This Saturday, my two daughters (ages 11 and 8) are driving a 1,700km journey to North Dakota to show our support for the #NoDAPL movement. I am doing it because my eldest is really into Aboriginal rights right now. These people are just trying to preserve their land.

I hope we don't get shot by Peter Thiel.

Calexit is a thing.

(Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.)

On the other hand, if he's finding "heat" that he'll inevitably be taking, by ever-rising degrees, for his association with Thiel (and hence, Trump and everything he stands for) to be not to his liking -- it's still not too late to get out of the kitchen.

Mark my words, if Trump starts to raise the national debt by a large amount, pull out of markets and put into bitcoin.

I had very negative feelings about Thiel, and those were magnified 10x after his endorsement of Trump, but I'll at least concede he's a very shrewd individual.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-says-he-...

https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/

The longer YC waits to do the right thing on this, the worse it will get.

Can we have a black bar for America, please?

I've seen enough horse races to know the favourite doesn't always win.

Not a goddamn chance. There's absolutely no way this could possibly change. This is one of those sacred American things, written into the framework of the entire country. Even if a small minority of people are for it, it would NEVER pass.

Yeah, you could say "Well, people were saying the same thing about a Trump presidency a few weeks ago, and here we are." I get that strange things are happening, but Trump was elected via the American process, so it's not like all the rules are falling apart.

As P.J. O'Rourke said, though I think he was quoting someone else: America has one political party, and like everything in Anerica it was two of them.

> he confirmed that he wants a database for Syrian refugees.

Doesn't the government already have database of all immigrants? I even have a nice card with a number, I'm pretty sure this number refers to a record in the database. Before I had that, I also had to fill in and send out certain forms, which I am pretty sure also went to some government database.

So how exactly Syrian refugees are different and what exactly makes the thing that US - and pretty much every other, as far as I know - government routinely does so beyond the pale?

After Trump’s tweet, Fox News asked him about his position on a Muslim registry.

"Let's hear it directly from you," said host Kimberly Guilfoyle. "Would President Donald Trump support a full Muslim database?"

"Basically the suggestion was made and (it’s) certainly something we should start thinking about," Trump said, repeating that the reporter presented the idea. "But what I want is a watch list. I want surveillance programs. Obviously, there are a lot of problems. … But, certainly, I would want to have a database for the refugees, for the Syrian refugees that are coming in because nobody knows where they're coming from."

Guilfoyle followed up: "So to be clear, you are not saying anything with respect to a religious database. You are talking about the Syrian refugees in light of the national security development affecting this country as we speak here tonight."

Trump said he didn’t hear the MSNBC reporter’s question clearly, "but even if I did, I mean, I want databases for the Syrian refugees that Obama is going to let in if they come in."

"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."

"All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination."

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

So what's not "open to discussion"? It seems like fundamentally everything about this election has been open to discussion, it's been a weird fucking election. Are you literally saying supporting Trump is a crime so bad that it's not "open to discussion"?

"The line tends to shift as society progresses." You talk about this "line" as if it's a real thing. Let me pose a fairly obvious question, in almost any time period, who imposed the limits of "what is not open to discussion", and what were their motives? Keep in mind, things that are obviously true don't need to be "not open to discussion", because nobody is bothering to discuss them.

I'm serious. I don't have a good answer. I think it depends on the issue, but I know people are going to draw their lines differently. Thoughts?

Please drop the partisan angle on this. This isn't a left/right difference. Obama campaigned with a similar promise and he still selected lobbyists for his administration:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/08/15/th...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler

And many on the right.

He obviously has a lot of wealth. How much is liquid isn't really relevant, his 'income' isn't relevant, with the ultra-rich all that really ever matters is 'net worth'.

- Software engineer at Google in Mountain View, California

Hopefully the Democrats learn about running someone electable before 2018. I have already prepared my donation fund for Bernie Sanders' or Tulsi Gabbard's 2020 presidential race (and I'll not vote again in 4 years if the Dems run yet another establishment candidate, learn your lesson already).

