support Hillary?
I find it ironic that Thiel, who claims that democracy and capitalism are no longer compatible (and it appears if he were forced to choose he'd ditch democracy) is being defended by calling someone else "despotic".
It's a donation so large that it would be impossible for the vast majority of Americans to participate in the same conversation. I question the decision to categorize it as pure free speech. It's qualitatively different from a $100 donation.
(a) Pretty sure that's not what "despotism" means.
(b) Pretty sure Thiel isn't going to shut up no matter what Sam Altman does.
(c) Pretty sure political criticism doesn't mean "the kinds of criticism I am comfortable hearing" --- in fact, pretty sure John Stuart Mill specifically warns against using discomfort as a litmus test for criticism.
(d) Pretty sure Thiel did more than simply donate to Donald Trump.
(e) Pretty sure the declaration that YC is a "non-political organization" is one you made, not one that YC did, and further pretty sure that nobody at YC agrees that their actions are cabined by your (so-far-unstated) definition of what a "non-political organization" is.
(f) Pretty sure YC has already threatened to blacklist organizations that disagree with them politically.
Oh, I could go on, and on, and on. But do we really need to?
I really suggest you take each of these points in turn and consider how you would feel if the candidate in question was HRC instead of Trump.
You're also missing the issue. It's not so much about Thiel but the message it sends: your professional career is at stake if you support the wrong candidate. I do not support Trump but I find that completely unacceptable.
Sorry, I am really not too concerned about the career implications of suggesting that someone who owns multiple McLarens stop endorsing someone who could plausibly purchase McLaren Automotive.
Again, that's not what we're talking about. Suggest away, until you're blue in the face. I encourage it. The problem is when you advocate actionable, tangible retribution against people not listening to those suggestions.
Who's talking about feeling uncomfortable? We're talking about actively punishing people for their political opinions. I can't tell if you're deliberately misreading the discussion.
Are you categorically opposed to punishing people for political opinions, or is it a matter of crossing a certain threshold? For instance, what if Trump had openly advocated putting Muslims in "internment camps" and Thiel had donated a billion dollars to his campaign? Would you still believe that severing a business relationship with him would be immoral?
So in your opinion is there any logically-possible situation in which it is morally acceptable to choose to cease associating with someone over incommensurable views? Have you ever done it yourself? Do you feel morally obligated to be a business partner of people who support Hillary Clinton, since to choose not to would "punish" and "silence" their speech?
* his continued support for Peter Thiel is harming the goal he shares with me of preventing a Trump Presidency now, or in 2020.*
You're worried that someone might read his endorsement of Hillary , then realise a business partner of his suppprts Trump and decide to vote for Trump instead?
I fail to see how anyone who knows who Sam Altman or Y Combinator is would follow that line of thought.
I don't have to worry about it. I can just read threads on Hacker News and see people rationalize Thiel's involvement and suggest that it implies a Trump Presidency is less dangerous than we think it is. I can look at this exact thread and see numerous people arguing that Trump isn't dangerous at all.
People can believe what they want. But Altman and Graham have a stated objective to convince people not to support Donald Trump. I'm doing them no favors by hiding the fact of how their actions work against that goal.
So, your argument is that people who, because of Thiel's donation, aren't as afraid of a Trump presidency as they should be, those people need to know that Graham and Altman have cut their ties with Thiel, rather than that they simply disagree with him, and that, by insufficiently ostracizing their friend and business partner, Graham and Altman are somehow sabotaging their stated goal of reducing Trump's support?
True. FWIW I think Thiel's goal is to take the opportunity to be on the national stage a bit, expecting to have a bit more involvement in future elections.
Also, FWIW, I think people who live in CA should seriously consider voting for a third party candidate, since HRC is certain to win the state.
I think a lot of people are chill about Trump and Trumpism because they're sure Hillary Clinton is going to win. They're not taking the time to really internalize what a Trump presidency would mean, because nothing is forcing them to.
They, too, should reconsider.
First: Trump could very well win. The polls before Brexit leaned slightly towards its success, but that depended on how you read them: almost as many polls showed it headed for defeat as success. Brexit took Europe by surprise. It's part of a wave of populist nationalism that we can recognize in many countries. Trump, too, is a part of the popular nationalism movement. Not only that, but there's still 3 weeks of election to go. If you believe Sam Wang, this has been an extremely stable election, and it's unlikely to tip. But if you believe Nate Silver, this has been one of the most volatile elections since we've begun tracking it, and the two previous big swings in opinion took less than a week each.
Second: there will be no getting around the tens of millions of people who will cast a vote, in effect, for American Fascism. If Trump loses, he'll create his own cable news network, which will have a built-in audience of millions. That network will drag Fox News further to the right. Trump will spend four years running a campaign against the legitimacy of the 2016 election, and will probably have little trouble capturing the nomination in 2020.
Remember: the GOP may not have believe Trump to be an existential threat to democracy in 2015, but they were sure as shit aware that Trump was a grave threat to their chances at re-taking the White House. His was a joke campaign. And yet he took the nomination from the party establishment, almost effortlessly. He will do it again. The forces aligned against him in the GOP proved themselves impotent.
This is not even about Trump, he is just the most blatantly visible artifact of a movement that enjoys calling people names and delegitimizing. Trump did this in 2008 and again in 2012, he did it with the whole racist birther routine which few Republican leaders denounced - they were perfectly happy to ride the coat tails of delegitimizing a sitting president. Perfectly happy to continue to do it this year by not even holding hearings on his Supreme Court nominee. And then just yesterday McCain proposes delegitimizing Hillary in advance by blocking any of her nominees.
I agree with you, I think this is playing with fire. But I have no idea if getting a little bit burned is what's needed, or if it quickly turns into Donald actually trying to get the Speaker of the House removed.
"They'll be there...I would think that Ryan wouldn't be there--maybe he would be in a different position," Trump said on The O'Reilly Factor.[1]
Does he really think he can do this? i.e. autocrat. Or does he not know how our government works? i.e imbecile. Or is he trolling? i.e. troll as head of state is great! I mean really? People are so deranged with anti-Hillary sentiment they don't really get how unstable a presidency this would be, just like this whole 18 month shit show has been.
> They're not taking the time to really internalize what a Trump presidency would mean,
They don't agree with you. Why should they take the time to internalize what you think a Trump presidency would mean, if you're wrong?
Have you followed all the problems related to people losing their jobs because of tweets, and Nobel laureates losing their jobs because of jokes that got blown out of proportion?
This is not quite the same as that; Trump's statements are not one-off tweets or jokes.
But you assume Trump's statements are literally what he wants to enact. Only #nevertrump actually believes that; everyone else thinks Trump is making statements that are just the right-wing version of Open Borders and Universal Income, and Trump and his supporters actually expect those radical right-wing positions (consider them an initial negotiation position) to be negotiated down to something centrist. They don't want all Muslims banned (well, some Trump supporters do, but not many), nor an economy-damaging trade war with China, nor a literal wall running the entire Mexican border, nor refusal to defend NATO allies. What they do want is some respect for enforcing existing immigration laws (congress made it illegal to immigrate by walking across the border, but the Democrat propaganda seeks to frame Trump as a bad person for suggesting enforcing the law Congress wrote). They want some attention paid to long-term economic consequences of outsourcing so much production, and restructuring the costs of the U.S. playing World Policeperson. They want some indication that the government is aware of the difficulty of "vetting" immigrants from a war-torn region without stable government, and that there are social and political externalities from accepting not-well-vettable immigrants when those war-torn regions are known for terrorism (that we may or may not be funding to try to topple Assad), and when even those who are not "terrorists" have what most Americans would consider an undesirable propensity for supporting things like Sharia law.
You and other Thiel-haters reject the principle of charity as it applies both to Trump and to Thiel; you paint a caricature of someone's positions, and go on a witch hunt against anyone who supports those people. When that isn't enough, you go on a witch-hunt against anyone who associates with those people. I consider that dangerous and politically damaging. Obviously everyone has a right to express their opinions, and to choose their associations, but that presumes some level of respect, caution and restraint that is not generally being shown by modern liberals.
"But you assume Trump's statements are literally what he wants to enact."
I am exhausted by all of the requests by Trump supporters to somehow magically read the tea leaves and interpret what Trump really means to do, while ignoring everything he consistently says he will do.
Like how Trump claimed he sexually assaulted women, then many women came forward and said, yes, he sexually assaulted them, and now we are expected to not believe Trump then, and not believe any of these dozen or so women, but instead only believe Trump today, who of course would never possibly be trying to deny something that's true but politically (and maybe criminally) damaging to himself.
How about we just go back to people running for office actually saying what they intend to do, and voters taking them at face value?
(Which, by the way, is surprisingly close to how most politicians actually behave. George W. promised to cut taxes, and cut taxes. Obama actually passed something embodying a lot of his health care ideas and negotiated with our enemies like Iran. There are many other examples of politicians actually trying to do what they promised, so I think it's a little dangerous to assume a politician won't actually try to do what he says he will do.)
In one breath, you say that the problem with how I view Trump is that I take him at his word. In the next, you accuse me of caricaturing his positions. The problem I have engaging with your argument is that I cannot crawl inside your head to discover what your perceptions of Donald Trump are, and those appear to be the only terms on which you're comfortable discussing Donald Trump.
But of course, the bigger problem here is that I'm not here to convince you not to support Donald Trump. I hope you won't. But if you do: fine. Sam Altman does not agree with you. He likens Trump to a dictator. If you're a Trump supporter, you are not the audience to whom my argument is addressed.
> His was a joke campaign. And yet he took the nomination from the party establishment, almost effortlessly. He will do it again. The forces aligned against him in the GOP proved themselves impotent.
IMHO The forces against Trump acted too late. In a field with 17 candidates, one of whom appeals to a significant percentage of the base, the outlier will usually win. I wouldn't be surprised if the RNC forces out weaker candidates earlier in the process next cycle.
> It's part of a wave of populist nationalism that we can recognize in many countries
Who's "we"? Learned economists/sociologists, or internet randomers?
Trump wants to "make america great again", Brexiters want to regain their sovereignty from an unaccountable other; they aren't the same thing.
> in effect, for American Fascism
Which way do you think the country was going before Trump came along? Greater freedom, accountability and transparency of government? Does prism, Snowden etc not mean anything?
No, they're not the same thing. #MAGA is the American populist nationalist movement. Brexit is the British populist nationalist movement. As you have adroitly detected, they are in fact two different countries.
But I'm glad you brought Snowden up. Because that gives me the opportunity to remind you that one of Donald Trump's campaign promises is to put Edward Snowden to death.
FBI report. Of course, it's a "joke" that Hillary "can't recall." Even though, "The statement drew laughter from the room which quickly died off when the Secretary kept talking in a terse manner, sources said. Clinton said Assange, after all, was a relatively soft target, “walking around” freely and thumbing his nose without any fear of reprisals from the United States. Clinton was upset about Assange’s previous 2010 records releases, divulging secret U.S. documents about the war in Afghanistan in July and the war in Iraq just a month earlier in October, sources said."
Your comment is a lot of projection of why people might support Trump. I'm not a fan of Trump, and my vote would go to Gary Johnson, but I hope Trump wins. Here's why:
1. I'm gay. Hillary Clinton has campaigned against gay marriage here entire career. Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (not coincidentally on the day I stopped being a democrat.) Trump doesn't care about homosexuality (literally when asked what he would do if he found out an employee was gay he said "it makes no difference"). While HRC supporters like to portray him as anti-gay and wanting to overturn the decision legalizing gay marriage, that's not honest. He correctly disagrees with the basis on which the decision was made, which is different from disagreeing on the outcome. (There really is no power for government to regulate marriage, especially at the federal level.)
So, I hope Trump wins because Hillary is the anti-gay bigot between the two.
I'm not even going to get into the allegations of racism because that boy-who-cried wolf has been going on since Obama got elected and merely disagreeing with him makes you a "racist" now.
2. The claim that Trump represents "american facsism" is a misrepresentation of Fascism. Fascism is an economic system whereby the economy is privately owned but controlled dictatorially by a central government. That means Obamacare ("private" insurance companies, total control over the government) and the GM takeover are examples of American Fascism. The total surveillance society we have under Obama and W and would continue under Hillary is fascist.
To portray this as "liberalism" vs "fascsim" is wrong, and more right if you reverse the roles. (at least Trump is a bit economically liberal.)
3. You guys seem to grab "code phrases" and repeat them as mantras. The one you used is "existential threat to democracy". Remember in 2000 when Gore lost the election and we had 8 years of W as a result? Remember the massive scandal about voting fraud and how widespread it was? That's a literal threat to democracy. Like the Snowden revelations it was news for awhile, and there was talk of reform, but nothing was ever done.
How can there be a democracy when the votes are not even honestly counted? How about the fact that we cannot audit the software of the counting machines?
Isn't that a literal threat to democracy? Much more serious than some obnoxious reality TV star who's slightly more economically liberal than a woman whose entire career has been beset with scandal and allegations of misconduct-- almost all of which were just proven true with email leaks? Who had an investigation by the FBI where the agents say the outcome was predetermined? Isn't that level of corruption a serious existential threat to democracy?
You don't have to agree with me, that's fine- MY objection is to this delusion that there is a only one way to look at this and anyone who disagrees is somehow evil.
I'ma gay guy who wants to legally marry and I'm not going to vote for someone who has denied me my rights.
This is such absurd mental gymnastics, I think this amounts to trolling.
1. Hillary never voted against marriage equality as a senator. You blame her for what her husband did in 1996, which he has since said was a mistake. Do you hold any of the over 300 Republicans who voted in favor of DOMA accountable? Do you hold any of the Republicans to this day who disagree with the Obergefell ruling, including Donald Trump, and want to unwind it at a local level?
Saying Hillary is a bigot is demonstrably wrong, at least she is completely committed to the Obergefell ruling at the national and local level. Unlike Trump who has clearly said he does not favor gay marriage.
And yes, Trump is a blatant racist. You have to be exceptionally oblivious to ignore even the recent examples of birtherism, and the Central Park 5 - who by the way are innocent and Trump still said last week nope, nope, they were guilty. He's a loon or he's a con, take your pick.
3. Wrong, something was done. Counties across the country got conned into buying fancy electronic voting machines, which are now sufficiently obsolete the companies that sold them do not exist, do not support that hardware anymore, and we're at a net higher risk than we were before. We had a bunch of high tech nut cases who sold governments across the country a bill of goods. Next time, try pen and paper.
> Trump doesn't care about homosexuality (literally when asked what he would do if he found out an employee was gay he said "it makes no difference").
Yeah, right. You do know that Trump wants to appoint clones of Scalia to the Supreme Court, right[1]? The same Scalia who was opposed to gay marriage and gay rights? [2]
> I'm a gay guy who wants to legally marry and I'm not going to vote for someone who has denied me my rights.
... but you don't mind supporting someone who will continue to deny you your rights?
>(There really is no power for government to regulate marriage, especially at the federal level.)
That might be true in theory, but the federal government has pretty unrestricted power to e.g. say gay marriage spouses "don't count" for purposes of SS benefits, for income taxation, for adoption benefits, etc.
There are a lot of insightful comments here, I'll respond to a few:
> It's part of a wave of populist nationalism that we can recognize in many countries.
True, HRC too makes many, many appeals to populist sentiments. Hers is less of a "National Greatness" populism, mainly because Trump has cornered the market for that in this election.
Trump has appealed to all the people who buy American cars because they are American or who think that eating a burrito will give them diarrhea (and assume that all people who routinely eat burritos must be plagued by it constantly), etc. etc.
I see this as less of a threat because frankly most of those people are simply old, and they are dying off rapidly. HRC and Obama support gay marriage today because enough of them died off to make homophobia a losing political position.
In the next four years, many more will die off, and that element of society that idealizes 1950s America will be much smaller. Though there is a younger generation that is sympathetic to the 1950s narrative... The television show Mad Men has been hugely popular, and its protagonist is essentially a more handsome Donald Trump. He grabs women and kisses them, he's erratic, he's loud, he's a womanizer, a self-saboteur. This television show captured the imagination of millennials because Don Draper is unlike most young men today. It's that same virility and unapologetic machismo that has led Trump voters to rally behind him. How can we go from being a society that loves Don Draper to a society that hates Don Trump? I don't think it's possible, and I think Trump's ideas will be around for a while even in the younger generation, albeit with a different spokesperson. This is why focusing on the surface layer of Trump is a mistake and why we should be addressing the deeper themes that are going to be alive and well no matter what happens in November.
We'd previously had a lot of presidents who tried to embody the cowboy aesthetic. GWB, born in Connecticut, talked about how much he loves "cold beer and barbecue", owns a ranch, etc. Chris Matthews claims that the winner is always the one the American people can picture squinting into a sunset.
> tens of millions of people who will cast a vote, in effect, for American Fascism
Totally agree, I believe a vote for Trump or HRC counts as this.
> Trump will spend four years running a campaign against the legitimacy of the 2016 election, and will probably have little trouble capturing the nomination in 2020.
TV news is now predominantly entertainment. This is a problem that goes deeper than Trump. It seems natural that an entertainment industry guy like Trump would want to get in on it now that there's zero need for any journalistic merit.
"I see this as less of a threat because frankly most of those people are simply old, and they are dying off rapidly."
You are also out of touch with reality like Altman admitted about liberals not understanding almost half of America. He was right that they've totally ignored their motivations. The Trump supporters are mostly Republicans and people in rural areas. These people have kids, raise them to mostly have similar beliefs, watch similar media that's pro-Right, and often vote for same people. Trump supporters in Mid-South are across all ages with more older ones but plenty in 20's-30's. Almost all the rural people I've asked are pro-Trump because they'd never vote for Democrats but especially not Hillary. They think Trump is more likely to deal with things they care about than a "snobby city-dweller" who doesn't care about them at all.
This will take a long time to die off thanks to the effects of isolation and close-knit communities on new generations. It's not going away in 4 years. Best thing to do is get some Republican candidates in that tap into that who aren't as dangerous as Trump for next election.
Highly disingenuous. First of all, even Bernie Sanders agrees that having open borders will causes wages to plummet. It's the dream of the Koch brothers.
Second, Hillary didn't vote for 10 ft wall and never proposed a 10ft wall. She voted for the Secure Fence act of 2006:
I don't disagree regarding Trump, but where do we draw the line? Should any employer who's executive board strongly denounces Trump's views and rhetoric fire employees who support him via donations? Should Google suppress his website?
I don't think Trump is the real threat to society, but rather that he is able to garner such widespread support in American society in 2016, and I don't think that's going to be fixed by taking punitive actions against his supporters.
Agreed - open up any religious text. There are a few pages that make Trump's talking points sound progressive by comparison. We don't marginalize religious donors. We should not marginalize Trump donors. It is a dangerous and divisive sort of tribalism that we should not engage in.
If religion X rules the world, it's possible that there will be bad consequences. If Trump becomes President, it's possible there will be bad consequences. Should our confidence score for either of these eventualities determine how we treat those who think the opposite? I think that is at the heart of these issues.
@ggggtez Those who think that Trump is the most divisive and dangerous candidate ever have short memories or don't remember Richard Nixon or Barry Goldwater. I certainly do not support Trump and wholly disagree with whatever little bits of policy that he has discussed throughout his campaign, but I also try to be historically honest about context.
For example, some might forget the things that Bill Clinton did before and during his Presidency which were opportunistic, sexist, and at times, borderline racist. For example, things like personally overseeing the execution of a mentally deficient inmate to show that he was tough on crime (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Ray_Rector), or chasing a woman around his office and biting her (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juanita_Broaddrick).
I realize Hillary is not Bill, however she supported him throughout his career through numerous serious ethical and character missteps, never left him, and now has him stumping for her on the campaign trail, which sort of makes her a de facto supporter of his behavior. Is Thiel's support of Trump really so bad that he should be ostracized and cut off? That doesn't solve the root problem of Trump's support, and it's not something I believe has any place in an enlightened society.
Theil's not an employee. What are you suggesting when asking where do we draw the line? To require defining how racist is racist enough? I think we all know the line for Trump was crossed. Money is political speech, which Theil can legally do. But no one has to accept his collaboration.
> To require defining how racist is racist enough?
That word just never ceases to be a source of power and comfort to you, doesn't it? Liberals have used that word too often to shut down debate and dehumanize their opponent or victim. We're done giving you that super power anymore. Now you'll have to make real arguments.
It's not racist to wish to enforce current immigration law. It's not racist to wish to protect the jobs and lives of American citizens.
Hey, why didn't you talk about what a homophobe he is? Well, I'm sure you'll use it next time, when Thiel is not the subject of your outrage.
I can only point to my own government and it's laws (Sweden), but "threat to society" is not an exception in our free speech laws. Threat to individuals or identifiable groups (ie, minorities) are.
There is a distinction between someone speaking words of non-violent revolution, ie a explicit threat to society, and words that encourage violence against a group of people. The first is not illegal, and both the law and the philosophy that created that law do not make claims that it should be illegal. The second form is, which is a direct result of that post-World-War-2 liberal philosophy. It is important to distinguish the two, and free speech laws is a good hint that society has already done this in the past.
In general, groups that want to suspend tolerance do so because they believe tolerating such behavior/people poses a threat to society. The people you are telling to read more liberal philosophy clearly believe that the real threat to a tolerant society is suspending tolerance itself.
Just to start things off, you do realize that firing him would appear to be illegal? At least, assuming there are no arcane reasons why California's laws do not apply here:
Protects employees who engage or participate in politics or who become candidates for public office. An employer may not make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation or policy that forbids, controls, directs or tends to direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.
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On to the philosophical point, why not go back to Karl Popper? If we look carefully, though, we see that he predicated this intolerance of intolerance on protection from violence. He was not afraid of any intolerance of words so much as those who would close their ears and swing their fists. So it was more a sort of right of self defense against anyone who would use violence and not persuasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
Note how his argument is predicated on the need to protect people from violence. Unless that is a need there simply isn't a reason to ban things.
But wait, the Trump supporters have been violent, right? That was all over the news, I'm sure. Everyone saw that. So we have good reason to suppress a violent movement now, do we not? Well, maybe, if we didn't see this:
Wait, no, that guy made ACORN videos. Can't be trusted! Must be fake! But, umm, we've seen that lady before. At about 17:40 in this video, you see the same person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uMzYaO2syE
You can even see a tiny mole on her chest in the same place. She's there, blocking the road and doing everything possible to delay the cops from clearing that out. But how do we know who she really works for? Well, what do you know, she's listed on the FEC website, they can tell us! (We can trust the FEC... right?)
Spender Recipient State Purpose Disbursement date Amount
STAND UP FOR OHIO PAC RODRIGUEZ, ZULEMA AZ REIMBURSEMENT FOR T-SHIRT PRINTING 06-10-2016 $320.00
STAND UP FOR OHIO PAC RODRIGUEZ, ZULEMA AZ POLITICAL CONSULTING FEE 06-01-2016 $17,500.00
MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION ZULEMA RODRIGUEZ AZ TRAVEL EXP 05-24-2016 $1,108.97
MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION RODRIGUEZ, ZULEMA AZ REIMBURSEMENT 05-24-2016 $1,108.97
HILLARY FOR AMERICA RODRIGUEZ, ZULEMA AZ PHONE 02-29-2016 $30.00
HILLARY FOR AMERICA RODRIGUEZ, ZULEMA AZ PAYROLL 02-29-2016 $1,610.24
In other news, she brags about her work at other protests where you may have seen pictures of a very injured cop. Lest we forget, remember that they also framed Sanders supporters for some of this stuff.
Given that this violence was deliberate, do you also, based on that philosophic reasoning, support the same censure of anyone who supports Hillary? It would appear to be the logical conclusion to your argument given the campaign's deliberate violence, would it not?
For the record, I find Trump a deplorable candidate. But the very idea that people would attempt to force us into a one party system by means of organized violence or excommunication from society won't sit well with many people. Especially not when it also appears that people are also herein advocating an action that appears to be flat-out illegal!
In addition to being QUITE POSSIBLY ILLEGAL, it would also be QUITE THE MAGIC TRICK, since Peter Thiel is not an employee of Sam Altman, and the organization Sam Altman runs is famous for being built around the essay "How To Start A Startup", which suggests that a unique strength of startups versus normal companies is that they aren't bound by discrimination laws, and so Paul Graham can choose not to start companies with mothers of young children.
If you do not believe that Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, then, while I implore you to reconsider, I am content to agree to disagree.
But you might take that disagreement up first with Paul Graham and Sam Altman. They do not agree with you. They aggressively don't agree with you. They compare Donald Trump with a fascist dictator. I think they're right about Trump, and therefore that they're very wrong about continuing to endorse Thiel.
I would be doing Sam Altman no favors to pretend otherwise.
You sound just like the republicans in 2008 when a gasp black president was elected. Oh dear, the world is ending, the end times are coming! What's the world coming to! We are doomed. A socialist Kenyan Muslim is in the whitehouse!
What actually happened? Nothing. If you looked at the country for the last 8 years you wouldn't be able to tell whether a republican or democratic was in the whitehouse.
Same thing will happen if trump gets in. A lot of talk, but little action.
You really think that opposing Obama because he's black is comparable to opposing Trump because he incites violence and encourages racism and xenophobia and speaks highly of dictators and brags about sexual assault?
I consider Obama one of the best most rational presidents the US have ever had.
But that rationality also gave us execution by drone without trial.
Don't take a beautiful and cool facade for anything than that. Behind the scenes its raw power and they are all, everyone of them, in the game for the power.
I'm not asserting that in any way Obama is perfect and have no problem with people criticizing his actions. I do take issue with comparing opposition of Obama based on his race with opposition of Trump based on his positions.
It does not follow that because a black president did an acceptable job that any president would do an acceptable job. Nor is opposing a president for being black morally equivalent to opposing a president for the things he says he wants to do.
Obama also lied about a lot and yet the world didn't end. Something about "transparent administration" ring a bell? "Closing Guantanamo" perhaps? Doesn't this set the precedent that you can't really believe anything a candidate says before he is elected? To be fair I don't single out Obama for lying. All candidates do it.which is why I don't worry about trump.
And again, I am in no way saying that Obama is above criticism. I'm saying that opposing him for being black is not at all the same as opposing Trump for his positions.
I think it's also not wise to treat all broken campaign promises equally. There's a big difference in voting for someone expecting that they won't accomplish everything they promise and voting for someone hoping that they won't accomplish everything that they promise. The former is hope that your candidate will do what they say. The latter is hope that your candidate is an outright liar or incompetent.
I find it so bizarre that supporters look at Trump and say, "oh, he's just making empty promises and he'll never do that." His empty promises are that he'll violate the constitution to enshrine religious discrimination into laws! It seems so fucked up to vote for someone hoping that they're just a pandering amoral liar who won't deliver on their promises.
Republicans were not opposed to Obama because of his race, though for the past 8 years that has been the excuse to avoid talking about the issues.
And once again, Liberals are not talking about Trumps positions, but merely calling him racist and sexist.
"It seems so fucked up to vote for someone hoping that they're just a pandering amoral liar who won't deliver on their promises."
Well, the charitable view of Hillary supporters is that this is what they are doing. Otherwise, you really think journalists should be taken out by drone for publishing things embarrassing to hillary?
You really think free speech rights should be taken away from people who make a movie critical of hillary? (That's what "Citizens United" was about - the supreme court defended free speech for a group that made a movie critical of hillary-- and since then we've been hearing how evil that ruling is.)
hey now, the blame for Guantanomo not being closed falls directly on congressional republicans, not on Obama's lack of trying. this is the case for most of his failed endeavors (nominating court justices ring a bell?). there's plenty of stuff he does deserve blame for. most notable i think is that although he effectively ended the Iraq war, he rescinded his decision to end the Afghanistan war in 2014. regardless, Obama and Trump are not in the same category in any respect, not even as politicians.
You reinforce my point. The blame for what goes on in Washington does not fall on the president! The older I get the more I think "commander in chief" is just a fancy title for "talking bobble head". We're not electing a leader. We're electing a media personality.
> I consider Obama one of the best most rational presidents the US have ever had.
> But that rationality also gave us execution by drone without trial.
Well, no; technology gave us drones, not rationality. The US has always killed what it identifies as enemy combatants without a trial, whether its through war, covert operations or drones. Obama at least doesn't match the death count of the Bush years.
>> But that rationality also gave us execution by drone without trial.
The point with smart weapons like drones is that they kill people in a few meters radius. They don't take out a whole village, or more.
If a country should be in war and/or hunt irregular terror organizations is debatable. It should be debated.
But complaining about one of the most humane (relative the alternatives) ways of waging war seems just weird.
The negative thing I have to say about Obama is that he didn't do more to stop the horror in Syria, with chemical weapons, millions driven from the country and hundreds of thousands dead. But I am not certain I have a better solution either.
I understand the point about smart weapons it does not change the fact that the US is doing targeted killing without trial or are still keep people in guantanamo and so many other things that we are fine with.
Yet somehow the rhetorics of Trump trumps all that.
Well Trump openly claimed he wanted to torture terrorist suspects and kill terrorists' families. So yeah, I think that's worse than targeted drone strikes on terrorists. While I have significant concerns about the drone program, I also recognize that we are at war with certain groups and capturing these people in order to get them to trial is mostly infeasible. I don't consider drone strikes to be worse than special forces strikes. I do consider torture and murdering families to be considerably worse.
Please explain this, I really don't understand this argument:
>> I find Guantanamo morally indefensible.
Guantanamo -- afaik, you can keep enemy combatants in prison until after the war. E.g. the conflict in Afghanistan is still active. So what is the problem?
(Then we have the whole point about the people at Guantanamo being combatants that didn't follow the war of laws. Do they have any rights, at all? Please use very good primary sources if you somehow argue that combatants that targets civilians have more rights than prisoners of war... That is contradicting the idea of those laws.)
The fundamental problem is that we are not at war with any nation here. We have repeatedly stated that we are at war with terrorism. So we've got a bunch of citizens of foreign nations that we took captive on the suspicion that they were engaged in terrorist activity, but we can't prove it. They aren't really prisoners of war, and there is no war at the end of which we can reasonably expect an exchange of prisoners. They're stuck in indefinite limbo with no trial and no expectation of release.
