It’s not a secret that many tech influencers voted for Trump. This is a stark contrast to 2016, when conservative tech billionaire Peter Thiel lost friends and was ostracized after he donated to Trump’s campaign and spoke at the RNC. “One of the big differences between the first term, in the first time everybody was fighting me,” Trump told reporters at a news conference, according to Business Insider. “In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.”
Indeed, besides Elon Musk, the other big tech names that shifted right were Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, and Jeff Bezos. They’ve all shared snippets of their rationale publicly. For Bezos, he shared with the NYTimes that it was the over-regulatory environment. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg went into detail about his shift right during his interview with Joe Rogan. In a nutshell, it was the Biden’s administration stronghold suppression of truth tactics around Covid that seemed to raise a red flag for him, noting that (17:27) “during Covid, our government is telling us that we need to censor true things? This is a disaster!” Zuckerberg also admitted that a decade ago, he deferred far too much on the media for the truth. Bill Ackman outlined his 33 reasons for shifting right. Based on my count about two-thirds of his reasoning is cultural and not economic. Mark Pincus, admittedly a lifelong Democrat, also backed Trump and gave two reasons: the Democrat’s suppression of free speech and lackluster support for Israel.
Given the shift right, I am curious as to why many people remain on the Democratic side. I’m convinced there are more issues we agree on than we think. If that’s the case, the question is: why remain a Democrat? In this interview, I speak to a longtime friend and successful entrepreneur and investor Kevin Surace. Kevin and I met when he was a clean tech CEO (back when clean tech just meant you wanted to be good stewards of the environment) and Inc’s Entrepreneur of the Year. We do agree far more than we disagree. In fact, I would say Kevin is a Republican (though I did not say that in the interview!). But Kevin says he’s not. You decide.
On a side note, Kevin raised a really insightful point. Recently, one of my son’s spoke about how difficult it is to have a realistic view of girls due to the millions of the seemingly perfect or attractive ones online. Indeed, if we spend too much time online, it’s hard to be satisfied with what’s before us.
We don’t exercise the ability to engage with various types of people and certainly circumstances that are uncomfortable. Yet in order to develop character, we need to face uncomfortable and adverse situations. We’re not developing the character muscle by avoiding the bad stuff. Kevin touched on this. Social media has pushed us further into feedback loops that shield us from opposing viewpoints. The effect is a world in which no one is compelled to find common ground. And when you lose the ability to find common ground, you lose the ability to be human. I hope you enjoy the interview.
Note: I welcome speaking with people I disagree with politically. If you’re open to engaging in a civil manner, let’s chat!
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