Your chance for your opinion to matter was when the primaries took place. Don't save your outrage for after it doesn't go the way you wanted.

Not really. The dems sabotaged their only electable candidate. I'm not upset about the Trump presidency only because I had come to terms with it as soon as I realised Hillary was going to screw over Bernie and basically guarantee a Trump presidency. Never before has an 'I told so' felt so unsatisfactory. Besides I'm not even sure a Hillary presidency would have been more palatable given her track record.

[1]http://iowapublicradio.org/post/app-saw-trump-winning-swing-...

The vehicle for the conflict of interest isn't what's interesting. I would still be concerned if a tech founder with a bunch of unknown private investors were to be elected to public office. More concerned if that founder refused to release any information about those investors, the amounts invested, or cap table. Even more concerned if that founder refused to put their stake in the company in a blind trust.

Many of our laws and the powers we grant our public officials rely on the assumption that someone who is in high public office got there for reasons other than to enrich themselves. In Trump's case, he may have other motives, but he's flaunted historical precedent in not releasing his tax returns or even attempting to remove the appearance of conflict of interest. Whatever you think of Clinton's relationship to the Clinton Foundation, we have the data because it was all publicly disclosed. We know nothing about Trump.

I merely wanted to give an example of what happens when there is a shift of the line and some people haven't caught up.

What you describe is functionally the tacit endorsement of abhorrent views. Every moment of every day is political; act like it or don't, but you can't change that it is true.

Tolerating certain politics as just "differences" in opinion is a luxury for people for whom politics are an intellectual exercise and maybe impact their bank statement at the end of the year, it's not affordable for those for whom it's a question of survival.

I don't know, i'm no politician; i'm just waiting on the 2008 Obama campaign promise to close Guantanamo Bay (to clarify: I mean cease black operations at that site indefinitely -- I don't have any illusions that the U.S. will stop illegal black operations internationally.).

I don't know whether or not if it's an impossibility at this point to do so; but I also believe if it is impossible it probably shouldn't have been a campaign promise used to influence voters.

Well I am having a blast watching CNN and NBC and I don't usually watch TV, but now I put it on for entertainment...

It's too easy to label somebody a Nazi (or whatever label enables you), eliminate all civility and humanity from them, wish them nothing but death, and consider yourself righteous and tolerant for it.

It is better to err on the side of treating bad people with more respect than they deserve, than to err on the side of treating decent people with more hate than they deserve. Because your judgment of how bad or decent they are is at the very best based on incomplete information in the first place. Erring on the side of hate directly makes the world a worse place, and erring on the side of respect makes the world a more civil place.

Clinton advocated for a "Manhattan Project" scope effort to backdoor crypto. She wants no-fly zones over Syria, a place we have NO business being in, to directly provoke proxy wars with Russia. She is extremely antagonistic to freedom of association and free enterprise, and she LOVES the panopticon surveillance state we have.

She is NO FRIEND OF EITHER STARTUPS OR HACKERS, and yet, 99% of you are frothing at the mouth over a man who said bad words 18 years ago.

It is at the point that I don't even think I can do business with any of you ever again.

Now, you might still not like him. Heck, let me take a bold step and say you won't like him. He will do things you won't like. Welcome to the real world. My government's been doing things I don't like my entire life. (Along with all the things I do like.) But I rate the odds that he's going to ethnically cleanse the US at "as close to 0 as I can mathematically get".

In the event that he really does turn into Hitler, I promise to stand up to stop him along with all the other people who will. I'm not too worried about having to follow through on that, though.

(If you want to talk about which candidates tend to murder their way out of problems... well... I'll freely admit to not having proof but Trump wasn't the one I was worried about that.)

Right now we don't really know which of his promises he plans on actually keeping.

The same can be said of racism, sexism, misogyny etc.

You have done more to de-stigmatize these words then the people who espouse the ideology have ever been able to do. It has made the accusation in itself a clownish eye rolling gesture to the general public. Rather then something to take seriously.

