Peter Thiel: If You Don’t Conform, They Don’t Count You as Diverse

“The Advocate, a magazine that once raised me as a gay innovator, even published an article saying as of now I am, and I quote, ‘not a gay man’ because I don’t agree with their politics,” he announced. “The lie behind the buzzword of diversity could not be made more clear. If you don’t conform, then you don’t count as diverse. No matter what your personal background.”

.. Moving on with examples, Thiel stated that “free trade has not worked out well for all of America.”

“All of our elites preach free trade. Highly educated people that make public policy preach that cheap imports make everyone a winner, according to economic theory. But in actual practice, we’ve lost tens of thousands of factories and millions of jobs to foreign trade,” he declared. “The heartland has been devastated. Maybe policy-makers really believe that nobody loses, or maybe they don’t worry about it too much because they think they’re among the winners.”

.. “The sheer size of the US trade deficit shows that something has gone badly wrong. The most developed country in the world should be exporting capital to the less developed countries,” Thiel claimed. “Instead the United States is importing more than 500 billion dollars every year. That money flows into financial assets and distorts our economy in favor of more financialization, and it gives the well connected people, who benefit, a reason to defend the status quo.”

“But not everyone benefits and the Trump voters know it,” he concluded.

Donald Trump Reveals Evangelical Rifts That Could Shape Politics for Years

“Those men have never spoken for me or, frankly, anyone I know,” saidMs. Hatmaker, the author of popular inspirational Christian books.

.. The fault lines among evangelicals that the election of 2016 has exposed — among generations, ethnic groups and sexes — are likely to reshape national politics for years to come, conservative Christian leaders and analysts said last week in interviews.

.. To these pragmatic players, the election boiled down to only two issues, both that could be solved with Supreme Court appointments: stopping abortion and ensuring legal protections for religious conservatives who object to same-sex marriage.

.. “I do not think there’s any way to get evangelical women in any force to show up for Donald Trump at this point,” Mr. Moore said.

.. Several polls show that Mr. Trump is underperforming among evangelicals compared with previous Republican nominees, who commanded about 80 percent of the white evangelical vote. Mr. Trump received 65 percent to 70 percent of white evangelical support

.. “the millennial generation has a lot less patience for Trump.” Of the 33 influential millennial evangelicals she profiled for a cover story two years ago, she says she can now find only one, Lila Rose, who is pro-Trump, and even she has been publicly critical of him.

.. The student body president, Jack Heaphy, as well as some students interviewed on campus, defended Mr. Falwell and Mr. Trump.

.. “I believe the vast majority of students on campus will be voting for Mr. Trump on Nov. 8 — not because he’s the perfect candidate, but because his policies align most with the viewpoints of students,” Mr. Heaphy said.

.. “It’s inconceivable that someone could run an organization named the Family Research Council and support a man like Donald Trump for president,” said Matthew Lee Anderson, 34, the author of several books and the blog Mere Orthodoxy.

Trump puts a boiling battleground in play

In pivotal North Carolina, two contentious local issues are overshadowing almost everything else.

Unlike the presidential contest in nearly every other swing state, North Carolina’s is framed this year by two local battles overshadowing almost everything else.
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There is House Bill 2 — the so-called bathroom bill which has energized young liberals and older conservatives in what’s viewed by many as a battle for the soul of the state. Then there is the furor over voting rights, which has provided Democrats with a major organizational and energy boost among African-Americans.
“The intensity that you see on the national level is on steroids in North Carolina, because not only do you have this presidential race where they’re both here all the time, you also have a highly-charged governor’s race and Senate race with the issues of HB2 and voting rights litigation all rolled up into one,

.. There cannot be another state that has that kind of intensity. It comes up in every conversation. It’s not just the insiders talking about it. It comes up on the sidelines of my daughter’s field hockey games.”