I don't know how we can defend indefinite detention of people on the suspicion that they might have engaged in terrorist activity. It's basically just kidnapping to hold them this way forever. I think there's a legitimate argument that taking them captive to interrogate them is reasonable, and perhaps even some moderate time of detention. Giving them a trial would also be reasonable. I don't think there's a legitimate argument for holding foreign nationals without trial indefinitely.
Your whole position is based on a claim that there must exist a nation state to have a "war".
You also claim that the laws of war are not applicable to the remaining types of military conflicts (with clans/tribes, any organization that is geographically spread, etc, etc).
Do you have references? The world's law experts don't seem to agree...
(Note that by your definition we need a new word for civil wars -- at least one side is not a nation state. We also need a new word for most of the military conflicts through history -- and today. And so on.)
You also claim that the Taliban never was a government? They had control of a large part of Afghanistan. And they are still fighting, along with their allies. Or do you claim that a war stops when one side lose control of their capital?
(Also, you shouldn't argue against what politicians say in public speeches, for the same reason you shouldn't believe advertisements...)
You just repeated your position and ignored what I wrote. I will assume that means you have no serious arguments.
If you really don't understand: A serious argument would be showing that it is not a war situation -- or that you have to put enemy combatants into a court before you can shoot at them.
(Edit: To argue that it is wrong or illegal to declare war and hunt e.g. alQ is not relevant either. I made that distinction in the previous comment -- and didn't take a position.)
Does painting all of your opposition's supporters as racist/sexist/xenophobic/ignorant/violent count as inciting violence? Or is protesters attacking Trump supporters across the country Trump's fault too?
I think that if any other celebrity said what he said, you'd think it's a little off color, but not bragging about criminal actions. His statements verbatim do not imply anything criminal, unless you fill in extra words yourself.
If you don't hate the guy, you could easily fill in extra words the other way, that is, to make it sound like he's saying something less ambiguous and more reasonable.
So ignore the part about sexual assault and there's still a laundry list of stuff that Trump has said on the record that is terrifying in a major party political candidate. Complementing dictators for running countries well? Proposing a ban on Muslims in direct contradiction of the bill of rights?
As I understand, even at the farthest point he was talking about non-citizens of this country. I don't personally believe we need a reason to stop a non-citizen from coming here. I also don't see any reference in the Bill of Rights concerning that - it's certainly a presidential power that has been exercised before.
It is worth noting he has since backed (evolved if you will) that position down to "extreme vetting" to "certain parts of the world" (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, etc.)
There has never to my knowledge been a president who banned immigration based on religion. If it's happened it was unconstitutional then as well. Certainly it's within the government's scope to ban immigration but not based on a religious test.
Did you link to the wrong proclamation? There are no countries even specified there. It's basically a proclamation that we won't allow in people who committed war crimes.
And there's nothing legally wrong about blocking immigration from a certain country or countries. We could block immigration from Italy and Poland and it wouldn't be unconstitutional despite the fact that they are predominantly Catholic. The religious test itself is what's unconstitutional.
> And if the religion condones crimes against humanity?
No. If you want to block people who say they are against homosexuality, that might be legal. If you want to block people who say their religion is against homosexuality, that's not legal.
The subtle differences matter. Similarly, if you're hiring for a warehouse job, you can discriminate against people who cannot safely lift 50lb packages repeatedly. You cannot discriminate explicitly against people in wheelchairs, even though that group in general will have a lot of trouble lifting 50 lb packages overhead.
Yes, it is equivalent. The fact that you are deluded to think that you can change anybody's mind by repeating this "racism xenophobia sexual assault" mantra which literally everybody has already heard million times by now just shows that you are equally stuck in your ways and irrational as the people you oppose. It's knee jerking on both sides.
And, speaking of Obama, you guys reminded me of this beauty created during the previous campaign:
It's not comparable to oppose a potential president for being black and opposing a potential president the things he claims he wants to do. You can oppose Obama's policies and statements all day, and that is comparable to opposing Trump based on his positions. Opposing Obama because he's black is just overt racism and equivalent to opposing Trump for having small hands.
Nobody opposed Obama for being black. Not even racists in the south. They couldn't care about that because they were too upset with the policies he proposed.
The only people talking about Obamas race where Obama supporters who wanted to avoid substantive discussion about the issues.
Those same people are running around calling Trump a racist now.
The entire scenario here was posited as this being equivalent to when republicans were terrified of a black president being elected. You might not agree that this was the problem, but it's the scenario being discussed.
For the record, the whole "Kenyan, Muslim" stuff was overly racist. Almost no one came out and said that they were opposed to Obama because they were racist. But when you falsely accuse a black man of being a secret Kenyan Muslim, you're just racist.
> I think they're right about Trump, and therefore that they're very wrong about continuing to endorse Thiel.
I think it's a very slippery slope to base endorsement on a person's political actions. It raises some important questions:
-Do you stop endorsing and associating with everyone who supports Trump? Where do you draw the line logically?
-Why can't people with opposing views work together and agree to disagree on the elections and let the votes speak?
-I imagine Trump haters and Hillary haters have very strong reasons,facts,opinions and speculative thinking to backup their claims that the other candidate is a threat to democracy, will start WW3, corrupt practices etc. This should lead to well informed debate as it seems to be happening here but without calling for distancing from person X for endorsing a different candidate. What will you achieve by distancing people based on differing views? A monoculture? Differing views and discussion on the views is one of the things that makes a democracy work.
I believe Sam is right on this. It's Thiel's money, he can support whichever candidate he wants (it's legal). His views differ from Sam's and PG's, and people seem to extend it to YC as an organization and call for distancing Thiel from YC. It achieves nothing, and if anything weakens democracy.
> I think it's a very slippery slope to base endorsement on a person's political actions.
Is it though? Let's take it a bit further: would YC be expected to continue to endorse, say, a confirmed and outspoken Fascist?
How about someone who had donated to organizations with an explicit, stated objective of reducing the rights of women and minorities? Or supporting a political organization which intends to carry out ethnic cleansing?
Are we to believe there is no line to be drawn, anywhere on this continuum?
> Are we to believe there is no line to be drawn, anywhere on this continuum?
The problem is that the line being proposed here separates roughly 50% of the population of America, possibly more. You are basically saying "I know that even though I may technically be in a minority, my moral convictions are so strong that I must impose them on you and deter you from your way of thinking by any means necessary, even if it means firing you from your job."
> I think it's a very slippery slope to base endorsement on a person's political actions.
What exactly else do you propose? Endorsing people based on their actions (all actions are political; no actions are apolitical; that's just how it works, you can't quit the game) is the only ethical position which makes any sense at all.
This has gone far enough. The only effective response is to judge by actions and refuse to work with any Y Combinator company until Thiel is fired (and Altman resigns).
And yes; I want working with Thiel to be a large net economic loss, because I believe that's the language he understands. This is the only effective tool I have to try and do that. It's nowhere near enough, but it's what I've got.
Let people have differing opinions and continue working with them. If Thiel is doing something illegal, and goes against the spirit of the Constitution, call him out for and push for legal action.
> The only effective response is to judge by actions and refuse to work with any Y Combinator company until Thiel is fired (and Altman resigns).
Fire Thiel for supporting Trump with a donation? Seriously? What is this, a dictatorship? Everyone who disagrees is silenced? You want Altman to resign? Genuine question : Do you hear yourself?
Thiel cannot be fired by Sam Altman because he is not an employee of Sam Altman. His relationship with Altman is that of an endorsee, and all that's being asked of Altman is that he stop endorsing members of Trump's campaign.
> His relationship with Altman is that of an endorsee,
Noted. Should have been careful there.
> and all that's being asked of Altman is that he stop endorsing members of Trump's campaign.
Why? It makes no sense to me. Why can't people have their opinions and agree to disagree on ones they don't agree on. Don't you feel such calls go against free speech?
They can. What they cannot do is work effectively to prevent bigotry, sexism, and the destruction of the American economy and political fabric while simultaneously endorsing and working with people doing the exact opposite. People keep dancing around the fact that Thiel is not simply a Trump supporter, or even just a Trump donor. He is a Trump campaign surrogate --- a member of the campaign.
I believe Thiel only responds to economic pressure.
I am intending to use my economic leverage, and advocating others do the same, by refusing to work with Thiel and his enablers, which include Y Combinator and companies funded by them. (It's not just the Trump thing, by any means, that's the end of a very very very long list.)
Altman has also shown himself to be – at best – unaware of the moral dimensions of his actions, and that's not someone I want to have to deal with. So I won't and I suggest that you don't.
Same reason I won't work for an oil supermajor. I don't want to be party to pollution.
Everyone else is free to act as they choose, but I hope enough people agree with me that it weights the needle. If companies can't hire talent, they die; so what talent can do is refuse.
>They compare Donald Trump with a fascist dictator.
A bit childish, considering the slot the candidate is running for is not in a dictatorship. If you think Trump could convert the US to a dictatorship, I would like to see the evidence supporting this.
Nobody ever ran for the Presidency of a dictatorship, that's kinda like their defining feature.
I'd point to Putin, Erdogan and Victor Orban as current strongmen who were elected democratically and slowly transformed their countries towards authoritarianism.
The parallels are undeniable: a bit of hatred against the "other", a lot of complaining about the media (and calling for laws to stop their "lying"), the hyper-masculine rhetoric and so on.
From what I understand of the US Constitution, there is a very good degree of separation of powers along with checks and balances to make this very difficult to implement in a practical sense, and would necessarily require both houses of congress as well as the supreme court to all be complicit in the act, thus requiring more than just one immoral person to pull off.
Indeed, but it's not one person. It's him and apparently 40% of the population, and large parts of the Republican establishment have also fallen in line (and many more would have if another 5% had switched to his side and made him the frontrunner).
These things don't happen overnight, and the single most important firewall may be the presidential term limit, and the absence of any similar office (like Russia's "prime minister" that Putin switched to when he was term-limited, installing Medvedev as his puppet in the meantime).
I'd hope that the limit is such a binary line that 8 year's aren't enough to change that perception. But who knows? Maybe he could have created a narrative to legitimize another term. Some sort of crisis... The usual.
But, luckily, the worst now seems unlikely to happen. It still seems important to run up the score, and then we'll see how his party deals with it. Ideologically, at least on economics, there isn't much left of what was called conservatism a year ago.
> Indeed, but it's not one person. It's him and apparently 40% of the population, and large parts of the Republican establishment have also fallen in line (and many more would have if another 5% had switched to his side and made him the frontrunner).
I don't agree with this 40% thing because it's not sufficient to say that because they support him, they support his worst ideas. Maybe they support his best ideas, and have a high degree of confidence that the worst will not happen. Nobody has foreknowledge of what a President will actually do in office. We can choose to use our best judgment and apply it while voting - that is why everyone gets one vote, to exercise that judgment.
To argue that those who are voting for him are in favor of racism, bigotry, etc. is a generalization. Would you generalize this way about followers of any religion? Many religions advocate some oppressive ideas, but we give followers the benefit of the doubt beforehand by saying that unless proved otherwise, let's first assume that they are peace-loving tolerant people of faith who believe only the "good parts" of this book, and not the violent parts. We don't seem to be doing that in politics, and I think that's wrong.
This is the situation: Identity politics makes gross hyperbole socially acceptable with ~50% of the population and "fightin words" with the other half.
Again: I actually appreciate the comments here strenuously suggesting that Trump is no real threat to democracy. This is the sentiment Altman is making room for by continuing to endorse Thiel. Their relationship works to normalize Donald Trump.
If Sam Altman is comfortable with that, he should remain affiliated with Thiel.
I am really confused by your comments here. You keep invoking Sam and Paul, but what does their business relationship with Thiel have to do with political support? Should they delete him from their contact list, too? What level of separation would you, tptacek, require of someone to disassociate themselves from a political opponent?
Your comments are infuriating in another way, because you're not actually debating what many people here are trying to talk about. You are dodging any defense of your assertions that Trump would be like a dictator, while backhandedly repeating it. That's not a conversation. That's preaching, and dodging.
Postscript: Trump can only "act like a dictator" so far as he can abuse the massive expansion of presidential power granted as much by the Democratic party as from Republicans. But I won't defend that here. I'll just tell you that other, smarter people think it too, and you should ask them about it.
>Your comments are infuriating in another way, because you're not actually debating what many people here are trying to talk about.
tptacek is focusing on the article. He has a very simple argument that Altman is acting shamefully.
This argument depends on Altman believing that Trump is a threat to democracy. It does not depend on anyone else believing that Trump is a threat to democracy.
tptacek wants to settle that, rather than get mired in arguing about Trump.
I'm not discussing whether Trump would be a dictator because that's not my argument. If you believe Trump wouldn't be a dictator, I am entirely comfortable with your support of Peter Thiel.
No one has the influence to convert the US to anything overnight. However, I do think that normalizing the language of authoritarianism can have long-term negative effects on our democratic process.
The same thing can be said about the normalization of globalization and technological progress which allowed the politicians and the companies who pay for their campaigns to trade jobs for cheap flat screens.
Ignoring one just because the other is more obvious isn't any better in my book.
No need to assume that I'm ignoring anything. I'm willing to accept globalization and technological progress despite their many imperfections because they have real, tangible benefits to humanity. On the other hand, the only person that stands to gain from authoritarianism is its leader.
Yeah so you are willing to accept the collateral damage of those who don't stand to benefit and whose lives are being destroyed from that. This is just another version of the same. Not better, not worse, just different.
Trumps authoritarianism is much less threatening than the same rhetoric from Obama or Hillary.
A lot of people are advocating authoritarianism- in fact thats the point of this whole thread- whether we should "excommunicate" Peter Theil.
But they don't seem to realize that leftism is essentially more authoritarian than rightism. Rightists want economic freedom, Leftists don't. (On social freedom neither of them want it- which is why Obama didn't try to legalize gay marriage, and picked Joe Biden the architect of the war on teen pot smokers as a running mate.)
Why don't liberals recognized that Hillary and Obama are authoritarians?
There's historical evidence of people being elected, in democracies, and turning them into dictatorships. Part of the process looks the same as what Trump is doing. (e.g. saying the election is rigged therefore calling the process illegitimate, saying he'd put his political opponent in jail).
If that doesn't persuade you, what kind of evidence would persuade you?
Oh, I'm persuaded- just look at the actions of W and Obama - both moved the presidency closer to dictatorship.
As for elections not being legitimate, that clam was made repeatedly, with merit, after 2000. The democrats lost, and they lost due to widespread fraud.
Finally, Hillary belongs in jail. Basically all of the allegations have been proven by the wikileaks email releases.
When your opponent is a blatant criminal it's quite fair to say "you'll be in jail" and quite different than saying "I'm going to jail you for disagreeing with me" which is what people seem to want to clam he said (so basically they are lying about him. If he's so obviously reprehensible, why the need to lie about him?)
"Basically all of the allegations have been proven by the wikileaks email releases."
Hmm. Interesting. What allegations do you think were proven? I was under the (mistaken?) impression that they mostly proved things that seem bad, nothing that was specifically criminal. It's not like we didn't know the details of the whole email situation beforehand.
Also, thought experiment - how would you react if Hillary Clinton were to say that she would appoint a special prosecutor to jail Trump for sexual harassment?
Edit: BTW, afaik, the democrats' allegations in 2000 came after the results of the election. They didn't repeatedly claim ahead of time that the election was rigged. Not sure if this is a huge difference, just putting it out there.
Also odd considering Trump spent the entire nomination campaign shilling his deal making abilities, and how he would lead by consensus instead of executive orders.
I don't see how YC denying Peter Thiel is anything more than political theatre it has no bearing on whether Trump will win or not.
All these distractions when the US has two states CT and IL in near bankruptcy due to pensions being 200%+ over state revenues, and a frightening national debt meaning Feds will likely not be able to bail them out. Wish everybody could panic over that not Thiel being involved with YC.
What is next? Perhaps YC should ask applicants for political affiliation?
I think you're wrong and I think the reason YC will not drop Theil is very practical: Theil is valuable for the underlying goal of the program (money) and dropping Theil would also alienate a huge (yes, yuuuge) swath of investors.
People --- more of them on my side of this debate than yours --- say this a lot. But I think more highly of Sam Altman than to believe he's standing by Peter Thiel, despite Thiel's work to elect someone both Altman and I believe to be an American Mussolini, simply out of financial expedience. It's that basic respect for Altman that motivates me to keep pressing this argument: the effort seems hopeful.
This is the type of thing that really bothers me. Not only is that a ridiculous comparison, it's completely baseless and anti-intellectual. Trump has made a few off hand fascist remarks, but nothing that could substantiate him establishing legal dictatorship. So why even make that comparison? Just fuel the witch hunt?
What, you think someone seeking power is going to stand at a podium and announce "I want a fascist dictatorship"?
He has been relentlessly attacking the legitimacy of democracy, encouraging political violence, stoking racial hatred, and threatening to imprison his opponent. On most days he does all of this before 11am.
No, we can just see right through the gross hyperbole that people are so fond of invoking. It's like the anti-circumcision folks saying things like:
"Circumcision is a barbaric practice in which babies have their genitals violently mutilated by religious nutjobs."
People that have actually been circumcised roll their eyes at such a phrase because it completely disregards the meaning and weight of the words "barbaric", "mutilate", "violent", etc.
I agree that Trump is no Mussolini - however I see why it's tempting to compare them, as they are both slightly comical figures with a great regard for themselves.
The closer parallel would be to another Italian leader: Silvio Berlusconi. He was also a businessman, is also famous for his attitude to women, also authoritarian, etc. Both men are great showmen, and populists who 'speak their minds'.
Of course, any analogy is imperfect - but it seems closer than the whole Mussolini/Stalin/Hitler one.
Saying he's made "a few off hand fascist remarks" is a pretty generous characterization. I'd say he's shown strong contempt for the rule of law and division of powers, has gleefully stoked racist and misogynist resentments to excite his base, and has very literally encouraged violence at his rallies (and is continuing to lay the groundwork for significant election day violence for the first time in a century).
Does any of this mean he could establish a legal dictatorship? I don't know, hopefully not, but I would hardly say the comparisons are baseless.
What strikes me as actually anti-intellectual is the trend among Trump sympathizers (particularly the ones I see on HN and other more cerebral contexts) to refuse to acknowledge that the inflammatory language he's used during the campaign can and already has materially impacted the way millions of Americans perceive and act upon their world.
> to refuse to acknowledge that the inflammatory language he's used during the campaign can and already has materially impacted the way millions of Americans perceive and act upon their world
You're using real numbers here so I assume you're not just making things up. I've not seen those, but if you have those sources I'd like to see them.
Here's the thing. I'm much more concerned with policy than Trump's rhetoric. He's mostly insincere and anyone that has spent time with a politician can see that. His discussions and ideas around policy are as empty and baseless as his threats to build a wall. He's a performer. Not a threat.
It would behoove liberals to focus more on policy and demonstrations of how their candidate can positively change the economy than to continue feigning outrage about the things that come out of Trump's mouth.
How is it baseless and anti-intellectual? If Trump were elected, he would be able to push through an agenda by exercising a significant aggressive minority of the population. This power to summon millions (who call legislators, picket, rally, etc.), who are compelled to participate if only for the spectacle, would be unique among American presidents.
You should direct that question to the person who made the comparison. I agree with it, but I think you'll understand this thread more if you ask the person I'm referencing.
You said both you and Altman felt that way. Maybe you didn't create the comparison but you just repeated it and said you agreed. It's hyperbole like that that makes people not care about your Clinton zealotry.
Our disagreement isn't on the question of Trump's existential threat status, it's on the question of what should be done about it (incidentally, the same disagreement you seem to have with Sam Altman and Paul Graham).
If you have a different solution than tossing out the heathens, I'm all ears. In Sam's blog post the solution he decides on is continuing dialogue. While this may be an imperfect solution, it seems to me a less imperfect solution than purging, as that generally results in communities being destroyed.
As long as an ideology is small enough, completely shunning it's adherents is actually the best strategy, because everyone is susceptible to social pressure.
But I fear that at 40% of the population, and with the social bubble people have build around them, Trump's neo-fascist movement may be beyond the reach of such tactics.
> it's on the question of what should be done about it
Everything that is legal. When, in the past, Republicans advocated trickle-down economics you possibly had a chance to convince people with arguments.
But I'm equally pessimistic about convincing anybody rationally. Trump and his supporters live in a reality completely divorced from any actually existing facts. It's this world with FEMA death camps and vast conspiracies planning to use the national guard to invade Texas and sell it to Mexico. There is no overlap anymore in what sources, what types of arguments, what axiomatic moral laws the two tribes consider valid.
Both strategies seeming comparably useless, I decided at some point that, when my grandchildren ask me in 40 years or so I want to be able to say "I did everything that's legal".
> As long as an ideology is small enough, completely shunning it's adherents is actually the best strategy
Until the thousandth time you use this tactic, and the number of people shunned begins to outnumber the ones doing the shunning.
> when my grandchildren ask me in 40 years or so I want to be able to say "I did everything that's legal".
I'm sorry to hear this. I hope in time you can come to focus on the similarities you have to your fellow humans rather than what sounds like a myopic focus on purely ideological differences.
As I said in GGGP to excuse your actions:
> sometimes a person needs to make mistakes / destroy something beautiful in order to find the next level of understanding
They can agree with that and still continue working with Thiel. You can be against fascism and but still be against creating a society where everyone must get in line politically or else be shunned.
I don't need people to get in line politically. I would be content with them not bundling millions of dollars for Donald Trump before getting up on stage at the RNC and claiming, as Thiel did, to speak for Silicon Valley in claiming that Trump is the only honest candidate in the race. I'm a simple sort of guy. My needs are not complicated.
I think you're making the right argument, I just don't think you're making it super clear.
(I think) what you're saying, is 'There is nothing wrong with supporting an opposing viewpoint. There is a huge problem with supporting Benito Mussolini. Sam Altman has compared Donald Trump to Benito Mussolini. Because of this, Sam should have a huge problem with supporting Donald Trump. Peter Thiel supports Donald Trump. Because of this, Sam should have a huge problem with his association with Peter Thiel.'
Keeping my political views out of the equation, I agree with that line of logic. The problem I think Sam is facing and why I think it's such a difficult issue is this.
Donald Trump is not Benito Mussolini. Unless he wins the presidency, he won't even have a remote opportunity at becoming him. So I think Sam is in sort of a lose-lose situation. On one hand, Sam remains steadfast in his decision, Donald Trump wins the election, Donald Trump enacts changes that make him on par with Benito Mussolini and Sam has now been complicit in the support of someone on par with Benito Mussolini. On the other hand, if Donald Trump loses or even if he wins and is anything less than a Benito Mussolini look-alike, he has effectively suppressed the support of an opposing political viewpoint.
I'm not pretending to know the solution, not even a little bit. I do think it's important to recognize how difficult of situation Sam is in.
That's not in fact the argument I am making. I do not support ostracizing or blacklisting all Trump supporters, just as I wouldn't have supporting ostracizing all Republicans in the wake of our catastrophic war on Iraq. However: I am comfortable with calling on people to divest from investments in the architects of the war on Iraq, like Doug Feith and Donald Rumsfeld, and I am comfortable with calling on Altman to divest from Peter Thiel, a key figure in the Trump campaign.
Altman's ulterior motive here is that it's bad for business if yComb departs from Thiel. And at the end of the day it comes down to money, so regardless of what Altman says, they will never part ways and ultimately become directly competitive with one of SV largest venture investors.
I didn't mean specifically in the comment above, I meant earlier.
'If you do not believe that Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, then, while I implore you to reconsider, I am content to agree to disagree.
But you might take that disagreement up first with Paul Graham and Sam Altman. They do not agree with you. They aggressively don't agree with you. They compare Donald Trump with a fascist dictator. I think they're right about Trump, and therefore that they're very wrong about continuing to endorse Thiel.
I would be doing Sam Altman no favors to pretend otherwise.'
It seemed like you were getting attacked from all angles, so I chose a comment that didn't have much on it. I wasn't trying to attack your argument (from above). I was attempting to put it into a more objective light.
False equivalence to Rumsfeld and Feith (and interesting you leave out Rice and Powell). What about somebody who contributed money to the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004?
I'm glad you brought Rice up, because this site had absolutely no problem calling for a boycott of Dropbox over their inclusion of Rice as a director.
(I don't support that boycott, because I think Rice's role in the Iraq war is far more complicated than that of Rumsfeld or Feith, who are the literal architects of the war plan she consistently criticized. Rice isn't blameless, but she's no Doug Feith.)
I have never heard him claim to speak for Silicon Valley.
The question becomes then, what do you consider your line. Is this about his outsized financial support? What if he gave his RNC speech and only donated $10,000?
Then --- respectfully --- you have never heard him speak in favor of Donald Trump, and you should go watch his speech before arguing about it. It's pretty scary. Maybe after seeing it, you'll understand the vehemence of the anti-Thiel sentiment.
Re-read. "We don’t accept such incompetence in Silicon Valley, and we must not accept it from our government." I think using the word "we" is the closest he gets to your interpretation, but even here it's clear to me that his views are his own.
To be charitable, you're full of shit. Does Hillary encourage violence at rallies? Does she stoke resentment at minority outgroups for political gain? Does she threaten to imprison her political opponents? Is she preemptively calling the election fraudulent and encouraging polling place intimidation and violence?
Also you mixed up "kind" and "degree". The difference between them is, in fact, one of kind. Sure, she's a bit of a corporatist shill, but that's par for the course for most presidents since the 1900s. The case against her is built from years of strident exaggerations and lies, amplified by misogyny. She's a completely normal, if less than thrilling, politician. The case against Trump is sufficiently built on things he's said in public in just the last few months alone. He's an American proto-fascist.
Atheist downfall? Since when? And what do you mean by 'downfall'? Like, they all started professing a belief in the hereafter, or like the scene in the movie 'Downfall'?
> I don't know if you followed what happened to the Atheist community in the US, but its downfall was essentially the kind of witch hunt you're trying to incite.
Personally I must have missed this. How did the downfall of the Atheist community in the US happen and who was hunting witches?
Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennett wrote books, participated in debates, and basically reimagined atheism as a political movement. Then the question of social justice's role in atheism split the community in two via progressive purging. Splitting the community resulted in movements with significantly less political capital, and the main thinkers moved off to other projects.
It's fairly political, so even though a lot of it happened online you'll still have a hard time of getting a clear picture. "Elevator Gate" is the obvious starting search, http://www.conservapedia.com/Elevatorgate seems to be the most complete single page I can find as an introduction.
I think you read the atheist situation incorrectly. When any group grows so large it splits. There are more atheists in the US than ever and the polls indicate that number is growing.
The majority of atheists never had the goal of maintaining one large political power base, and the authors you mentioned mostly wanted adults to stop believing in fairy tales and wanted little to do with political power.
I don't see any failure in atheism other than the amount of time it is taking to gain societal acceptance in the south, which seems to have nothing to do with this discussion.
> "Other than creation itself, God is revealed in several ways, including conscience and special revelation (the Bible, and prophets). Most importantly though, God is revealed in Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God."
I don't expect them to paint a friendly portrait of Richard Dawkins.
Yeah, I wasn't trying to recommend them. They just did the leg work of digging up the quotes and putting them on a single (huge) page for linking, which I thought was what you were asking for.
Thanks. I got confused because the parent post mentioned the "downfall" of "the Atheist community in the US" as opposed to an outspoken atheist who said something stupid online and got publicly ridiculed for it.
> I got confused because the parent post mentioned the "downfall" of "the Atheist community in the US"
Yes, I was the person who wrote that, and this is what I meant.
> as opposed to an outspoken atheist who said something stupid online and got publicly ridiculed for it.
... which then resulted in infighting over if it should be ridiculed, a mass exodus of the thought leaders, and general dwindling of the community. Seriously, Dawkins was shunned by major atheist conferences over his comments in my earlier link. Many atheists then shunned those conferences for shunning Dawkins. When's the last time you saw new material on athiesm in the news? Your answer is almost surely "before elevatorgate"
Ah, see, I don't view atheism as a community or as a political movement. It's just a personal believe (or lack thereof). And I don't see any evidence that this has declined.
There is an atheist community no doubt about that. The bright movement was a good example and then followers of Dawkins, Harris Hitchen et all which roams places like Reddit are by every definition of that word a community with a shared amount of argument, interest and an idea of outside the community.
It's not a moral fashion to believe that jailing political opponents or advocating laws making it illegal for the NYT to criticize him is outside the boundaries of "wrong, but tolerable".
And while I'd agree that employees should be protected as long as they do not intentionally harm their employers, Thiel isn't an employee and his "firing" would have far fewer consequences for him.
> It's not a moral fashion to believe that jailing political opponents or advocating laws making it illegal for the NYT to criticize him is outside the boundaries of "wrong, but tolerable".
Right, I would call those moral truths rather than moral fashions.
The issue is that Trump's behavior hasn't been as clear cut as you're pretending it is (for example rather than actually jailing political opponents, he called for a special prosecutor and a jury trial). My fashion police comment was about the behavior in this thread relative to Trump's actual actions. For a hypothetical uber-Trump I'd be on the other side of this discussion.
"Sam Altman cannot coherently believe this while supporting Peter Thiel [,...]"
Why not?
This is the only part of your comment I have a problem with. People can coherently have two values that they care about, and have to weigh one against the other.
It is totally legitimate to think that Trump is a threat to democracy, to completely oppose Thiel, but to also think that firing someone for their political beliefs is a bad precedent that you don't want to engage in.
It's even totally legitimate to be more OK with what Thiel is doing because the chances of Trump winning are relatively low. It's possible (even likely, IMO) that if Trump were much closer to winning the election, Sam Altman and Paul Graham would do more to prevent it.
The problem with this logic is that you're multiplying a very low probability against a truly catastrophic outcome. The expected value result of that calculation is still very, very bad.
