
Livestream: Peter Thiel Speaks at Republican National Convention - flinner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_lpyG-ddec&t
======
objclxt
> When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union.
> And we won. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use
> which bathroom.

> This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?

I guess in the 1950s and 60s all those people complaining they couldn't use
the bathroom they wanted were just distracting from the real issue of the
Commies.

This is just such a baffling, nonsensical statement that I can only conclude
Thiel is pursuing some kind of hidden agenda and this is all part of a massive
con.

Firstly, history shows us that who uses which bathroom is actually quite
important. We used to have bathrooms with "Whites Only" written on them. We
don't any more.

Secondly, Thiel has a JD, so presumably knows that this issue is a fairly
significant constitutional one, and a lot more nuanced than he lets on.

Thirdly, the only people _raising_ this debate are Republicans in right-wing
areas. _Nobody_ in Silicon Valley is debating this issue. Nobody. Who does
Thiel think is "telling" us this is the "great debate"? It's just pandering,
plain and simple.

~~~
kyleashipley
Did not watch the speech, but if I'm interpreting the transcript correctly, it
sounds like he is telling the RNC that their attempts to pass laws restricting
LGBTQ rights are a distraction from more important problems in business and
technology, not that LGBTQ rights are not important. It seems like a critique
of the current platform and a suggestion that Trump would focus his energy
elsewhere, on an actual "great debate."

Maybe I missed something, though!

~~~
mc32
I think that's how it's meant to be interpreted. That they should focus on
core issues (economics, jobs, security, equality, fairness, etc.) and not
pander to a small interest group in order to raise money using an out-of-sync,
losing cause.

I think Repubs should see Trump as somewhat a liberator of Repubs from the
tyranny of their previous ideology.

Whether he wins or loses, he's freed them from the shackles of social
conservatism which would ultimately make the party less relevant, over time. I
mean, that was a dead end.

------
meritt
Gotta say, I'm extremely disappointed in Thiel. For being such a "visionary"
he has really chosen a terrible investment in Trump.

~~~
Aloha
You must have a better crystal ball than I do.

Clinton is a known quantity, yes. But I know that a Hillary Clinton presidency
will be 8 years of investigations and recriminations into crimes, real or
imagined. I also know that very little will change going from an Obama
presidency to a Clinton one.

Trump is an unknown quantity that has said some scary things when taken out of
context - but speaks the things people won't say, but think. Is probably equal
to our current president in the ability to sell a message. The worst case I
see for a Trump presidency is something ineffectual. The middle case, he's a
wrecking ball, and breaks up enough to the deadlock, fake culture wars, and
stupidity in politics to unite our country against him and on to further
greatness. The best case, he's a very effective president and can break down
walls, modernize the executive branch and shave off trillions in waste.

In short, if you think things are fine as they are - and only incremental
improvements are needed, Clinton is your lady - if you think the system is
broken and needs a wrecking ball, Trump is your guy.

I'm confident enough in the fundamentals of our system of government, that I'm
not concerned about the future of our country with either outcome.

~~~
dreyfan
I'd try to intellectually point out why you're completely wrong and Trump is
an imminent danger to our country (see: Turkey the past two years), but I see
that you live in Washington, which means your vote for Trump is irrelevant.

~~~
dang
Please don't bring someone's personal details into an argument on HN. That's a
breach of civility.

~~~
dreyfan
It's listed in his public HN profile, it's not like I'm doxxing him.

It's also relevant to the discussion at hand: a non-democratic vote in the
state of Washington, due to the electoral college winner-take-all allotment,
will not have any impact on the final outcome of the state. I'm not attacking
him for where he lives; it's merely pointing out a fact of life.

~~~
dang
No, this is established moderation practice on HN and I must insist on the
point. Finding personal details and bringing them back to an argument as
ammunition is unduly personal and therefore not allowed here.

I'm sure you didn't mean any harm and agree that doxxing would be worse, but
it still degrades the quality of discourse when people do this. So please
don't do this.

------
gallonofmilk
I just posted the youtube video of this and it was instantly flagged... why is
that? Peter Thiel is arguably one of the most famous Silicon Valley VC's and a
partner in ycombinator, isn't him speaking at RNC newsworthy?

