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

The problem is that among this crowd, simply saying "I voted for Trump" or "I hated Hillary so I just didn't vote" is considered "controversial" and worthy of personal and professional backlash.

Voting for an openly sexist person is extremely controversial. I don't find "I hated Hillary so I just didn't vote" controversial at all.

Your comment is a perfect example of the Valley's intense hatred of any remotely conservative viewpoint that the article is referring to. People have all kinds of reasons for voting for a particular candidate. It doesn't mean they endorse all of their actions or views. In this last election, I suspect that many Trump votes were made simply because they didn't like Hillary, and there were only two choices.

This is sexist talk in Silicon Valley. Be careful.

How is "I voted for Trump" (and I don't regret it) not controversial?

I understand that there are many people who voted for Trump, but that does not mean that the opinion is something that should be considered being in line with the norms of the free society and far past conservative viewpoint.

(Not in the sense that you have no right to your opinion, in the sense that person having that opinion loses the respect of others.)

Great. I'm sure they all had reasons to vote for a man who said "grab them by the pussy." That doesn't make it any less of an endorsement.

How can something half the US voters did be controversial?

The norms you mention are obviously not where you think they are. I think you may be out of touch.

Again, this is a perfect example of the absurd overreaction that Valley liberals have to the idea that someone might have some conservative views. You sound like you voted for Hillary...do you endorse every single thing she has ever done and said? Did that "I'm with her" shirt you probably bought apply to the Clinton Foundation scandal and the use of an unsecured private email server for classified emails? Probably not.

It's the same with Trump. Some voters - many millions of them - overlooked his many flaws and voted for him, for any of a variety of reasons. That doesn't automatically make them racists, bigots, sexists, idiots, or any of the other labels that liberals like to put on Trump voters. I'm not even endorsing a specific viewpoint here - I'm just saying that instantly ostracizing someone from their workplace social scene (if not their job altogether) based on one data point that by itself means next to nothing is wrong.

To claim that voting for the candidate who actually won the election is controversial is not rational. In my estimation this kind of intolerance is exactly WHY so many people voted for him despite his flaws.

I can understand why someone would vote for Romney, McCain, Bush, Dole, but for the life of me I assume that if you voted for Trump you were ok with everything that was known about him; e.g. you believe it is OK to talk about grabbing pussies in the locker room. Trump is special, never before have we had a candidate on either side like this, at least Bill Clinton appeared to be ashamed about his BJ in the whitehouse.

That really has nothing to do with Silicon Valley specifically, Trump supporter has become a bad word in many big cities that Bush supporter never was.

I think it's highly controversial considering how split the country is on the issue. It wouldn't be controversial if say, 80% of the population voted for him. But they didn't. Half the country did, which is precisely why it is controversial.

Half the US? Citation needed.

Last I checked it was only slightly more than half the eligible voting population that actually voted in the presidential election.

Popularity is quite orthogonal to controversy regardless. Our current president is controversial, and it can be argued that controversy is the very thing responsible for the votes he received.

> Clinton Foundation scandal and the use of an unsecured private email server for classified emails? Probably not.

This is false equivalence. People like Clinton might appear corrupt for republicans and Dick Cheney might be horrible for democrats, but Trump is in completely different plane.

>workplace social scene (if not their job altogether) based on one data point that by itself means next to nothing is wrong.

What you think is the threshold where political opinion can become personal? When your family is deported?

You missed my point. I was saying that all candidates have flaws, and people find reasons to vote for them anyway. Whether you voted for Trump or Hillary, you were voting for a flawed candidate. It is only your personal political bias that makes Trump in "completely different plane".

Absurd overreaction? I haven't seen that, but I do see people complaining that their free speech causes others to also speak.

>your personal political bias that makes Trump in "completely different plane".

Of course. Everything does. It's just of general description of reality.

