Most of what you describe as your awakening to the evils of big govt is the journey to becoming libertarian. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I [like many other Americans] transitioned from lifelong Dem to libertarian during COVID quarantine, but now see flaws with my own tribe too.
As far as the challenge with ethics, the beginning of this article encapsulates the problem: When your former collaborator says "I love that for you" [one of those punchable phrases] what she's really saying is, "I already found my fast-track to power; why would I care about anything else?"
I can also tell you that zero libertarians or conservatives were surprised in the least to discover that Sam Bankman-Fried's parents were Stanford ethical scholars. Clearly, they gave him the cheat codes to polite society, and he took full advantage. Surely his parents imbued him with some sense of superiority, perhaps even condescension, to us mortals who bumble through life ignorant of First Principles [a term that means "I'm a Good Person, and so are you, if you agree with me"].
Like you, I come from Holocaust refugees, but my family suffered a lot less than yours. That may explain why I have a less charitable view of immigration than you do, or it might be that being an Asperger type, it's easier for me to spot policy hypocrisy--even in my own party.
I know Passover is past, but I have four questions [and dozens more] to illustrate the difficulty in getting humans to recognize their innate preference for virtue-signaling over problem-solving:
1. Stanford culture seems to be an uneasy dichotomy of woke and conservative. SBF's parents were eminences-in-residence, but so is Thomas Sowell. Why are so few white liberals, who just LOVE black folks to pieces, so uninterested in Sowell, who spent a long career writing about the ethical myopia of progressives? Ask any white liberal what they think of black Trump voters, and watch their facial contortions as they try to give a non-racist answer.
2. Why is it verboten to compare Trump to FDR? The similarities are overwhelming, but neither Dems nor Repubs want anything to do with such talk. Everything Dems warned about Trump doing once he becomes dictator-for-life are things FDR already did. Listening to Ken Burns try to explain away Japanese internment camps and turning away Holocaust refugees is just as revealing as the exercise above.
3. Why are so few open-borders proponents interested in what legal immigrants think about the idea? Spoiler alert: Most legal immigrants don't like illegals, for a variety of reasons. If you ever travel through Latin America, it's quite apparent how people in every country feel about citizens of less affluent countries on their borders.
4. I noticed the photo you used of the gentleman with swastika tattoos just happens to be white. Would it seem #awkward to replace that with a photo of a brown Muslim wrapped in a keffiyeh? Hitler didn't think it was weird that he found so much common cause with Amin al-Husseini; it's the most natural thing in the world. A bromance of multi-culti antisemitism! Isn't it so interesting how all the Hamasniks protested at the DNC last year, and none at the RNC? Why is that? Could it be because the antisemitic semaphores coming from the left are much louder than the right? Perish the thought!
Other than that, I like how you think about finding clever solutions to wicked problems in public policy. But without grappling with the emotional valence of existential issues, nothing will come of it. You can make a good living as a conference speaker, preaching to the choir. But practical solutions are downstream of understanding the herd mentality in times of duress. I'd like to ask one more question, as it's something I've thought about too often:
Why do sociopaths and psychopaths still exist, when there are so few of them? Why are they not only tolerated, but so often elevated to commanding heights? To put it bluntly, what cover do they provide for the dark desires of the majority of human sheep, that we are so willing to be governed by a small cadre of wolves?
If the truth were palatable to our civilized self-image, everyone would possess it already...
Hana, thank you for your lucid, passionate and deeply informed writing. I'm a friend of your
mother-in-law who worked for and came to love Allen, so I know something of your story, but
knew nothing of public interest technology..its promise and clear failures because of politics and prejudice. The discarding of any ethical concerns within ANY aspect of government, business
religion, media and seemingly everything in public life seems overwhelmingly pervasive. Thank you for helping me see better, depressing though it may be.
Most of what you describe as your awakening to the evils of big govt is the journey to becoming libertarian. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I [like many other Americans] transitioned from lifelong Dem to libertarian during COVID quarantine, but now see flaws with my own tribe too.
As far as the challenge with ethics, the beginning of this article encapsulates the problem: When your former collaborator says "I love that for you" [one of those punchable phrases] what she's really saying is, "I already found my fast-track to power; why would I care about anything else?"
I can also tell you that zero libertarians or conservatives were surprised in the least to discover that Sam Bankman-Fried's parents were Stanford ethical scholars. Clearly, they gave him the cheat codes to polite society, and he took full advantage. Surely his parents imbued him with some sense of superiority, perhaps even condescension, to us mortals who bumble through life ignorant of First Principles [a term that means "I'm a Good Person, and so are you, if you agree with me"].
Like you, I come from Holocaust refugees, but my family suffered a lot less than yours. That may explain why I have a less charitable view of immigration than you do, or it might be that being an Asperger type, it's easier for me to spot policy hypocrisy--even in my own party.
I know Passover is past, but I have four questions [and dozens more] to illustrate the difficulty in getting humans to recognize their innate preference for virtue-signaling over problem-solving:
1. Stanford culture seems to be an uneasy dichotomy of woke and conservative. SBF's parents were eminences-in-residence, but so is Thomas Sowell. Why are so few white liberals, who just LOVE black folks to pieces, so uninterested in Sowell, who spent a long career writing about the ethical myopia of progressives? Ask any white liberal what they think of black Trump voters, and watch their facial contortions as they try to give a non-racist answer.
2. Why is it verboten to compare Trump to FDR? The similarities are overwhelming, but neither Dems nor Repubs want anything to do with such talk. Everything Dems warned about Trump doing once he becomes dictator-for-life are things FDR already did. Listening to Ken Burns try to explain away Japanese internment camps and turning away Holocaust refugees is just as revealing as the exercise above.
3. Why are so few open-borders proponents interested in what legal immigrants think about the idea? Spoiler alert: Most legal immigrants don't like illegals, for a variety of reasons. If you ever travel through Latin America, it's quite apparent how people in every country feel about citizens of less affluent countries on their borders.
4. I noticed the photo you used of the gentleman with swastika tattoos just happens to be white. Would it seem #awkward to replace that with a photo of a brown Muslim wrapped in a keffiyeh? Hitler didn't think it was weird that he found so much common cause with Amin al-Husseini; it's the most natural thing in the world. A bromance of multi-culti antisemitism! Isn't it so interesting how all the Hamasniks protested at the DNC last year, and none at the RNC? Why is that? Could it be because the antisemitic semaphores coming from the left are much louder than the right? Perish the thought!
Other than that, I like how you think about finding clever solutions to wicked problems in public policy. But without grappling with the emotional valence of existential issues, nothing will come of it. You can make a good living as a conference speaker, preaching to the choir. But practical solutions are downstream of understanding the herd mentality in times of duress. I'd like to ask one more question, as it's something I've thought about too often:
Why do sociopaths and psychopaths still exist, when there are so few of them? Why are they not only tolerated, but so often elevated to commanding heights? To put it bluntly, what cover do they provide for the dark desires of the majority of human sheep, that we are so willing to be governed by a small cadre of wolves?
If the truth were palatable to our civilized self-image, everyone would possess it already...
Hana, thank you for your lucid, passionate and deeply informed writing. I'm a friend of your
mother-in-law who worked for and came to love Allen, so I know something of your story, but
knew nothing of public interest technology..its promise and clear failures because of politics and prejudice. The discarding of any ethical concerns within ANY aspect of government, business
religion, media and seemingly everything in public life seems overwhelmingly pervasive. Thank you for helping me see better, depressing though it may be.
Thank you so much for your kind words.