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370 points sillypuddy | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.215s | source
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sho ◴[] 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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1. saltcured ◴[] No.16409442[source]
Alienation is good way to describe the experience of California. In a sense, it is the most fundamental characteristic in our identity.

S.F. and California as a whole has also been a crucible of multiculturalism and socioeconomic tension since missionaries first accosted the natives, redefining itself with each wave of arrivals including fur trappers, ranchers, farmers, prospectors and Chinese laborers of the gold rush and railroad age, the Okies of the depression, and black and hispanic laborers for WWII. The city has also been a west coast stronghold of finance, lawyers, and corporatism at least since the gold rush era started creating locally concentrated wealth. These forces have shaped and continue to shape both politics and popular culture.

To a first order, what is happening in S.F. or S.V. within the blindered tech employee sphere is much the same. Local experience is warped by the continued influx of youngsters from outside. We have been having an endless September far longer than the internet's version. They dilute and revise popular culture as much or more than they are themselves inculturated.

A longer term economic trend has been the wind-down of military bases and defense-related manufacturing in the S.F. Bay Area. This has affected economic immigration into the region by removing one large source of conservative outsiders (those young ex-military folk with tech training and a new-found awareness of the local economy) and also a selection of jobs funded by military contracts and including hands-on engineering and industrial tasks. Meanwhile, the dreamers continue to immigrate on their own, much like youth flock to Los Angeles with dreams of the entertainment industry.

This alienating, pod-people replacement process ought to seem like it is accelerating right now partly due to simple demographics. There are more youngsters to flow in as part of a general pulse of young people in America, compared to the dip in the population curve we experienced through Gen X around the first dot-com cycle. In almost every context, young people in their 20s are more liberal, more naive, more idealistic, and more outspoken about their opinions. Having more such people at once is very visible, just like it was in the 1960s with the boomers.

I wonder how the vanguard of the 60s felt when they started to hear that they were "too old" to be trusted by the growing wave of hippies and yippies.