To be silent in the face of oppression isn't neutrality. It's implicitly siding with the oppressor.
> To be silent in the face of oppression isn't neutrality. It's implicitly siding with the oppressor.
That's the kind of "I took an edgy course in college" shit that makes people outside the progressive bubble think "society is getting too woke and everyday people are getting left behind."
You can draw a pretty straight line between "my uncle voted for the other guy so I disowned him" and the political/social dysfunction that led to Trump in the first place.
This article isn't for progressives. It's a plea for everyone else to realize what's happening is wrong. If you can't take the barbs out of your language, you're going to offend your audience before they'll even listen to what you're trying to say.
Nah, that's the "I was raised in Austria and all my history classes where about driving that point home" take.
How did the Nazis ever come to power, one asks? Why didn't anybody stop them? It's because everybody stayed silent until it was too late.
Screw polite meekness. You're either against what's happening or you're a collaborator. It takes people actively speaking out to show others they aren't alone and that not everyone is okay with what is happening.
There's a headline today (I think it was CNN) about a disabled kid who died because his dad was in ICE custody. Came over as an unofficial refugee from Kuwait, had a kid, and was selected for deportation 20y ago. Deportation was stayed due to his kid's condition (dad was his caregiver), so long as he registered with ICE (né INS) every year.
He went in for his annual meeting this winter and never came back out. His kid's health cratered and the kid died. Dad wasn't allowed to the funeral.
I know the news isn't neutral either - the people who wrote that article want you to think everything that ICE is doing is fucked up. Also, everything ICE is doing is fucked up.
My only hope is that one day everyone who participated or collaborated will come to regret their heinous acts.
> Whichever candidates you may have supported in the past — or even if (like many of my friends in Silicon Valley) you don’t usually do politics — you almost surely did not want this.
No Reid. They did want this. They still want it.
Lately I've been just sickened by Apple, and particularly Tim Cook. The guy is revealing himself to be completely amoral.
Perhaps it was naive to assume otherwise, but celebrate at the "Melania" screening with the same people that labeled Alex Pretti as a "domestic terrorist", on the night of his murder? WTAF.
Apple employees - what are you doing to push back on this? Staying silent?
- Isn't Cook supposed to step down from the role in the next few years? If so, wouldn't that facilitate an accelerated exit to not have to put up with this shit? He might as well have chosen someone who's willing to do that, and slowly fade away.
- Why haven't we seen the same level of craziness coming from Satya and Gates? Are Microsoft's offerings and interests so diversified that the government has less power over it?
Update: grammar
The even bigger approach now is the denial of service attack on the judicial system coming from AI-enabled infractions that are too new to the system. To deny enforcement in an area that helps authocrats - an AI tool can enable anyone to create problems on that area automatically and easily, and now the pipeline for getting justice in that area becomes clogged. It doesn’t even need to be intentional - it can be automatic.
The zero sum game of tech firms competing for the same fluid investors in the stock market means the control of government becomes guaranteed - because if a single one is singled out the money flows out of its equities and into their competitors. It’s blood supply to vital organs. The CEOs have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders above all else. They cannot do anything that will damage the stock price without being sued to oblivion and that would attack their personal assets as well.
Why is this article flagged? It's directly relevant to the readers of HN.
saubeidl•1h ago
Thiel has been anti-democracy for a long time; Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Cook, Andreessen and many others have also shown their true colors.
Turns out the oligarchs are pro-oligarchy. Who could've guessed.
manphone•1h ago