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.
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.