| > All of the virtue signaling and moral feather preening surrounding this issue is something to behold. Spare us the rhetoric, please. The only purpose it serves is to confirm your alienation. Business mixing with activism is nothing new, although progressive businesses engaging in activism is. You'd do well to remember the recent fracas over churches and resorts choosing not to host gay weddings. That's conservative activism. > Or perhaps the Republicans, though new federal liability laws, should render Airbnb's business model non-viable at the national level. Such laws would be a stunning display of hypocrisy from a party that claims to be against federal interference in markets. It would also normalize (or continue the trend of normalizing) political punishment for companies that don't agree with the current administration's (non-legal) policies. Regardless of who's in power, that's not a good road to go down. > The left has been engaging in total war against the right for about a decade. I hear this sentiment often. While liberals (such as myself) have benefited in terms of visibility from the last 8 years, I see no signs of "total war" on my college campus or in my neighborhood back home. There is general agreement that conservative (and Trumpian) policies are categorically bad for all Americans, but this doesn't reflect a contempt for conservatives or Trump voters as people. More than anything, there's a feeling of bewilderment stemming from the conservative party's unconservative choice of candidate. Edit: I realized that I forgot to add this in the last paragraph: The idea of the left engaging in "total war" is discomforting for another reason - it doesn't accurately reflect the facts of this past election. Over the last 12 months, only one party selected a candidate who hasn't made any attempts at bipartisanship. Whether or not you agreed with HRC's policies (I didn't, on many occasions), she made a conspicuous effort to appeal to both liberals and conservatives. The more progressive contingent mocked her for this, but it's still a showing of good faith. No such good faith attempt was made by the Trump campaign. It's worth noting, however, that Trump's campaign isn't really to blame for the aforementioned. He merely tapped into a talking point that the GOP has been brewing since the Watergate scandal - that the media can't be trusted, and that the party must be the source of facts. Combined with Gingrich's 1996 Contract With America and the reactionary appearance of the Tea Party in response to the Obama administration, the claim that it is the left that has waged war looks, at best, shaky. |
You obviously were not in fear of career repercussions by posting your reply. I guarantee you that there are people reading your post now, who want to post a reasonable disagreement from the "conservative" viewpoint but will not because they are in (legitimate) fear of what negative affects it will have on their future employment.
That is what I read as the OPs comment. Decades of that adds up, and I certainly have noticed on HN and other industry meeting places you are allowed to express politics as long as it's that of the majority. You can explain this from the point of view of every actor in the process acting rationally in their own self interest - but it still creates a problem of defacto silencing political belief, and even more importantly only letting those radical (or rich) enough to not care about social acceptance join the conversations as a dissenting opinion.
That is troubling to me. When you only see one side feel free enough to take practical advantage of their right to free speech something is seriously wrong - and why I feel that the OP is far more correct in that this is more like war than political discourse at this point. I honestly don't know if you can walk it back, and the road that puts us on scares me.
As someone who is seen as "neutral" in the workplace, I have people from both sides dump on me in private. There is a lot more common ground than most think, but as long as people live in fear of having genuine honest political arguments I simply cannot see these trends turning around. My personal anecdote is that it's getting worse over time - not better.
Edit: spelling