No one with any credibility is going to compare the President elect of the United States to Hitler. Its a pantomime act that the disgraced 'Media' and Twitter nobodies do to entertain one another.

Because the candidate who LOST the popular vote won the electoral college, so his fewer votes were better allocated, as it turned out. He won fair and square, but it's beyond idiotic to pretend that nominating Hillary was somehow a gift of the presidency to Trump. According to insiders, even Trump thought he was losing going into election night.

Because half the people of the United States are hypocrites with no strong moral compass. It is not politically correct to say it but it is true. I didn't think so before this but I know so now.

>>Nooooooo, your fault was not understanding what millions of Americans are going through that would force them to vote for the opponent. The blame lies solely with that mindset.

That is a lie. A good chunk of the trump supporters are actually well off. [1]

[1] http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-...

It exactly means that no matter how subjectively and personally odious somebody's beliefs are to you, you can still respect their personhood, and evaluate any associated business & products at face value.

"Tolerance" does not mean enforcement for or against selected beliefs. Waging a stigmatizing crusade against a belief is enforcement.

The moment you think you can deem and enforce absolute right & wrong upon others, you open yourself up to it happening to you without defense. That is not the path of liberty.

The alternative is actual argument rather than punishment, something overgard in no way ruled out.

...which unfortunately may not be a great tool given the current situation. I think we are at the point where playing nice may no longer be a serious option.

But that doesn't mean we should just, lke, punish all the bad people because they're bad people. That still isn't helpful. It just feels good, it doesn't necessarily accomplish anything.

In the particular case of people joining the Trump administration, I think Megan McArdle makes a good case against punishing capable people for joining it: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-09/there-s-n...

Still. We're in a situation now where argument is unlikely to get us anywhere -- but in better times, that's the ideal, not using words to punish people.

It's true that few of us have the time and energy to dig through all the bullshit and achieve understanding of everyone we find abhorrent.

But where we are able to do so, we usually learn some important things about others and about ourselves - mostly, that when it comes down to it, we all just want to feel safe and loved.

True compassion is hard, but unless we can offer it to others, we can't expect it to be offered back to us.

There's a difference between "advancing your views" and "demanding someone get fired because they disagree with your views". See? If you want to call Thiel a dickhead for his support, feel free, you even have my agreement. But this is the CLASSIC go-to-move of overzealous social justice creeps, to demand banishment of the person for thought-crimes.

The overwhelming majority of the videos I have seen are Hillary supporters beating Trump supporters.

The supposedly "tolerant" side has been looking awfully intolerant of late.

With the exception of Hillary-planted agents provacateur, as verified by DKIM-validated Podesta emails, who is beating up whom?

By this definition, business owners in Indiana who don't support gay marriage could legally not serve those customers. Is that the world we want?

I agree with you. But we cannot disregard the dishonest behaviour performed by most leftists/liberals over the years. The leftists/liberals hurl so much social stigma against the republicans/Christianity but they dishonestly and criminally keep mum about e.g. Islam. Sam Harris and Bill Maher have pointed this out beautifully at [1] and [2].

The leftists have never allowed anyone to socially stigmatize Muslims about their faith in the very vicious, barbaric and most importantly "the most intolerant" ideology of Islam. So now this has came around them.

Mainstream left/liberal camp is completely dishonest about its take on the issue of intolerance of Islam.

Sadly but not surprisingly people like Trump will succeed to exploit such thing.

The saner people in the left should reflect on this dishonest behaviour of the mainstream/vocal leftists and must do something about it, else the intolerance will just grow.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCWf0tHy7M

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL8rZTuGfZo

People prentend that politics is a purely abstract thing, but consider. Bush is directly responsible for well over 500,000 deaths. The blood of his victims is directly on the hands of everyone that voted for the idiot. Trump might not be as bad or he might start WWIII.

Get off your high horse and give some respect to the electorate, and accept that you backed a loser.

Please, for our sake that we can rebuild in 2020 from what little we have left of our country, do look around and realize that the DNC had alot to do with why Trump won.

