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

(www.wsj.com)
370 points sillypuddy | 5 comments | 18 Feb 18 16:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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sho ◴[18 Feb 18 19:32 UTC] No.16407784[source]▶
What is crazy about the the situation in SF is that even 5 or so years ago if you asked me what the "echo chamber" there was echoing I would have said libertarianism and some kind of techno-utopianism. The takeover by the proscriptive far-left has been astonishingly rapid, and it is absolutely real. I also know people who have left, and many more who absolutely keep their political and even philosophical views to themselves, especially after Damore.

It's been an extraordinarily fast takeover and I'd really like to know exactly what happened those 5 or so years ago to precipitate this seismic shift.

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gameswithgo ◴[18 Feb 18 19:39 UTC] No.16407829[source]▶
I have no idea what SF is like, so in these discussions I never can tell if there really is an influx of insane, insufferable far left crazies, or if people who insist on remaining racist and keeping gays in the closet are mad that nobody is having that anymore. The latter is what I see in my own circle of humans but I live in Texas.

I can say though that I've moved further to the left as I've gotten older, from a libertarian tech-stereotype when I was younger, and in large part it has been from seeing the conservative half of american slide slowly further into insanity and horribleness, seemingly driven by fox news, at least among family.

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sho ◴[18 Feb 18 19:52 UTC] No.16407948[source]▶
> insane, insufferable far left crazies

Definitely this option.

And by the way, I've been increasingly wondering lately whether our blind insistence on labelling absolutely everything "left/right" or "red/blue" isn't doing our society real damage. I've never voted conservative my entire life but I have nothing in common with the far left and indeed fear them a lot more than the far right. We need a new vocabulary.

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walshemj ◴[18 Feb 18 20:44 UTC] No.16408445[source]▶
Yes but there are no far left parties in the USA to vote for.
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1. adventured ◴[18 Feb 18 21:18 UTC] No.16408736[source]▶
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).

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2. walshemj ◴[18 Feb 18 22:01 UTC] No.16409003[source]▶
so are they are like the SWP in the UK - no they are not. I don't think so I get the impression there like a weedy version of the lib dems
3. anigbrowl ◴[18 Feb 18 22:09 UTC] No.16409057[source]▶
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

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4. manfredo ◴[18 Feb 18 22:20 UTC] No.16409144[source]▶
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.
5. dragonwriter ◴[19 Feb 18 00:21 UTC] No.16409802[source]▶
The Green Party is not a far left party, though it's the biggest American Party that is unambiguously left (since the Democratic Party has a sizable, and still dominant though that is becoming less secure, center-right faction), so it's where slightly-pragmatic far left figures end up.

There are far left parties, but they do even worse than the Green's two state lower house seats and no more significant seats anywhere in the country, electing exactly no one to any even modestly significant office.