I don’t care about the amount. That’s not the point.
The point is that the same man who allows Infowars merchandise to be sold on his website donated $33 million to Dreamers.
One data point would say he’s an alt-right ass hole while the next would say he’s a liberal who hates white America.
Calling him a “conservative” just because he’s rich and likes being rich is overly simplistic. Just like calling him a “progressive” because he supports Dreamers is also overly simplistic.
There’s a pretty strong likelihood that he donated the money for tax write-offs and benefits rather than the goodness of his own heart. Cause our tax system allows the super wealthy to do that.
I’d say that being rich IS the same as being immoral.
It however isn’t the same as being conservative.
Being republican in this country IS the same as being immoral.
Being conservative is heavily correlated with being republican.
All of this doesn’t necessarily say he’s conservative, just sorta implies it.
∴
It does definitively prove him to be immoral. At which point I’d say his status as conservative or liberal is moot.
Fuck him either way.
I think there’s a difference between being conservative immoral and being rich immoral. The two might overlap in some cases, but they’re different kinds of being immoral.
You could be right, but to me, there are degrees of being immoral. While none of them are good, immoral is not a one-size-fit-all category.
Again, if I were to summarize all my posts about Jack Dorsey and onward, it would be that the world and people are complex and inconsistent. It’s wrong to try and “flatten” that complexity in all cases.
To go back to Jack Dorsey, I find it fascinating that everyone, on both sides of the political spectrum, seems to think he’s against “their” side.
I can think of a few interesting spin off ideas / responses, though as they come to me they’re replaced with other ones so lemme just incoherently stream of consciousness here for a minute and sort through it after:
People are definitely complex and there’s definitely degrees of immorality. I stole a candybar as a child, I’m not a murderer. Obviously.
While in the above instance it’s not ok at all to flatten the complexity. I’d also posit it’s definitely ok to flatten complexity some times. As an example, super duper evil people throughout history have been studied to death. Historian after historian catalogues the available records and tries to discern what they may have been thinking at what time. So the fact that there may be complexities in say, the mind of hitler, I think it’s just fine to blanket him as evil and ignore all that. Because he was.
There’s definitely something interesting about being able to be seen as against “their” side. I’ll point out that he’s not universally hated. I can think of a few examples of, kinda tech/finance/bro-y people who love jack dorsey.
Further, it’s pretty easy to look at one bad act (take not banning nazis from his platform, or… what is it that conservatives don’t like him for?) and project from there. One bad act, and you see him in a new light, everything from that point onward is interpreted in the least charitable way possible and boom. You’ve got yourself a villain.
I’m sure I had more points and thoughts but this is all that was left in my head at the end.
I just think that we’re throwing around the term “evil” a little bit too easily around here. I find that a lot of comments lack… complexity and nuance… when people become overcome by their emotions. That’s understandable, but not helpful in my opinion.
I think Bezos donating to Dreamers is internally consistent with most rich tech people’s views. Talent is needed and the Dreamers have hungry educated members that are all but legally American.
Okay so first, it is foolish to think you can trust a government like that, my man. Embezzlement and systemic fraud have been happening in the USA probably since the beginning. Consider the lead water pipes. A comptroller in Illinois embezzled $50 million from the government to breed horses.
Two, I don’t know the very wealthy, but I also can’t safely say “they should not have money beyond a certain point.” Cuba is a good case study of this. They tried that, then the Eastern Bloc dissolved and they went broke and could not get stuff. Then after a struggle for autarky, they restart their tourism industry (which, from the Wikipedia history, Castro was ambivalent about for decades), and introduced a second currency set at 1:1 with the dollar for access to the free markets. Both the President of the USA and the Cuban government aren’t entirely comfortable with that tourism, however.
In my mind, there is wealth, for some people it’s unattainable, I am uncomfortable with wealth, but regulating wealth rarely worked out for people. China might be an exception, Cuba might be an exception, but I’ve had a lot of colleagues and friends whose families left after those experiments began.
This the same old nonsense right wing argument. First they make the post office crappy on purpose, then they argue we should get rid of it because it sucks. We should lower taxes and give the government less money because look how corrupt it is. Perhaps the reason it is corrupt is because the agencies and people with power to fight corruption are under-funded? Other countries have wonderful post offices because they fund them properly. We can have wonderful post offices and also terrific law enforcement agencies that take down corruption everywhere it appears. We have to raise taxes and pay for it. Doing the opposite only means things will suck more, not less.
Also, what makes you think the cap on wealth is the thing that made Cuba’s economy suck, and not, oh, something else pretty significant…
You will not hear much objection from me, Scott. I am actually surprised that anyone thinks the post office is not the backbone of the country–the ability to send a small parcel to anyone with speed and security is definitely one of the reasons we say “the country exists.”
(Link to the history of the Embargo)
Eh, I dunno. People in power in the USA were not fond of Castro’s concept of revolutionary justice, I think the embargo was retribution for that, I think they found it just. However, I read Plato’s Republic and also am Catholic, so I am very, very skeptical when anyone begins talking about “justice,” especially and unequivocally when it is sought against the poor. It’s odd to me, too, that JFK and Castro had similar backgrounds for their time and place, and both allegedly decried the religion of their youth, but that one chose to stand with the poor and the other with the rich. Also, at the same time Kennedy was feuding bitterly with Cuba, he was also stating his admiration for the devoutly Buddhist Secretary-General of the UN.
(I’ve only recently begun an in-depth study of the 60s in an attempt to better understand 2018. That decade was bizarre. I think it’s not only that people are complex, maybe like, they don’t make sense, it’s crazy for us to think they do.)
Glad to see the forum tradition of going wildly off-topic continues in its present incarnation.