The only "myth" there is pretending that it requires a filibuster-proof majority to pass any legislation.

We already tried this and have seen the results. We rounded up and deported more than a million Mexicans twice in our history. It is remembered, California apologized for their hand in it a couple of years ago.

Millions of families could be uprooted, torn apart and be left stranded without ID, possessions or money[1] and left to die[2]. Mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors, co-workers and classmates could disappear.

My perspective is that 'exactly as bad as the Holocaust' isn't the bar to pass to be a potential tragedy.

I didn't make a comparison to the Holocaust, but since we're there: deportation and mass ordered removal is part of what made the Holocaust a tragedy. It took years of deportations (of the traditional sense), forced relocations and imprisonment before people were shipped to the ovens in droves.

[1] http://immigrationimpact.com/2016/04/07/deported-immigrants-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback#Consequences

"... a lot of people in this country feel like they're being smugly dismissed every time they open their mouths. That the 'white trash' have no interest in getting to know them, understanding their problems, or building a society that is inclusive of them. They're used to being lectured by people who don't even know them, who think their entire community is insignificant and irrelevant and backwards and stupid. They're used to being called 'elites' and worse, just for existing."

The smugness of the liberal establishment bothers me, and is one reason I didn't vote for Clinton. But I find myself a recipient on the opposite end of that bigotry line all the time also. Not sure what to do with that observation, but it's very salient to me. Explaining it doesn't make it ok, I suppose, or something along those lines.

If you are talking about the cosmic tally of bad deeds, opportunity isn't relevant.

Wow, sounds like it is bad there, it is not as bad here yet.

> The problem is that the police gives the opposite party or at least their lawyer the full address of the victim - and these addresses tend to be aggregated and leaked on fascist blogs.

Except her name is on Twitter, the full name. It is not that hard to find the address.

Let's be frank do you honestly think campus police at this university are compiling lists of leftist people to give to their "fascist" friends? And that is the reason she did not want to file a police report? Somehow you jumped over the simplest explanation - that she lied, straight to "campus police are a fascists who compile lists of people".

But let's not pretend that was solely the domain of the DNC.

Trump has stood in front of a camera and called for his supporters to beat people up at his rallies. He's said that people should be punched "right in the face". He's offered to pay legal fees for people charged with assault for attacking protestors.

Also "caught" red handed. Except he was openly advocating for it.

[1] Calling it "half-assed" doesn't even do it justice because the measures are far less than half of what's needed.

Take a long, hard look at both my post and yours and ask yourself what point you're attempting to make (and if you somehow don't come up empty, please share it with the rest of the class - I'd love to know at least).

Tell me: Where's the Godwin line, exactly? You railed against ubernostrum just because he compared a current situation to one in the 1930s and what you get out of this is that America's safe: should Trump turn into Hitler, America is safe because you, and surely lots of others, will stand up to the government!

Goody. Well, I feel better now, whew!

You're a pragmatist, right? So tell me: Where is that point where you, and many others, stand up to the growing problem? Is it when the people rise up and protest? (They already have.) Is it when people start dying? (Many are). Or do you wait until a wall is being built, religions are being rejected at the border and the targeted groups are being threatened on the street?

Where is that fucking line? Do thousands have to die? Does it have to be tens, hundreds of thousands? Is it when it hits 7 digits?

You won't stand up to all this nonsense? Fine. I fully realize you don't have the logistics for it. Nobody does.

No worries, you won't have to -- an ethnic cleansing is, as you said, mathematically close to 0. And really, there'll be nobody left by the time it gets to that point, because you're not standing up now.

I'd love to find out that it was all 100% manufactured and none of it ever happened or was true. But, y'know, it all did happen and was true. And it elected a candidate who began his campaign on explicitly racist (build a wall and deport all the "Mexican rapists") and xenophobic (ban all the Muslims) lines.

If someone is willing to say that they would stand up to an ethnic cleansing, I think it's reasonable to ask them at what point they'll stand up to it.