But I also disagree about Trump's prospects. As I wrote elsewhere on the thread: I think we underestimate the likelihood that Trump will win, and further I think we're going to be in exactly the same struggle in just 3 more years, when Trump begins his next presidential campaign in earnest. When he captures the nomination next time, there will be no opposition research left with the power to halt his campaign: all the news value will have been spent on this campaign.
Donald Trump is a terrifying force in American politics, and the damage he's done will spread far beyond the 2016 election.
I'm out on a limb here for saying this, because I'm a loyal Democrat, but as a believer in the American political tradition warts-and-all, I think Republicans should be even more dismayed, because one way or the other Trump is going to ruin the Republican party. When most Democrats say this, they mean that Trump will prevent Republicans from winning. But I don't mean that. I mean that Trump is killing their party, and he and his acolytes will finish that job by (eventually) winning. Even as a liberal Democrat, I feel sorrow for the loss of a loyal opposition and a voice for limited government.
I tend to agree, but it certainly seems like Sam Altman and Paul Graham don't. I'm reasonably confident that they would do more if they thought Trump being elected was more likely.
Also, you paint a terrifying picture of what happens next - as you (IMO correctly) point out, Trump will not just disappear, but will probably be setting up the next election. Which isn't even the worst case - the worst case is a serious and ongoing Trump challenge to Clinton's election.
> Even as a liberal Democrat, I feel sorrow for the loss of a loyal opposition and a voice for limited government.
I always got the impression from my liberal friends that they would be overjoyed controlling the house, senate, and oval office until the end of time with no opposition.
The way Democrats are running their campaign they are the real threat to democracy. Newest leak:
For those without time to watch:
Scott Foval, National Field Director at Americans United for Change, discloses a number of unethical (and perhaps illegal) activities on undercover camera conducted by the liberal advocacy group Americans United for Change, with various PACs and the DNC.
Evidence of Democrat organizers paying agitators to disrupt Trump rallies in efforts to smear Trump supporters.
Evidence of collusion between superPACs and the DNC. Foval describes his middlemen who get around the law to commit these crimes.
Discusses strategy for “initiating conflict by having leading conversations with people who are naturally psychotic” – Foval is referring to paying agitators to instigate trouble at Trump events here, calling Trump supporters “naturally psychotic.”
Aaron Black, DNC Rapid Response Coordinator, boasts about planning a Chicago protest at a Trump event. Two Chicago police reporters got hurt at this event.
Scott Foval admits planting a “supporter” (friend of Foval) who gets rough treatment at a Scott Walker event. Foval also staged people in the crowd for a “reaction.”
Scott Foval brags about hiring homeless and mentally-ill people to protest and agitate at various Trump events.
> The way Democrats are running their campaign they are the real threat to democracy.
Yes, this exactly. While Trump is out there making lewd, offensive, or ignorant statements, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic party are actually carrying out actions that threaten the integrity of our democratic process. It's sad that all of those things are just from the newest leak. Way too much collusion amongst the party, the campaign, superpacs, the media, and outside interests. All of this makes it nearly impossible for the public to make an informed decision.
Encouraging your well-armed nutjob supporters to go to the polls and 'monitor' them is kiiiind of on another level.
Trump isn't just a moron spouting off nonsense--he's the leader of a large radicalized army, an army which includes large swathes of the police and military. Americans are so complacent and used to stability that they think this is all a crazy TV show that can't affect them personally, but this is a very volatile situation that could quickly go in the wrong direction.
All you’re doing is trying to shame Altman and Y Combinator supporters into disowing Thiel. The great thing about what Altman is doing is that he doesn’t feel so morally superior to others that he’ll either see people share his views, or have them removed. You should learn to criticise ideas, not people.
I don't understand this line of reasoning, from either end of the spectrum. When those ideas have abhorrent real world consequences, that negatively affect real people's lives, why would we not criticize the people who hold them?
> But we are all very much entitled to criticize what Altman is doing, and we would be doing Altman no favors by withholding that criticism.
Perhaps, but it's a slippery slope to a loosely-defined moral litmus test that is in the eye of the beholder, a fashionable "in group" set of beliefs which are not actually subject to rational scrutiny but are instead tenets of a creed of allegiance. They are hyperbolic and intended mainly as a signal to others, like a patch stitched onto a sleeve or a badge worn on one's clothing, which side the person is on.
For example, consider this creed of statements largely unsupported by fact (caveat: I do not support either candidate and actively oppose both):
I consider Donald Trump a threat to American democracy and prosperity. I believe the 40% of the American people supporting his candidacy are deeply disturbed, damaged human beings who are animated by Trump's racism and hatred.
I am certain that Donald Trump has sexually assaulted many women, and his criminal sexual acts are on par with the worst sexual predators of history. I am certain that Donald Trump's campaign is in collusion with the Russian government simply to get Donald in office so that he can do business in Russia and extract personal profit for himself (unlike HRC who is motivated by altruism and service, not personal ambition or greed).
I believe that in spite of being nominated by major American political parties, Donald Trump and HRC are vastly different human beings with vastly different ambitions and quality of judgment.
I believe it is our duty to our daughters and future generations to do everything possible to stop Donald Trump from gaining power, including socially castigating and penalizing his supporters in any way possible, including "unfriending" on social media. I believe that focusing on the outrageous allegations of Trump's kissing and groping behavior are far more important than comparing the two candidates stances on issues and comparing the practicalities of their stated policy aims.
I am certain that Donald Trump intends to challenge the election results if he loses, and that he's planning to incite violence in an attempt to gain office.
These statements pull the dialogue away from facts, logic, debate, falsifiability, etc., and make it about raw power, which is coercive and not rational or meritocratic.
as long as no one have actually formulated an argument based on facts how Trump is a threat to democracy I dont see how he is more dangerous than Hillary, Bush or Obama. And i am pretty sure a large portion of people outide the US see those three as bigger threats to their lives than Trump given US foreign policy.
So until someone show how the us system can be destroyed by Trump I stand by my position that Trump is no more dangerous than Hillary.
But you are basically saying that what you believe doesent apply in the case of Trump and so you are ok with ignoring your own principles while claiming he is the one who is guilty?
Trump - (paraphased) Muslims are evil, they should be registered and have special restrictions placed on them.
He singled out a single religious group. Made them the target of a group of people that are disposed to hating them. It goes against the very spirit of modern western democracy. To many it represents a clear and unforseen threat to our country. Even Bush who was clearly the most aggressive of the recent presidents in dealing with Muslim states, stopped WAY short of that. Clinton has clearly not singled out any one group, clearly tried to bring more people together. To compare the two is blatantly overlooking the clear differences in Trump's campaign and nearly every other one in recent history.
There’s a major problem with Muslim refugees in Europe right now. My girlfriend used to love visiting Paris, now it’s basically a no-go zone even in daytime. What he’s saying is based on reality, even if it makes you feel all bad inside when you hear it. Even in the US, where the refugee problem doesn’t exist, you still learn after terrorist attacks that, f.e. the family knew, or that the attacker had bomb equipment all over the apartment, but nobody said anything.
These are national security issues, and they need to be addressed by the president, i’m glad he’s doing it, same for illegal immigration, even if he’s doing it in a cringe-worthy, populist way. He’s not a life-long politician.
Anytime a tragedy happens right now, first thing you hear is Obama and Clinton taking about guns being the problem, and wanting to disarm you, or that all Muslims are amazing people. You never hear the problem being addressed. It is rather scary to see your president, and potential future president do that.
> My girlfriend used to love visiting Paris, now it’s basically a no-go zone even in daytime.
What are you talking about. I've lived in Paris for 40+ years, there is no special problems. We had terrorists attacks, we may have more, but basically nobody cares much about it or talks about it, and life is the same as it's always been (lots of traffic, lots of people in the subway, weather not great).
Marine Le Pen is polling above 30% in France (in the same type of polls that understated Brexit). It's a stretch to claim that "nobody cares" because clearly there is significant discontent being expressed politically.
You are exaggerating, completely. But lets presume you are not.
How does Trump's fear mongering and threats of violating the constitution help? Opressing a group based on their religion have never in the course of history made a anything safer. It just creates bigger problems later. Once he opens the door to religious oppression how do you know that the next president won't use that power against you?
Trump is an existential threat to the United States.
My girlfriend used to love visiting Paris, now it’s basically a no-go zone even in daytime.
A bizarre thing to say, for multiple reasons. Most chiefly being, Paris has quite famously had a large Muslim population for several decades now -- which the recent refugee influx has hardly made a measurable impact on.
So he's saying his girlfriend "used to" love visiting Paris, with all its Muslims, up until about 2-3 years ago -- but now it's a "no-go zone"?
I'm a theological noncognitivist so I couldn't care less about what religion is more "evil" but move any group (Muslim, Christian or even a bunch of Pastafarians) from such a condition to the middle of Europe, and you will get similar results. They are more human than they are Muslim.
I'm not going to go on about how not actually that bad the situation is because that is not the point.
No, you move a group of people, who don't share western values into the middle of the western civilization and this is what you get. Syria is not the only war-torn country on Earth.
There’s a major problem with Muslim refugees in Europe right now. My girlfriend used to love visiting Paris, now it’s basically a no-go zone even in daytime.
I think you and your racist girlfriend should probably go visit some other country instead. I am sure you can find some nice white safe space where you can fondle your your personal weaponry without being considered mentally unstable, but Europe is definitely not going to be to your liking.
Exactly. Hillary has stated there would be a military response to Russia because of the alleged hacking.
Latest leak shows Evidence of Democrat organizers paying agitators to disrupt Trump rallies in efforts to smear Trump supporters.
Discusses strategy for “initiating conflict by having leading conversations with people who are naturally psychotic” – Foval is referring to paying agitators to instigate trouble at Trump events here, calling Trump supporters “naturally psychotic.”[0][1]
I'll tell you exactly why I think Trump is dangerous to democracy. He is acting in a way that has historically, as far as I remember, led to the downfall of democracy in other countries.
Things he is doing in that vein:
1. Saying that he'd put his political opponents in jail.
2. Saying that the election is rigged.
3. Encouraging the idea that if he isn't elected, the election was illegitimate.
These are the facts. If you still disagree, I think it has to be because of one of these reasons:
1. You disagree that Trump is doing these things.
2. You disagree that they historically have lead to the downfall of democracies.
3. You disagree that them having lead to the downfall of democracies means that it is good evidence that this is a danger to democracy.
I'd appreciate if you could tell me which of the above is your stance?
(Obviously, if I missed another possibility, I'd be happy to know about it!)
If you believe that Trump is no more dangerous than Clinton, your support for Peter Thiel makes sense, and, while I'd implore you to reconsider, I'm content for us to agree to disagree.
But Sam Altman and Paul Graham don't agree with you. They virulently disagree with you. They repeatedly compare Trump to a fascist dictator. They claim Trump is an existential threat to our democracy. Paul Graham said that if Trump wins, he'll "join the resistance".
I agree with Altman and Graham on that. But I feel obligated to point out to them both --- Altman in particular --- that what they say about Trump is incompatible with the manner in which they affiliate with Peter Thiel, who is a part of the Trump campaign.
Or perhaps you are hijacking their words and misrepresent their actual opinions.
Perhaps they dont believe its as litterally as you do. It would certainly make sense since claiming Trump is Stalin is as ill informed as it is absurd.
Just like you are ready to ignore your principles for a bigger belief so is Theil. He is not voting for Trump he is voting for change. The very change everyone agrees is needed.
Of course a decent person can support Trump, if by decent you mean hard working, honest, responsible, etc.
This isn't about the decency or not of Trump supporters. It's about indirectly supporting Trump and thereby increasing the chances he'll be elected.
Altman's and YC's non-disavowal of Thiel supports that outcome. Altman's support is a layer removed from writing a check for Trump, but it's still support.
If Altman believes (as he seems to) that a Trump presidency would be very bad for America, it's hard to see why he would not specifically repudiate Thiel's actions. That's different from repudiating a friendship.
If you had a friend who used their considerable resources to publicly and materially support what you believed to be a truly bad outcome for America, would you not consider saying, "I can't go there with you, and I can't let my company's prestige support you while you do."?
If Altman is comfortable with the idea that his actions are encouraging people to comfortably support Donald Trump, then I'm comfortable with him continuing to endorse Peter Thiel.
But that's in support of my point that perhaps they don't mean it the way you want them to not yours that they really believe that Trump is a threat to democracy.
You can decide to read what Sam Altman says and say "but maybe he doesn't really mean it", but that's a bit of a stretch. Just read their actual thoughts on the subject. tptacek is not misrepresenting what they are saying.
From Altman:
"His racist, isolationist policies would divide our country, and American innovation would suffer. But the man himself is even more dangerous than his policies. He's erratic, abusive, and prone to fits of rage.
He represents a real threat to the safety of women, minorities, and immigrants, and I believe this reason alone more than disqualifies him to be president.
[...]
Trump shows little respect for the Constitution, the Republic, or for human decency, and I fear for national security if he becomes our president."
I am not saying he doesn't mean it, simply that he doesn't mean it enough (it would also be an absurd claim to compare Trump with Musolini) to do anything about it.
> And i am pretty sure a large portion of people outide the US see those three as bigger threats to their lives than Trump given US foreign policy.
I don't think this is correct. It is 100% not correct in the EU and I doubt people in the countries where US foreign policy is more heavy-handed – you know, murdering people from the air without trial and all that – actually believe in substantial policy changes after the election. I am pretty sure many fear more of the bad stuff.
No one will provide you facts on why Trump is so dangerous (because they can't) and they will ignore all evidence of Hillary's corruption (because they think words are worse than actions.)
No one will provide them here because (a) they're not hard to find, and (b) they're not really the topic of discussion, which is the disconnect between PG and SA's claims about Trump, and their lived actions. This article isn't about Trump's dangers, it's about YC's hypocrisy.
@mcphage lmao "easy to find" is just a reply people make when they don't have any evidence. a quick google search on "why is donald trump dangerous" nets me opinionated articles based on what he has SAID not DONE.
Hasn't done anything because he isn't ELECTED and has never held office. We can only judge based on the words he has said. We have to take him at his word and react to what he plans to do. That's why people are so afraid of how dangerous he is.
It may not be, but looking back many people view the blacklisting of American communists as antithetical to democracy even though their philosophy would have it to overturn our system and forge into a communist one.
Blacklisting people because we think they are a threat to our society is what enabled employers of the past to make it hard for people of an opposing view to get jobs because their politics were "anti-American", even though strictly speaking they could be the antithesis of our political and economic system even now.
I do think things have shifted more than a bit with unbridled campaign donations as "speech". This isn't someone handing out fliers or manning a call bank—if you're helping someone deeply opposed to your politics make money, and they're spending giant piles of that money to aid candidates you don't like, severing business relationships and trying to harm their ability to make money any way you can seems like fair game to me.
Don't like it? Favor measures to strictly limit money's effect on campaigns.
What if workers' unions were to fire members who don't support candidate X, or fire those who do support candidate Y, after all portion of their salaries could be used to underwrite the uncandidate... Is this kind of political retribution what we're aiming for?
Quantity has its own quality. Bob the riveter donating $500 is far removed from 7-figure donations. It's an entirely different kind of relationship with the candidate and the campaign.
I think this is too arbitrary. It's making a distinction for the sake of argument. Either people can support a candidate freely or we can't and we go the way of official approved politics.
If you want to remove money from politics, go ahead, do try. But don't make arbitrary cases for when its apt and then, when it's convenient, make it not apt.
This is the oligarch-gods of politics warring. Frankly, as long as they stick to hurting one another and leave the little people alone, I consider smacking one another around their role. They want to throw their incredible amounts of money and influence around for an outsize effect on elections, they should be ready for that money and influence to be threatened as fair game in the political battle. They can always not do that and participate like a mere mortal.
This is hardly arbitrary. People choosing to participate in this arena are not on the same playing field as the rest of us. I don't feel that applying identical rules to them as the "little guys" is somehow more fair than applying what is appropriate. Again: no one makes them use their power this way. Challenging the basis of that power is 100% OK in my book if that's how they want to use it. They dragged their professional reputations and fortunes into the mud. Complaining that it got dirty is silly.
Based on reading your comments for several years, I presume you are very much in favor of protecting employees from various kinds of discrimination(as you should!). Advocating firing Thiel seems to be counter to that.
- If YC severed ties w/ Thiel, as people are recommending, should YC also divest itself of companies with founders who support Trump?
- Should YC-invested companies fire employees who support Trump?
- Imagine the shitstorm if a right-leaning YC founder fired an employee for working in the HRC or Stein campaign. The no-discrimination at any cost crowd is going to howl with rage the first time "their" person gets fired by "the other" camp, solely for political affiliation.
- Ok, we could pass some employment law: "firing employees over political beliefs is not OK, unless it's an existential threat". Who gets to decide what is an existential threat?
This is a very dangerous weapon, and your eagerness to use it now makes me think you haven't considered what will happen when it's used against your political tribe.
"Based on reading your comments for several years, I presume you are very much in favor of protecting employees from various kinds of discrimination(as you should!)."
I think it's pretty relevant that Thiel isn't an employee
of YC. Saying that they would "fire" Thiel is a complete misnomer - he's a partner that does business with them. I think that's a very different kind of relationship.
I'm aware of that legally the distinction is relevant, but in the realm of public discourse, it isn't. YC could also e.g. cut ties with Thiel because he's gay, but of course HN would crucify them.
Sorry, I still disagree. As an alternate example, if I heard that a business partner had decided to stop doing business with another business partner because of disagreeing with their politics, that would play very differently in the press than a boss deciding to fire an employee for same.
He doesn't even "do business" with them! As Altman himself said: Thiel doesn't get YC equity. It's a marketing relationship. If it were an employment relationship, I would probably feel differently.
The number of instances of the word "believe" is where your argument (and Marcos') fails.
I'm not a justice expert, but unless Trump is judged and condemned, he is innocent and none of his actions are to be considered criminal, correct? That being the case, supporting him shouldn't be punished as well.
I'm thinking that maybe the People should prosecute Trump over hate crimes and such (there are grounds for that, right? Inciting crime is a crime in itself). Once he's a felon, then we may discuss if supporting him over a certain extent is to be considered criminal...
Again, I know I'm not creating the most solid argument here, since my legal expertise is limited, but judging people from supporting a free person seems misguided to me, rebellious as Trump is.
> There is no work of political philosophy anywhere that suggests we should be able to say whatever we'd like "without fear of repercussions"
Its called freedom of speech/expression. Article 19 of the universal declaration of human rights uses very similar words
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference..."
The idea is pretty traceable through the middle ages with also reference to ancient greece and rome often given. However it holds less weight now as it has been brought to bear by problematic issues of slander/libel and also threats of violence particularly but also by state issues (sedition/blasphemy/obscenity/state secrets etc.). Today even pure 'offense' is more and more considered outside of freedom of expression.
Probably the truest implementation however is in english parliament which has had defined freedom of speech dating back to their middle ages bill of rights. This hasnt been fettered in the same way.
That's speaking of lack of interference from the government not from your fellow citizens. Everyone has the right to criticize whom ever they choose and do business with whom ever they choose, for any reason they choose. No government should have the right to enforce interference based on believes.
Certainly societal segregation is part of freedom of speech. John stuart mill is a key refefence to this. His general principle is that government should only step in to prevent harm but sometimes segregation based on belief can be that harm (his 'tyranny of the majority')
Now nobody we are talking about is struggling to survive based on their beliefs but whether its right to start segregating people for their views is definitely a freedom of speech issue.
John Stuart Mill did not believe that people should be shielded from criticism, even massed criticism, for fear that they might be victimized by their own bad feels. In fact: Mill believes that the preservation of free society and ordered democracy with equal access by citizens was one of the few reasons society has to limit freedom. As luck would have it, we're here today debating the very real candidacy of a person who proposes to strip Muslims of their citizenship rights, and of someone who stood on a debate stage and proclaimed that one of his first acts as President would be to ensure the imprisonment of his political rival.
Thankfully, nobody here is suggesting that the state should limit anyone's freedom (for that, you have to go to a Trump rally). Instead, we're simply criticizing Sam Altman for endorsing Peter Thiel.
There is no appeal you will be able to make to any liberal philosopher that people should be immunized from criticism.
Im certainly not saying criticism is wrong but 'having to fear the repercussions' goes further - i assume from all sides this meant the articles reference to YC potentially severing ties with thiel. All im pointing out is that this is a freedom of speech issue - whatever side you want to weigh in on. Broadly i agree with your views on Trump and interpretation of Mill
If Thiel were an employee of Altman's, I might agree with you. He's not, so I haven't had to pick this apart so much. Thiel's relationship with Altman is more akin to a large NASCAR decal's relationship with a a race car. I'm simply urging Altman to peel the sticker off, at least until he's successful in convincing his friend to stop supporting American Fascism.
There's a rationalist proverb: a bad argument gets an argument in return, not a bullet. Using economic force in debate starts edging towards the "bullet" end of the spectrum.
This shrinks the range of discourse and makes the collective brain more stupid. Call it "racism" or "fascism" or what you will, but every political movement that persecuted its opponents thought its opponents were worthy of persecution. This is called "demonization". You use current morality to turn your opponents into demons and justify raising the stakes against them.
We'd all be better off with a precommitment to civil debate. This would include engaging with Trump's specific ideas instead of using mere labels to refute him.
The First Amendment of the US Constitution (ie the relevant law at play here) mentions nothing about freedom of consequences from speech. And that is a good thing. The idea that such a freedom should exist is laughable.
> Sam Altman cannot coherently believe this while supporting Peter Thiel, who is not just a Trump supporter, but an important part of the Trump campaign.
I've yet to see this claim substantiated. Why can't one coherently believe Trump is an existential threat to society while allowing one of his biggest supporters to give advice to startups? What on earth does one have to do with the other?
People keep talking about moral "incoherence" and "spinelessness," in response to which I have two concrete questions:
(1) How does it "support" Thiel to allow him to advise startups who are allowed to choose whether they want to work with him? How would it improve the situation to rob YC startups of his advice?
(2) Sam already wrote that he thinks Thiel is "completely wrong" in his support of Trump. What else must he do?
I can't wrap my head around the idea that it's evil to do business with someone committing an unrelated evil to the business being done. It'd be one thing if Thiel were using YC as a megaphone for his political efforts, but YC already said he wasn't.
Whether or not it's a "fundamental principle of democracy" , the hyperbole and moral policing sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Yes, trump would be a terrible president but he's not Hitler (I know you didn't compare him to Hitler but it was a very common comparison in the media for a while).
>You may not believe Trump is a real thread to society. [...] Trump is an existential threat to our democracy.
If you don't have the rule of law, then you don't have a democracy. Of the two major party candidates, one is a hyperbolic, thin skinned twat who can't control his own mouth. The other is a venal, entitled, secretive, law-breaking, compulsively lying enabler of sexual predators, who will allow people to die, be raped, and have their lives destroyed, if doing her actual job and acting with honor would even possibly threaten her personal financial or political ambitions.
>What is a principle of liberal philosophy, though, is that we should be tolerant of the beliefs of others (in the sense of not intervening to suppress them), including intolerant beliefs, until those intolerant beliefs threaten society.
So, to paraphrase, you have moral principles only as long as it's safe to do so and then are willing to stoop as low as you need to when it's not.
Well, let me tell you, sir, that that is no part of any liberal philosophy that I subscribe to, nor is it part of the philosophy of anyone I respect.
I think you think this was a snappy response, but I'm simply paraphrasing John Rawls. If you prefer Karl Popper, you might look up "the paradox of intolerance". You could also take it back to John Stuart Mill, if you'd like.
> But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in or opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
> [some pages later:] For a long time past, the chief mischief of the legal penalties is that they strengthen the social stigma. It is that stigma which is really effective, and so effective is it that the profession of opinions which are under the ban of society is much less common in England, than is, in many other countries, the avowal of those which incur risk of judicial punishment.
My understanding of Mill is quite against this claim, and especially your claim upthread 'There is no work of political philosophy anywhere that suggests we should be able to say whatever we'd like "without fear of repercussions".' He was arguing directly this idea that it's enough for free speech that the state not suppress it.
There's no philosopher you can't enlist in the support of any view if you quote them out of context (also: you could have done far better in finding a quote to deploy here; try searching On Liberty for the word "opinion").
The part you haven't come to yet is the Harm Principle.
I don't like the insinuation that I didn't read the book I quoted. I did, and I went to the trouble of finding quotes because memory is fallible (especially in the direction one would like it to err). Using that rhetorically against me is bad for the quality of discourse here.
Yes, Mill's general principles for liberty exclude the right to harm others. But he's very very skeptical of considering speech a harm. He's not a counterexample to the literal sense of what you wrote upthread about "saying whatever we'd like without fearing repercussions": e.g. you should be legally liable for libel, and socially liable to individual opprobrium. But he was clearly against the kind of repercussions for the kind of speech we're talking about here.
> The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
Okay. So if we're preventing harm, then, what is the possible harm here? Do you think intolerant beliefs threaten society? I'm of the opinion that beliefs mean nothing until acted upon, that only intolerant actions threaten society.
Or to rephrase it as one of the core tenets of Silicon Valley, "Having a great idea is not enough. It is the manner in which ideas are executed that counts."[1]
So? Then they are wrong as well then, at least in that particular, their eminence notwithstanding. Appealing to authority makes your position no more tenable.
Principles that are abandoned when under duress are no principles at all.
I'm seeing variants of this thrown around a lot here, but I don't see people engaging with tptacek's point, at least to my reading of it.
Let me turn this around. When corporations choose to get actively political, like Chick-Fil-A's support of anti-gay groups and Ben & Jerry's support of Black Lives Matter, should we not take that into account when we decide whether to do business with them? I don't think you'd make that argument, because really, it's not a very sound one. It's not a very sound one to say that we are compromising our principles if we share our stance on those corporations with others and try to get them to come around to our point of view, either, is it?
So why does it suddenly become sound in this case?
> Nobody denies Sam Altman's right to support Peter Thiel
Of course; what upsets people (you included, probably?) is the hypocrisy and rationalization. For his friend, Altman is willing to throw all principles and grand declarations about "no asshole policy" through the window. In a way it's charming; in another way, it's hard to fathom.
If anyone on HN said 1 thousandth of what Trump says everyday, they would get banned. But giving $1M to his campaign so that he can continue saying those same things, that's totally fine.
According to Sam Altman, if Peter Thiel said some of what Trump said, they'd stop endorsing him. I could not be more baffled by this stance: someone who speaks like Donald Trump is too toxic to affiliate with YC, but someone who diligently works to make Donald Trump President of the United States is not.
This is the end consequence of tremendous cowardice from a lot of people over a long time, starting with the owners and administrators of Hacker News.
HN has – through inaction – smirkingly enabled alt-right/NRx/GamerGaters to parody-thru-libel liberal positions on equality for a long time; supporting Peter Thiel is in the same vein. That's made Hacker News racist, sexist, and (worst of all for this crowd's self-image), stupid.
For a bunch of "disruptors", they're blind to the systemic effects of that set of decisions to the point of parody. Well, the only conclusion to be drawn: the Y Combinator partners (and the companies they fund) don't care sufficiently about society to be people I want to work with. Makes my decisions easier!
I am as troubled as you are about the uptick in overt racism and sexism on HN. But I know and trust the moderators of the site, and this is a conversation I have had with them too, and I don't have any better ideas on how to deal with it than they do.
The bigger problem is that the (very large) community of reasonable nerds who care about bigotry has largely abandoned Hacker News. In doing so, they've conceded it to the racist fringe. They, too, should reconsider.
It's at least comforting to know that blatant racism and sexism tends to get flagged off of threads.
I've noticed this too. Not only on HN, but below the line on many publications - The Economist, Politico, even at The Guardian, long a liberal bastion.
I don't think the reason is that 'reasonable' people have jumped ship though. At least that's not the sole reason. It seems recent events have turned some of those reasonable people reactionary. They've watched an increase of censorship and dishonesty under the guise of progressivism and decided that sunlight is the best disinfectant (just take a look at the shrieks of conspiracy whenever a frontpage post is flagged).
In doing so they have paved the way for an increase in bigotry from those who now believe that the lid has blown off once-taboo topics.
Perhaps I'm wrong but sorting comments by 'popular' on any of the sites mentioned above suggests that this isn't a phenomenon unique to HN. It's a shift in our online discourse.
Totally agree with 'genericpseudo and 'joesmo. YC's created the environment that's so tolerant of racism and sexism. If they don't want people who care about bigotry to abandon the site, it's up to them to change the dynamic.
I don't. By their actions shall I judge them, and their actions are complicit in making Silicon Valley an awful place to be for a number of my friends.
Asking anyone to "reconsider" their way into a hostile environment is pretty brutal. For that to be realistic, YC has to make the first move, and it'd likely have to be an extremely costly signal. What would you suggest?
"The bigger problem is that the (very large) community of reasonable nerds who care about bigotry has largely abandoned Hacker News. In doing so, they've conceded it to the racist fringe. They, too, should reconsider."
Should they though? When the community tells them with every post that this isn't wanted here, that the community doesn't care, and that the contributions are not welcome, should they really spend (or waste) their time, effort, and keystrokes here? And if so why? This isn't rhetorical, but really something I think about often when I'm waiting for an app to deploy and choosing what to do with those free minutes. And more and more, the answer is a resounding NO.
Let's say arguendo that Donald Trump is an objectively harmful candidate to democratic society. Peter Thiel may have given far more money than what most people even possess, but it's categorically the same as those who are voters for Trump -- both parties are providing some very direct support for Trump, and Thiel is arguably one step more distal than the voter.
I think that at some point, you must stop punitive consequences from leaking out of a category of democratic behaviors, or else entire categories of democratic behavior may be discouraged. After all, ought not the voter also be punished in the same manner we wish upon Peter Thiel? Shouldn't that voter suffer business and personal consequence?
If a grandma appears before a massive audience because she has a compelling story to tell in support of Trump, and in doing so, she becomes coined as "Grandma Lee" and becomes a hot media narrative worth more than what Peter Thiel gave, should that grandma also be punished accordingly? Disconnected from business colleagues? Shamed by any institution she's party to?
There should be a deliberately designed limit to causal responsibility when one is legitimately participating in democracy. If "legitimate" behavior is still bad for democracy, then that's where society should target their efforts, rather than through the shadowy powers of cultural punishment.
