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Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

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Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#321

I recently moved (fled) from downtown San Francisco to Nashville TN and couldn't be happier. I lived in SF for over 5 years, and there is absolutely a mass exodus of people and engineers leaving the bay area because of extreme ideology, hypocrisy, constant outrage, and the echo chamber that engulfs everything. Downtown San Francisco is a great place to visit for a few days but no place to start and raise a family.

Ok...but you didn't leave because of ideology, you left because you wanted to start a family and housing here is unaffordable, right? Which is also why people leave, not because of beliefs.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Green Party is a far left US party. To go much further left, you have to enter Venezuela style Socialism. The GP openly advocates for changing essentially everything about the US political and economic system and shifting every area much further to the left ideologically (by much further, I mean it far surpasses what even "liberals" in Congress advocate for).

The Green Party is a far left US party. With hardly any senior elected officials even at the municipal level. Like many fringe parties, it is just about big enough to qualify for public election financing but not to be competitive in any races that matter. http://www.gp.org/officeholders

Granted, with that line of thinking there aren't any far-right parties either. It's just Democrats and Republicans that have any substantial number of offices.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#323
post #312
post #169

I don't get it. I grew up in Silicon Valley and I work in tech, and so do many other people I know. They run the gamut from far-left socialists to libertarians to own a bunch of guns. They have all kinds of ethnic backgrounds and religious views. Some of my most libertarian/pro-gun friends have not been shy about their political views and it hasn't hurt their tech careers at all. They are far more welcome here than l…

Conservative propaganda has learned from the left how powerful victimology, feeling persecuted, is. White resentment is through the roof when I talk politics with a lot of my white friends.

White resentment becomes possible only when one ceases to care about facts. (Ex. http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/reports/cerd.pdf)

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#324
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is "I voted for Trump" (and I don't regret it) not controversial? I understand that there are many people who voted for Trump, but that does not mean that the opinion is something that should be considered being in line with the norms of the free society and far past conservative viewpoint. (Not in the sense that you have no right to your opinion, in the sense that person having that opinion loses the respect of…

Again, this is a perfect example of the absurd overreaction that Valley liberals have to the idea that someone might have some conservative views. You sound like you voted for Hillary...do you endorse every single thing she has ever done and said? Did that "I'm with her" shirt you probably bought apply to the Clinton Foundation scandal and the use of an unsecured private email server for classified emails? Probably n…

Absurd overreaction? I haven't seen that, but I do see people complaining that their free speech causes others to also speak.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#325
Off topic: I am legit interested to know how paywall sites get to the front page of HN. I wouldn't have guessed that the WSJ has a team of people to upvote their content to the front page, but now I'm second guessing that assumption. Or, does HN have some hidden allegiance with certain news agencies that lets paywall content through? Obviously TechCrunch gets in free, since it's used for YCombinator startup advertising, but the WSJ surprises me.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#326
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to be racist to support the modern Republicans, but you do have to decide that racism really isn't a deal-breaker for you.

If racism isn't a deal-breaker for you...

In a multi-party system, I would agree with your implication. But when you have a system with only two realistic choices, it is possible to vote for a candidate because you think the other one is even worse, without endorsing the candidate you voted for.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#327
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clinton Foundation scandal and the use of an unsecured private email server for classified emails? Probably not. This is false equivalence. People like Clinton might appear corrupt for republicans and Dick Cheney might be horrible for democrats, but Trump is in completely different plane. >workplace social scene (if not their job altogether) based on one data point that by itself means next to nothing is wrong. Wha…

You missed my point. I was saying that all candidates have flaws, and people find reasons to vote for them anyway. Whether you voted for Trump or Hillary, you were voting for a flawed candidate. It is only your personal political bias that makes Trump in "completely different plane".

>your personal political bias that makes Trump in "completely different plane".

Of course. Everything does. It's just of general description of reality.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"openly supporting" the winning presidential candidate isn't "absurd".

Yes it is. When you support Trump, you support his vile brand of leadership. The majority in this the country do not support this man or his ideas. They simply don't. The base that supported him and made this presidency possible is collapsing by all reported metrics (as in they are literally dying off, and younger people neither support Trump's ideas nor are they as religious). So while Trump's base may have squeezed…

As disgusting and obnoxious as Trump is, there were enough perfectly good reasons to vote for him as a vote against the other major candidate.

Until people start actually voting for (a) third party, I am afraid that rather than being a last squeeze, we will be getting candidates like this more often, not less.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#329
post #169

I don't get it. I grew up in Silicon Valley and I work in tech, and so do many other people I know. They run the gamut from far-left socialists to libertarians to own a bunch of guns. They have all kinds of ethnic backgrounds and religious views. Some of my most libertarian/pro-gun friends have not been shy about their political views and it hasn't hurt their tech careers at all. They are far more welcome here than l…

On the other hand, I have seen a coworker strongly imply that someone is a white nationalist for suggesting that it’s possible to be a non-racist republican.

I noticed a similar view appearing more than once in the UK: "if you voted for Brexit you're probably a racist".

I think people like this were ironically and unwittingly recruiting people to the other side. Which is unfortunate.

Re: Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

#330
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're telling me! We transsexuals are a great example, having been co-opted in recent years to make liberals/postmodernists look good. We are just too convenient of a packaged identity now that gays are not a big deal any more. I feel for Thiel, he may be a "public person" with his commentary, but his sex life is private. Everybody knows that you are not supposed to pry (most of us just want to move on with our life…

Completely aside from this, how can you support Trump while knowing that he doesn't support you and his VP actively fights against LGBT rights?

You do realize that (1) politics is multi-dimensional, (2) trans-issues are far too unimportant for Trump to actually care about and (3) US has good enough legal system that there's approximately 0 chance that Trump can actually do anything agains trans people (I mean he can't even manage to ban foreign Muslims).
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