I do find cultural bigotry to be odious though and to answer your question, I will not protect the rights of people to threaten and kill others. I will not defend a culture that promotes the exclusion of classes of people by skin color, religion, accent, gender or even political leanings.

I don't know why you're asking me what mechanism would make this work. People's unhappiness has very little impact on whether policies work. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this discussion, as the things I refuse to defend would not be happening in the first place.

In terms of trump voters, I don't care about their reasons. And I am not trying to convince them. They made the world significantly less safe, putting literally billions of people at risk. That's just not cool, still as a well off person I don't need to care it's probably not going to get me killed.

As to love, some people flat out can't feel pain. Some, have more than one set of DNA. That's just 2 examples, but humans have a lot more variety than most people think about. Being an outlier and being famous are really separate things.

I know that typically in courts the accuser has to prevent positive evidence, but this is a traumatizing time for minorities - let the court of public opinion at least not rush to brand her as a faker, at least in part because if it is real, doing so will only exacerbate her trauma.

As a matter of fact, it is entirely possible. Just yesterday news broke that cops were in bed with a biker gang (http://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/ermittlungen-polizei-durch...). But it's very rare that such things happen.

> But them being members of a fascist party and compiling lists, as hard as I try, I don't see happening.

It's not the cops, it's the fascists who compile and spread such lists.

Sorry, that is simply not true. Obamacare was passed without a single amendment (or even a full debate), and without a single Republican vote.

Democrats in the Senate used this super-majority to pass the ACA (Obamacare) in December 2009. Technically, they used the super-majority to end the filibuster and then voted on the bill.

Unfortunately, the Democrats have already gone nuclear repeatedly.

What makes you think the Republicans won't do the same?

Edit: typo.

"Take it from someone who saw what Brexit did to the UK: Your country, by electing someone with an unpleasant set of views on race/religion, has implicitly given free reign to people with even more unpleasant views on those to do whatever they want and not fear repercussions because... after all, they've been told they're in the majority now."

You argued that there would be an increase in "do whatever they want", which I take to mean crimes (assault, robbery, hate crimes, etc) by people who feel empowered by a majority.

You cited anecdotal evidence as an example (take it from me, I experienced brexit...) to back up your claim there would be an increase in crime. I cited a source ("rag" or not, they cited direct quotes from the police and the police's own analysis of the statistics that there wasn't an exponential increase) to prove the idea that there is some kind of magical "exponential" increase in crime to be false.

My point is that electing Trump is not going to cause this increase because the vast majority of ordinary citizens will not turn into criminals exponentially.

The DNC sent those protesters to provoke violent confrontation that the Clinton media operatives at the networks could use to craft the narrative that trump was a big baddie.

So while its not the sort of behaviour anyone want to see in an election. The fact remains that the entire scenario was being crafted by the DNC to damage there opponent which is far worse then what happened on the ground.

The use of fake protesters sent to stir up violence at political events is an attack on democracy itself. And an attempt to shut down peoples write to participate in a democratic society. In that light the behaviour of Trump is quite understandable.

Would you let a few paid protesters shut down your political rally?

Trump is the most 'free' President in modern history.

He 'owes' the least, to the fewest people.

This is one thing even the center-left press were talking about.

As for Thiel - $1M might seem like a lot - but Trump doesn't really 'owe' Thiel anything, because Thiel doesn't have direct future influence etc., and Trump doesn't need him in the future.

For example: Bill Maher gave $1M to Obama. For that you get some friendly things, but Obama didn't need Maher after that.

Hillary is not directly uber wealthy - and she accepted $57M from private individuals and businesses while she was Sec of State - for which she provided mostly small favours (introductions).

Trump had the smallest team in Presidential history, the banks were mostly betting on Hillary etc..

I don't really like Trump, but he's largely unburdened by having to hand out appointments.

He'll give them to those that 'stuck by him' i.e. Guliani etc. and scorn on the old Bush guard.

I'm not seeing anyone arguing that Peter Theil isn't qualified.