It's sort of like asking "what is a celebrity"? There's a line somewhere, and the existence of paparazzi doesn't impact the privacy rights of ordinary people.
The political line is somewhere over the level of voting, and could be somewhere below the level of donating millions and giving speeches to millions.
There's no reason the line inherently has to be drawn at the limit of "legitimate" behavior. We can say that something is legitimate to do, and legitimate to affect who will do business with you.
What repercussions? The situation strikes me as asymmetric: no matter what action Altman or Graham take they will be heavily criticized; for Ptacek, the worst would seem to be disagreement with his well-reasoned dialogue.
It seems unfair to force this to become a very public conversation.
Sam Altman has so much money that he divides his time between multiple McLarens. His "reserve fund" in case of emergencies is ten million dollars. Altman need never work again in his life. That's not me, especially after my two teenage kids go to college.
I'm a startup founder. Not only that, but I'm a startup founder that just last year considered attending YC during the summer session after Altman invited me (and, more likely, my then-cofounder Patrick McKenzie). I have friendships with people inside of YC, and with YC founders. Moreover, the company I'm building now works exclusively with startups, most of them at the YC stage of development, no doubt many of whom will actually be YC companies. How likely am I to get that invite again?
Furthermore, Peter Thiel is famously the most vindictive investor in Silicon Valley. He bragged about it, I believe, to the New York Times. I've had the pleasure of being blackballed by a group of different VC firms in the past.
If you think I have nothing to lose by antagonizing Sam Altman and, I guess, Peter Thiel (I think I have some safety from being too insignificant for Thiel to care about), I'd ask you to reevaluate.
> If you think I have nothing to lose by antagonizing Sam Altman
Altman's handling of this Thiel situation suggests that he'd handle it gracefully and would not hold it against you, out of respect for your personal beliefs and out of respect for your acting in a principled way, even if he disagreed with your conclusions, etc.
Reading what you've written, it sounds like you are saying that Altman and people associated with YC are sufficiently petty that they would refuse to work with you in the future because of a political disagreement. Am I interpreting this correctly? That would seem to be at odds with Altman's actions and public persona so far.
Logic suggests that you aren't, in fact, likely to risk any of those things just to express your opinion in an online argument. So you don't think this is a real danger or you wouldn't be saying it here.
> Even most leaders of the Republican party refused to get on stage at the RNC to support Trump. Thiel did.
The reason for that is very simple. They don't have "fuck you" money or "fuck you" careers. They need to be careful of what they say and what they do. Peter Thiel doesn't and to a lesser extent neither does Sam or Paul. They probably will still have an oversupply of highly qualified people acting in their own self interest who want to take advantage of YC and all it offers. Ditto for investors and so on. A much different situation than a politician.
> But we are all very much entitled to criticize what Altman is doing, and we would be doing Altman no favors by withholding that criticism.
In all honesty Sama goes up many notches in my (non-important to anyone but me) ranking system for what he is doing. Even given my previous thoughts on the actual impact to him business wise or personally (I am sure anyone who needs him will still seek him out and forget about all of this.)
I'm pretty sure a huge portion of Trump's support is from people that are essentially single issue tax and supreme court voters (for the presidential election). Or even a Yuuuge portion. Jerry Falwell Jr. isn't struggling or left out of the political process.
I also don't understand what everyone have the right to say and mean what they want without having to fear the repercussions is supposed to mean. If someone repeatedly says stupid things, one of the repercussions is that I'm going to start thinking they aren't very thoughtful. Do they have a right to not be judged by me? Or are you referring to some grayer area of repercussions that they should not have to face?
I think the idea is that you thinking they are stupid is much different from being fired from a job (or removed as a partner, however you would frame this scenario). The changing externalities leads to that gray area.
Political viewpoint should never be in my opinion a contributor towards dismissal. The problem here, is that I can easily see some of the Trump-style racial discomfort that he exploited leading to being fired from a job / removed as a partner, or at the very least hindering advancement, for actual non-political reasons.
In any internationally exposed company, Muslims and Mexicans (and other nationalities / religious groups, but these have been the focal points of the Trump campaign) might be your customers. They might even be some of your employees. Now, say you are one of those with said Trump-exploited racial discomfort and you quite often babble about how evil the Muslims are or how nasty those Mexican immigrants are etc. One can certainly infer that one does not really want to put this person anywhere near any job where they might be on a team with actual Muslims or Mexicans, let alone exec type of positions where you may be visiting Muslim/Mexican employees or customers directly.
I really don't care for Marco's attempt to strong-arm YCombinator based on a political candidate (not all Trump supporters are supporting him for the racial discomfort type thing anyways). But I do sometimes wonder whether those holding racial discomfort viewpoints do in fact have a potential barrier to life progress and even whether this sort of thing is a potential contributor to the inequality gap. The challenge to me is how to reduce this without resorting to the often condescending / insulting / I'm-holier-than-thou type responses you frequently see in discussions about this topic.
Which I am afraid indicates it has much more to do with "our team winning" than supposed goal of politics - i.e. making things work better. So when I read such demands as the parent post I can't help thinking "virtue signaling".
"the fundamental principle that no matter what in a democracy everyone have the right to say and mean what they want without having to fear the repercussions"
I think you are mixing things, Democracy does not give anyone the right to be liked even when they say awful stuff. Marco is not saying that supporting Trump should be illegal, he is saying that supporting Trump is shameful, and that supporting someone who supports Trump at such scale is shameful too.
Oh i agree on that. Just like i can say he isnt really making an argument, just stating an opinion on a very simplistic base. Questioning peoples morales is always shaky ground. No one is just one thing.
> I think you are mixing things, Democracy does not give anyone the right to be liked even when they say awful stuff ... support[ing shameful things/people] at such scale is shameful too.
I have some sympathy for both perspectives (Marco's and Altman's), and I have a great dislike of Trump, but ultimately this leads to some very difficult questions related to the intersection of public and private life, and how the same intersection could and should affect (or not) employment, eligibility–recognition (e.g. for scholarships, invitations to speak, awards, public office, etc.) and other junctions of persons and institutions.
Without intending (at any level, in this context) to dive into some of the issues I'll mention shortly, I want to consider the implications from a personal angle. The Catholic Faith is important to me, and I consider it an obligation – as occasions arise – to be something of an apologist for any/all of the Catholic Church's teachings, no matter how unpopular: on contraception, abortion, the nature of marriage, sexual morality, and so on. I have, do, and will speak and write publicly about those things. I have been and will likely continue – on occasion – to be chastised for doing so. I get no enjoyment from vitriol, but as I said, I think I have a moral obligation to speak up.
So, in a society that largely rejects such teachings, what should the consequences be for my publicly defending and promoting those beliefs? Is it desirable that (if not now, eventually) I should not be able to be gainfully employed among, say, the mainstream tech crowd? If I were launching a startup, should my venture be disqualified from funding by VCs or other investors that learn of my views and public defense–promotion of the same? Should I be disallowed to speak at popular tech conferences if I applied to do so? Should the answers to those questions be different if the way I go about my unpopular activities is devoid of personal attacks and discourtesy (i.e. shown to individuals with whom I have disagreements in public or private).
The reason I've made this so personal is because I've actually worried, a bit, about these matters in recent years. I've wondered too, if I have children, and if they follow in my footsteps in these matters (I hope they would), what would be the consequences for them?
But the personal angle is really just for perspective. More broadly, how should our society treat those with unpopular views (even very unpopular ones)? I suppose one might judge that exclusion–rejection at the level of affecting quality of life and participation in "the mainstream" might be a deterrent to such views or might even "cleanse" them from individuals and communities. But where does it stop, and what does it mean if tolerance convulses into its opposite? I worry we're only headed toward a deeper fracturing of our society and ideological ghettoization. I don't think that will make our society stronger; no, quite the opposite.
`Supporting` someone who supports Trump? You do realize he's not their employee, he's wealthy, and most certainly wouldn't change his mind if YC or all of you disagreed with him, right?
That Trump's and by extension Theil's actions have a very real set of consequences has NOTHING to do with democracy. The government is not taking action against them, we the people are. The very idea of democracy is that it's the expressed will of the people, filtered through mechanics to make it possible to administrate. In this case the will of a great number of people, including Marco according to the post, is remove support from people who choose to say these damaging things. It's not an incomplete understanding, it's that in their value system, the things being said can have no possible balance and anyone supporting them represents a clear danger to what they feel makes a democratic country great. That you would suggest a lack of understanding and try and use that to defend the very people moving to limit and harm democracy in the USA is condescending and harmful in my opinion. Of course everyone is feel to support who they wish but no one is free from dealing with the fall out from standing with the hateful and bigoted.
And just by that you became what you claim to be against. I am not for Trump or for Hillary, i am for the right to have a discussion about bigger issues without being painted as a supporter of biggotry which only serves to detract from the issues this country has. But i guess that makes me the naive part here.
Nothing anywhere gave you the right to have a "discussion about bigger issues" without "being painted" as anything. You will find no legal foundation for that entitlement in the US Constitution, nor will you find a philosophical foundation for it anywhere in the theory of liberal democracy.
You have a right to express your views, and I have a right to criticize them. Both rights are inalienable.
I think OP's desire is to be able to have a debate about the topics without being met with Ad Hominem responses.
Are the things Trump says and allegedly did reprehensible? Of course. But to bring them up in a conversation about the status quo in DC is still ad hominem, and to think that being right about his being a pig wins any debate about a possible evil power structure headed by Clinton is a straw man.
Donald Trump scares me. So does the cavalier attitude of so many who seem to have tunnel vision when it comes to politics vs the two minute hatee du jour.
You're going to have to be more specific about how you interpreted my definition of ad hominem, and your sources that counter that idea. That search turned up some interesting ideas, but I have no idea which ones you espouse, and we'll never get anywhere on this unequal footing.
I think you're going to have to be more specific about which of my arguments have something to do with 'ThomPete's deficiencies as a person or his personal unsuitability to be making statements about Trump or Thiel or Altman. That's an uphill climb, because I don't know anything about 'ThomPete, so I doubt I've made any such arguments.
Ah, I think this is where the confusion lies, I never meant to accuse you of ad hominem against ThomPete. Sorry if I caused confusion there.
> And no I don't want to defend Trump or Theil but rather the fundamental principle that no matter what in a democracy everyone have the right to say and mean what they want without having to fear the repercussions
I interpreted "repercussions" to mean ad hominem. Peter Theil has his reasons for supporting Trump. But I see the conversation shifting to his transitive guilt of bigotry/misogyny, as opposed to the political motivations for that support. I think this is ad hominem, as it's a focus on the moral scandal and not the political issues.
I'm a little lost. How is the bigotry and misogyny of someone with a very real chance to be elected President of the United States and Command in Chief of the world's largest military force not a political issue?
It is a political issue but so is sending drones out to kill people without trial.
There are collateral damage to all political decisions you are just more accepting some rather than those the Trump supporters accept.
That doesn't mean they can't have a higher political goal than purely bigotry. In fact I believe both Altman and Thiel shows that you can in fact disagree without shaming.
What's your point? I agree with you about drones. You know who doesn't? Donald Trump. Donald Trump doesn't merely support using drones against terrorists. He thinks we should firebomb Raqqa. He thinks that the families of terrorists should be captured and tortured in order to dissuade terrorists. He is in favor of --- he said this publicly --- limited regional tactical nuclear war. He is a staunch advocate of torture, not just to obtain information (itself an odious plan) but as retributive justice to those who oppose him.
Peter Thiel supports this man. He donates millions to his campaign. He's a surrogate for the campaign. He stood on stage and endorsed the campaign even as dozens of senior Republicans refused. He donated just last week, so much that he made the front page of CNN, after Trump pivoted to attacking the election itself.
If drones are a major concern of yours, good on you! You, too, should be working as diligently as possible to prevent Donald Trump from killing millions of people in new military strikes.
Trump is for firebombing Raqqa. Trump is for capturing and torturing the families of terrorists. I don't have to extrapolate his platform from the definition of "isolationist". He has made his plans clear.
That's a fallacy, taking a stand against bigotry in no way makes you a bigot. There is a huge difference in refusing to support a person or a business on moral grounds than trying to copt the government of a nation to enforce bigoted believes. Trump is clearly advocating just that, using the the government to enforce anti-muslim restrictions.
I believe you've misused the word fallacy. Taking a stand against bigotry absolutely can make you a bigot. Different kinds of bigots engage in mutual opposition on a regular basis.
>And just by that you became what you claim to be against.
Are you claiming that pointing out bigotry is in it's self an act of bigotry? Im asking because that is how I read that, and I don't want to accidentally create straw-man argument because of a misunderstanding.
Having said that here is my potential straw-man.... Wouldn't it follow that pointing that out is also an act of bigotry? Where is the cutoff point?
I disagree. I think Marco’s point, which I strongly agree with, is that donating to Trump goes beyond just supporting a political candidate that you don’t happen to agree with. The fact that Trump has some valid policy ideas is completely besides the point. Amongst other things he is inciting racial and ethnic hatred, undermining trust in American democracy, encouraging violence and legitimising sexual assault. When you donate to Trump you are supporting this behaviour just as much as his policy ideas. This is the problem and is what is completely immoral in my opinion.
I think I should also mention that I am not a US citizen and do not live in the US so I speak as an outsider here.
So it's ok supporting Hillary even though she is largely responsible for huge parts of US foreign policy having sacrificed hundreds of thousands of innocent people as collateral damage for a bigger political goal.
I think this argument does more harm than good. Repeating "Trump is a bad man!" ad nauseam and shaming people for supporting him only makes them feel like outsiders, and outsiders double down.
The alternative is just as bad even if she's not as flagrant about being a criminal. Trust in "American Democracy" should be undermined because it's a garbage concept. It's all about whoever gets people like you to ignore their side's crimes and shout about how horrible the other side is.
Political positions are not moral positions. There's more than one way to accomplish a goal, and even if you share goals, it might be that you just think that the priority of these goals are different.
I think the best way to increase the American quality of life is to allow more choices, more trade, and reduce taxation. This gets me branded as being "anti-poor". I want the same thing as you, I just think there's different ways to go about it.
I'll granted that sometimes political positions come from moral positions, but they are not a 1:1 match, and you can't claim you know the best way to enact a set of moral positions.
You have the right to say what you want but you must accept the consequences.
So, for the sale of argument: if Trump is democratically elected and then begins reprisals of his political enemies, you must accept those consequences?
The right to free speech means the government cannot or should not punish you for speech (save for when it poses a danger, like creating imminent threat to someone else's wellbeing).
Everyone else is free to respond to and criticize someone for their speech (as long as that response doesn't involve, say, assault). This includes the writing of articles against someone else's decision of where to spend their money.
At this point, with the constant talk of how the election will be rigged and occasional talk of assassinating his opponent, a vote for Trump is a vote against the very foundations of democracy itself. It's no longer about decency, but about preserving the basis of our nation.
I respect everyone's right to express their views, whatever they may be, but there's no obligation to support people whose views I find reprehensible. And when someone supports those reprehensible views with a big chunk of cash, why shouldn't I object?
Does he really represent that group of people? Or does he appeal to them because no one actually represents them? I think he's there for himself and whoever will give people the impression that he's winning.
Obviously there are many disillusioned people but I certainly don't think Trump is the best option for them. I'd like to see far more real attention and representation given to the crowd you speak of.
Yes. This is the similar point about Brexit. When the Brexit vote was on, instead of seeing that the Brexit leave people had some points that they wanted address, the remain people vilified them. Making sure that none of the points they wanted to get across was address. This furthered the gap and caused the divide.
The people who voted Brexit leave were disillusioned voters who think the current system is bad and their voices weren't being heard. But the remain camp instead of listening to them, pushed them away. The leave vote was a form of dissent from people who were upset with the current system. Yes they might have been racists amongst them, but they courted people who were excluded.
Yes, Trump is extremely valuable. He's exposing America's dirty laundry in a way that couldn't happen otherwise. There is a significant minority who want some autocracy in their government, or they don't care if that's what they get as long as the dear leader calls it like he sees it, even if how he sees the world is demonstrably wrong, and will give the undeniably very wealthy a tax break they may want but don't need.
He has some important points. White people are scared of the brown? They like their white privilege and don't want to give it up? They're attached to their misogyny in ways they can only articulate when off camera? Yes. Important. Just like it's important to look for blood in your stool.
I generally agree, that America since roughly the 1980s, has regressed politically. It puts its dirty diapers into the hamper, out of site out of mind, until the next election. It increasingly likes emotional tug of war, stoking anger and acrimony, rather than persistent converse. And that's how a con man has so impressively conned so much of the country. He couldn't care less about the gripes of those who have a legitimate complaint about how things aren't going all that well for them, but he's all too happy to exploit it. He can't fix any of these problems aside from obsoleting the Congress. I think he'd like that.
Trump TV, the next con. I think the original idea of running in the first place was just to sell his brand, not lead a country. He doesn't act like a leader at all, rather an ordinary stick that just likes stirring the pot. He's done nothing his entire life to make this country better, or the lot of those he now claims advocacy.
What's really at stake is making the leader of the country someone who resorts to name calling as his primary art of diplomacy. He was easily manipulated by Howard Stern, and there will be more gifted manipulators on the Hill, and around the world. Donald is out of his element. There is no bankruptcy lifeline for him at this level.
> he represents a group of people who haven't been represented for the last 40 years. A group who are themselves excluded from society. A group who experience their own form of discrimination by the likes of Marcos, me and everyone else who are benefitting from the progress of technology, globalization, taxation rules and so on.
I honestly think there's not a good choice in this election, but I find it ironic that the people who regularly make fun of poor people, call them "leeches" etc. want to cut social spending etc. and are known to hold the belief that "you probably didn't work hard enough" are now the ones left behind, "not working hard enough" to pull their own in modern society, yet still advocate for the same things as they were when in control...
That's a lot of hand-waving high-minded rhetoric. The problem is that Trump does not represent those 40% in any significant way.
- "free speech" is a protection against the government, not against Marcos/YC/whoever no longer working with you, which is also a form of speech.
- Trump is not and has never been part of the white, male underclass that makes up his support. He connects with them on exactly one level: hate. Hate against the "other", from foreigners, non-whites, or women, to people with a college degree and actually to poor people ("losers"). He has spent a week in a vendetta against some woman who apparently gained weight or something, less than two months before an election to the most powerful office in the world. I'm a big fan of nuance and complexity and I usually mistrust people with strong convictions. Here, this one time, it happens to be warranted.
More importantly, people don't fear his "policies", whatever they may be. There have been enough Republicans with trickle-down fantasies that we know it won't work, and probably kill a few poor people at the margins, but the republic will live on. The unique quality, setting him apart from GWB or Romney, is the damage he's planning to do to the sausage factory itself: he has explicitly advocated the jailing of his political opponents, laws making it illegal to criticize him, bills of attainer etc.
That's playing with fire, and it's past the point where people can agree to disagree and tolerate it. Even Republicans, some of them retiring and therefore free to follow their conscience and nothing else, are scared of him.
So no, there's no right to be spared the consequences of you words. That's actually quite a strange idea, considering speech without consequences seems useless. There is however a burden to push back against proto-fascists burning the constitution and wrapping themselves in the flag.
You're conflating the First Amendment with free speech. The First Amendment is a protection against the government. Free speech is a natural right that could be exercised in the absence of government.
The problem is the racial manner in which he has chosen to conduct his campaign. Today we see the normalisation of hatred and marginalisation of entire races and religions. It's not even dog whistles, rather flat out villification purely based on observable groups. It might not bother the average white male, but believe it or not, there are other groups in society who will uprise one day in a very violent manner if this kind of rhetoric continues.
> he represents a group of people who haven't been represented for the last 40 years
No he doesn't. He doesn't appeal to or represent poor whites, those vote D. He also doesn't appeal to or represent minorities, immigrants, or women. Those also vote D. He appeals to and represents white men that have a household income slightly higher than the median. Those people have been nothing but listened to for the last 140 years.
Also, last I checked women had plenty of voice in the last 40 years... beside being the majority of the voters (and thus always pandered to by default), US have no-fault divorce (something that usually only women want, most no-fault divorce are initiated by women), abortion is legal (Brazil for example where I live, abortion is still mostly illegal), Title IX exists, VAWA exists, more women than men finish college, female labour participation is higher than male, and so on...
I think the group he is referring to is my parent's demographic, working class Americans in factories. Whereas the Democratic party once supported labor movements and unionization as a primary cause, social welfare and rights issue have moved to be the primary (Please note this is a generalization, but mirrors their perspective).
The result is that they see a candidate who promises isolationist policies (Keep our manufacturing jobs here, as they've seen them go to China and Mexico for decades) as a more viable candidate than one who continues to drive for more globalization.
In passing, I'd like to note that my father actually preferred Cruz, which may match your description slightly better, while my mother preferred Trump largely for the reasons I listed above.
> He appeals to and represents white men that have a household income slightly higher than the median. Those people have been nothing but listened to for the last 140 years.
I think that describes like... 4% of the population, depending on your definition of "slightly".
This is true. The debate about Trump is made more complicated by the racism and sexism demonstrated by (those that happen to also be among) the most ardent Trump haters.
Following the USA campaign from far away, I hadn't yet heard of similar examples. Could you please elaborate a bit, or just post a link? Thanks in advance!
To support your position it's more complex than it appears I'm going to repost this article that correctly describes many issues leading to Trump support:
It's from an entertainment site but many claims in here are exactly what rural people tell me in person in 3 states plus online in a few more. That Duck Dynasty treated and portrayed them positively is why that show exploded in popularity to great confusion of many liberals. Trump is tapping into concerns of half the country that doesn't exist or is "a bunch of fucktards" in the minds of many (most?) city-dwelling and liberal Americans. I actually took time to listen to them to find many of their positions make more sense when you actually understand their lifestyle, businesses, upbringing, etc. My agreement was a mix with mostly disagreement but I saw where they're coming from. Shit like Trump's rise doesn't happen in a vacuum.
The sooner liberals and Silicon Valley start understanding rural America the better. They'll be able to target them with better political candidates, businesses, etc. There might also be increased cooperation instead of fighting. We might get more Trumps in the future if the disconnect remains and continues to increase.
"Everyone have the right to say and mean". I see a problem here because people do things, perhaps it would be better if they only say or mean something.
> the fundamental principle that no matter what in a democracy everyone have the right to say and mean what they want without having to fear the repercussions
This is not a principle, let alone a fundamental one, in any democracy or any other kind of society.
> > the fundamental principle that no matter what in a democracy everyone have the right to say and mean what they want without having to fear the repercussions
> This is not a principle, let alone a fundamental one, in any democracy or any other kind of society.
While this is literally true, I feel the need to point out that increased restrictions on speech, and increased repercussions for speech seem to correlate strongly with non-democracies.
Agitating for people to be fired based on pilitical affiliation is not "criticizm". If you think it is consider how you would feel about it when you are on tbe receiving end.
The very same Gallup study which that Vox article relied on to argue that Trump support was correlated with higher, not lower income also found that blue collar and less educated workers were disproportionately likely to vote for Trump, and Vox intentionally omitted that fact. This is particularly dishonest of Vox because the result they did quote was after correcting for the fact that working-class status and education are correlated with income, and they didn't mention that either.
That is, any correlation with income that appeared to be better explained by both being correlated with being working-class or anything else was excluded, and worse still there's no guarantee that the attribution to a particular category (say, class instead of income) is the result of anything other than random chance.
Very interesting. I actually read this as a more nuanced take on the Vox article (which I'd read more as saying "it's not economic anxiety" rather than "it's this other thing than economic anxiety"). The verdict seems to be, we cannot tell whether it's economic anxiety or something else. Anyway, interesting blog, which I've now added to my subscriptions, so thanks for that!
I see you wrote words here but they're not really saying anything.. what is your point then? What really is at stake here? If racism and sexism aren't* just that, what are they? Who is this excluded group you're talking about?
> he has some very important points which needs to be addressed and discussed
What are those points then? Please, let's discuss them
I don't live in US, and I think Trump is a terrible person.
But if I lived in US, I probably would still vote for him.
First, some points of why to avoid voting Hillary and voting in any of the other candidates (including the weaker ones).
1. Hillary should be in jail, specially after the home e-mail server.
2. Hillary foreign policy style caused hundreds of thousands of needless deaths.
3. Hillary want to make that foreign policy even stronger, Hillary's and her friends and employees rhetoric about Syria suggests she is fully willing to outright attack Russia military there to ensure her goals, risking a WW3 scenario.
4. Hillary is clearly in the banks pockets, and will help them cause whatever 2008-style crisis is next, even if unintentionally.
-----------
Now some specific Trump points.
1. Trump wants to bring manufacturing back to US, this is very attractive to a massive number of poor men, that currently are just out of the labour force to the point of not even counting in unemployment statistics anymore.
2. Trump, despite being a unstable madman, also made clear he thinks US foreign policy should be related to leaving other countries alone and stop meddling, US is in serious need of a president that believes that, because all the presidents in the last 30 or 40 years were interventionists.
3. Trump wants to fix several social and economic problems of poor rural americans, unfortunately this topic is huge by itself, and I can't explain in detail, also I am not sure Trump knows what he is doing, but he wants to do /something/, differently from Hillary that called these people "deplorables" and think laws should be made harsher and 'punish' them more for being 'oppressors' of women and blacks.
Regarding Trump point #2, I don't think his foreign policy is quite what you think it is. At a rally I went to in Greenville, SC, he referred to "glassing" Iran, and during a nationally televised debate he had this to say: http://youtu.be/IdOceoZfHuw
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt: I don't think he's malicious and I don't think he's interventionist. I think he has given these issues no more than 5 minutes thought.
The accusations come up now because it's something that is hard to get punished for and it was a month before election day that he stated in front of everyone that his previous claims of bad behavior were not true.
> For all the crazy things Trump says, for all is egoism he has some very important points which needs to be addressed and discussed and he represents a group of people who haven't been represented for the last 40 years.
Is there a line that Trump could cross where you would start to say he's dangerous and doesn't deserve his spot at the table?
No one gets to decide who gets a spot at the table. It doesn't really matter if you think Trump is "dangerous", the idea that if you think the "right" way you're entitled to shape the dialogue by censorship if needed is exactly what people who are anti-anti-Trump are trying to fight.
This is the worst kind of argument anyone can read about this topic.
What you are conveniently and deliberately ignoring is that the offense is being taken not at Trump's policies, but at his actions and his bigoted views.
Back in the day, you would have been making the same argument about apartheid in South Africa: who are we to criticize them? They're a sovereign country, they have their own ways of doing things! Forcing them to accept equal rights and democracy is cultural imperialism!
Give me a fucking break. Trump is an asshole because of his actions and his lies. No one uses these terms to describe McCain, Romney, etc. Why? Because while they are Republicans, they are not assholes.
Trump calls hardworking Mexican immigrants "rapists" and "criminals". He calls for a religious test to enter the country, banning all Muslims. He kept questioning Obama's citizenship, not because he really doubted where Obama was born, but because he couldn't get himself to admit that a BLACK man had won the WHITE house; and by denying Obama's legitimacy, you can deny his victory. Finally, he quickly discarded this position for political expediency, it having served its purpose to get him atop the GOP ticket. And in the latest revelations, Trump crows about grabbing women's pussies and assaulting them. THIS IS WHAT IS OBJECTIONABLE about Trump, not his ideas (or lack thereof). He's a liar and a bigot.
So it IS fair to question anyone who puts such significant resources into getting Trump elected. It is one thing to vote for Trump; but quite another to spend millions on getting him into the dictator's seat he covets. Don't give me this "it's against democracy" bullshit.
Coming back to South Africa: if we had not put in place the sanctions and economic boycotts, the black would still be feeling the batons today.
Shame on Marco. I can't stand Trump, but I also can't stand this ganging up on Thiel. I guess the fact that he's a billionaire means he can be bullied, but this political bullying has a chilling effect that leads to the lackluster choices we get for president every four years.
Thiel sees Hillary as a bigger threat to his interests than Trump. To prefer an outcome does not imply you favor all aspects of that outcome. As arrogant and simple-minded as Trump comes across, he didn't stay wealthy without delegating his authority, and there would be violence to no-end if he appointed racists and sexists to high-level positions. That egomaniac ultimately seeks admiration, and the threat of "deporting illegals" was most-likely (you never know and that's why I'm not voting for the guy) a strategy to get the nomination.
Instead of Thiel, we should be admonishing our media, which couldn't have hand-picked two more controversial figures and allowed themselves to be manipulated at every step. We should be admonishing Hillary and Trump supporters who turn a blind eye to their unethical tactics and ends justify the means mindset. The ends (aka political payback) usually just result in more corruption and more things to fix with government. We need to stop this cycle. We can start buy turning off the TV, and considering a third party.
> Thiel sees Hillary as a bigger threat to his interests than Trump. To prefer an outcome does not imply you favor all aspects of that outcome.
It is however evidence of Thiel's values. He's chosen his side, and it is perfectly reasonable for people judge him on the fact that cares less about Trump's willingness to stoke hatred than whatever flaws he finds in Hillary Clinton.
> I guess the fact that he's a billionaire means he can be bullied
No, the fact that he is supporting a republican means he can be bullied. The tolerant left is on some radical moralistic high ground right now and it's far more dangerous than any words Trump has said.
When the campaign of a presidential nominee (Hillary) is recruiting the homeless and mentally ill to cause violence at Trump rallies, simply condemning and attacking someone for having different political views is all but normal.
> When the campaign of a presidential nominee (Hillary) is recruiting the homeless and mentally ill to cause violence at Trump rallies
Citation very VERY needed. James O'Keefe is not an acceptable - that is, truthful - source. [1]
> The tolerant left is on some radical moralistic high ground right now and it's far more dangerous than any words Trump has said.
You need to unpack this. I don't understand how any ideology of "radical moralistic high ground" is more dangerous than Trump's "rigged election" rhetoric, which calls into (unnecessary and unfounded) question the system our country is built on.