~~~
naaaaak
Basic censorship. SV liberal-types are triggered by the word "Republican" and
thus have filters for it. This response will be auto downvoted or filtered out
soon.

~~~
Jtsummers
I didn't flag the original. The problem is, this board is generally
(political) flamewar free. And many of us want to keep it that way. To that
end, partisan politics has no good place here. Policy discussions, even more
to the philosophical "capitalism" vs "socialism" side are better than
Republican vs Democrat.

------
louprado
The only thing anyone outside of tech will remember about this speech that an
openly gay tech leader from a liberal city is supporting Trump.

To paraphrase a past PT quote "It's easy to be easy to be contrarian, it's
much harder to be contrarian and be right". But I would personally add to
that, "it's yet quite harder to be right _and_ know why you are right."

That's the problem with backing Trump. While it's not impossible he'd be a
good president, it is impossible to know this today given his inconsistent,
incoherent, and volatile statements. Not to mention his wildly incorrect past
statements.

There's a weird grin PT has during this speech that I have never seen before.
It's like the world's worst poker face. If he has a broader plan I am not sure
it's off the right start.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"There's a weird grin PT has during this speech that I have never seen
before."

I don't know the man, but from looking at Google Images that doesn't seem to
be outside his normal range of expressions.

For example, [http://dde39d2gc4th3.cloudfront.net/wp-
content/uploads/2014/...](http://dde39d2gc4th3.cloudfront.net/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/unnamed3.png)

------
alexmingoia
A list of problems and not a single proposed solution. More of the same. The
Iraq or Libya intervention _already happened_. So being against it then says
nothing about it now. Will Trump discontinue operations in Syria? You get my
point.

------
flinner
Exact link to the speech video recording:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_lpyG-
ddec&t=37m19s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_lpyG-ddec&t=37m19s)

------
easyd
Transcript:

Good evening. I'm Peter Thiel.

I build companies and I support people who are building new things, from
social networks to rocket ships.

I'm not a politician.

But neither is Donald Trump.

He is a builder, and it's time to rebuild America.

Where I work in Silicon Valley, it's hard to see where America has gone wrong.

My industry has made a lot of progress in computers and in software, and, of
course, it's made a lot of money.

But Silicon Valley is a small place.

Drive out to Sacramento, or even across the bridge to Oakland, and you won't
see the same prosperity. That's just how small it is.

Across the country, wages are flat.

Americans get paid less today than 10 years ago. But healthcare and college
tuition cost more every year. Meanwhile Wall Street bankers inflate bubbles in
everything from government bonds to Hillary Clinton's speaking fees.

Our economy is broken. If you're watching me right now, you understand this
better than any politician in Washington. And you know this isn't the dream we
looked forward to. Back when my parents came to America looking for that
dream, they found it—right here in Cleveland.

They brought me here as a one-year-old, and this is where I became an
American.

Opportunity was everywhere.

My Dad studied engineering at Case Western Reserve University, just down the
road from where we are now. Because in 1968, the world's high tech capital
wasn't just one city: all of America was high tech.

It's hard to remember this, but our government was once high tech, too. When I
moved to Cleveland, defense research was laying the foundations for the
Internet. The Apollo program was just about to put a man on the moon—and it
was Neil Armstrong, from right here in Ohio.

The future felt limitless.

But today our government is broken. Our nuclear bases still use floppy disks.
Our newest fighter jets can't even fly in the rain. And it would be kind to
say the government's software works poorly, because much of the time it
doesn't even work at all.

That is a staggering decline for the country that completed the Manhattan
Project. We don't accept such incompetence in Silicon Valley, and we must not
accept it from our government.

Instead of going to Mars, we have invaded the Middle East. We don't need to
see Hillary Clinton's deleted emails: her incompetence is in plain sight. She
pushed for a war in Libya, and today it's a training ground for ISIS. On this
most important issue, Donald Trump is right. It's time to end the era of
stupid wars and rebuild our country.

When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union.
And we won. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use
which bathroom.

This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?

Of course, every American has a unique identity.

I am proud to be gay.

I am proud to be a Republican.

But most of all I am proud to be an American.

I don't pretend to agree with every plank in our party's platform. But fake
culture wars only distract us from our economic decline.

And nobody in this race is being honest about it except Donald Trump.

While it is fitting to talk about who we are, today it's even more important
to remember where we came from. For me that is Cleveland, and the bright
future it promised.

When Donald Trump asks us to Make America Great Again, he's not suggesting a
return to the past. He's running to lead us back to that bright future.

Tonight I urge all of my fellow Americans to stand up and vote for Donald
Trump.