Bush nominating Harriet Miers is an example of cronyism. This really isn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Miers_Supreme_Court_no...

I didn't see what you saw, but Trump sure looks tired. Anyone would be, I have no idea how they keep the pace they do. Oldest President-elect in history.

My first executive order as President of the United States would be to ban camera shutters at my press conferences.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWs4RzoPP6M

I bet part of that was an emotion completely absent from Trump's public persona: shame.

Trump started his political career circa 2010 as a "birther" -- going on national TV, asking for Obama's birth certificate, saying he was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible to hold office. Really racist, bottom-of-the-barrel tabloid stuff.

--

Obama was incredibly gracious the day after the election. Here he is, talking about how he's "rooting" for Trump to do well, how Trump's success as President will be the nation's success:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr2USTE3L98

Meeting after all that must have been at least a little bit embarrassing. Even for the Donald.

Uh, no shit?

From all accounts he simply doesn't have the intellectual stamina to handle the rigours of the job. And I don't mean that in a negative way he is just more of a hands on, energetic, get shit done sort of guy. So in order to survive he is going to delegate to people like Guilani, Christie, Gingrich, Carson etc. Some of the most shameless, self serving and unethical people around in politics.

Right, I'm definitely not attacking that. I'm also not really advocating for anything -- thankfully I haven't been put in charge of the mess that the US is, so I don't have to find a solution for it all by myself. I was just saying I won't defend such things.

If I did, though, it'd probably involve education and systemic changes. Like you said, "hiding" the problem didn't, doesn't and never will work. I don't believe that Hillary would have made any changes to the system, so if anything 2020 could have been a worse election (whereas now, I'm reasonably certain that unless Trump does exceptionally well this cycle [or exceptionally badly], Warren will be president the next).

These are all theoretical fixes to a system that's broken today, though. People are being bullied in the streets, at their work etc. When do people stand up to that?

Yesterday somebody was lamenting that people shouldn't say "democracy is gone" when it's working exactly as intended. This here isn't what's intended. Two sides fighting to the point that further escalation would result in civil war? The extreme demonization of democrats, republicans, mexicans, muslims, blacks, old people, christians, atheists and whatever demographic favours one side over the other? Seeing the immediate aftermath of the election, I fear that America really is falling apart.

I mean, here in Europe, people are saying left and right that the EU is falling apart because of Brexit and a general sentiment against globalization. The US has it worse now. I'm starting to wonder if there'll still be 50 states in a few years.

E.g. Trump can halve DB's fine in return for future loans. Win-win for both of them, a loss for the US.

I don't see how he takes power away from the tea party, and the tea party is very much a bought party.

I'm not disagreeing with you; I'm just asking you to cite one or more of these accounts describing his lack of intellectual stamina.

This account [1] by the ghostwriter who wrote 'Art of the deal', who spent months with him, suggests that he is neither smart nor patient. Over his long life, starting with a very silver spoon that he wasn't able to destroy, he effectively focussed most of his energy to coming up with a couple of heuristics for making deals and communication. I get the impression he spent most of his life's effort on something that might be called 'social hacking' here.

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-g...

From Wikipedia:

"In 1990, after consulting focus groups[38] with the help of pollster Frank Luntz,[39] GOPAC distributed a memo with a cover letter signed by Gingrich titled "Language, a Key Mechanism of Control", that encouraged Republicans to "speak like Newt" and contained lists of "contrasting words"—words with negative connotations such as "radical", "sick," and "traitors"—and "optimistic positive governing words" such as "opportunity", "courage", and "principled", that Gingrich recommended for use in describing Democrats and Republicans, respectively.[38]"

Both options sucked in that regard.

What's wrong with being attracted to young women (his daughter is no longer a "girl" in any sense of the word)?

Really? The German bank that has lent Trump millions of dollars has a $14 billion fine to the justice department. https://theintercept.com/2016/11/10/trump-presidency-could-b...

And you keep making these statements about being unencumbered when it is well known that Russian ogligarchs own significant amounts of his company's debt. That is the very definition of being encumbered.