The O'Keefe video[1] shows extended primary source material of named Democratic operatives bragging about recruiting the homeless to deliberately cause violence at conservative events, including providing scripted words.
You may not like the editing, and there could be material edited out that redeem the Clinton operatives 1-5%. But not much. At least by my lights, the evidence is quite damning.
The thing is, that's what people said about his previous work, and so much of that was discredited, it's hard to believe it this time. Definite case of boy-who-cried-wolf, for me.
I will admit I'm biased: I find the allegations very difficult to believe and their timing extremely convenient. That doesn't mean they aren't true (any more than the sex assault allegations against Trump are false because they only just came out recently), but rather that further scrutiny is reasonable.
There's also the argument that there's a big difference between individuals in the campaign doing something, and the campaign endorsing/encouraging/demanding something. That defense has been used by the Trump campaign whenever it finds anti-Semitic, white nationalist or obviously racist campaign operatives in the media (as has happened several times), so if it applies there, it ought to apply here.
> There's also the argument that there's a big difference between individuals in the campaign doing something, and the campaign endorsing/encouraging/demanding something.
The Foval Group is contracted directly with the DNC. As far as anyone knows, Trump has never paid anti-Semitic or racist protesters to literally cause physical harm to people at Hillary rallies.
Edit: Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to make excuses for the words Trump has spoken, words are EXTREMELY important, but the level corruption inside the Hillary campaign is on a completely different level than things Trump says. Remember, actions speak louder than words. With Trump, all we have right now are words. With Hillary, we have actions. What I am seeing right now is one candidate being exposed for massive corruption while another candidate is promising to clean up the corruption in US politics and essentially make it illegal for politicians to become lobbyists. That, in my opinion, is very important.
Honestly, if people really wanted to solve this 'issue' instead of criticizing the business ethics of YC, they'd go DONATE TO THE OPPOSITE CANDIDATE and VOTE ON NOVEMBER 8TH.
Because in the end, it's ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE, and I'm sure there's more people who disagree with Thiel than agree.
But then again, media—that includes HN—needs a news story.
People are calling for the severing of working relationships based on the guy's politics, which is perhaps not a textbook definition of bullying but more than just debate.
Sadly the concept of civil debate seems to have been lost somewhere along the way.
People criticizing YC over this either actually believe, or are affecting to believe, that it's perfectly reasonable for them to drag others into their black and white worldview, in which apparently this season you're only allowed to align yourself with Democrats.
Posts like this play directly into Trump's hands. The entire Trump ideology is based on a belief that "real Americans" are being oppressed by a sinister "global elite". Demanding that Trump supporters be fired tells everyone that the "elites" are a) scared of Trump, b) can't win through arguments and have to resort to intimidation, and c) are a powerful, dangerous group which is hostile to average people, who need someone to protect them from this sinister force. Which is all, of course, exactly what Donald Trump wants them to believe.
Daily newspapers have endorsed Clinton by a margin of 147 to 2. It should be obvious, over a year after the Trump campaign started, that anyone voting for Trump isn't going to be dissuaded by yet another article calling him racist. Indeed, I think many Trump supporters back him because of all the articles calling him racist. "They" must be scared of Trump (the logic goes), or else "they" wouldn't spend so much effort attacking him, so Trump must be the only "truly independent" candidate who will "fight the system".
If you don't believe me, look at eg. this comment on /r/The_Donald, which was voted up to #1 on a recent Peter Thiel article:
"True story. I once hung out with a group of lesbians (most my friends are male), and when they found out I didn't agree with them politically, they told me they were taking away my dyke card. Thankfully there are a LOT of gays who give no fucks about the 'lgbtqjseflelkf community', and just live their lives like anyone else. This article is nothing more than typical democrat tactics. 'YOU'RE NOT A REAL <insert minority> UNLESS YOU DO WHAT WE SAY.' REMEMBER IF TRUMP WEREN'T A REAL THREAT, THEY WOULDN'T BE THIS DESPERATE." (emphasis in original)
The same tactics have been used against Trump over and over and over, for more than a year now, and his support is still pretty much where it was during the summer. Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over and over, and expecting different results.
I'm deeply uncomfortable with the narrative where support for Trump is a basis for excluding a person from discussion and employment. He's a major party candidate, supported (if sometimes disliked) by roughly half the population. That's not a number of people you can fire or silence!
The usual argument runs that this time is unique, that Trump has embraced racism and violence and his major-party status should not bury that. That he is effectively (sometimes "literally") a facist, and should be treated as such. I think it's an inadequate, alarming response.
Just about half of voters will back Trump. At that scale, silencing and marginalizing them is impossible, so whether it's moral doesn't really matter. Shunning influences people when it cuts them off from their social circles, but most of the people embracing shunning admit they know 0-1 Trump supporters. It's not going to marginalize anyone, just deepen a divide between the groups.
Even if Trump were quite literally Mussolini 2.0, firing and shunning his supporters wouldn't end his candidacy. In fact, refusing to engage with facists has historically pushed them further, letting them build their beliefs unopposed.
I respected Altman's explanation. It doesn't matter that Trump is different, or that Thiel donated an exceptional amount (particularly since it was in line with his wealth). Firing people for simple support or donations makes this problem worse, so no amount of importance is a justification.
He's a major party candidate, supported (if sometimes disliked) by roughly half the population. That's not a number of people you can fire or silence!
Are you sure? Prop 8 was _passed_ (i.e. it was voted in favor of by more than half of California's population), and yet we still regularly hold witch hunts for people that supported it. I've actually been asked about it on a job application.
> I've actually been asked about it on a job application.
It seems like that's probably illegal, though here's hopefully some nuance:
It probably shouldn't be illegal. The parts of the civil rights legislation that reach into the private sector should be probably be repealed/sunsetted. It should be sufficient to have the government actually recognize/implement equal protection under the law. E.g., if the KKK burns down the local shop that serves people of color or is owned by a person of color, the police should bring the KKK members to justice.
To keep going, while it shouldn't be illegal, it shouldn't be encouraged either. The employer has their right to free expression and voluntary association but they should strive/remain-vigilant to uphold the spirit of free speech and tolerance even if the law does not compel them to. For those with such self-discipline, their reward is access to the broader, richer market of rational peoples of every stripe.
It seems like most people want YC to cut Thiel off, which would be very similar to that. David Heinemeier Hansson and Ellen Pao have advocated for virtually that exact scenario.
Thiel doesn't even get equity in YC. Thiel's participation in YC is almost literally just a marketing tactic --- it's a co-endorsement. We're telling Altman: rethink the endorsement.
And once that happens, that legitimizes DHH firing Basecamp employees who vote for Trump. I understand that Thiel's involvement with YC is not "employment," but the point is that 1) yes, people are suggesting excluding Trump supporters from employment and 2) high visibility people doing so would have a massive ripple effect on everybody else. It's just another thing that goes from "that's insane and you can't do that" to "these other companies have done it, so it's no big deal."
You can construct a slippery slope out of any argument. I can get you to "DHH fires Basecamp employees" from "refusal to donate to Donald Trump" in just a few more steps. So that argument is not compelling.
It's more productive for us to concentrate on the arguments that are actually being made. You don't have to, of course, but I don't think you'll get very far otherwise.
How would that make you feel if you were a YC-funded founder who happened to support Trump? The semantics of Thiel's relationship with YC doesn't change anything.
This feels like exactly the thing that's been dismissed as an unrealistic slippery slope elsewhere in the thread.
When the narrative was "Thiel's connection to YC is about prestige, so YC should sever that connection to preserve its reputation", I found it basically reasonable.
But if the narrative is "Disavowing Thiel will make Trump-supporting founders uncomfortable with coming to YC, or uncomfortable admitting their support?" Then we've jumped to punishing people professionally for being in a group comprising 40%+ of the country.
Hounding founders who support Trump (who, perhaps, don't even donate or like many of his views) seems to go straight into the awful kind of patronage/exclusion politics that's being condemned here.
I do not support "hounding founders who support Trump". In fact, I don't support hounding most Trump supporters. I am content with hounding key members of the Trump campaign itself.
This seems reasonable - becoming a key member of a political campaign means signing on for that sort of thing - but I'm struggling to reconcile it with the earlier statement. If making Trump supporters uncomfortable about entering a business arrangement is a good thing, surely that's about trying to put economic pressure on Trump supporters in general?
I'm not trying to be uncharitable here - I honestly don't follow. One possibility is that since YC founders often end up quite wealthy, you're talking about discouraging the next Thiel rather than discouraging business with Trump supporters in general?
There's a line there. If Altman wants to express support for another candidate or express disagreement with Thiel's views -- great! The political process at work. What is not okay is him using his position of power to seek retribution against Thiel for his views. YC is not a political organization. It's not about making Trump supporters uncomfortable, it's about making them afraid to exercise their right to free speech.
To be clear, I am not a Trump supporter, but dehumanizing Trump supporters is not a productive approach.
There's no political argument that you can't turn into a slippery slope like this. You can get to Brendan Eich with just a few more hops from a starting point of "refusing to donate to Trump". So that argument isn't very interesting.
What might interest you more is that I agree with you about Brendan Eich. I think Eich's situation is nothing at all like that of Thiel's. Eich was a full-time employee of Mozilla. From what I know of the situation, Eich hadn't made any of his employees at Mozilla uncomfortable. Eich's support for Proposition 8 was quiet: people dug it out of a database to use against him. And while I disagree with the stance he took against marriage equality, opposition to marriage equality doesn't challenge equal access to the channels of democracy. Eich wasn't campaigning to remove the Muslims from our country, or to imprison those who disagree with him.
Of course. I also know it started as a left-wing workers movement that moved to the right to gain favour of the wealthy capitalists required to fund its growth which included seizing control over the media.
As a European looking from the outside and more than aware of this history, I see the media goose-stepping to the tune of one campaign which uses it to stoke up moral outrage about their opposition of which this story is a current symptom. The candidate that rhymes with history is not the chaotic/offensive TV personality.
Are you kidding? At no point during that parties history was it ever 'left-wing'. It was partially funded and staffed by the military, and originally organized to push hard against leftist elements in Germany. It primarily appealed to workers as a conservative alternative to leftist politics, quite similar to the conservative party we have today.
>> At no point during that parties history was it ever 'left-wing'
What?! Of course it was - history time: the small feller with moustaches joined an anti-capitalist workers party. It's in the name - it was Socialist but Nationlist so anti-communist but still decidedly to the left of say the DNC today. Check the manifesto including things like banning rentiers, seizing land, obligating pensions and this little gem "We want all very big corporations to be owned by the government" etc. The moral is that its not where you start, its where you go that matters.
You are completely ignoring the part where he effectively replaced the core of that insignificant political party during the takeover. It's incredibly deceptive to conflate the single most conservative movement in history with leftism because of a hostile takeover of a tiny political party. If you actually read those 25 points, it's a blueprint for a regressive totalitarian dictatorship with a command economy. If you consider that 'leftist', then I couldn't disagree more.
There were factions in the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical.[23] The conservative Nazi Hermann Göring urged Hitler to conciliate with capitalists and reactionaries.[23] Other prominent conservative Nazis included Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich.[24]
The radical Nazi Joseph Goebbels hated capitalism, viewing it as having Jews at its core, and he stressed the need for the party to emphasise both a proletarian and national character. Those views were shared by Otto Strasser, who later left the Nazi Party in the belief that Hitler had betrayed the party's socialist goals by allegedly endorsing capitalism.[23] Large segments of the Nazi Party staunchly supported its official socialist, revolutionary, and anti-capitalist positions and expected both a social and economic revolution upon the party's gaining power in 1933.[25] Many of the million members of the Sturmabteilung (SA) were committed to the party's official socialist program.[25] The leader of the SA, Ernst Röhm, pushed for a "second revolution" (the "first revolution" being the Nazis' seizure of power) that would entrench the party's official socialist program. Further, Röhm desired that the SA absorb the much smaller German Army into its ranks under his leadership.[25]
I wasn't aware that there was a boycott of Oculus over Palmer Luckey, but man, that's heartening to hear. I have to admit that I would not have picked "political integrity" over "access to VR toys" in that particular sparring match. Good for those developers!
Boycotts are a form of speech. The right to criticize is inalienable.
Trump's support is way down from the summer. 538 had Trump and Clinton pretty much even at the end of July. Right now they predict an 87.4% chance of a Clinton victory, with about a 7% difference in the popular vote (which, for modern elections, is a pretty big margin).
The highly partisan nature of American politics puts a pretty hard floor on what any major candidate can expect for support. The Democrats or Republicans could run a half-eaten bagel for President and they would still get about 40% of the vote. It's no coincidence that this is about the level where Trump is polling right now.
Sure, posts like this just reinforce Trump supporters' beliefs. But so what? They're going to vote for him anyway. 80% of the electorate knew which way they were going to vote before the primaries even began. Nothing is going to sway them. What matters is convincing the 20% in the middle. They're rejecting Trump pretty hard right now, and pointing out how horrible he is certainly seems to be helping.
Or how Clinton has a disdain for your average American voter? And plans to push through trade agreements that hurt the very Americans whose vote she's trying to get?
I can't imagine why half the country won't vote for her.
I know minorities and women who will still vote for Trump after everything that has happened; perhaps it'd be wise if you dislike Trump to understand why that is and what has brought us to this point instead of putting your head in the sand.
The socialist tradition has a suitable term: "class traitor".
The ruling class is ruling, in substantial parts because they are better at cooperating than other classes (and are good at seeding discord in other classes). One aspect of ruling class cooperation is ruthlessly punishing their own class traitors.
I suspect that is part of what the whole saga is about.
In a sea of partisan squabble, you've said something truly worthy of thought. This has analogs in everything from organized crime to the interactions of genes.
Elites relative to whom? Clinton has decades in the top echelons of power besides being married to an ex-POTUS so I guess it is hard to be more elite on a global scale.
Trump might be elite compared to the average Joe on the street but he has no political history comparable to Clinton.
And the biggest issue of all: Trump seems to be the best candidate to avoid WW III.
At times I've suspected this entire cacophony of anti-Trump vitriol was just a ploy to convince the plebes that he isn't one of TPTB... What would really change under Trump? Coke and Pepsi taste the same to me.
How can you be sure that Trump is lying about every single thing he says? Every position he claims to hold would be a massive change. Most of Clinton's positions are "everything is pretty good, just need a few tweaks".
the alternative to denouncing outright support for racist and sexist position is accepting it as normal political speech, which sounds worse.
There's this trope that attacking this position doesn't harm (or even helps) Trump, but polling has shown the contrary. The scandals involving his comments about women, about the muslim veteran, his mocking of a reporter with disabilities, have always been followed by drops in polling for him. His tax policies, a bit less so.
Talking about how Trump's positions are terrible cause his numbers to go down. If that's not effective political speech, I don't know what is.
Denouncing, sure. But what we're seeing is a push to fire, exclude, and not engage with Trump supporters. Think of how many people insist that they don't know a single Trump voter.
That's not something which hurts his candidacy. It convinces his supporters that they're under attack (they literally are), and encourages people to keep silent rather than admit that they like any of what he says. Ignoring him might have worked at 5% in the polls, but at ~50% you need to engage his supporters.
That doesn't mean treating his positions as 'normal', but there's plenty of room between that and firing donors and banning campaign signs.
I don't think 'employees' should be fired on the basis of who they support. But Thiel is an extremely powerful and wealthy businessman, who, let's not forget, put a news organization out of business because he didn't like their reporting.
Right, polling shows that 95% of Romney Voters are voting Trump (or at least this was the case a couple weeks ago), so excluding everyone is a bit much. There are many degrees of support to be given, as well.
Thiel is not just a Trump supporter though, he's a major donor. Out there doing fundraising and fullheartedly defending Trump's positions through money. At what point do you have to actually take responsibility for your actions if not after writing a million dollar check? At what point does SV decide that having someone materially supporting a fascist as a major player in the community is not super hot?
Fun side note, there was some polling done that showed that Americans are now extremely unlikely to date someone who supports a different political party.
>Posts like this play directly into Trump's hands.
I'm not sure that's true. Trump is a narcissist who wants to be loved. He's not trying to be hated.
What these posts do is create or reinforce cultural and political divide in a very ugly way. The message is that if you're a Trump supporter you're immoral and because you're immoral there's no way to compromise with you. The author may get brownie points from other members in his bubble, but his attitude is destructive and should be stopped. All you're doing is incentivising lying about political beliefs and further radicalizing conservatives.
One concern with this line of argumentation: reasonable people shouldn't have to change their behavior, but rational people might want to.
That is, suppose you believe (as I do) that D.T. and his supporters are quite dangerous. If they are using my behavior to gain strength, it behooves me to change my behavior!
Thanks, Marco, for drawing my attention to Sam Altman's great blog post. More people should take Sam's attitude:
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.
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.
IMHO Sam's is a pretty good post, and I also feel Sam is basically saying Peter Thiel gets a pass because he's Peter Thiel and because Trump is a major party nominee, but if anyone else were publicly supporting a basically anti-free speech, anti-immigrant, anti-women, democracy-undermining extremist organization or politician, no reasonable person would want them as an investor or adviser.
Which I think Marco sums up well saying, someone who says what Trump is saying could not be associated with YC, and donating over $1m is saying you strongly support what Trump is saying.
IMO saying you shouldn't fire someone over politics, shouldn't be a free pass to support ANYTHING, including things antithetical to basic human values or YC values/interests, if it happens to be from a presidential candidate.
But it's also about outcomes. As I understand it, Altman considers a Trump win a bad thing for America.
There's no inconsistency between, on the one hand, repudiating Thiel's material support of Trump and, on the other hand, figuring out how to engage Trump supporters and their issues going forward.
The former helps prevent an immediate bad event, the latter builds a future in which America is less likely to fragment further and leave more people on the outside.
Nowhere in these does anybody stop talking to anyone. Altman talks to Thiel and publically disavows Thiel's support of Trump. Altman puts his own considerable resources and thought into talking with Trump supporters to see what's up with them, really. Everybody's talking. Granted, the conversations aren't easy, but they're talking.
I am not sure why endorsement of a political candidate is sometimes equated with 100% parity on every single belief of that particular candidate.
It is entirely possibly that some people support Trump because of his crass and divisive rhetoric, and it's also entirely possible that some people support Trump because of his stance on trade. Is it really anyone's place to demand that another voter change the list of priorities that determine their choice of candidate? Does that not fundamentally alter the intended functioning of the way voting in a democracy ought to work?
I am all for constructive debate on why the policies and character of one candidate makes them more suitable for holding a particular government post, but to suggest that one ought to resort to intimidation, ostracism, marginalizing and other such methods because of an individual's personal choice to prioritize a candidate's agreeable stance on one issue, over a disagreeable stance of another, seems very dangerous to me.
During his campaign, President Obama famously claimed that he felt marriage was a union that ought to be between a man and a woman. Most would consider this to be a highly regressive view, yet voted for him because he was their preferred choice on a whole lot of issues. Campaign officials like David Axelrod later revealed that he took this position publicly for political expediency. Regardless of whether this is true, if one were to suggest marginalizing Obama voters in the way that is being suggested here, I am confident that there would be very little semblance of a community left.
Some particular beliefs are critical. If a candidate is perfect and a genius, but for example is against (for example) women voting, this is critical for endorsement, even though he may be perfect in every other sense.
Likewise, if your friend is from a different party than you, you may still be friends, but if he is a member of the KKK I guess that draws the line. Tolerance is not supposed to be infinite.
What people are finding out is that the line is different for everyone.
And of course, its the election for President. Everything gets blown out of proportion.
Some beliefs are critical, but the important part here is that the line is different for everyone.
I think a lot of people would support a 'perfect' presidential candidate who opposed women's suffrage, simply because they would never get that change through Congress. That's not an idle example, I've heard people say "sure, but Trump's crazy stuff won't pass and I like some of the things he could actually get through Congress."
Even the KKK example isn't totally convincing to me. Daryl Davis is the usual example - a black blues singer who got to know Klansmen and tried to talk them out of their positions. He had a hood collection from all his successes, and there's an argument that he effectively broke the Maryland clan.
Obviously that doesn't obligate anyone to stay friends with someone in the KKK. You don't need to tolerate things you find abhorrent. But I'm genuinely frightened by the recent push to limit how far it's acceptable to extend tolerance.
If someone is consistently pushing back on the ideas you have a problem with (as Davis did), I think it's harmful to demand that they stop associating with the people who hold those ideas.
Why? Unless the candidate will have the power to prevent women from voting he can hold any beliefs he wants in general.
There is a good reason why we have separation of power and why we have a complex political system in which even the president needs political capital to do things.
That said i think it's highly unlikely that there will be such hypothetical candidate that i can agree with on 99% 90% or even 50% of the issues and they'll be say a member of the KKK.
> Unless the candidate will have the power to prevent women from voting he can hold any beliefs he wants in general.
We don't know what powers the Executive Branch has now or will have. It evolves. FDR drastically expanded the power of the President, and he almost took over the Judicial Branch by appointing a bunch of new Supreme Court justices.
The next POTUS will appoint at least one Supreme Court justice and possibly more, which would give him/her enormous power over many decades of US law.
FDR asked Congress to expand the Supreme Court and institute an age limit for justices, but Congress said no. So that was a failure of expansion of Presidential power. But while FDR is a good example in a lot of other ways, most Presidents have managed to expand their power, but Congress can check them if they choose to do so. See the current situation with the Supreme Court, where the Senate is actually reducing the power of the President.
I think you also overestimate the control Presidents have over the justices they nominate, which is to say, none. Anthony Kennedy was supposed to be "Bork through the back door" when Reagan nominated him, but he's been one of the more liberal justices of the past 30 years. Or see how Roberts has, in a couple of key cases, broken with his fellow conservative GOP appointees.
Like the other poster mentioned FDR might be a good example for checks and balances rather than some unfettered expansion of power.
While we might not know what power the executive branch will have in 50 or 100 years we know what power it has now, and we know what power it can have in 4 years unless you really think "Emperor Trump" is a possibility.
Also while POTUS does appoint chief justices they still need to be confirmed by congress.
And regardless of what is going on neither branch of government can go against the constitution, at least not to any major extent before being reigned down.
P.S.
It's more than likely that the US had presidents recently that had pretty negative opinions about a certain population including women, I would refer you to the Nixon tapes to see just how "disgusting" a president can be in a private environment.
And while I'm fully aware that Nixon is one of the least loved presidents I don't think he was an outlier, just some one who got caught.
P.S.
I don't support Trump, I'm not an American, I don't understand how Trump even got into the race in the first place yet alone became a nominee, but I do not support any type of political oppression and thought policing.
> I am not sure why endorsement of a political candidate is sometimes equated with 100% parity on every single belief of that particular candidate.
Endorsement is one thing. Donating a massive amount of money is something entirely different. Not many people are willing to part with $1.25M for someone they don't fanatically support.
And either way, that's not the point. The point is that, while most candidates have deep flaws, Trump has flaws that cannot be overlooked or explained away by political differences.
These include: racism (for which he has lost lawsuits), advocating sexual assault, and suggesting that Hillary Clinton be assassinated.
I'm replying to the general concept that it's a lot of money for a campaign. It's really not. While it's a good amount from a specific person, this specific person has a lot of money.
The absolute amount is not meaningless because it has an effect in the real world.
It buys a certain amount of airtime, organizers' time, etc. Thiel said, "I'm not going to do X numbers of hours of work for you, but I'm going to donate them to your campaign."
That number of hours is staggeringly high, by the way: equivalent to 30+ years of full-time work by unskilled laborers.
> Trump has flaws that cannot be overlooked or explained away by political differences
You are right, and many take this view. The issue is whether or not one ought to be marginalized for _not_ taking this view. If we are allowed to cherry pick the worst in a candidate (Trump offers a lot to pick from) and define their entire candidacy, and further extend this to say that all of those who support him, with either a vote or with money, must necessarily share in this horrible worldview, then I believe that to be an oversimplification.
What's effectively being said here is that this person has been immoral in the past, and there is a strong likelihood of him being immoral in the future. Those who are not willing to pre-judge him for the immoral actions he is likely to commit, should be ostracized. I think that's wrong.
Peter Thiel is doing just fine. If Y Combinator walked away from him, he would not be hurt or marginalized or ostracized in the least. This is not about persecuting people who vote for Trump.
But to support Trump with an enormous sum of money _after_ Trump has revealed himself to be willing to resort to borderline anti-Semitic slurs, to welcome the support of the white supremacy movement, to call for locking up his political opponent, to threaten the free press, to call for an end to Bill of Rights protections for accused criminals, to pre-emptively claim that the election is rigged, that voting fraud is rampant and to encourage his supporters to intimidate voters, to promise to ban an entire religion, and to brag about sexual assault in professional situations is to make a statement that these are the things Thiel is okay with advocating. Whatever other positions Trump might have that Thiel supports, these things are part of the package. Trump is not just a normal candidate. He's a true threat to our democracy.
" is to make a statement that these are the things Thiel is okay with advocating."
Clinton supporters are never held to this standard.
No one calls on Clinton supporters to publicly disavow her statement about the "basket of deplorables". Clinton also shipped classified information to her basement server and destroyed thousands of records when under subpoena. No one claims that Clinton supporters are supporting this behavior. Indeed, it seems just fine for Clinton voters to support her despite her activities which were, at best, "extremely reckless." Clinton supporters can say that, despite her flaws, they will vote for her.
But for some reason, any Trump voter automatically supports every bad thing he ever did.
The responses he provokes are also a threat to democracy.
It's important not to become that which you oppose by calling for opponents to be punished in some way (e.g. be locked up, or lose their job) because of their beliefs.
He's doing his best to convince people that the results of the election will be fraudulent. He has hinted that his supporters might want to assassinate his opponent. That's what a threat to democracy looks like.
Saying that a business might want to reconsider who they work with because of the political donations made by a partner is not remotely a threat to democracy.
> This is not about persecuting people who vote for Trump.
No, if you look at the arguments being made and the people making the arguments, it's clear that "this" in the larger sense is exactly about ostracising people who support Trump. Thiel himself is just the target of the moment.
You mean why are we giving a hard time to all those people who join the KKK just because they look good in white?
But seriously, I don't think the demand to "sever ties" with Thiel is the right (it does have the slight scent of a purge), or the smart one to make (it plays too much into the hands of those who are glad to jump on the "silencing opposing views" bandwagon). In fact, it pretty much ensures that the debate be diverted to that, especially when many in the crowd are, for one reason or another, fixated on their ideas of free speech. It isn't a hypothesis, either, but precisely what happened time and again in the relevant "community". But YC is influential in SV, where various racist and misogynistic ideas, for one reason or another, take hold on some from time to time, and yet YC has often stayed silent (or faint) on such issues, even when they claim to disagree with them, while being quite vocal about political issues like SOPA and visas that affect the powerful SV players.
> it plays too much into the hands of those who are glad to jump on the "silencing opposing views" bandwagon
Why frame it like this? It is "silencing opposing views", whether a bandwagon exists or not, so is bad in itself. You seem to imply the only problem is that people care about the issue - that's a good thing!
> in SV, where various racist and misogynistic ideas
SV is a liberal and leftist hotspot, so those ideas also take hold. Are you pondering why any none-liberal ideas sometimes take hold there? Maybe there a degree of subjectivity in it?
> yet YC has often stayed silent (or faint) on such issues
Possibly for good reason. There is a lot of animosity towards the tech crowd there, and beating them up about diversity in tech is a common pastime.
Remember the PG misquoting? He should have just refused to talk about the subject.
Well, I'm not 100% sure that telling your billionaire buddy that since he's become a politician in a movement that you view as dangerous to your country and its people perhaps you shouldn't do business together for a while, qualifies as silencing his views. Still, I don't think it was right to demand this of YC.
> Are you pondering why any non-liberal ideas sometimes take hold there?
I'm not wondering why supremacist views sometimes takes hold anywhere, I'm just saying that perhaps people of influence who oppose those views may want to speak up a bit more vocally. Maybe it's even their duty.
> Possibly for good reason. There is a lot of animosity towards the tech crowd there
So Marie Antoinette's mistake wasn't not working in the interest of her people but in reminding them that they're hungry?
He hasn't "become a politician", it isn't proposed "for a while".
> I'm not wondering why supremacist views sometimes takes hold
We were talking about "various racist and misogynistic ideas", not "supremacist views". Are you talking about any view you see as subjectively racist/misogynist, or only specific ones?
> Marie Antoinette's mistake wasn't not working in the interest of her people
Antoinette's famous comment was glib and not intended to help, versus PGs sincere willingness to discuss sex issues; Also, she was a monarch is a brutal reign, if you want to compare than to the SV tech industry, go ahead.
I think TechCrunch's breakdown[1] rather does a good job of summing up all the times Thiel has made it plain that he and Trump have a lot more in common that the SV technolibertarian set here seems willing to admit.
Thiel is providing material aid and support for a man whose policies are as close to fascism as makes no difference, and he himself has been openly critical of immigration, women's suffrage, freedom of the press, and even the very concept of democracy itself, not even to mention his past association with cryptofascists like Moldbug.
YC's idiotic line in the sand about "well, as long as it technically wasn't Thiel who said it" isn't even true. Thiel has sad plenty of ugly shit himself, even besides providing active material support to others who have.
Shame on you for blaming Y Combinator. If it was 1.25 million for Clinton you would probably praise Y Combinator, no? This feels more like a clash between your personal political preferences and Mr Thiels's. You are just blaming Y Combinator to inflate this story, trying to get more people on the Clinton side. Shame on you!
Why do people keep making this false equivalence between the two options? One candidate has repeatedly taken racist and sexist stances, as well as demeaned those who are handicapped (and honestly, the list goes on and on). If people don't take a stand against this type of thing, it is a tacit acceptance.
