
Peter Thiel Sours on Donald Trump - cmurf
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/08/peter-thiel-sours-on-donald-trump
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evgen
And now we reach the point where opportunistic douchebags who used Trump/alt-
right crowds for their own benefit and those who felt that it gave them
license to say and post things that they previously would have kept to
themselves or to 4chan start to see the writing on the wall and begin looking
for the exits. Unfortunately for them, the internet never forgets and the
stink of this will cling to them for the rest of their days. I never had a
high opinion of Peter Thiel, but for the past year or so my policy has been to
avoid any company or organization that took money from him starting in 2016.
This policy is not going to change. Ever.

~~~
guelo
Where can I get that list of companies?

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ChuckMcM
_" But the disruption that Trump has brought to Washington doesn’t appear to
be the kind that Thiel was betting on."_ Whoops? The thing about chaos is that
it doesn't have a discernible vector. When you throw chaos into a situation to
shake things up, all directions it could go are equally probable. And no
matter how bad you think things are currently, there is a large surface area
of possible directions that makes things worse.

~~~
cmurf
The whole "shake things up" meme was among the dumbest. It made me think of:

"Honey, the toilet isn't working again! Those dammed plumbers don't know WTF
they're doing. I'm calling an electrician to shake the f'n toilette! We'll
just see how that works!"

Seriously, this is kakistocracy levels of thinking, but that's what happens
when people are a.) legitimately frustrated and b.) have no idea how to vent
it. So they basically just role the dice and go with the stink bomb approach.
All I can think of is we're just going to have to collectively suffer, and
hopefully learn from the mistake but at this point the pain level isn't high
enough for a proper feedback loop to kick in. Everyone is still really
attached to the idea their tribe is just inherently obviously vastly superior
and the others are either stupid or traitors.

Politics by emotion. And embrace of denialism.

~~~
imminentviolet
In what way is it dumb if the alternatives looked even worse?

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cmurf
If you follow the metaphor, the idea of shaking a toilette to fix it is stupid
as is hiring an electrician. Rationally, you'd find another plumber, maybe
choosing a different selection metric.

Extending the metaphor, the electrician has a long record of saying
demonstrably untrue things about both water, electricity, and plumbing.

And the idea that alternatives look worse is just more stupid denialism, the
idea that literally all alternatives are worse than someone who poops on all
the furniture is just non-credible nonsense and begs for ridicule because it
is that ridiculous. It's not rational.

~~~
imminentviolet
Regardless of what you think about Trump, he distinguished himself enough from
the rest of the field that he became the only viable choice for enough people
at the right stages to push him through. Apparently your lofty rationality
isn't developed enough to see that. What does rationality even mean in this
context? I'd love to know where you draw the line between a rational choice
and an irrational one when it comes to voting.

~~~
yongjik
> ... he distinguished himself enough from the rest of the field ...

...by not being a plumber?

~~~
imminentviolet
The idea that only professional politicians should be admitted to office
would've incensed the left 10 years ago. These days, because Trump made it in
instead of say, Jon Stewart, the left is suddenly very pious about political
office.

~~~
yongjik
Of course people without professional political career can be presidents, even
great presidents sometimes.

However, if the _main differentiating factor_ of your favorite candidate is
that he had zero experience in politics, it's hard to take that argument
seriously.

People considered Bernie Sanders an outsider, and he's been a senator since
2007. Trump isn't an "outsider": he's simply unqualified.

~~~
imminentviolet
It depends. If you consider political experience (especially extensive
political experience) to be a marker of corruption and ingrained hypocrisy,
political inexperience can look good by comparison. There seem to be enough
people sufficiently cynical these days to see it that way.

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Nokinside
He saw opportunistic possibility to get ahead and it backfired.

The problem with Trump government is that dysfunction shadows opportunistic
cynicism by wide margin. Nobody can question his authoritarian tendencies. He
just lacks the executive skills.

~~~
cmurf
I'm not quite so forgiving of "opportunistic possibility" that just isn't
working out to Thiel's advantage.

First a person had to cross the birtherism rubicon, it wasn't something you
could just skip over claiming you didn't know about it. Either you went with
"YES! MORE GIVE ME MORE OF _THAT_!" or "Yeah that's pretty derp, but I'm going
to overlook it as irrelevant to a proper assessment of one's character:
someone who's making a personal and racist attack, attacking the office of the
presidency, and also really attacking everyone who is willing to believe such
an obvious lie - yeah that's who I still want as a president, someone who
thinks I'm a moron." And just tick that box.

And then there are the Stern interviews. The bankruptcies. The widespread
pooping on all the furniture approach to business.

And the 1999 Russert interview where he said we must preemptively bomb North
Korea, we have to do it. And last year out loud asked why we hadn't used nukes
yet.

The data points for a kakistocracy are all there plain to see. But there was
and still is a deep attachment to tribalism and denialism that resulted in
where we're at.

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Upvoter33
"sources say" ... sometimes I trust sources like this, sometimes not. Really
hard to get much out of this article. However, it does push all the buttons
for those of us on the left, and hence, it exists. If it's true, it's hard to
imagine that people like Peter Thiel honestly thought Trump would be any
different than he is right now.

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neo4sure
"Reed Hastings" (Netflix ceo) was spot on when he said he will lose points on
evaluation. Frankly, he should be fired from the FaceBook board.

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ufmace
Maybe, maybe not. Honestly, I don't put much faith these days in what Left-
leaning publications report on personal dealings within the Trump
administration. Particularly when it is sourced to multiple anonymous sources.

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guelo
This is probably planted in the media by Thiel himself.

