
Silicon Valley's Ambivalence Towards Trump Turns to Anger - zonotope
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/technology/silicon-valleys-ambivalence-toward-trump-turns-to-anger.html
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bencpeters
Personally, I find this "turn to anger" a little hollow/self-serving. Nothing
Trump has done so far is in any way out of line with what he was saying on the
campaign trail - the only people who are surprised by his actions are the
people who took a "he's not being serious, it's just talk" view when
evaluating his speeches. I wish SV companies and executives could have had
this "turn to anger" back when it mattered and helped avert this when it was
easiest to do so - before the election.

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capkutay
What was the tech sector supposed to do? Go campaign in Wisconsin for Hillary?

Tech was already shoveling tons of money into her campaign. Bezos-owned
Washington Post was about as Anti-Trump as a news organization can be.

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rch
People in Boulder were making calls to more contested states. Historically
these personal calls have had a small but measurable effect.

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jpatokal
"Ambivalence?" All I've been hearing on HN for the past year plus is
comparisons to fascism, the Nazis and the Anti-Christ.

That said, at least Mussolini made the trains run on time and the Nazis were
pretty efficient, which is more than can be said for the Trump
administration's first week...

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wiml
Point of trivia: Mussolini didn't even make the trains run on time.

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gumby
Actually he "did" \-- in quotes because he put out alternative facts --
propaganda -- to that effect.

Little known fact: the original word for the kinds of publicity companies use
to grow demand for their product was "propaganda" (propagate the goods, get
it?) coined by Edward L Bernays, Freud's nephew and the first formalizer of
advertising.[1] After Germany appointed a minister of advertising
("Propaganda"), the industry decided it needed a new name.

Now we have a journalist/propagandist on the National Security Council. Should
be interesting. Did you know Alan Kay was on Reagan's? He (Alan) has some
hysterical stories of his time on the NSC.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_\(book\))

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flukus
Silicon Valley was too busy inventing the gig economy that has people turning
towards trump.

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KKKKkkkk1
I don't like Trump's policies any more than anyone else here, but I think that
it's wrong for companies to play a role in politics. A company like Google was
created by its shareholders with the purpose of making money by providing
Internet search services. Taking political positions would subvert the goal
for which Google was created.

If some of Google's shareholders want to pursue political goals instead of
providing search services, they can take their money out of Google shares and
start a PAC. This is precisely the reason why Sergey Brin said that he does
not represent Google when he was at the protest at SFO yesterday.

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molecule
So you don't think that companies like Google and Apple should oppose and
speak out against unwarranted government surveillance? Their customers and
shareholders think that they should.

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fezz
and employees.

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dirkg
All talk no action. This is the definition of 'for show'. If they wanted, the
ultra rich valley billionaires and companies could affect real change by
leveraging their power.

But these are the same companies and people who tacitly approved of Trump and
did nothing to stop his election, or even try to educate people.

I'm looking at Google, who are now trying to woo Republicans !

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grzm
It's not uncommon by any means for companies to support both parties. I
haven't been reading the details on the "Google wooing Republicans" topic,
though I wouldn't be surprised if Google hasn't been supporting Republican
officials, at least in a quieter manner, for a long time.

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EGreg
My post is about outrage combined with navel gazing, and perpetuation of human
rights issues.

I have a serious question. While I am personally against a ban on immigration
of the kind Trump is doing, 6 out of the 7 countries targeted - all except
Somalia - have a permanent ban on Israelis. Not a 4 month ban "until they
figure out" some aggressive vetting processes, and make themselves look like
they kept a promise to their constituents. A permanent ban.

By the logic of "this is a ban on Muslims", that is a "ban on Jews".

My question is - where was the outrage all those years? Seriously think about
it.

Chomsky (who I have met and later email-debated with extensively) says
criticizing other countries is like criticizing the 19th century, and your
duty is criticizing the crimes of your own, because you can do the most there.
While I agree with that duty, I think it misses one crucial piece.

People from progressive and developed countries tend to "let things go" when
other countries violate human rights because they are so far outside their
local political reality. They end up navel gazing at their own sins, with
dangerous consequences.

For example, feminists today in the USA spend much more energy on making sure
default social network avatars are gender-neutral than they do on stopping
human trafficking, honor killings and rape culture in patriarchal tribal /
caste societies in _other_ countries. That's what I mean by navel gazing.

Angel Merkel and EU bureaucrats let millions of Syrian refugees into Europe
while not requiring Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states to even sign the UN
convention on the rights of the refugee. These people speak Arabic but go to a
country where their language and customs are out of place and retard their
contributions to society. And why? Navel gazing.

Similarly Jews often help exacerbate criticism of Israel by failng to require
people to apply the same standards to other countries. Care about the rights
of refugees? Great. Let's have a solution that all the countries of the region
implement: giving citizenship to those who were born in the country. Then
after couple generations Palestinian refugees etc. would have long stopped
being refugees. By having Israel alone give citizenship and a right of return,
you practically force eg all Lebanese of Palestinian descent to try and flood
Israel.

Instead, their pride in their country's achievements makes them acquiesce with
those who use the words "Social Justice" to advocate a kind of double standard
Marxist view that everything is a zero-sum game and there must be losers.
Zionists must lose. White people must apologize and pay reparations. But these
double standard Social Justice never lead to anything except perpetuation of
misery for those that have to live without rights.

My point here is that pride in exceptionalism leads to complacency. We should
have cared when these countries (and other Islamic countries) banned Israelis
from entering. But we were focused too much on our Western world.

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legostormtroopr
Silicon Valley tech billionaires who will be un-impacted personally by
migration, complain when they no longer have a cheap source of labour.

The Valley isn't going to be hosting migrants and they aren't going to be
competing against unskilled migrant labour.

Why is it walls are just fine around LAs mansion estates and in closed gated
communities, but as soon as the general populace wants them they become bad?

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a_j_c
I'm so tired of seeing all the blog posts and comments that think our problems
are due to Trump and Republicans instead of taking a look at our own
"progressive" party. Sure, Trump and the GOP are fucked up, but so are the
Dems and the tech community seemed perfectly fine fawning over our "tech
president" when he was bailing out the billionaires, expanding state
surveillance powers, and ordering the murder of thousands with drones.

Whenever I mention how the corporate Dems have been selling us out for years
and we need to light a fire under their ass to work for our interests, I'm
immediately ostracized from my fellow "progressives."

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mc32
The biggest thing against Hillary, geopolitically, was her hawkishness and the
posture against a nuclear Russia. Obama-Putin was very rocky. Hillary-Putin
would have been an abysmal and possibly dangerous relationship.

Avoiding a hot war in Eastern Europe is worth the people affected by the new
immigration bans.

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JPLeRouzic
In the past there was also people willing to deal with Germany when it tried
to invade parts of Czechoslovakia. We can see how it was successful.[0]

I am in favor of peace as it is the best state for humanity to strive. But to
maintain peace, we must have a good strategy, not a call to people like Putin
such as "Please do anything you like".

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement)

~~~
mc32
It's about striking a balance and it looks like some of Putin's actions were
due to his thinking he was "provoked" by Nato expansion into his backyard and
his being an authoritarian could not allow himself to look like a supplicant
or submissive to Us action in the area so he goes about and dusts things up a
bit.

I think Obama and his advisers sorely missed someone like a Condoleezza or a
Cohen, etc. people who would give him some good insight into Putin's thinking
and why he acts the way he does.

I mean, at the end of the Obama presidency US-Russia relations were hotting up
beyond my comfort.