Many very smart, educated, and informed people I know believe that Hillary has effectively monetized public service/political influence and is the most corrupt major party nominee to run for the Presidency in modern history. If people don't take a stand against that type of thing, isn't that tacit acceptance as well? Pick your poison, so to speak. Hillary's supporters will argue that she's not corrupt and has been investigated and cleared of all charges, just as Trump's supporters will argue that he has a 40 year history of helping women and minorities shatter glass ceilings in the construction industry, and therefore is likely not a racist or a misogynist, rather just an ''equal opportunity asshole''. I think this election cycle is much more about voting against the candidate you hate, than for the candidate you love, which should make election day all the more exciting since the normal polling and turnout models could be totally off the mark.
i agree, and believe many trump voters will privately and reluctantly vote for him, and publicly say they voted for someone else for this very reason.
i also believe many others will vote for trump simply to push the country toward a breakup of the 2-party system into a 3 or 4-party system. they very well could have voted for bernie if that were an option.
I was told in another thread that was "Shy Tory Factor"[1]. I get the feeling polling is going to need to really look at what they do since they got Brexit and 2014 US wrong.
Worth pointing out that GAI was co-founded by a STEPHEN K. BANNON which, coincidentally, is the same STEPHEN K. BANNON that runs Breitbart and is currently the campaign chairman for DONALD J. TRUMP.
Possibly not the most unbiased of sources, I think.
Do you have an actual comment on the content of the report, or just low level FUD about its source?
This comment is actually pretty hilarious given the fact that Teneo Holdings, mentioned in the report, was founded by ex Bill Clinton staffers, and had Bill Clinton and Tony Blair as 2 of it's original 3 advisors. Huma Abedin is presently on the Teneo payroll.
If those sorts of ties between people are problematic to you, then you must ABSOLUTELY HATE the Clintons, because the same type of arrangement is how literally everyone close to them got there.
I think the point is that in context, that doesn't matter. If everyone believed that, Hillary would be polling at 70%.
Starting an argument from "this is ok because we're right and they're wrong" means that you have to expect the other side to use the exact same argument. I'd rather not see us go down the road of firing people for supporting popular candidates, if only because everyone can do it.
A large proportion of Trump supporters are not for Donald Trump the human being and all the things he's done. They're for the Republican party being in power; they're against Clinton for her faults (real or imagined); they're for someone who isn't a mainstream candidate being in charge for once. There's all kinds of reasons to support the GOP Presidential candidate that many people may see as more important than the insane, racist, sexist things Trump has said and done.
(I say this as a left-leaning guy by Canadian standards. Believe me, I'm terrified you guys might actually elect that monster.)
You're right: many people are supporting the top of the GOP ticket out of loyalty to the GOP, or because they're pro-life. They don't support Donald Trump.
But Thiel does. We know this, because Thiel got up on stage at the Republican National Convention, in a nationally televised speech, and proclaimed to the nation that Donald Trump was the best candidate in the race --- and the only "honest" one. Thiel's support for Trump is not in question.
Right, but a large portion of supporters are not donating over a million dollars. I'd expect that person to be for Donald Trump, rather than some vague wish for republican values.
I've traditionally associated more with Republicans than Democrats. Like many others around here, I'm fiscally conservative but socially liberal. The Republican party's stance on social issues, especially marriage equality and lack of tolerance in general, has been chronically infuriating to me. I believe Thiel was the first openly gay convention speaker in the history of the Republican party. He received a standing ovation. That was a major moment that went unnoticed by many. But not by me. Consider for a moment that there may be more going on here than meets the eye. Thiel may be quietly doing more to move many old school rank-and-file Republicans out of the past and into the future than anyone else this cycle, and that's a positive development for the entire country.
Most of Trump's supporters don't accept that he's racist, or generally sexist, or the other charges being made. The ones I've talked to largely believe that he's just rude, and sometimes directs that through traits like race, gender, and disability. On policy, they would say that opposing things like illegal immigration isn't actually racism.
Laugh at that if you want, say they're stupid, but realize they're saying the exact same thing about you and the claim that Hillary is dangerously corrupt. "No she isn't, it's just..." - same structure.
My point is that you can't rescue a stance of "fire Trump supporters" by saying he's the bad guy. If that were consensus reality, the election would be over.
So you're absolutely opening the door to retribution from people who think the same way in reverse. That's exactly why the value of having a norm against punishing people for holding popular opinions, no matter how divisive.
> Most of Trump's supporters don't accept that he's racist, or generally sexist, or the other charges being made.
I wonder if we have enough evidence to reach that conclusion? Respectfully, I'm not sure you've talked to enough supporters to generalize about the whole group.
Speaking only for myself, if I end up voting for one of those two, it will be for Trump. I accept the strong possibility that every one of the negative personality traits he's shown are genuine.
I think in policy matters he's basically a wildcard. But I find Clinton so undesirable as a candidate that I would prefer a wildcard.
Does this mean I approve in any way of Trump's apparent personal characteristics? Absolutely not.
I should probably have said "don't accept that he's racist or sexist in a way that precludes voting for him". The claim I meant to make is that most of his supporters are not voting for him because they feel that racism and sexism are good. That claim, I think, carries no matter what the breakdown between "he doesn't mean it", "he's racist but I'm not", and "he means it but I don't think it's racist". Certainly, I've seen all three assertions.
My broader point was simply that "but Trump is worse, false equivalence" is absurdly circular reasoning. There are plenty of people (yourself included?) who could make the same charge against Clinton.
For myself, I wouldn't want to be accused of 'tacit acceptance' of the stances of any of the candidates. Everyone running (third parties included) has at least one view or policy that I find abhorrent, so I get personally uncomfortable about the idea that voting for someone means accepting their stances.
This election is generally perceived as choice between 2 bad persons, 2 bad leaders, or choosing lesser evil if you prefer.
Some people have higher preference of political correctness, smooth behavior and strong, likable speeches. Some feel bad/desperate enough to don't give a f__k about this and rather want to see a change in current not-so-bright-for-them situation. This kind of situation happens very often, all around the globe where you have elections.
Personally, choosing between spoiled amoral brat who didn't achieve much without daddy's cash and influence, and Clinton which is arrogant lawyer (where is the common lawyer hate when it matters?) apparently too deep in corporate pockets to ever see or solve anything real... well, I guess I would just pick a candidate that doesn't have a chance.
luckily not US citizen, so this is just outside view
> One candidate has repeatedly taken racist and sexist stances
I dislike Trump immensely, but this narrative that this guy is OBVIOUSLY a racist, homophobe, a misogynist whatever, is not good for your country. Every election the DNC dog-whistles that the GOP candidate is all those things in order to discredit their opposition. For example, Romney was a flake but generally a decent guy and yet he was spun as a misogynist!! He's not a misogynist. Trump is a narcissist and a huckster, but he's not a racist. I'm not even sure he's a misogynist either.
You cannot disparage your opposition like that. It's unproductive because it entrenches supporters in their views and even radicalizes them. You're basically alienating 100 million people from mainstream politics - do you really really want to do that?
Taking a stand against those sexist and racist stances (which several prominent members of YC have individually very strongly) does not preclude also taking a stand against attempts to ostracise and vilify anyone who supports the republican candidate. Should the US take citizenship away from the 40% of citizens who would vote for Trump because they are supporting someone beyond the pale?
Your position undermines the very democracy it purports to defend.
One candidate has repeatedly been dishonest and suspected of corruption while in government previously (and honestly, the list goes on and on). If people don't take a stand against this type of thing, it is a tacit acceptance.
No it is not tacit acceptance. People weigh pros and cons of each candidate and make a choice. No donation or endorsement implies 100% allegiance, only an overall preference. I'm sure Thiel thinks Trump is fairly idiotic. "But he's a sexist" doesn't change anything even if it were true.
Anyone is free to shun people for their publicly stated political stance but any particular policies or personal attributes of Trump or anyone are not in a special category that is shun-worthy.
The other candidate is corrupt, more politically savvy, and a career politician.
Also racism and sexism is a subjective issue, asking people to take a stand against "this kind of thing" without specifics is playing into the political banter.
I wouldn't support Trump but Hillary's fealty to Wall Street and die-hard neoliberalism ("hemispheric FTA, etc.") affects hundreds of millions of people whereas whomever Trump groped affected maybe 50 people.
And no, turning it into a symbolic issue in a Presidential election isn't going to help prevent it happening to the women in your life.
For all the fearmongering over him (and let's face it some of it has been absurd) I think he'd end up being a lame duck president who doesn't do very much except primp, preen and massage his ego. Assuming that's true (he never has been particularly well connected to reality and the president can't do an awful lot unilaterally), that might actually be the preferable option.
Ironically many of the people who were against Bernie because "he wasn't realistic" and what he wanted "isn't achieveable" seem intent on forgetting that now that an orange attached to a blonde mop is running for president.
This is equivocation. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are in no sense equivalent. In fact, Trump is so historically bad that leading figures of his own party are disowning him. Major donors are clawing back contributions. The RNC even halted its support.
If it was $1.25 million for Clinton, there would have been no complaint. If it was $1.25 million for Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or even George W Bush, there would have no complaint. Donald Trump is a different and unique circumstance, as Sam Altman and Paul Graham repeatedly claim in their writings, but do not follow through with in their actions.
> If it was $1.25 million for Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or even George W Bush, there would have no complaint
Are you kidding ? when Condoleezza Rice got a seat on DropBox's board, people here on HN very much complained and said how they were going to "drop" Dropbox because someone on its board was on the wrong political side.
I'm not republican but it's pretty clear in most US tech circles,especially in the Silicon Valley, you just cannot be republican or people will be out to get you. Trump or not, that's a fact and it's ridiculous.
To me, these attitudes (and their general acceptance + support) are just as worrying as Donald's own attitudes and supporters.
One of the strangest things about human nature--at least that I've seen--is that when we vehemently resist something we detest we often produce its mirror image.
It's honestly extremely frightening to think that making a political donation to a major-party candidate you support could cost you your livelihood in this country. Those are not the principles America was founded on. (It's not even like McCarthyism anymore where they were persecuting a small minority party. We want to blacklist people for being __Republican__? Really?)
This is exactly how Democracy becomes eroded and one party systems emerge. And the fact that more people don't see that is quite chilling.
What's that old American saying? Something like: "I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." That's the America I grew up in. What happened to it?
We've been headed toward one party statehood for awhile. The American project has failed.
"Democratic politicians are the ruling class’s prime legitimate representatives and that because Republican politicians are supported by only a fourth of their voters while the rest vote for them reluctantly, most are aspirants for a junior role in the ruling class. In short, the ruling class has a party, the Democrats. But some two-thirds of Americans — a few Democratic voters, most Republican voters, and all independents — lack a vehicle in electoral politics."
I was really hoping that Gödel was wrong when he said that he found a logical loophole in the constitution that would allow for a dictatorship. But I believe we are figuring out what that loophole was.
I am 100% in favor of Sam Altman's decision for the following reasons: 1. Trump is offensive, racist, sexist and a terrible human being all around. I am Mexican, and I hate his guts and everything about him. However, I believe in what Voltaire once smartly said "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". I do not agree at all with Peter Thiel's decision to support Trump in the RNC or with money, but I defend his right to express himself. 2. Sam Altman and Paul Graham have done a lot to defeat Trump and elect Hillary as president. One of their part time partners supports Trump, that is not indicative of YC's political view. 3. Peter Thiel is a business man, and investor therefore that is what I focus on, his book which is fantastic and his work on facebook, can't judge him unfairly on everything, just because he supports Trump. He has a brilliant business mind and that is why he is a part time partner at YC and that is in the arena he should be judged.
I am strongly in favor of free speech. Peter should be scrutinized and debated, not fired. Sam Altman does not deserve any nonsense because of this.
This exemplifies a disturbing tactic of the left, demonizing anyone who holds differing political views, attempting to turn them into social pariahs, causing them whatever harm they're able to within the law.
I happen to think that Hillary Clinton is a criminal who belongs in federal prison. I think the only reason she's not being prosecuted is that the current administration is corrupt, and views laws as weapons to be used against political opponents rather than a set of rules to be applied equally to all citizens. I am of the opinion that her "foundation" that accepted "donations" from countries that had business before the US State Department while she was running, it, is basically a money-laundering operation for bribes. I believe the woman who accused her husband of viciously and violently raping her in a hotel room was telling the truth, and I think those Democrats who are throwing fits over Trump's crude statements and sketchy allegations of his impropriety are hypocrites, considering the way they defended Bill Clinton and elevated him to the status of Elder Party Statesman after he left office.
And yet I think people should be free to publicly support Hillary Clinton's bid for POTUS without having their livelihoods come under attack.
This is exactly why as a former independent I am going with the Republicans this time around. Although I do tend to side with them on more issues, it's the way the Dems conduct themselves that has completely turned me off of them:
Shame on you, Marco Arment, for calling for someone's head because you don't like their political position. Whatever happened to the land of "I disapprove of what you say but I'll defend to death your right to say it" or "Give me freedom or give me death"? Or it is, as it turns out for you, that it's the land of the free only for people who agree with you?
I'm not a Trump supporter, but I applaud YC's decision not to sever ties with someone because of their personal opinion. And Marco Arment should feel ashamed for trying to oust people with different political opinion than his and undermine the cherished principle of freedom of speech.
There are some brilliant people working in this industry whose politics I abhor. That doesn't mean that we can't, don't, or won't work well together, or even that we have to leave politics at the door. I've had some great conversations with people who I strongly disagree with politically -- frustrating, yes, but still highly interesting and worthwhile for mutual understanding.
This trend of naming, shaming, and excluding political opponents has got to end. We've been here before (even as recently as the GWB / War on Terror era), and it is absolutely toxic for an open and democratic society.
I agree with you in general, but Trump is uniquely toxic. Every day he says more and more hateful and disturbing things, and threatens our open and democratic society with his constant railing against the rigged election and encouragement to supporters to go intimidate voters in typically-Democratic districts. This is not just a political difference. Trump is truly dangerous.
It's too easy to see the opposition as "uniquely dangerous." As I recall, the left actually believed that George W was going to start World War 3 and declare himself dictator. And Obama was going to permanently take over major corporations and institute communism.
There's an interesting dichotomy when people talk about this election. The same folks who accuse Trump of being divisive, then demand folks break ties with all Trump supporters.
I detest Trump, but I understand a certain aspect of his followers. (I know several intelligent Trump followers. They do exist.) Their core premise is, "We want to push Reset on the crony capitalism in Washington, and if it takes a terminally flawed candidate to destroy the establishment, so be it." In this light, things like "He's never done the job before", "He's a Pervert", "He lies a bunch" don't hurt him. And when Republican leadership abandons him, it strengthens his cause. (Yes, there's racism too, but let's leave that to the side for now) Yes, Trump is reprehensible, but you can appreciate that the disaffected are rallying behind him with "Let's not have 4 more years of the rich bailing themselves out and bringing cheap competition in for our jobs."
YC can join the Facebook drama queens who unfriend people with opposing political views, but that's childish. Better to engage the opposition, and allow people to support whatever politicians they want out in the open.
I'm not a Trump supporter, but all the YC shaming is terrible. You're advocating for dictatorship where only one political view matters.
Wikipedia: "A dictatorship is a type of authoritarianism, in which politicians regulate nearly every aspect of the public and private behavior of citizens."
This is exactly what's happening with today's political correctness.
I need to watch the daily news so politicians and news anchors can disseminate the naughty words of the week. Otherwise, I might unintentionally let the 'wrong' thing slip at work and get fired.
Being a blond haired, blue eyed Caucasian programmer, my manager is constantly looking for a reason to replace me since the company implemented it's diversity program. I'm one of the highest producing employees and I feel discriminated against, but it's politically incorrect to state this.
I wonder if the author also thinks that YC should reject founders who support trump? Just add a little question to the application form:"Do you now, or have you ever, supported Donald Trump?"
The next stage could be "Do you now, or have you ever, associated with a Trump supporter?" - "if so, please list their names here so we can keep YC pure by excluding them from YC, and pass their names to the re-education brigades"
I disagree with the author of this article. If anything, this article just shows how powerful the media is and how it can influence people to have such extreme thoughts about things which they actually know very little about.
Trump is not guilty of sexual harassment - That is hearsay; media propaganda. Yes, he said nasty things, but it doesn't mean anything about his ability to do a good job as a president.
I think he is probably a rotten person, but I think everyone in politics is just as rotten anyway. To pretend that Hillary Clinton is a saint is wrong - Personally, I think that she is every bit as rotten as Trump - But she is really good at hiding/suppressing it.
Most Trump supporters don't want to vote for him because they think he is a nice person (and I'm sure that Thiel doesn't either) - They just think that he is capable of doing a great job as a president and they think that this is more important than his personality.
I am not sure if it is ridiculous. It depends. It's about a line that everyone has to draw and to set. And this also what Marco is trying to mention in his post I guess.
Let's take a more extreme example from history, just for pointing out that there is a line: I hope we could agree that supporting the NSDAP is as far over such a line as imaginable.
Not comparing anyone in this context with the NSDAP, just pointing out that there is such a line, and hiding behind "political free opinion" doesn't help to avoid hard decisions.
It's good that you aren't comparing this current context with our modern view on the NSDAP.
Mainly because pressuring others into supporting a certain candidate through non-political means really is ridiculous and a deeply concerning attitude in democratic societies.
Wait a second, maybe I can't follow you here.
Are you saying that there should be no consequences for anyone no matter who someone is political supporting, because it is in political context?
If so, two questions:
- What if someone is supporting someone in none political context (which is hard, cause kind of nearly everything could be defined as such), does then someone have to stand for her/his public behaviour and face disagreement or consequences?
- What if someone supports politically the KKK, the IS or any other organisation or party, that you might not agree with?
How about a much more important thing in our constitution: Free speech. Does free speech mean I can say and publicly announce anything, without having to face consequences?
> Are you saying that there should be no consequences for anyone no matter who someone is political supporting, because it is in political context?
Not at all. I was inplying that the consequences should be political as well.
If your children aren't your opinion, try to engage in valuable conversation instead of cutting their allowance. If your neighbor puts up a sign for a candidate you don't like, put up your own sign and don't try to pressure his employer into making him leave.
Democratic societies actively require political variation. Using your physical or economic strength or maybe your status to make people do or state things they don't like is blatantly uncivil.
I'm not an expert on US constitutional law & procedure so you might need to make your own research on their legal specifics in this certain case, but in most western setups I'd bet it's not a very good idea to believe in a legal right which might allow you to publicly announce "anything". But I don't see its relation to our topic here, I think it's probably not essential.
It's probably not the same people but it's funny (in kind of a sad sort of way) that you have people arguing for deregulation because you can vote with your wallet if you're morally opposed to something, and for everyone keeping their political opinions out of business at the same time.
Edit: Nevermind. I just went and read some of your other comments out of curiosity and you're a libertarian. It's exactly the same people.
and it's not even a "real" political view. thiel's said all along he views trump as disruptive to a government that's broken. it has very little to do with the positions people get so worked up over.
Thiel's support of Trump shows that Thiel is a sexist and a racist. If YC wants to attract startups with founders who aren't white men, this is a problem. If startups in YC want to attract employees who aren't white men, this is a problem.
Or Thiel might think that Hillary is a worse option than Trump?
Maybe. Who knows. You should ask him. Pretending to know why he votes for Trump is just wrong.
You assume what he thinks, his state of mind, etc.
Idunno, maybe you should consider accepting that supporting a person does not equate to being that person nor does it imply that both hold the exact same beliefs.
I don't need to assume anything about what he things. Trump is clearly, unambiguously and objectively a sexist racist xenophobe. Human rights provide a line a lower bound of values we all agree on must not ever be crossed, Trump does so eagerly.
Pence is on the ticket. You don't put him on the ticket unless you are homophobic and sexist. Pence has proven himself to be truly outstanding in these areas.
Ed said it[1] better than I could, so I'll quote him:
This is a long way of saying to the people who support Trump (and therefore would never read this) that "Let's agree to disagree and keep being friends" is a poor strategy this year. However you've managed to rationalize it in your head, supporting someone so openly and enthusiastically racist, xenophobic, and flat-out mean says a lot about you.
We are long, long past the point of pretending that support for Trump, let alone actual material and financial backing, is a matter of mere "politics" (as if that in itself is some harmless affectation).
Peter Thiel took one look at the failing campaign of a vociferous racist, mysogynist, authoritarian, anti-democratic fascist, and said "I'll give over a million dollars to him."
How can we trust the business and social acumen of a person who makes that kind of decision? Who faced with a losing candidate will throw good money after bad. Who faced with a business landscape that is crawling, desperately, into finally opening its doors to women and minorities, happily funds a man who says you can "grab [women] by the pussy," that "we ought to build a wall" to keep out Hispanics, and openly campaigns for barring Muslims from the country (who, I might point out, are statistically as likely to be South Asian as Arabic, a demographic hardly unrepresented in tech).
You wouldn't find it so bizarre that a man who has swastikas tattooed on his face had trouble finding a job, why do we find it so bizarre that a man who has done far more actual material harm might not be appealing to a business partner?
This is really strange attribute of democracy, that if majority decides (informed or by uninformed that decision be), one can flip from democracy to (let's say) autocracy, but then you dont get to vote in next election if you change your mind, because there will be none.
The original intent of the 2nd amendment (right to bear arms) was to void a scenario like this, by giving enough military power to the people to make impossible for an elected government to switch to autocracy / dictatorship / ... without the approval of the population.
Wether this amendment is still needed, and if it's effective considering the evolution of military technology, is open to discussion, but at least the original constitution tried to avoid this.
In this case those personal opinions are widely publicised, and reflect -- rightly or wrongly -- on Y Combinator. At that point it does become a matter of business, as the backlash may end up hurting Y Combinator's business (negative press, founders not applying, investors not willing to work with it, etc.).
This is a disgrace to punish someone just because they have different view. Kudos to Y Cominator to not cave in. Peter Thiel is free to support and donate to whoever candidate he feels strong about. If you don't like it, donate to the other candidate. Dragging it into business and people life is so Mccarthyism.
Isn't the right to hold your own judgement the heart of freedom? And what is that judgement if it cannot be expressed? If it cannot have consequences?
Sure, we must protect the expression and dissemination of thoughts and views as key to democracy but when it comes to implementation of those expressions and thoughts we also have a duty under democracy to vigorously push our own judgements.
Non American here. Inability to even comprehend why calls to punish one person because it supports option that I don't like (that's allegedly full of ism-s) equates to me being as narrow minded as the side I am attacking... is very dangerous. Marco is not doing any favor to his favorite this way. Narrow mindedness, no matter how well packaged, stays narrow mindedness. Dragging YC in this is again just a reflection of inability to see how this looks on the outside.
As we say in this part of the world "just don't defend me any more please".
You make excellent points. Marco is not alone in this. There is a subculture in the US that is so full of their own self righteousness, they are unable to take a fair look at themselves. No matter where we sit on the political spectrum, we as a larger culture need to take this more seriously. Thank you for offering your perspective as an outsider.
Living through communism in an eastern european country and getting the real freedom to vote and support who we want changed everything .
And this is why I simply cannot understand this. Educated people from countries which I associate with a strong democracy are asking, no, demanding political discrimination. This is illegal in any civilized country and for obvious reasons. And they do it in the name of progress too!
I must control my impulse of getting angry and calling names, but the fact is you are ignorant spoiled children who take your freedom for granted and would trade it for simple feelings of holier than though.
What concerns me the most is not HRC or Trump. I will vote for neither and I don't believe that either of them will make a big difference. However a big divide in American society is the real problem. I grew up on Soviet Union and it Communist Party was the one and only ideology pushed down everyone throats. The ideology was more important than people (see for just one of many examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov).
With the D and R camps right now I see exactly the same - the ideology becomes more important than anything else. For example, in this discussion "support for candidate X" factor is considered more important than personal and business relationship between people. This is exactly how Communist Party wanted the people to behave. I don't like it at all.
Instead of working together, the D and R camps push supporters to the extremes. Unfortunately, if this continues then things will go really badly. I am really looking for a force/person who can unite the people instead of dividing them.
Q1. Is Trump a spectacularly bad candidate, i.e. would he turn the USA intor a dictatorship, start a nuclear war, or do somethnig else equally damaging to society?
Q2. If Y Combinator shunned Thiel for supporting Trump, would that make a Trump presidency less likely?
If the answer to Q2 is no, as I suspect it is, then it doesn't much matter what the answer to Q1 is.
If we end up with a culture where people are shunned or lose their jobs for their political beliefs (e.g. Brendan Eich) or for who they associate with, that can only coarsen political debatre in the USA, in the long term making it more likely that it does become a dictatorship, something the people doing the shunning want to avoid.
In fact if Q1=yes and YC shunning Thiel would make it more likely that Trump would win, which it might well do as it plays into Trump's anti-establishment narrative, then people opposed to Trump should very much insist on YC not shunning Thiel.
Excellent points. I have no love for someone as ignorant as Donald Trump, but the values demonstrated by some of the most committed Trump haters seems the most likely to support a dictatorship in the years to come.
(1) Seek to understand, then seek to be understood.
If we want to eliminate misguided beliefs, convince anyone who thinks sexual assault and racism is okay, etc., you need to first understand them, and have them feel as though they are understood. It's a basic rule of effective communication. No one will listen to your criticisms of their arguments if they are not convinced that you have understood what they are saying and show empathy towards their position. So, a dialogue wherein all parties work together to develop shared understandings will be far more effective than the demonisation of a section of society.
(2) Supporting Trump doesn't necessarily mean Peter supports Trump's more bigoted and/or inappropriate views. This is Peter Thiel we're talking about. Peter gets excited by thinking differently to other people. If thinking differently were a sex act, it would be Peter's fetish. Peter would support a candidate only if he believes it's what the country needs to help bring back a time of growth and optimism that he thinks has been lost long ago (see: Zero to One). Now, remember, just because Peter believes something, doesn't mean that it's right (see: Clarium Capital).
So, it is my view that Sam is right in supporting the sharing of vastly different ideas, views and understandings. Thiel hasn't specifically supported any of Trump's shameful views, as you aptly describe them, so his only 'crime' is to believe that a protectionist moron (he'll perceive him differently) can do anything positive for the country - a belief that might be mistaken, but is by no means a crime or something to cause shame.
Stop demonising Trump supporters. You'll never convince idiots of anything by addressing them as such.
You Americans (at least I think the majority of you are Americans) are getting quite ridiculous arguing over this.
Supporting a political candidate is a personal choice, one that is given to every eligible individual in a democratic state. Calling for someone to be fired or sever ties with them over political choice is retarded and counter-productive.
Americans love to moralize and punish each other. Instead of saying that they think somebody is wrong they like to make the other person into some evil person who can't even be argued with because they are so evil. That's why there is no real political discourse but just people screaming at each other.
Americans (at least the left leaning ones) also love holiness spiral signalling wars. Its quite possible OP doesn't believe anything in the linked to article, but that style of writing is how the left does sophistry, its the progressive modern way to signal superiority and worth. Op wants attention and smugness, that's how its done in 2016. People who believe any of the linked article is literally true end up with the same logical problems as people who believe every word of a holy book is literally true. The linked article is well written sophistry but don't expect sophistry to contain anything rational. If you didn't get to irrational beliefs in a rational logical manner, you're not going to escape from irrational beliefs using rational or logical discussion, which makes debating the specific points of the sophistry pointless.
Its quite possible OP doesn't believe anything in the linked to article
By OP I assume you mean me, ie: the guy who submitted the article to HN, not the author.
First, I'm not out for attention, but thanks for that unprompted attack (dick). I submitted this as it seemed wrong that it kept being censored/flagged off HN. Honestly I expected it to be flagged off again, but hoped at least a few more people would get to see it.
For me the real issue isn't so much that Thiel is Trump supporter, but that Sam Altman and PG have both been very vocal in their denouncement of Trump, so keeping Thiel as a partner (not employee, let's be clear about that) seems incongruous at best, and down right spineless at worst.
Don't get me wrong, Donald Trump is huge cunt in my view, but even if I were indifferent to Trump, I'd still feel Thiel and Ycombinator should not be doing business together with such drastically conflicting values.
It's also probably worth mentioning I'm English and live in the UK, and this whole election reminds me of Brexit. Pretty much everyone I spoke to thought it would be a landslide for remain. Hell, even the politicians advocating leave didn't seem to think they'd win. Yet here we are, £GBP in free fall, and no one on either side seems to have any idea what to do next.
Even if it seems unlikely now, Trump could end up as president, and that's scary for a lot of people.
> Sam Altman and PG have both been very vocal in their denouncement of Trump, so keeping Thiel as a partner seems incongruous at best, and down right spineless at worst.
You may have to clarify this for me, because it sounds as if you believe people with different political ideals can never work together, even on something non-political.
It seems the exact opposite to me. Spineless would be cutting ties with Thiel, even though it's against their principles to do so over political affiliation, just because some people who get hysterical over politics want them to.
The right wingers love to do that too, not only the lefties. Call somebody "racist" or "socialist" and you have marked them as so bad that no further dialog is needed (or even possible).
I agree emphatically that this is on both sides. Those of us who have watched with relief and hope the decline of influence of irrational, moralizing, censoring fundamentalist Christians[1] (on the right) are somewhat shocked and disappointed to see such a dramatic uptick of irrational moralizing fundamentalist social justice activists[1] on the left.
[1] Not all of them! But enough to cause harm to society
I see a lot of Trump supporters doing the same thing as the (mainstream) left is doing here. The entire concept is strange to me, that they would so rabidly support their tribe that they think they've attained some a) of moral superiority or b) their tribe is the only thing stopping the country from total disaster. The truth is a lot more boring than their fantasies. The media feeds into this hysteria though so I don't blame all of them.
> Americans love to moralize and punish each other. Instead of saying that they think somebody is wrong they like to make the other person into some evil person who can't even be argued with because they are so evil. That's why there is no real political discourse but just people screaming at each other.
It used to be the monopoly of the right in US, now it's interesting to see that the left engages in the exact same rhetoric, techniques and tactics. Or maybe they always did, it's just more blatant today how both sides are extreme and if you don't fall in line you're either Satan or worse than Hitler.
>Americans love to moralize and punish each other. Instead of saying that they think somebody is wrong they like to make the other person into some evil person who can't even be argued with because they are so evil.
That used to be mostly confined to the conservative side of the political spectrum. Now it's spread to the liberal side as well.
I think its the anonymizing nature of the internet. We're not evolved to communicate digitally. Its going to be a rough road here on out for the human race.