I agree with you that there's a logic that says this. It's insane logic, but it's coherent. We are all going round the bend.

[Edit: I meant Trump, and I was wrong - see below. Technically Thiel is also allied with Pence, who does believe in Conversion Therapy, but that wasn't who I meant. I apologise]

People usually mean "political establishment" as "people who entered their party's youth org at 14 and since then never left working for their party". Which is bad because a politician who never had to do a real-world job in his life can neither understand nor empathize with the problems of the average population.

For example they describe in detail the tax mix e.g. income versus capital gains, as well as the nature of liquid assets, deduction types etc.

But we would probably learn something like:

a) he's not nearly as rich as he claims

b) he's made maybe $50M this year and paid $0 in taxes due to write-offs in earlier years.

That would not go down well publicly.

Romney paid an effective rate of 14% on his $500K income (I think all capital gains) and that was destructive for his campaign. It just looks pretty out of touch - 99% of Americans earn less than $500K and pay far more than 14% in taxes.

So it would have been a publicity disaster, enough to hurt him badly.

Maybe some other skeletons in there.

But I don't think anything illegal.

Lol, what does it mean: under control until the guy opens an account under a fake id

Imagine if Reagan had torpedoed the Montreal Protocol. That's what we're talking about here.

Trump is probably gonna fail, if you want to stick it to him hold him accountable by his own standard. At the end of his term, you look at America and say Did you do it, Donald? Where are the jobs? Are people happier and more secure? Do they have better health care? The answer is probably going to be no. There's no internally consistent excuse he could give to this that wouldn't entail his own failure, because results were what mattered. so the only thing he could possibly say, and we already know this is, we could've won but we were sabotaged. So get ready for it, but remember it's gonna be hard to argue against because people will have fought against him, and what's worse they will have fought against him _on principle_, yet again caring more about the "integrity" of the system than the people the system was supposed to protect. Even if he loses and it can clearly be chalked up to his own bungling, he'll be able to point that out and sufficiently mask his own failures because of it.

I mean, this is a really bad situation, same as the election itself was: if he wins, then well, he wins, maybe he'll accomplish some good, but it's gonna come with a lot of bad. If he loses, it's still a sufficient indictment of the system that his criticism still stands. You people don't even realize how fucked you are. He is America's Destroying Angel. By the time he arrives, it's already too late.

More generally, no ideology can actually capture reality. While they all contain some truth, they are all also fundamentally untrue if you drill down far enough. I'd rather grade someone on results (human happiness) than adherence to an ideological framework. I don't mean this in a simple utilitarian sense, either.

I'm not the OP, but I was 16 when Obama formed his administration, and I was uninvolved in politics at the time. Does that disqualify me from tracking and critiquing the Trump Administration?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_L._Jackson

These are all trial balloons, of course. I hope they're just posturing, and that we're going to get people in the vein of John Ashcroft --- wrong (very wrong), but within normal parameters.

Arpaio, Gingrich, Palin --- these aren't serious Republican thinkers. They're people riding a GOP gravy train. Each chose to court publicity instead of doing their job, and each is being rewarded under the Reality TV Administration of Donald Trump.

I don't doubt Thiel is capable and accomplished, but I also don't doubt he's ruthless, ambitious and tends to see things in black and white. It remains to be seen which of the ideas he's championed on he chooses to focuses his efforts on, of course, whether that's encouraging the government to support breakthrough research and entrepreneurship, slashing higher education funding and creating new tax shelters for the ultra rich, or just ensuring Palantir is well-positioned for contracts on new surveillance systems. Of course, reasonable people will still probably argue over what his contribution has been after he's made it. :)

My worry is the opposite.

Trump's style is furious counter attack at the slightest provocation. That's obnoxious when you're a jerk billionaire. It's more serious when you control the deadliest military machine in history.

So Theil's anti-political phases are interesting to me as a demonstration of how ideology and capital condition each other.