~~~
etimberg
> Our nuclear bases still use floppy disks. An odd thing to complain about. If
> it works, it works.

~~~
Jtsummers
It works, but it's very fragile. A _lot_ of our military tech is fragile. We
have many dependencies on systems that are no longer (physically) produced
outside DoD demand, which puts the prices into the exorbitant range.

Modernization efforts are error-prone and only bandaids in many cases.

And new efforts have seen production and development issues that are just
embarrassing (F-35).

------
vsayer
I thought Thiel was libertarian! Mind blown!

~~~
vsayer
My theory is Thiel is supporting Trump because he's guessing Trump will fail
and thus the government will completely lose the people's trust sparking riots
etc and fundamentally changing its future involvement. Very intriguing.

------
chiaro
Given the paucity of high profile business speakers at the event thus far, I'm
surprised that the RNC didn't milk Thiel for longer. It's also surprising that
he talked about replicating the prosperity of SV beyond the Bay Area, when the
general sentiment from figureheads more representative of the startup culture
(such as pg) note that tolerance and liberalism is a key part of engendering
innovation.

------
kevindong
I guess Thiel really, really wants those tax breaks and laissez faire
capitalism.

------
bbravado
Heres to hoping this theory is true: [http://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-
thiel-donald-trump-c...](http://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-donald-
trump-crazy.html)

~~~
mempko
Why are you hoping it's true? Either, like Thiel you also want democracy
weakened. Or possibly you want Thiel to be revealed as the Thief he is. My
hope is the latter.

~~~
bbravado
eh, I suppose imagining this "tech visionary" doing such an absurd thing as
supporting Trump due to long term political strategy lessens the sting.
Considering we are constantly told to adore these visionary silicon valley
types. /s

To his credit however, if theres ever been a case to be made against our
_current_ democratic system then Trump sure takes the cake.

------
VladKovac
> I don't pretend to agree with every plank in our party's platform

Pretends that party agrees with everything he's saying.

------
Mao_Zedang
The pro(reg)gressive left are becoming more and more nervous as populist
movements around the world appear to be gaining traction, turns out people are
worried about their jobs and their personal security.

------
timofei7
We won against the Soviet Union? Maybe he should revisit some history. If
anything, our constant embargoes during the cold war only made the Soviet
Union last longer. As soon as both sides started trading more freely, that was
the fall of the Soviet Union, largely due to Gorbachev in either case. We had
stupid foreign policies then, and we still have stupid foreign policies. He
refers to the greatness of NASA back in the day, does he not know that is a
government funded liberal program that his party would like to shut down? Does
he not know how to use the internet to educate himself before giving a speech
to millions?

~~~
Turing_Machine
"We won against the Soviet Union?"

The Soviet Union no longer exists, and the United States of America does.

So, yeah, most people would call that winning.

~~~
timofei7
We did nothing to "win". Most people would require there to be some action to
get the credit.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"We did nothing to "win"."

Oh, I think the Cold War certainly counts as something. It's a dead certainty
that, without U.S. nuclear force and somewhere around half a million U.S.
troops in Europe, the Soviet Union would have eaten Western Europe as
thoroughly as it ate Eastern Europe. Also, as I type, I'm within a few miles
of three former nuclear missile sites. Those didn't magically appear by
themselves, dude. How does that count as "nothing"?

I also think that (contrary to your claim that increased trade brought the
downfall) if the U.S. hadn't sold the Soviet Union vast amounts of grain
beginning in the 1970s, the fall of the USSR would have been much faster, and
much, much uglier. Nonetheless, I'm glad that didn't happen. Millions in the
U.S.S.R. would have starved to death.