Thank you, I couldn't agree more with you. I'd like to add that being a professional means working together with people of diverging opinions.
Both candidates' slogans are deeply ironic (Stronger Together and Make America Great Again) in light of the division and alienation the election is fostering. The US media are radicalizing the people for the sake of votes.
I hope Thiel doesn't stress himself over such outrage. I wish him well.
The question of whether every eligible individual in a democratic state should be allowed to support political candidates with millions of dollars in funding is a contentious one, and my understanding is that the answer in most developed countries is "no, you're not allowed to do that."
You are correct that supporting a political candidate is a personal choice, and on many occasions I continue to do business with companies headed by people who back political ideals I disagree with. However, I HAVE discontinued business with companies that directly support groups I disagree with (Chick-fil-a being a small, but easy example) - I don't care what people do with their own funds, but once a companies name is attached to a donation or lobbying effort it's completely reasonable to hold them accountable for their actions in my eyes.
Unfortunately, even with this mental separation I try to maintain it falls into shades of gray when there isn't a clear separation between the business and the individual.
What? People get fired over personal choices all the time. If I leered at women at the office, then told them it was fine because they secretly liked it, I'd be out in no time. It's a personal choice to do that, and to support a candidate who does the same, but the company can absolutely take your choices into account when figuring out who isn't needed.
Nationally title 7 only protects you from the following: sex, race, color, national origin, and religion. There might be local state laws that protect you from politics, but no national law.
Given the era it was written in "race, color, national origin, and religion" were seen as a way of defining and carpet bombing the entire "ancestry" topic. If they just listed "ancestry" there would be wiggle room with what is the definition in order to discriminate on ancestry. For the purposes of the legal system the definition of ancestry in that context is all of race, color, national origin, religion.
Interesting political affiliation isn't seen as ancestry although in practice it most certainly is. We like to LARP that elections are fair because people decide, when the reality is most of the population is born into party affiliation and boundaries are gerrymandered such that almost none of the public gets to actually decide anything ever. What I'm getting at is we LARP that the people have a voice and a crucial part of the LARPing is we must pretend political affiliation is NOT dominated almost entirely by ancestry. If for example "all black people vote for party X" that would imply black people are not part of a representative democracy where leaders are selected by voting etc, which is totally badthink thoughtcrime to even consider as a physics style thought experiment or mathematical inductive reasoning. So obviously politics can't be a protected class in a "democracy" like the USA.
If you think that's out there, consider something like sharia law [1][2] where the law is based on religion. In some regions, you can get arrested for things you don't even understand.
First, it's not generally illegal to fire people over political beliefs. More importantly, though, Peter Thiel isn't an employee of Y Combinator --- as Altman himself has been at pains to point out.
Voter registration is already public in many states (and searchable online). While that doesn't include actual votes, it does include party affiliation which is obviously a strong indicator. Beyond some extreme exceptions, you can't even opt-out of being listed in this publicly searchable database which includes your home address as well. In other words, voting is hardly anonymous even today.
And even that doesn't account for recent massive scale (191M people) leaks [1].
You'll have to do a better job of connecting those dots for me, because I do not see the connection between criticizing someone for endorsing a member of the Trump campaign and working to eliminate the anonymous vote.
Incidentally? Elimination of the anonymous vote? That's something Peter Thiel probably actually believes in. He believes democracy is a failed experiment, and the extension of the franchise to women harmed society. He believes, in general, that more voting worsens outcomes.
Almost nobody will agree with the idea that in an ideal world built upon the "marketplace of ideas" that someone should be constrained from expressing political opinions for fear of losing their employment.
In fact this being so is a primary driver of Trump's anti-PC appeal.
Nobody is losing their employment in this discussion. Thiel doesn't even have equity in YC. His part-time partner status is a marketing arrangement, a co-endorsement. All that Sam Altman is being asked to do is to reconsider endorsing Thiel.
Meanwhile, all sorts of misconceptions are behind the appeal of Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a monster. I do not think reasonable people are required to change their behavior to assuage the misconceptions of his deluded followers.
You think this a damning argument. But no reasonable reader thinks we couldn't blow the thread up to 1000 more comments, each choc-a-bloc with vivid details, about the terrible flaws of Donald Trump.
The reason I'm not taking the bait is that the debate on this thread isn't about Donald Trump, and I'm not going to help you muddy the waters.
No, I mean what I've said repeatedly. If you support Donald Trump, or even just think he's no worse than Hillary Clinton, I'll agree to disagree with you and move on. But Sam Altman does not agree with you. Sam Altman compares Donald Trump to a dictator. Paul Graham compared him to Stalin.
The debate is about whether Altman can continue to endorse an important member of Trump's campaign while still believing that Trump is an existential threat to democracy. If Altman is sanguine about a Trump presidency, his support for Thiel is understandable. I don't think that he is.
Fair enough re: employment, but if we shift "employed by" to "do business with" it's still the same discussion.
A theme going on here is a binary state regarding how we should treat individuals and consider their positions. This idea of "endorsing" Thiel means you are supporting all of his political views and not just his business views. That if one supports Trump one is all-in on all of his positions.
For example, many of Trump's supporters are identifying with his economic message. They may find his immigration stance to be distasteful but the overriding concern is the economy, so they are willing to suck it up. Trump's bloc isn't a monolithic group with shared priorities.
Altman's position on this is exactly correct- expressing his disagreement with Thiel but with the maturity to quash the urge to run away from or "punish" Thiel. We would be better off as a society if we all adopted this mindset.
If we shift "employment" to "do business with", we have formulated an argument that boycotts are unethical. So, no, I don't think that gets us anywhere.
Boycotts are designed to force a _business_ to change behavior.
If we extend this into the realm of the individual and political speech, it is a totally different animal with clear dangers for freedom of expression.
I am not myself sure if I would consider it a moral failing to "boycott" an individual as a pressure tactic in these circumstances (or more like misguided social engineering) but it is definitely laudable to take a more nuanced view as Altman and YC have done.
Businesses are made of people. But your argument is even less coherent than that. When people boycotted Nestle, they were supporting a campaign whose intended impact could have put thousands of people out of work, many of whom had no opposition at all to the boycotter's ideas. Boycotting a company is an even more grave act than criticizing some dude with more than one McLaren about endorsing a Trump campaign surrogate who could most likely buy McLaren Automotive. But we tolerate and accept boycotts, as we must, because they are a form of political speech.
It is totally fine to take action against a business; that the business is comprised of people who have no direct input into the actions of the entity and may face consequences of the actions against it should not be an important consideration of where you choose to spend your money.
A counterexample would be a situation where someone went and figured out that most of Nestle's employees were supporting Trump and then boycotted the business as a way to pressure those employees into altering their positions. That is much closer to being morally objectionable.
Outside of that, Altman _has_ criticized Thiel's views, directly. The disagreement seems to be about what to do afterwards. He is simply not willing to cut him off for this disagreement. If this way of thinking was a social norm, you would eliminate "anti-PC" griping which is important to a good chunk of Trump supporters, and you would likely see positive social change happen more rapidly (e.g. if this was the norm 50 years ago you might have seen more movement on gay marriage, etc. if people could pipe up without fear of being fired (or "boycotted")).
We have seen many examples in the last decade of "enemies of the left" being fired and no platformed for their views. This campaign targeting Thiel appears to be a product of the same value system, so it is understandable that some people consider it relevant to the discussion.
I don't disagree with you, man, but you also have to realize this wound never fully healed after our Civil War ended in 1865.
You look at a map of the "red states" and they are very much what is remaining of the Confederate States of America. The red states in the west are where these racist losers fled to after the war to get away from all the freed blacks.
The fact that Trump is calling the election "rigged" and essentially egging on an armed rebellion after election day - well that just might happen because it already did a very long time ago.
The people manipulation machine is so well tuned. The internet has failed us.
People think hating trump supporters is the cool thing to do and probably would put their life on the line against him. How crazy is that?
No longer is one even attempting to respect or even research another point of view. No time for that. Don't you realize that the only goal is to divide the people and remove focus from what actually matters?
The whole US politics is now about showing how the other candidate character is the most horrible and any lie is fair game, on any side.
The owner of basically all media wins the war - and thats not exactly surprising either.
The number of indirections here is incredible and I'm amazed nobody has pointed it out yet. In essence the post says: Shame on YC because
- a non-employee / part time partner of YC has
- supported a presidential candidate who
- has, a decade ago, said things that (besides reflecting badly on his character)
- if realized in action
- would constitute sexual harassment
Now if it was practice at YC to sexually harass people I'd say yea, shame on YC. But this is ridiculous. If we were to accept indirect arguments like in the post then it would be equally valid to say:
>Thiel, a non-employee (a “part-time partner”), is directly supporting Donald Trump at a massive scale — over a million dollars! — after we’ve learned even more of Trump’s horrendous statements, positions, and past actions than we could’ve ever imagined.
I'm not sure but there is no mention of voting anywhere in the article.
It takes great bravery to allow your beliefs to affect your bottom line. Thiel has demonstrated this bravery by spending his time, money and reputation on Trump.
Now it's Altman’s turn. If he truly believes that "This election is exceptional. Donald Trump represents an unprecedented threat to America", then Marco is correct that supporting Thiel is against his beliefs. Good on Marco for calling it out to us so eloquently.
Obviously, Thiel is very influential and parting ways with him would be a big deal. It's likely it would cost Altman time, money and reputation. It's possible Thiel will hold a grudge and that will have unknown ramifications that might hurt YC and others.
This is why it's brave.
Business leaders often pretend they aren't choosing a side, when they always are. Be brave Altman. We'll support you.
Nothing bad sticks to the democrat candidate. I'm not talking about proofs, but about headlines that get written all the time for clicks. Where are those for Hillary? Not on CNN, nytimes, etc.
Every day there is a new headline about how Trump winning would destroy the universe. Where should I read the news? Politico? Infowars?
Peter Thiel's support for Trump seems instrumental and not an end-in-itself[1]. I disagree with it and think it's stupid. But if he was my business partner and told me that he had good reasons to think that the long-term utility of a Trump president outweighs the unpleasantness and negative side-effects then I would argue with him and try to talk him out of it. Thinking about it in this way, shunning him seems to be an extreme thing to do.
Are we going to talk about the election on Hacker News now? Seems most submissions deemed political have been blackholed, correct? And I think that's fine. But if we're opening the gates, lets open them wide and not just post the same garbage that can be read anywhere else.
For example, let's talk about something ignored by most of the mainstream like this excellent investigative report that came out yesterday. It concerns those Chicago riots where Sanders supporters supposedly committed violent acts and shut down the Trump speech there. Well turns out that this and many other violent acts, riots, and even possibly acts of terrorism (which is defined as violence in the furtherance of political aims, which this was), were coordinated, organized and paid for by the Clinton campaign itself, all nicely documented with proof in federal disclosure forms showing that the violent rioters were paid Clinton operatives.
I voted for Sanders in the primary. I'm voting for Stein in a few weeks. I don't really appreciate politicians hiring people to commit acts of political terrorism and blaming it on Sanders supporters like myself.
So let's talk about this since we are going to talk about politics on HN now.
Excellent point, but to discuss politics on HN is a waste of time as there isn't an easy way to know who you are talking to - the same type of operatives you refer too are also crawling HN and pretty much every other popular social media space. Marco is either completely oblivious to the phenomena (and has bought into their narrative hook, line and sinker) or perhaps he himself is also artificially incentivized.
The same could be assumed about Sam Altman who yesterday wrote an equally damning article (damning to himself IMO).
I am not accusing anybody, and certainly would not and am not jumping to a conclusion based on a single article - and would welcome Marco and Sam's rebuttal - but am instead looking at the larger picture here... there are reports[1] of popular YouTubers being offered $$$ to endorse Hilary and so it's not too much of a stretch to assume they would also pay prominent people in tech too (and not to mention Hollywood as well of course).
Being aware of a certain possibility, and pointing out this possibility for others to see, is not an accusation - particularly because I said and as you acknowledged it was not intended as accusation nor did I jump to that conclusion personally.
2. The anchor of a major news network donates lots of money to organizations fighting against gay marriage, and in his spare time he writes editorials arguing that homosexuals are weakening the moral fabric of the country. The news network decides they disagree with this kind of behavior and fire the anchor.
a) This is acceptable; the news network is acting within their rights and according to their principles
b) This is outrageous; people should be judged on the quality of their work and not their political beliefs
12. The principal of a private school is a member of Planned Parenthood and, off-duty, speaks out about contraception and the morning after pill. The board of the private school decides this is inappropriate given the school’s commitment to abstinence and moral education and asks the principal to stop these speaking engagements or step down from his position.
a) The school board is acting within its rights; they can insist on a principal who shares their values
b) The school board should back off; it’s none of their business what he does in his free time
If you answer these questions differently, you need to try to apply your so-called principles consistently. This article is bullshit for the same reason the Brendan Eich affair was bullshit--if the situation were reversed, the same people calling for Brendan Eich's head would have been ardently defending someone who had been fired for donating to marijuana legalization or something. As long as he's not discriminating or smoking weed in the workplace, etc., YOU SHOULD NOT PERSECUTE SOMEONE FOR HIS BELIEFS or how they affect his political contributions.
Your questions present a false dichotomy. You can be against the news anchor merely because of his principles and against the school board because of theirs.
To me this is logically consistent because you believe the viewpoints themselves are incorrect.
Sigh. People keep bringing up Brendan Eich. What happened there is very simple: a good chunk of Mozilla PR and marketing is about freedom. Software and online freedom, yes, but the word "freedom" is used a fair bit. Eich monetarily supported a cause that aimed to take away freedom for a certain class of people. This is incongruent for the face of an organization that has freedom one of its core messages.
Mozilla is fairly unique in tech world in this regard. Nearly all other companies don't really talk about freedom. If Eich was the CEO of any of those other companies, his donation would not (and should not) have mattered. If Eich had remained CTO of Mozilla, his donation would not have mattered either, as the CTO is not the face of the organization. The CEO's beliefs, however, do need to align with the core messaging of the company.
As for those who say that in 2008, opposing gay marriage was a mainstream view, and even Obama opposed it: in 2012, Obama publicly went on the record that his views had shifted to support. The Mozilla/Eich thing went down in 2014, and Eich had an opportunity to communicate that he'd changed his views. If he did that sincerely, he'd likely be CEO of Mozilla today. Instead he stood by his 2008 views, reaffirming that he's on the wrong side of history.
I see the divide in this country growing every day.
We aren't electing a king or queen.
It's a single political position that's checked by the House and Senate.
And yet because of the media, because of the Republicans, because of the Democrats, we're no longer Americans. We're a people who are being played against each other for revenue in a popularity contest.
I've never seen people act so terribly to each other on such a normalized scale. The polarization scares me.
I for one support Y Combinator's commitment to tolerance. Tolerance is sadly lacking in today's political discourse. Like many, I find Donald Trump distasteful, but to call for the removal of an investor for supporting a candidate one disagrees with is both intolerant and small minded. A pluralistic democracy depends on both tolerance and civility for its' very existence. It's more than a little ironic to me that people critical of Donald Trump for, essentially, being intolerant are now expressing that criticism in the form of intolerance by calling for the banishment of his supporters.
Imagine working in a world where when you disagree with the way someone votes or supports a political character, you tried to get them fired. No one would have a job anymore.
There seems to be this progressive instinct to claim that it's not enough for people to believe the same things I do, or support the same people I do, but instead everyone must always denounce the people I do in the ways I dictate or be shamed and boycotted. This instinct is divisive and damaging, and drives away erstwhile allies.
Posts like Pao's and this one, which are intended to enforce a progressive orthodoxy through the application of massive negative pressure, are far less effective in winning over converts than its authors suppose. A lighter touch would be far more effective.
There's a stunning degree of false equivalence happening here with regard to Trump.
Trump is not Romney or McCain. It's not a left/liberal-only claim that Trump is dangerously unfit to be president. There are scores of republican national security experts who have written open letters, come out publicly against him, etc.
To claim he's just another side of a coin is absurd. This guy is out there, as we speak, dangerously fanning the conspiracy that the election will be rigged.
The decision by YC sent a signal about diversity of opinions. But, it sent other signals as well. One is that it further normalizes Trump. One can make a strong argument that of the signals YC could have sent, the latter is worse.
Where's the line? Would Trump need to literally have been a klan member for it to be okay for an organization to say, you know what, we're not going to associate with people publicly supporting this guy? Somewhere there's a line, and many of us believe it was crossed a long time ago.
The other thing is, Thiel is not going to be 'unfairly silenced' if YC were to cut ties. He's a vocal billionaire who in our current system of money and politics has a megaphone far larger than most. It's disingenuous to equate YC cutting ties with Thiel to firing an employee over their personal political beliefs. It's a privilege to serve on a board at that level, and there should be a higher moral standard.
"Funding Trump, especially at this scale, represents general support of what Trump has said and done." - That's a pretty big logical leap. Would a person who supports Hillary "generally support" flippant top-secret email handling?
Let's be logical: I think we can all agree that a person can support a candidate while not supporting every word they speak or action they take.
Thinking there is a lot of good in "what Trump has said and done", that his horribly racist, sexist and insane opinions and ideas are an acceptable price, and that Clinton would be a worse president is a legitimate opinion, but comparing Clinton's reckless behaviour to Trump's reckless statements is not. Forgiving past errors isn't the same as accepting future policies.
Imprudent and illegal use of email is only a mistake, it doesn't represent a political program or opinion or stance, except for the generic disregard for the law that is implied by breaking it.
When did Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition change its name to Product Include? These are the exact same extortionate tactics that Jackson and Sharpton have been peddling for decades.
I'm not American. I live far away from the country and have zero influence on its politics.
However, America has a deep influence on the whole world, and, of course, it's president is very relevant for all nations in this planet. So I follow the political scenario closely.
As (hopefully) many, I'm completely against Trump. He's irresponsible, most of the ideals he spread are harmful to (my understanding of the) development of mankind, etc. I really hope that he isn't elected under any circumstances.
Still, it seems to me that Marco doesn't understand democracy, freedom of speech, belief, and a number of other values that are as important to mankind as those Trump poses a risk to. As a person should (has to) be free to vote to whomever they wish, also they are free to support that same individual.
Punishing such support is about the same as threating The Republic for supporting Clinton.
So Trump has a lot of problems, but it looks like he is not corrupt. Hillary, on the other hand, is fully with corruption. I really don't like/agree with YC priorities (I'm not an American, which is even more disturbing to see someone that laughs about killing others country president been endorsed/elected)
Are you joking? Trump is _transparently_ corrupt. The Trump Foundation exists to serve as a tax shield, funneling donor money to Trump and his family personally. C.f. the allegations of corruption toward Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, which are laughably indistinct and incomparable. If corruption is what you care about, then Hillary Clinton is _inarguably_ the superior candidate.
So stuff against Trump is proven 100% for reals and stuff against Clinton is mere allegations? Hmmmm.
I'm not a Trump supporter by any stretch of the imagination, but I do find it fascinating how easily people manage to rationalize things.
I'm sure there are TONS of folks who would decry a person for being a climate denier who would then perform the exact same mental process to 'overlook' whatever problems exist with the Clintons.
> So stuff against Trump is proven 100% for reals and stuff against Clinton is mere allegations? Hmmmm.
Well there's obviously a spectrum but I think it's absolutely inarguable that Trump's foundation is a tax dodge and that Trump is transparently corrupt; and I think at worst you can say that Clinton made some bad choices, but yes absolutely the allegations against her are without proof.
> I'm sure there are TONS of folks who would decry a person for being a climate denier who would then perform the exact same mental process to 'overlook' whatever problems exist with the Clintons.
Of course nobody is overlooking problems, and your attempts at equivocation are transparently concern trolling. But it's pretty inarguable that "whatever problems exist with the Clintons" are speculative and completely incomparable with "whatever problems exist with Trump".
> think at worst you can say that Clinton made some bad choices
The Director of the FBI said exactly that, but that there was no malicious intent and thus no crime. Why an investigative body is making a recommendation about charges notwithstanding, when it comes to national secrets, nobody else gets the benefit of the doubt re: mens rea, it's generally interpreted as strict liability. Why did former Secretary Clinton get a seemingly free pass on this one, while members of the rank-and-file military do not? I suspect it's because they're in the rank-and-file.
I don't understand how Americans don't care about Hillary's lies. (actually, I do, it's called mass media manipulation, but you guys, of all modern societies in the world, should be one of few capable of fighting it).
Hillary Clinton simple says that she made a mistake and nobody asks why did she used a private email server?
I think this is a huge trap, but would things go a little better for Trump if he admits that it was all a misunderstanding and he is a reformed man now?
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
EDIT: That said, I don't NECESSARILY believe that the Clintons have absolutely, for sure been up to no good. But I am a little suspicious, given the facts that the FBI found. There's plenty of stuff that they could do to exonerate themselves. I just suspect it won't happen, especially since the FBI has seen fit to say "no bad intent so no crime"
The funny thing is that the same corrupt media that paints others presidents as "dictators" and "murderers" is helping Killary, painting Trump with tons of colors.
It puzzles me how come in USA people are considering only 2 candidates to chose from. At this stage it looks like people are not voting for the candidate they agree with, they are choosing the candidate they disagree with the most and then voting for the other one. This is only 1 step better than how it used to be in USSR where people had an option to chose essentially only 1 party. (sure officially there were more parties, as there are more candidates in USA, but it wasn't a real option in reality). Still far away from European democracies where each election you have multiple parties competing.
Those polls don't necessarily mean that people aren't choosing the lesser of two evils. Those questions aren't asked in a vacuum. Most of the polls ask about people's opinion of the candidates in a Clinton vs Trump context. Even if that wasn't the case, people might still feel that they have to support one candidate over the other.
It's hard to make people throw away their biases and ask themselves why they really support something.
your statement is non-sensical. what, did you add together 43 + 33 = 76 therefore the majority are satisfied?
that's crazy talk. the best case scenario is that 43% of the electorate is satisfied. both candidates are very very far away from being acceptable to a majority of the entire electorate.
this charts (as many published polls) are based on very small samples. asking 1000-3000 people. yes those people are selected to sample the whole spectrum, but if they are always the same people, you can not claim that they are representative anymore. as simply by asking the poll questions you are turning group of people who "don't care about the election" into the group "was forced to think about election and now have an opinion".
In France there is a two step election : during the first round, people choose between multiple candidates (around 10). The two candidates with the most votes are selected to go to the second round, where people choose the next president.
There is a saying that during the first round you vote for your favourite candidates, while during the second you vote against the one you don't want to see in office.
Short of revolution, we aren't ever going to see a representative democracy here, because the two parties in power have us perfectly divided 50/50, and the status quo benefits them both greatly.
this seems to be a problem of presidential democracy (voting for 1 man). parliamentary democracy, where people are voting for a party and even specifically for multiple people nominated by the party, is solving this problem.
Right, but how do we get the US to move to a system of proportional voting and power? We're never going to get a president+congress that is controlled by one party to vote and pass new laws / ratify new amendments that change the system such that they'll no longer be in control. And we can't get the current two parties to agree on whether the sun is hot or not, let alone on radically changing the way our democracy works.
The cynic in me suspects that, despite all the fiery rhetoric, both parties are in fact very happy with the status quo and the partisan divide that exists in this country. Aside from a few battleground states/areas, most seats are perfectly safe. Mississippi isn't going blue, and California isn't going red.
I heard an interesting idea which would be to place always a "none of the above" option on the ballot for any position, and in the event that option took majority, all candidates listed would be disqualified completely, and new ballot would need to be made.
Replace "Thiel" with "communism" and much of this article (and many of these comments) could be taken from the 1950s. McCarthyism is unacceptable from the right or the left.
So, none of the Hollywood writers who were blacklisted were rich? And none of them donated time or money to Communist causes? The intolerance is almost exactly the same.
I don't have a problem with a private company, such as YC or a production company, firing someone for publicly donating a massive amount of money to a political candidate.
McCarthyism was different because:
1. Many of the people who were fired, blacklisted, or persecuted were only suspected communists.
2. Somewhat related: if any of the blacklisted people were rich enough to do so, they didn't publicly donate their day's equivalent of $1.25M to any communist cause.
3. There is no threat of violence, prison, or losing his livelihood for Thiel in this case.
Thiel is not supportung Trump because of Trump's racism and sexism. He is supporting Trump because of his policies and disruptive capacity. This is the difference between supporting a candidate and attributing everything a candidate does to the supporter.
Hillary Clinton is a war criminal by many standards. Should all Clinton supporters sever ties with YC?
Would there be such a ruckus if this was about some other VC fund that bore more right-wing cultural flavors and they had a markable member who donated vast sums of money to the democrat nominee?
A rational person would not discriminate against someone because they do not support the same football club. I fail to see how this is any different.
Another way to look at this is to apply a version of Jeff Bezos's Regret Minimization Framework: project yourself decades into the future and read about yourself in a history book.
If you truly believe Trump is an unprecedented threat to democracy in the league of Stalin, how would you feel telling your children that "it was just business" when you kept on a partner who was part of his campaign apparatus?
I don't think IBM is particularly proud of their management during the 1930's. No one knows or cares about the personal views of the people behind those decisions, just what they led IBM to do.
I'm against Trump but this holier-than-thou grandstanding demanding shunning anyone who supports Trump is tiring and small-minded. It's a symptom of a society intolerant of other political beliefs. Moreover, do you think ostracizing 40% of society for their political beliefs is really going to improve our political future? It's easier to cut out people we disagree with than arguing with their beliefs (civilly).
Let's take the high road and stick to impassioned, reasoned arguments against Trump's beliefs and actions.
I see it as a good thing that Trump is so foolishly blatant - You can SEE all the filth - It's all right there in plain sight. His ego is so huge, he couldn't even censor himself if his life depended on it; he is the perfect public figure.
In any case, I don't see anyone denouncing the right to protest, just the protest itself, which is the next turtle on the way down from your sentiment.
2 points :
- Peter Thiel has a right to support trump. The common misconception is that for something to be a right it should be morally right as well. This is not the case. Having the right to do something doesn't mean it is morally right to do so.
- You can support a subset of someone's ideas without agreeing to all of his ideas. For example, I think Socrates is a great guy but I don't agree with a lot of what he says.
The backlash towards Thiel is an interesting sociological phenomenon. It seems that the pressure to conform is extremely high in the tech community.
Conservatives have a right to their own set of values, like anti-abortion, faith-based education issues, smaller government, reduced taxes, etc., and they have a right to back whatever candidate aligns with their values. I'm a liberal but it is amazing to me to read these types of articles, from other liberals with zero tolerance for the alternative viewpoint. There should not even be a decision to be made here. It takes all kinds of people or else it would not be America. It is not acceptable to persecute people based on their political choices.
Political debate in the US has traditionally taken place in a framework of shared values. Some of these are: you accept electoral defeat, you nominate people with a basic minimum of human decency, and overt bigotry is not acceptable.
Within that framework, people have sharp disagreements over issues, some of them life-or-death (like abortion). But the framework is something that was sacrosanct, until this election.
The problem many people, including conservatives, have with Trump is that he breaks basic norms around how our democracy should work, and represents a threat to it. That's why Thiel's vocal support for his candidacy is so troubling. It's not just a case of someone whose politics I disagree with, it's someone financing the destruction of the whole apparatus those politics take place within.
Thank you for posting this. I'm also a liberal, but when such politically divergent people as Ralph Nader and Rush Limbaugh are (shockingly) speaking out against the same kinds of social disease, it's time to take notice. Something has gone very wrong on the left.
Of course they have that right. Others have the right to criticize them for exercising it.
The issue here is also not Trump's supposed conservatism (which I, frankly, doubt heavily), but that he brags about sexual assault and is advocating for some pretty fascist shit.
YC states Trump's words would get him kicked out of YC. Color me baffled as to why spending over a million dollars to support those words isn't considered similarly bad (if not worse).
Marcos here, line many, falls for the classic myth. That change can come to America via the ballot box. That it matters who you vote for. That the election makes a difference. How many times do we need to be reminded that this isn't true? How many elections of false hope gone nowhere do we need to see?
I'll say it again as I have innumerable times before. It does not matter one bit who gets elected president.
As Emma Goldman once quipped, "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."
If Trump is your enemy, like he is mine, fight Trump. To fight and berate others for a twice-removed association is not just stupid, it's lazy, and a waste of your and everyone's time. I see 500+ comments here but no convincing anyone. Perhaps you feel impotent and that you can only shout platitudes onto deaf ears. Think harder, act smarter. Vote, and get those you can influence directly to vote. This thread right here, is not the way.
>It seems to be a constant throughout history: In every period, people believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you would have gotten in terrible trouble for saying otherwise.
I heard the NRA is a a racist, sexist bigot with rapidly mounting allegations of multiple sexual assaults! I don't know who this ceterun_censeo guy is, however, I reckon he obviously is supporting people who support Trump. Light the pitchforks! Shame him on twitbook!*
* I feel like I have to explicitly mark this post as sarcasm for fear of peoples stupidity. I listed some other things (like find out where he works) and it just made me sick, I couldn't do it, even in sarcasm and jest. I hope after the dust settles people remember how to be decent again.
I think a lot of people are missing a key point here. This isn't about stopping a candidate you disagree with, or even about stopping a candidate that you think would be bad for the US. It's about making Y Combinator and the software industry as effective and good-for-the-world as possible.
Even if throwing Thiel out would actually help Trump's candidacy, they should do it.
There's an interesting debate about whether you think Trump's policies are a good idea, and how much you care about him being elected, but that's a sideshow. Thiel represents Y Combinator, like it or not. How he's perceived affects how Y Combinator is perceived, and how the industry (SV especially) are perceived by the rest of the world. Currently, he's actively and very publicly giving millions of dollars to a candidate espousing violence, sexism, racism and sexual assault.
By supporting Thiel, Y Combinator is supporting somebody espousing violence, sexism, racism and sexual assault. It doesn't matter if they're a presidential candidate or not, or what it does to the election results. Encouraging and supporting these _moral_ positions is horrific, bad for everybody, and just practically bad for business. When your public face becomes the face of hate speech, you have a practical business problem, and you need to solve it.