How old are you? I remember people crying when Bush won in 2004. I remember some girl refusing to date a friend of mine because he voted for Bush. Bush received plenty of vilification, which if you are young, is easy to forget given the left now views him like an adorable goofy grandpa. The hate was intense at the time. (Although yes, it’s worse for Trump).

95% of liberals (myself included) would have re-voted for Bill Clinton in 2000, if he was allowed to re-run, over Bush. They would have overlooked all of the shit with Monica (a 22 yo intern!) and the other women, because they would have viewed Bush as a worse choice. And I think nearly all of them do not endorse what he did.

Old enough to remember Bush’s popularity sky rocketing after 9/11. Bush received plenty of vilification from the extreme left, but the moderate left were willing to go along with him as long as everything worked out (which is why he won in 2004). Bush was incredibly likable and didn’t come off as profane even to those that hated his politics.

The thing about Trump is that the moderate left and even many from the moderate right (my uncle never voted for a democrat until 2016) are mostly disgusted with the guy. It isn’t really about politics as it is about human decency against sexism, racism, and so on.

Or maybe those two things aren't everyone's top concerns, especially if they're struggling with the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy, as many people in less prosperous parts of the country seem to be.

But even if you're well fed and feel secure in your future economic prospects, not caring very much about racism and sexism doesn't make you racist or sexist. It seems to me that most Republicans just don't care about those two things nearly as much as they care about other things. If you're surrounded by only white people, racism becomes a very abstract concept, vs if you live in a large multicultural city.

As a party, Democrats really need to start working on understanding the people who don't vote for them, rather than just assuming they're just insane bigots and insulting them as such in the process.

Or people need to understand that when you associate with bigots you'll be labeled as such and whatever granular point you're trying to make gets lost behind that larger point.

Is saying I voted for Clinton also controversial?

If that comment was an example of "intense hatred", I see that part of the problem is over-reaction.

Voting for the candidate you prefer should always be considered in line with the norms of free society.

That is, you know. One of those norms. A rather important one, too.

Apparently

This is why I'm glad the D's are cleaning house. Sexual assault shouldn't be partisan. F Bill Clinton. Hilary was absolutely complicit too.

Both of you are speaking of granular points that ultimately lose to immediate, local concerns. One side says some variant of bigots, the other some variant of coastal elites.

>When you vote for a sexist and racist, don't be surprised when you're thought to be a sexist and racist.

When you vote for someone who appears to be corrupt, don't be surprised when you're thought to be corrupt.

When you vote for someone who appears to be rich, don't be surprised when you're thought to be rich.

When you vote for someone who appears to take a lot of money from Saudi Arabia, don't be surprised when you're thought to take a lot of money from Saudi Arabia.

Are you starting to see how childish that logic is?

>What you think is the threshold where political opinion can become personal? When your family is deported?

Hilariously enough, Clinton and Obama deported far and away more people.

Trump deported more people already living in the US; Clinton and Obama deported more at the border, by enough that total deportations were higher.

Actually, Clinton deported more in both ways. We weren't counting people deported at the border as deportees at the time.

See, that's my point, someone doesn't have a job, or prospects, is desperate for some relief on that front, and you seem to be chastising them for not caring about the president's bigotry enough to vote for someone they're convinced won't help them economically. Do you see why they might not feel like their livelihood is a "granular point", but rather "a much larger point" than whatever you care about most?

Turning away somebody at a border is not deportation.

> you believe it is OK to talk about grabbing pussies in the locker room

Talk is cheap. There's little reason Trump has sexually harassed anyone more than Bill Clinton - and Hillary still sticks by him.

Well, it's been counted that way since the 2nd bush administration

I don't think even Trump has sexually harassed Bill Clinton.

It's part of the deportation stats and the only things that makes the “Trump deported more than Obama” thing even technically true.

Obviously, yes, there is a substantive difference between removing someone who has only entered so far as the border checkpoint is on the US side of the border and removing someone who has been living in the US. That's the whole point of pointing it out.