I grew up in Florida (Rep. Joe Scarborough's district, back when he was a rabid conservative and a leader in the Republican revolution) and Alabama, worked as an intern at a neoconservative K Street think tank in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and went to law school in Virginia in the late 2000s. I've lived and worked on and off in the Bay Area for nearly 15 of the last 20 years, and have plenty of family in Southern California (including a sister and cousin who are active politically, one progressive the other more a Californian conservative), so understand the vibe down there.
The sentiments of the techno-utopians on the west coast and the settlers before them shouldn't be equivocated to the anti-civic sentiments of Southern conservatism and the national conservative movement that emerged principally from the Bible belt and Sunbelt states in the 1990s.
Keep making that mistake and we'll have decades more of civic and political nihilism. Even the most starry-eyed Silicon Valley billionaires dreaming about basic incomes and robo-basilisks still seek to engage with government and the state. Gingrich, perhaps more than any other politician (he did lead the Republican Revolution, after all), is a walking incarnation of the modern Republican ideology, and he's an avowed nihilist when it comes to government.
Similar all-or-nothing, bitter attitudes are creeping into the political left and it will likewise lead to political decay. It's not healthy. People should feel to disagree with and criticize Benihoff, Mayer, Musk, Zuckerberg, etc; but step back and compare them to people like Carla Fioroni. Who's politics should you really be afraid of?
The sentiments of the techno-utopians on the west coast and the settlers before them shouldn't be equivocated to the anti-civic sentiments of Southern conservatism and the national conservative movement that emerged principally from the Bible belt and Sunbelt states in the 1990s.
Keep making that mistake and we'll have decades more of civic and political nihilism. Even the most starry-eyed Silicon Valley billionaires dreaming about basic incomes and robo-basilisks still seek to engage with government and the state. Gingrich, perhaps more than any other politician (he did lead the Republican Revolution, after all), is a walking incarnation of the modern Republican ideology, and he's an avowed nihilist when it comes to government.
Similar all-or-nothing, bitter attitudes are creeping into the political left and it will likewise lead to political decay. It's not healthy. People should feel to disagree with and criticize Benihoff, Mayer, Musk, Zuckerberg, etc; but step back and compare them to people like Carla Fioroni. Who's politics should you really be afraid of?