You would fire a public face of your company if they publicly wrote a post about how they liked to sexually assault people. You would fire a public face of your company if they publicly donated millions of dollars to an organisation encouraging sexual assault. Why is it different if the organisation they're supporting is running for president?
It's not about Trump's policies, and it's not about whether or not it plays into Trump's hands: if a major face of your business is actively visibly supporting abuse, discrimination and violence and you do nothing, then your business is supporting abuse, discrimination and violence. You're going to give you and your industry a bad name and discourage minorities of all kinds from ever working with you, along with anybody else who finds your morals repugnant.
Supporting Thiel while he actively defend and encourages racism, sexism and violence in the name of "free speech" doesn't make the world better; it makes it far far worse.
The thing is, "good for the world" is a subjective notion.
In my studies of philosophy I am yet to find any system of ethics that provides an objective and universal definition of right and wrong - if you find one, please let me know.
Until then, we are all dealing with subjective opinions - it's just that some opinions are more popular than others. In democracy the most popular opinion wins, but this does not imply that an opinion is objectively "right" (as we know from history).
Hence, I find this recent trend where people classify other people's beliefs as "objectively wrong" - with no consideration for the subjectivity of their own beliefs - to be deeply troubling. Such behaviour is a departure from reason; only dogma remains.
We cannot deny the overwhelming amount of value P. Thiel and M. Arment has brought to this world.
Politics is ugly and divides people instead of bringing them together. The Hacker News community is all about technological progress, which is based on science, and as such, do not let your subjectivity cloud your judgment.
Do you think the world would be a better place by removing Thiel because of his political position?
Asking to fire Thiel is as insane as asking to fire the 40% of Americans backing Trump
(based on latest poll results: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/latest-polls-show-tr...)
I wish you guys would put all your vigorous efforts on revamping the political system than pointing fingers at invaluable people.
Classic american politics: shame people on their political views. Don't argue, you'd risk understanding differing views. Better off cutting all ties with them and remain in your idiotic ignorance.
I somwhow don't think it's "classic". I think it is a fairly modern phenomenon (coming along with "safe spaces", "no platforming" and so on).
"Classic" would be something more along the well-known quote attributed to Voltaire about disagreeing wholeheartedly but defending the freedom of speech of the differing view.
And this Thiel shaming is the exact opposite of that Voltaire thing.
Ok it's true if you cut off dealings with anyone who supports the a candidate you hate, then you are not violating any laws worth obeying, let alone the US constitution.
You are merely being a dickhead.
Do we really want to live in a world all ordinary aspects of life a reduced to a grand show of public piety, and worse, one where we compete to show our willingess to punish the heretics?
Citizens United and McCutcheon were such disasters for our democracy. Hopelessly partisan 5-4 votes from the USSC as well. No surprise given the way big money usually leans.
Corporations aren't people, and money isn't speech, no matter what five people in robes say.
The problem here isn't who Thiel supports, it's that he has the ability to throw $1,250,000 on a whim to that person. Very, very, very few people can do that.
The reason millionaires and billionaires funnel so much money into elections isn't for the hell of it. It's because they know that money buys advertising, attack ads, etc. They know it helps their side win. Because yes, there are many stupid people in this country who are easily swayed by these tactics.
Yes, we all know it's not a guarantee that the candidate with the most money wins. But wealthy people (mostly) aren't stupid: they wouldn't be spending the money if they knew it wouldn't sway any votes.
It's not about buying the election, it's about increasing their chances of winning. An analogy would be buying 1000000 raffle tickets instead of 1 like most other people get. But our entire democracy is based around the idea of one person, one vote. Allowing unlimited money into politics effectively gives vastly more votes to the wealthy.
Get the money out of politics and it's no longer an issue how big of a piece of shit Thiel is. He can like whoever he wants to and I couldn't care less. Oh shoot, I hope he doesn't see this and start bankrolling vendetta lawsuits against me now :/
If I earn money, should I be able to spend it how I like? If I have freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, isn't it fine to use my money towards the goals of freedom of speech & press? Citizens United is solid in my book.
If we were to take down Citizens United, how would you deal with media outlets like Fox or WaPo? They're clearly biased and have an agenda, their biased reporting acts as a contribution to a campaign. But they're businesses, and what they do isn't classified as campaign support, even though it should.
> If I earn money, should I be able to spend it how I like?
You already can't spend it to buy grenades, chemical weapons, illegal drugs, etc. You should not be able to spend it to influence elections either. I just explained why.
It's not 'fair', sure. But a lot of things aren't fair thanks to stupid people being stupid. Most recreational drugs are outlawed to protect the idiots that can't handle it. (Well, that's the narrative anyway. We'll sidestep the racial undertones, benefits to big pharma, etc.) Because otherwise, those idiots can go on to do the rest of us great harm. There are a lot of stupid people who are swayed by bullshit political attack ads (said attacks are deplorable from both sides), so we need some way to minimize that damage. Campaign contribution laws were not a perfect solution, but at least a stopgap measure. Now the floodgates are wide open.
> If we were to take down Citizens United, how would you deal with media outlets like Fox or WaPo?
They operated long before Citizens United came down. They concern me as well, as does MSNBC, RT, Al Jazeera, etc.
It's probably not possible to get fully unbiased news, but we've definitely gotten way worse in recent years on partisanship in news. And regardless of which party you support, you have to agree that the divide between us is becoming increasingly toxic and dangerous. The media is in large part to blame for stirring that up for their ratings.
Of course, even without news, the internet and social media are a big problem now too. Everyone simply follows like-minded people, blocks those they disagree with, and live in echo chambers to reinforce and polarize people even more. It's ... really starting to get very dangerous :/
> what they do isn't classified as campaign support, even though it should.
Should newspapers (i.e. corporations) be allowed to endorse candidates?
If so, how is this not spending money (paper, ink, time) to influence elections?
If not, how is this not an unacceptable limitation on free speech?
And, (to address a common objection to this line of reasoning), if "bona fide media organizations" get special free speech protections not available to the rest of us, who decides who is a "journalist" and who is an amateur?
Before this goes on too long, I'd like to stress that I don't have all the perfect answers in life. I don't think my views are perfect, but they are what I believe.
I know that often, how things 'should' be require laws that are basically impossible to write. But I really don't think I am being that unreasonable to say there's something grossly unfair about one person being able to pour in millions of dollars into an election to sway votes his way.
> Should newspapers (i.e. corporations) be allowed to endorse candidates?
That's a definite gray area. I can see arguments for and against that.
At least with a newspaper, people are actively choosing to buy it (barring it being in a vending machine with the endorsement on the front page.) It's usually pretty well known and clear that NYT runs liberal, and NYP runs conservative.
I don't get that choice with giant billboards as I drive around town. You can argue I can change the channel, but I don't really get that choice with TV and radio ads, either.
I'm sorry, but like with complex issues (eg abortion), I don't have a perfect answer for you on this point. Any choice is going to come with consequences. But that doesn't mean I think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater and have a cash free-for-all in our elections.
I sympathize with your sentiment, but I don't agree with your conclusion. Opening the door for the government to regulate opinions about the government seems, on its face, ripe for abuse of power.
If we had wise angels permanently running the government, we could dispose of many precautions. But, since we don't, we should try to have laws where we would be safe from oppression even if our worst enemy took power.
Correct. That was what I was getting at with one vote, one person and buying more raffle tickets than another for a drawing. Money = votes, otherwise there wouldn't be so much money in play.
It's not a true democracy when the rich (whether that be the Koch brothers or George Soros) indirectly get way more voting power than the lower and middle classes get.
If people weren't swayed by obvious attack ads, then I wouldn't care how much money people wanted to throw away on elections. And indeed, they wouldn't throw any away, because it would be a total waste then.
Okay, so... we need to nail some things down for your utopia. What is and is not allowed to be said or printed?
I imagine I can say (with my voice) anything I want? What if I'm standing on a soapbox on a busy corner, 12 hours a day? What if I give a speech to 200,000 people in a stadium?
What about over a radio broadcast? How do you cap that? Individual contributions to campaigns are capped at something like $2.5k, do I essentially get $2.5k of airtime, as valued by advertising times?
What if I'm not specifically supporting a candidate? But I could say: "We should really have a candidate that is good at fixing spine vertebrate, because they'd be good at fixing the spine of America!" or "The next person to appoint a supreme court justice should be pro-life."
If I'm near my $2.5k of cap of support, am I even really allowed to say anything? "America needs a _strong_ candidate" could be an interpreted as support for... well, someone.
I suspect that your solution is going to be impractical and hard to enforce.
One obvious place to draw the line - indeed, the place where used to be drawn - is the part where Citizens United tried to pay channels to air their film about Hillary. Normal media outlets are businesses, which means that they need to cover their costs somehow. They also have to gain and keep the trust of their audience through their reporting. If you're just paying off existing media outlets to show your propaganda to their audience solely for your political gain, then you're engaged in campaigning. This is why Citizens United's earlier attempts to get Fahrenheit 9/11 and its trailers banned failed; the FEC found that it was bona fide commercial activity.
>Citizens United and McCutcheon were such disasters for our democracy
The Citizens United case was about a non-profit being able to produce, advertise, and air a film about a presidential candidate. The government said that they could not because of election financing laws.
This seems much more like a free speech issue than an election financing issue. Do we really want to go down the path were the government can tell you that you can't make a movie about a person because they are currently running for office?
Really naive to think that supporting a political party and supporting Trump are the same. Of course, Peter Thiel does not support the BS that Trump says. It would be a huge contradiction coming from the same man that took down Gawker. If there was no single reason why people are supporting Trump, it is American's version of Brexit, by voting Trump people are protesting the massive economic chaos in the USA. They aren't hoping Trump will fix it. The opposite, they are hoping Trump will fail miserably, which will effectively hit the reset button on the American economy.
> Some have said that YC should terminate its relationship with Peter over this. But as repugnant as Trump is to many of us, we are not going to fire someone over his or her support of a political candidate. As far as we know, that would be unprecedented for supporting a major party nominee, and a dangerous path to start down (of course, if Peter said some of the things Trump says himself, he would no longer be part of Y Combinator).
Employment should not be based on political beliefs.
> Trump shows little respect for the Constitution, the Republic, or for human decency, and I fear for national security if he becomes our president.
Similarly, that is a pretty clear statement that Trump isn't a conservative and I'd say that is honestly all YC needed to do.
People are allowed to have opinions, and people are allowed to criticize those opinions. If you're going to publicly support something (like, say, with a million dollar donation), you should expect public feedback about said support.
There's no suppression of the freedom of speech happening here - Marco is expressing an opinion about an opinion.
By your logic, we should accept all opinions as valid and not critize any of them because that would be "suppression" of the freedom of speech. But clearly all opinions are not valid - and people on HN seems to have no problem (rightfully) critizing sexism and other discrimination in the workplace. And people are criticizing Trump (and his supporters) for the same thing.
Threatening someones job, or pushing for exclusion based on their political beliefs, is a dangerous precedent. This tactic has been used to exclude people for their gender, race, and sexuality in the past. I don't care if the person working with me is a neo nazi or a hillary supporter or a Trump whack job. As long as they do their job, and dont' do anything that infringes on my ability to get my job done, I don't really care. Leave other people alone and let them believe what they want to believe.
What a load of bullshit. If an investor of a known Republican centered industry, let's say a gun manufacturer, donated 1.25M to Hillary's campaign, Marco would be saying praises of him while the people in the gun lobby would be calling for that investors head.
This election cycle has brought the worst out of everyone in the US. I regarded people like @sacca and @marcoarment in a much higher esteem before this began.
For what it's worth, Thiel seems to have the view that Trump isn't actually going to do horrible things, and will invest in infrastructure and American businesses.
This seems deluded for the same reasons that some American liberals were about Stalin, and purging him for his authentic and not apparently horrible beliefs would be the same mistakes that we did during the McCarthy era.
The most damning thing to me about this is that Peter Thiel is content to let YC take the flack for him. He knows he's damaging them; that partners are walking away from YC, and it's down to him.
A decent person would walk away at that point, to save YC and take the heat on themselves.
He doesn't. Which makes it all the more odd that sama will still go to bat for someone he a) disagrees with and b) wouldn't do the same in return.
Sam Altman has already stated what Peter is allowed to say (and presumably think) as a condition of his continued association with YC. There was a recent spate of articles by and about Sam Altman, including a probing interview by his brother (presumably in lieu of a blatantly self-serving monologue by the subject). So we kind of know Sam's viewpoint and his tendency toward defining who can say and do what at YC and on HN. I would call that shameful in a public commons, but this is a private enterprise, and Sam is free to set the boundaries in Sam's world.
I don't know what the right thing for YC to do here is. But whatever it is can wait until after the election.
The last thing you want is to enable Trump to concoct a narrative that "crooked Hillary" is forcing businesses to discriminate against Trump supporters.
Trump is an existential threat to democracy and Thiel is disgusting for supporting him, but it looks like he will lose. However he is claiming that the election will be rigged against him. This is incredibly dangerous and YC firing Thiel could be like pouring gasoline onto a fire.
I think the core of this dispute is the question: How do we deal with those we deeply disagree with? Ostracism, shunning, and preaching? Or vocally opposing their beliefs, as civilly and constructively as you can?
America is increasingly settling into two tribes who seem to believe in the first option.
That moment when https://xkcd.com/1357 gets taken too far and people are afraid of voicing anything but the current, popular, politically correct opinions for fear of losing their careers.
I don't think that a person, president or not, is to play a crucial role. Society has a dynamic in which a president is only a mirror for you to watch yourself.
Perhaps the mirror show you something that you don't want to see and you can try to clean it or hide it, but that mirror just show how society is for real. I sincerely and literaly think that we should get used to watch candidates for presidency to be nuked in tv, as in a big brother show, no more secrets allowed. We should see clearly and understand deeply that we are just human animals and nothing more.
A candidate for presidency should be able to show some kind of humor, witful ideas, clear thinking, some catastrophic behaviour and be able to inspire some trust. I believe that nothing more can be expected.
For those looking forward for a better future, the challenge is not in choosing your president, but in becoming your best friend.
Any of you can be the best president, I am sure of it, just awake, get up in the morning and see yourself in the mirror for real.
It would definitely be wrong to fire or sever all ties with someone for supporting, say, George W. Bush. On the other hand, it would be appropriate to do so if said person supported Hitler.
So the question is where you put Donald Trump on that spectrum. Personally, I think he's much closer to an authoritarian populist than to a regular politician.
You may disagree with Trump's placement on that axis, but I find it very strange to see so many people in this thread arguing that punishing someone for their political position is always wrong, no matter how vile or dangerous said political position is.
"Oh no, someone supports a political agenda different from mine. I'd better bring out the cannons and shame anything even remotely related to this person, because I don't agree with his political views!"
Maybe YC is worried that if they boot Thiel, and Trump wins, he'll be vindictive enough and powerful enough to crush YC. Like, it would be a real shame if the Attorney General started looking into Fair Housing violations by AirBnB, or if Dropbox suddenly lost the government connections it's been cultivating by putting Condi Rice on their board.
Bit off topic: does $1.25 million really seem like that much money? I mean I accept it is a huge sum of money in a normal context, but in this context (donations to political parties) is it really exceptional?
I mean I've heard of wealthy men losing multiples of that at Poker.
Just one quick comment, because these discussions always go there: This is not about Hillary. Whatever the family Clinton did or not did, it doesn't matter.
This is about someone who supports Donald Trump in a significant way, and the person Donald Trump and his potential negative impact on our society.
I don't agree. Clinton is the other choice. What people are doing is weighing up the negatives and positives of each candidate and decide who to support.
Racism, sexism, calling the election "rigged", saying you are going to prosecute your opponent, accusing them of being on drugs, bragging about sexual assault...
These are not political views. It's just absurdity, and supporting such a person with $1.25 million absolutely makes me question your judgement.
Who stands to lose more if Theil were to no longer be affiliated with YC? Is YC a social endeavor with a political agenda, or a program for entrepreneurs?
If the former, might want to tell the investors. Start with John Meriwether. ;)
This is a tricky situation. While many universally agree Trump is dangerous in his opinions and viewpoints on many issues, you can't just severe ties with an investor because of their political affiliation. Thiel might be supporting a candidate with racist and bigotry views, but this is his choice. When it comes to business, you should never make things personal and I think worrying about someone's political affiliation is definitely making it personal.
Might not be the most popular opinion, but I think Sam made the right call here.
By Altman's own argument, there's a line Thiel could cross that would make YC sever ties with him. All it would take is for Thiel to repeat some of the things Trump said.
So having a YC partner fund hate speech is okay, as long as it's by proxy. This is a baffling stance.
There is a difference between having an opinion or stance on something and repeating racist, ignorant and bigotry statements from a candidate. As far as I know, Thiel has done nothing but make a donation, he isn't forcing his views on anyone at YC nor publicly parroting/endorsing things Trump is saying.
In this instance Thiel has done nothing more than make a donation to a political candidate many don't like.
> There is a difference between having an opinion or stance on something and repeating racist, ignorant and bigotry statements from a candidate.
There is, indeed. Donating over a million dollars that can be used for ads repeating racist, ignorant, and bigoted Trump statements falls squarely in the latter category.
I agree, Digital. I think Sam's comment, "We shouldn’t start purging people for supporting the wrong political candidate. That’s not how things are done in this country" hits the issue spot on. If anything, maybe Mr. Thiel and Mr. Altman ought to have a serious conversation on the issue, but Thiel has undoubtedly contributed significantly to ycom.
Wouldn't this sort of behavior play into Trump's view of 'the system' being rigged against him? Shouldn't individuals have a right to have terrible opinions?
David Duke probably thinks "the system" is rigged against him too... and if you include private institutions in your definition of 'the system' it is and should be. If you hold reprehensible views (though technically legal), then society punishes you. As it has every right to. Trump will complain no matter what, that has zero weight. When someone who cries wolf like Trump isn't complaining, then something is terribly wrong.
> Shouldn't individuals have a right to have terrible opinions?
Yes. And society at large has every right to punish and socially ostracize these who hold abhorrent views.
I feel like technically minded people get mixed up between "we withhold from the government - the institution in our lives with absolute power - the right to silence citizens" and "we expect the private companies/organizations we support to use their influence to better society, not ruin it."
I wish that more smart people would not demonize either party and instead analyze and dissect each platform and weigh the potential benefits and consequences of them.
It is much more convincing to read actual facts about the platforms, and it's a lot more constructive.
With the brain power here, we might even be able to make constructive suggestions and possibly even influence either party's policies so that regardless of the outcome it works in everyone's favor.
If we can point out that some component of Hillary's plan or Trump's plan will surely lead to disaster in some way, that itself may have the political power to influence revision in a positive way, especially right now since both candidates are searching for weaknesses in each other's campaigns.
This is one of the most intelligent communities in the world, so let's be constructive.
This. The whole process has turned into character analysis and character assasination, rather than whose policies make the most sense for America. Both parties and the media are to blame.
There's a ton I personally dislike in the published GOP platform (eliminating the EPA, walking from Kyoto, completing the Keystone, defunding Amtrak, etc, etc) that bears discussion, rather than judging and yelling who's less evil.
The problem is that Trump doesn't offer much in policy, even when it comes to policy he actually talks about and this doesn't just affect the things he wants to keep secret from ISIS. He also contradicts himself quite a lot and when he touches upon policy in his talking points it's often times questionable whether he's even aware of the actual policies he's referring to and to what degree.
There is just no basis for an actual discussion or comparison on policy details.
It's not lazy. It's showing the extreme (clearly unacceptable) end of the spectrum to ask someone how they decide where to draw the line. What would Trump have to do before supporting him is unacceptable to YC?
But if you really don't want to use Hitler, try Rodrigo Duterte or Silvio Berlusconi instead. They actually share a lot of similarities to Trump.
"It's showing the extreme (clearly unacceptable) end of the spectrum to ask someone how they decide where to draw the line."
That's actually very lazy. It's shifting the burden of "drawing the line" on the other side.
It's the "well, why don't we just kill toddlers as well? Where do you draw the line?" in an abortion argument.
It's the "why don't we just give 12 year old's automatic assault weapons" or "why don't we disarm the police and military as well" in a gun control debate.
It's the "So why don't we just tax corporations 100% of their income" in a corporate tax debate.
Trump has started heavily implying that the election will be rigged, Russia-style. He repeats Info Wars propaganda sillyness. He's come out to say that the elections will be stolen from true Americans by illegal immigrants. He's called for beating protestors.
Some of his positions are more a question of form rather than function compared to the political mainstream. His comments on muslims immigrating into the country are not far from the Republican Party mainstream, unfortunately.
But beyond his policies, he has been openly hostile to the concept of functioning democracy. There's a lazy comparison to be made to Hitler, but that's because Hitler also subverted the system through a cult of personality.
I know some people oppose him for his policies, but it feels internally inconsistent (you'd have to boycott most Republican supporters). But surely using strategies to undermine the legitimacy of the election results (that in a different country would be an obvious lead-up to a coup d'etat) is something we can all get behind as a bad thing.
I wouldn't go so far to say that Trump and Hitler are one and the same, but you can draw similarities in the rise of nationalism in both campaigns and their impact on the electorate.
Even if Hitler isn't used as an example (it is a rather extreme one), say David Duke ran for president and Peter Thiel donated to his campaign. Would YC cut ties with Peter then?
I'm just curious to know where YC thinks the line is, and if there is even one.
Or, without saying the H word, what if Thiel was openly a white supremacist, member of and contributor to the KKK? Would that be completely okay? Would that be "just politics"?
While I agree with a lot of what Marco says in spirit, there is a HUGE point that Altman makes as well:
> 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. […]
This one sentence I think fully encapsulates why the Republican base has gone to the extremes it has. They don't give a damn about who Trump is or the awful things he does because he is listening to them, something the coastal intellectuals haven't done for decades.
Speaking as someone from one of the flyover states, I'd probably be supporting Trump too had I not come around to a lot more progressive viewpoints. The fact is yes a lot of what these people believe is wrong and backward, but just ignoring them and pretending that having the middle of the country doing nothing but hard labor and drugs is ok is exactly what got us here. Nobody gives a damn about the middle states outside of election year. Every year rural economies tank harder and harder but because it isn't a sexy problem like Shale Oil nobody gives a shit.
These people have been marginalized, ignored, and abandoned during some of the hardest economic transitional periods, and they're tired of it. You'd be voting for any candidate who at least gave the passing appearance of giving a damn about you were you left in that situation.
I think you get a lot of it right here, and nobody wants to acknowledge that for some reason. I would disagree that Trump is listening to people in the "flyover" states, but rather what he is doing is signaling that he's not in the coastal elite in-group. I'd bet Trump has very little idea how badly folks are hurting in red states, nor does he really care.
But what has happened is that those people have heard every political candidate say basically the same politically correct stuff irrespective of their D or R flavor and then once elected do basically nothing to help.
Now someone comes along who doesn't sound anything like the previous D or R flavored politicians (who never helped, despite their promises to) and TADA! "He knows and understands our problems" not because he does in any way, but simply because he sounds different.
To be clear: I'm absolutely sure Trump doesn't understand a damn thing about middle-state people. He just isn't outright dismissing them and their problems, and look what it's done for him! That's the scary part.
> Altman’s framing of Thiel’s Trump support as a diversity issue isn’t just incorrect — it’s a harmful distortion that reveals a deep misunderstanding of the tech industry’s actual diversity issues. (I don’t and can’t fully understand our diversity problem, but I at least won’t pretend to.)
What on Earth does this even mean? There's something wrong, I can't have a different opinion, but you can't even understand or explain it? Give me a fucking break.
But today, we have disent, fighting against it (assuming YOU the reader belive they can think for self)
- http://tinyurl.com/j89tf56
When we on the right (to the right relative to authoritarian left) say broadcast media is lying - this is an example. Left should be shamed when we can.
I am engineer by training - give me data points.
(ooh. Moderator downvotes. And w/o a comment on the data)
I could write a mirrored copy for "How dare you support a warmongering, nation-selling, unpatriotic woman like Hillary." but these sorts of attacks are pointless in the end. No US-based company should be supporting Hillary. They don't have the best interest of the nation at heart, they have the best interest of their wallets instead.
I'm wondering when the far-left is going to wake up and realize by alienating their fellow countrymen with attacks and namecalling they are creating a larger problem, not solving it. You don't win over people's hearts by calling them bigots and sexists (especially when accusations like that get thrown around because of "manspreading" or "microaggressions").
Both political sides are allowing themselves to be manipulated so heavily by the media, and that there is an increasingly dangerous gap between "us" and "them" mentality going on in the States. I'm actually genuinely concerned for the day of the election. Regardless of who wins, people have fanned the flames so much that I'm glad I live in a small rural area. Regardless of Trump or Hillary I'm expecting riots on the streets of many cities/regions.
I shouldn't be expecting that - and blog posts like this one only fan the flames ever higher.
This still shouldn't be on HN. I'm not from the US and I am totally fed up with both pro and anti Trump/Clinton propaganda that spews out to cover all of the world, and I don't want to see it here, at least particularly when it's just "stories about politics, or crime, or sports" and particularly not "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon." as the HN guidelines put it.
I'd rather fight for Thiel's right to say and work for his opinion.
I'd agree, with a tiny caveat. I couldn't care less about US politics, think neither candidate is likely to change much that affects me or mine, and think the US president's power is vastly overstated.
Where I disagree is that I think the real problem lies in the reactionary posts, like Pao's Medium post and this one. These I think are a very real threat to me and mine.
These ideas - that things that aren't focussed on hacking code together to create businesses, that distract not from adjacent to the topic but from within, these are the problem.
That's the crazy part here to me. Forget the politics, the people reacting to politics and wanting things in the HN sphere to change are (trying?) to have very real impacts on things I care about, and none of that is, AFAICT, in any way shape or form positive.
Trump, Clinton and the US election hasn't helped one person hack together any code, and neither has the post linked to, but only one of them is part of the industry that is directly involved in hacking together any code, and that part, that part is the issue.
This doesn't belong on HN. People should be allowed to make their political choices as they please & as is their right to do so. It isn't YC voting in the election and YC doesn't compel people to vote a certain way.
If the community flags it, the community flags it. I haven't flagged any of these Thiel stories until now. I've seen enough the past few days. I get what people feel, think, and [don't] support. I don't care to keep reading this over and over again.
Taking down or not is up to the site operator. HN is a privately run site. The operators can decide which content they want or don't to see on their site.
Yes it is but there is some irony that HN are ok to defend Theil based on freedom of speech but they're are not extending the same courtesy to Marco for criticizing them about it. Seems HN maybe as thin skinned as Trump.
In the 21th century educated techies should understand that Trump is not a mere candidate, but a product of a set of image makers, speech writers, psychologists and whole bunch of deceptive and manipulative techniques applied.
Basically, it is a well crafted frontman (same as in a rock band) to appeal to less educated majority. This explains all the sexism and masculinity, bravado and jokes - all this reflects what the majority of any given population would appreciate, but not necessarily publicly approve.
In a society which is famous for its well crafted, researched in psychology departments, deceptive advertising techniques, all what Trump does should be familiar and transparent - the same primitive manipulations everyone is using to sell the crap to each other.
Trump is a product of applied psychology, designed to obtain majority of votes. Do not even try to fancy that hipsters, vegans, etc. leave alone the ivvy league students, constitutes the majority of US population.
So, some people take their chances, betting on that this primitive but sound strategy could win. Consider this as just a form of a risky investment.
There's also the entire argument that Thiel doesn't really support Donald Trump, and that this donation is more of a strategic move that is coherent with increasing Ted Cruz's chances of election in 2020. Cruz got as close to a public denouncement of Trump as possible, and he will probably need the support of many of his voters (who knows if they'll even remember, doubt it) to be able to secure a victory. Thiel could perhaps be the trump card necessary as support, as he double counts as both a gay man and someone who remained "loyal" to Trump. I think that Thiel's opinions on how the world should look are more in line with Cruz's, and he himself has called Cruz "very smart". I don't know a lot about politics or Peter Thiel, but to think that a former chess champion and fairly renowned silicon Valley figurehead legitimately supports Trump is a little outlandish. The odds of there being an ulterior motive are far greater than the opposite. Not to mention that he probably saw all the negative PR coming, as well as the resulting dissociations. He probably believes it was all worth it.
HN admins - if you're going to shut this one down as well, could I appeal to you to at least give a reasoning why? Killing posts like these without for example dang providing at least a quick reasoning why leaves a bad taste in my mouth...
Flagged is one thing, a previous discussion was additionally set as "dead". As far as I know that can only be done by an admin, no? If it was all an automatic thing done by the system, then I have no issue with it.
BTW, it looks like they turned off the flagged state of this post and are giving the discussion a chance. Well done. Let's hope the comments here don't devolve into silly political bashing...
I flagged the last post. I flagged this post. The vast majority of people don't care. Peter Theil is probably a completely fine human being and has valid reasons for supporting Trump, and I'm much more concerned about the people who feel that is donation alone is enough to vilify him.
Trump support is not free-speech, tolerance issue or diversity issue, it's political issue.
As I understand it, Thiel is one of the 10 or so part time partners in Ycombinator. He is also board member of Facebook, so shame on Facebook.
I don't think Thiel's involvement puts large shame on Y Combinator, but at the same time I don't condone political activism that tries to isolate Thiel and his money by shaming his partners. Business is not politically neutral zone.
If you vote for Trump, you are supporting a racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-LGBTQ fascist. You are in fact voting against the very principles of equality, liberty and diversity that this country was founded on. As such voting for -- much less, actually supporting Drumpf -- means you are endorsing violence against huge portions of the American public (e.g., sexual assault against women, imprisonment of Muslims, Latinos, etc).
Therefore, not only is there nothing wrong with forward looking organizations for excluding people as dispicable as Trump supporters, they have a responsibility to do so for the safety of their members who happen to be LGBTQ, Muslim, female, People of Color and basically anyone else who isn't a straight white male.
It's 2016, about damn time we send a message to the bigots that their hate is no longer okay and we're not going to tolerate it anymore. End. Of. Discussion.