On Silicon Valley, the anti-political technocratic ideology it seems to be producing is a minor phenomenon. There may be something to the notion of bits vs. atoms as the "stuff" of production, but what gets obscured is that capital and the law of value rules here nonetheless.

On Girard, Theil's affinity with those ideas seems to me to be bound up with his struggle to reconcile his libertarianism with Christianity. My guess is that if he dropped the Christianity, the Girardian thought would fall away.

My main point is that Theil is a particularly good "personification of capital" and that if you drop the stupid anti-capitalist politics and see capital as neither good nor bad but simply the ruling principle of the world, then it can explain a lot.

"hold(s) different opinions from oneself" isn't the only characteristic of Nazis, they have other attributes which do justify not tolerating them.

But yes, if it wasn't those attributes, you could still "tolerate" them, in the sense of allowing their opinions to be heard. You don't have to agree. You can even explicitly argue with them.

No, it's not. I won't quote dictionaries, you can look it up on wikipedia. You can also find compilations of all the offensive remarks he made regarding women.

> ALL politicians are to some extent.

True. Indeed, we're all liars. However, Trump seems to disregard the truth when it stands right next to him. Even in the face of irrefutable proof he doesn't back down. That's worse than lying.

> He seems to be handling twitter quite great

I wouldn't call handling twitter tech literacy, but he's taking an aggressive stance against Apple's privacy policy for example.

> Disgust is visceral aversion, and can be very personal. Not an argument

I kindly disagree. At some point so much garbage is piled up you can't help but sum it up in a very personal way: disgusting. Also, as a human being I can't help but have feelings. And I would argue they're a rational response to everything I witnessed this election.

  The respectable Republicans distanced themselves from Trump

  Twenty-three days ago [..]

Neither he nor his supporters will agree to that now, nor will he acknowledge he was wrong. And there will be no consequences.

Most people only have eye for short term problems, don't have a good memory or good associative capabilities and don't think beyond the outcome they hope for.

Even if you are aware of longer term problems, consequences and have a good memory, you may still choose to pursue short term goals in your opinion-making, because those listening to you want you to address their immediate concerns. You don't need to worry about contradicting yourself or causing new problems: they won't notice.

So congratulations on remembering that an action/proposal/opinion of 23 days ago opposes one now. Did you also realize back then what the consequences in face of an adverse outcome would be? That would be an extreme ability of foresight. And unfortunately it doesn't make a lick of difference.

He says this in the video:

> Whenever you hear someone use the word science it's like a tell that they're bluffing

Try to make sense of it.

Trump inherited his father's wealth AND his father's business.

I'd argue that other modern reality TV stars are more successful then he is. Paris Hilton never received an inheritance (hefty allowance not withstanding) and built her own business. Kim Kardashian inherited less than him and is on her way to becoming richer. Both built their own business empire, not inheriting daddy's.

Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam met with the KKK in 1961 despite mutual hostility that would never be ameliorated [2]. In 2016, your entire career can be ruined simply for holding the "wrong" opinion. Boy how things have changed.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/48-Laws-Power-Robert-Greene/dp/014028...

[2] http://www.vice.com/read/when-malcolm-x-met-the-nazis-000062...

Cronyism "might be expected" from politicians. (In fact it's very expected from self-serving, hubristic politicians like Donald Trump.) That doesn't make cronyism OK.

> just twenty-three days after your witch hunt,

The thought processes of all these allegedly enlightened people are strange. For all the claims of "rationality", I can barely find difference with the psychology of the most primitive tribesmen. Just a better grade of pretexts.

(The murderous rage of the "rationalists" in the French, Russian, Chinese, Cambodian, etc. revolutions, all conducted by very educated people, is well documented and quite sad.)

Thanks for pointing that out.

That whole thread highlights to an extreme degree how broken politics is in the U.S.

WOW. This is insane! Things like this and Mozilla's CEO situation are exactly why Trump won the destitute and the rich alike.

Liberals shoving down their half-baked morals into everybody's throats. How condescending. So much for Egalitarianism. We are equal, just not with Trump voters. What a hypocrisy.