By the way it seems like both presidential candidates' main selling point is is that they are not the other candidate. Really not how things should be.
The 2016 Election
171–180 of 646 posts
Re: The 2016 Election
#172I have never really liked Donald Trump, he is an abrasive egocentric character and I quite like Hillary she being an attractive intelligent woman. Now I am not so sure, I find Hillary smug and untrustworthy and am finding Trump refreshing honest, if a little over-exited at times. its important to respect diverse views even if they fly contrary to your deeply held beliefs. Its not easy but if there is an open debate. thats probably a good thing
Re: The 2016 Election
#173Why would Sam not go for a third party who was less problematic? There are third party candidates available. Is it because they are unlikely to be elected? If so, this thinking keeps on trapping us into voting for the least bad of the bad.
Because Sam is an intelligent and rational individual.
If Trump were to win, Dems would for sure do a reshuffle and look introspectively. If Hillary were to win, there will be little introspection.
If Clinton wins, the Repubs will go into a tailspin and introspect, if Trump were to win, Repubs and Dems will have to both look inwardly to figure out how their machinery failed so miserably in the face of a hack -a blowhard with no political experience who will say anything to win and who likely, if elected would make Taft look like a good executive.
Re: The 2016 Election
#174There's another issues, both parties are courting the more extreme views within their parties.
That is, the Democrats are looking further left/liberal, and the Republicans are looking more right/conservative.
Neither is looking after the centre, they only seek to appease the more vocal within their ranks... the extremists.
Typically when the pendulum swings things average out, but politicians have learned over the past several decades that if they want to gain 10 miles of political position they should negotiate for 100 miles from the outset and beat the other party into submission before settling on 20 miles (everyone's a winner).
The entire system seems to promote seeking an extreme position even if such a position isn't desired by anyone.
Re: The 2016 Election
#175Sam, just so you know, many of your sentences could exchange Trump for Hillary and be exactly what Trump supporters I know say. Especially this one: > [Hillary] shows little respect for the Constitution, the Republic, or for human decency, and I fear for national security if [she] becomes our president. Other sentences would just exchange antonyms and not make it sound any better. You call Trump isolationist, they ca…
> Sam, just so you know, many of your sentences could exchange Trump for Hillary and be exactly what Trump supporters I know say. Especially this one:
> > [Hillary] shows little respect for the Constitution, the Republic, or for human decency, and I fear for national security if [she] becomes our president.
Except one is based on a set of statements made by the candidate and his own campaign, the other is mostly built upon the massive pile of conspiracy theories and mountains-made-from-molehills that constitute the argument against Hillary.
Re: The 2016 Election
#176> We should all feel a duty to try to understand the roughly > half of the country that thinks we are severely misguided. > I don’t understand how 43% of the country supports Trump. > But I’d like to find out, because we have to include > everyone in our path forward. If our best ideas are to > stop talking to or fire anyone who disagrees with us, > we’ll be facing this whole situation again in 2020. > > That kind of…
There are 'wrong political candidates,' and there are fascists.
The question is all the more urgent, but the conclusion that there is neither justification nor need to drawn clear bright lines is not.
Support for Trump is not something about which reasonable people can disagree.
People who do so should be called out, isolated, and challenged.
That goes double in environments like the Valley, given to libertarian hubris, over regard for one's own talents and discernment, and undo concentration of wealth married to an unjustified sense that it results from genius...
Re: The 2016 Election
#177I think a lot of the problems with the YC/Thiel discussion stems from the difference between how people view it: is it a political disagreement, or is it an ethical disagreement?
In a "normal" election, this would be pretty cut-and-dry: it'd primarily be a political disagreement over taxes or something, and letting someone go because of their political beliefs would be viewed by many as being pretty extreme.
Many people — myself included — view support for Trump today as an ethical problem. When you see him and his followers advocating misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, aggressiveness, and basically all the other -isms and -obias, it becomes much harder to "see the other side" of the debate. It's not political for many people who will see — and have seen throughout this election cycle — very real repercussions in terms of discrimination and hostility that affects them every day in their lives.
So yeah, there's a lot of anger with YC supporting someone in a leadership position here. I know YC keeps mentioning that Thiel is in a part time position, but he's still in an advisory position, which brings with it a lot of responsibility and ownership that we'd hope YC would be much more understanding about the impact of such a position.
I appreciate that it's a tricky situation for Sam and others to be in, but I do hope that they'd reconsider their stance in the future. Until then, on a personal level, I'm not interested in applying to Y Combinator. That's one small thing that I can do in the meantime, at least.
Re: The 2016 Election
#178> We should all feel a duty to try to understand the roughly > half of the country that thinks we are severely misguided. > I don’t understand how 43% of the country supports Trump. > But I’d like to find out, because we have to include > everyone in our path forward. If our best ideas are to > stop talking to or fire anyone who disagrees with us, > we’ll be facing this whole situation again in 2020. > > That kind of…
Sam tweeted that this was his favorite article about the election: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-on... It really does a great job of helping explain Trump supporters.
For a more formal look at this, I'd suggest looking at Sarah Kenzidor's work over the past year. She's a journalist in St. Louis with a PhD in... sociology? (I think?), specializing in the Uzbekistan country & regime. She's brought that knowledge to bear on the Trump campaign and has spent a lot of time trying to explain to the 'coasts' Why Trump. Her book on this is called the "View from Flyover Country". I haven't read the book, specifically, but I've read most of her articles on the matter since the spring.
Re: The 2016 Election
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I made it then, and I'm making it now. One of the best ways we can fix campaign finance is by holding campaign financiers responsible for what they're funding.
That is a very dark world where the minority need to legitimately fear the majority. No thank you.
In this case, the minority are rich and powerful people.
Re: The 2016 Election
#180> We should all feel a duty to try to understand the roughly > half of the country that thinks we are severely misguided. > I don’t understand how 43% of the country supports Trump. > But I’d like to find out, because we have to include > everyone in our path forward. If our best ideas are to > stop talking to or fire anyone who disagrees with us, > we’ll be facing this whole situation again in 2020. > > That kind of…
You made the comment I was going to make. Though I would have included the following too: > The way we got into a situation with Trump as a major party nominee in the first place was by not talking to people who are very different than we are. The polarization of the country into two parallel political realities is not good for any of us. We should talk to each other more, not less. When it comes down to it.. its bec…
>its become clear to me at least that a large percentage of the country simply put, is not 'getting ahead' - the anger that drove the Trump and Sanders campaigns is very real and must be solved if we are to prosper.
The key there is that they _feel_ like they're not getting ahead - a very different thing than not actually getting ahead, and much more dangerous.