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Saturday
May212016

The “Inclusive & Tolerant” Left

This guy won't talk to me anymore.It’s been a few months now, but this has been eating at my craw for some time and recent events have reminded me just how close-minded people with left-leaning political tendencies can be. Before getting into particulars, a little about the technology business in general. Well, my experience with people in the technology business anyway.

The bulk of the tech business is, of course, centered in and around the San Francisco area. One nuke would wipe out Intel, Apple, Cisco, Google…you get my point. Other tech strongholds are Seattle, home of Microsoft, Austin where Dell, Apple and others have big facilities and New York because it’s New York and that’s where the money is. If you overlay a political map on these areas, you’ll find they are all colored blue.

I own a home in downtown Seattle where I like to spend summers to escape from the Houston heat and humidity. Being a Mac fanatic and an Apple developer, I’ve made more pilgrimages to San Francisco for Macworld Expo and WWDC than I can count. Austin is just a couple hours away and I have lots of friends and family there. I’ve also made many trips to Round Rock (Dell’s headquarters just minutes from downtown Austin) while performing my job as an IT manager. So, I consider myself very familiar with these areas and I must admit to being guarded about my Libertarian political views when visiting. Nothing will get you ostracized faster than having the unmitigated gall to disagree with a liberal.

I’m a proud Texan. Born in Houston, I’ve lived here all my life. My beautiful wife is a New Orleans girl. We met about midway through our careers in the energy business. In Texas, energy means oil. We both worked for the biggest oil company in the world and our paths crossed at one of its chemical plants just outside Houston. She is a mechanical engineer and I am a systems engineer. After we wed in1995, she progressed through upper management on her way to an executive position with the company. I changed companies and went on to become an IT manager with another Fortune 500 firm before starting my own company in 2008. Today we are financially secure, both retired for over two years and both of us are a couple years shy of 60. The point of all this is that by any measure, I think most anyone would consider us reasonably intelligent, well-educated and successful.

So, why would a left-leaning person reject my opinion out of hand and refuse to discuss it openly and honestly? Case in point: A few months back there was a big kerfuffle when Dropbox named Condoleezza Rice to their board. It’s quite common for big corporations to name Washington insiders to their boards in order to have and insight into what’s happening with our federal government. Some want government contracts, some want favorable regulation and some just want an ear to the Washington tracks. Al Gore has been on Apple’s board for years. The problem for Dropbox is that they picked a Washington insider with the wrong ideology, at least wrong according to the vast majority of people in the technology business. She came from the Bush administration where she served as National Security Advisor and then Secretary of State. Rightly or wrongly she has been widely denounced as the person who approved water boarding as an interrogation method for use by the CIA and U.S. Military. Some say she only relayed the wishes of her boss, George Bush while others think the whole thing was entirely her baby. Either way, the left has demonized her to point of being ridiculous. Today as we watch videos of public beheadings, people being drowned in cages and others set on fire and burned to death, it’s hard to understand how someone approving water boarding to interrogate the perpetrators of these types of crimes could deserve such vitriol. But I digress. The leftists of the tech world got their panties in a wad when Ms. Rice was named to Dropbox’s board of directors. Twitter went wild with nasty comments about Dropbox and many even called for a boycott of their product. One such techie was Chris Breen. He held a longtime position with Macworld as a tech journalist and I was a big fan of his regular columns. I met him two or three times at Macworld Expo and attended a couple of his sessions. I always found him pleasant and friendly and he is obviously well informed about all things Mac. Over the years we held a couple of Twitter conversations regarding technical issues and I found him to be very generous with his knowledge. I would describe our relationship as cordial. That’s why I was completely flabbergasted to learn he blocked me on Twitter.

I’ve come to take the west coast techie leftism for granted. Personally, I could care less, but I did think the outcry calling for a Dropbox boycott was a bit disingenuous. I tweeted to Mr. Breen that I was certainly no fan of Condoleezza Rice, but I also pointed out how difficult life would be if we boycotted every company who had a board member we disagreed with politically. I stated that if we did so we would be forced to grow our own food and refine our own gasoline. I also reminded him of what the left purports as a couple of its bedrock principles, tolerance and inclusion. He promptly tweeted back that he was glad my tolerance extended to torture. Before I could reply he blocked me. Now, to me, that’s the Twitter equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling, “Na, Na, Na, Na. I can’t hear you!” Am I too far off base here? Didn’t think so. To me, blocking someone after a long history of pleasant and informative conversations just because of a single philosophical disagreement is nothing short of childish. The disagreement couldn’t even be remotely considered heated. Certainly no harsh words were exchanged nor even considered on my part. Oh well, I guess Mr. Breen and I learned something about each other.

Mr. Breen learned that the MacTexan is not a liberal in the classic sense. He also learned I’m someone who points out disingenuous behavior when I see it and I learned Mr. Breen doesn’t have the fortitude to have a conversation with someone with a conflicting view. I truly feel sorry for him and his like. How terrible it must be experiencing a life with all divergent views filtered out because they are considered stupid and intolerable. I’ll bet this whole Trump thing really has him chapped. I guess I’ll never know for sure. I’m still blocked, but leftist behavior is fairly easy to predict.

Oh well. I guess I’ll take my “stupid and intolerable” views with me into retirement. Yes, my wife and I are so stupid we’ve managed to retire in our mid-fifties with more than enough to live very comfortably for thirty years or so. Last I heard, the morally and intellectually superior Mr. Breen is still going to work every day. Not for Macworld. I heard he went to work for Apple. I truly wish him well and hope he prospers.

I’ll bet he still uses Dropbox, too.

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