Trump-related, Trump-unrelated -- the important thing is that our hubris is coming back to bite (or even just nip) us. Small consolation for those trammeled along our way -- but something.
"Silicon Valley seems to have lost a bit of its verve since the Presidential election. The streets of San Francisco—spiritually part of the Valley—feel less crowded. Coffee-shop conversations are hushed. Everything feels a little muted, an eerie quiet broken by chants of protesters. It even seems as if there are more parking spots. Technology leaders, their employees, and those who make up the entire technology ecosystem seem to have been shaken up and shocked by the election of Donald Trump."
As loathsome as Trump is, I do look forward to having our collective nose rubbed in our collective shit.
That's the problem. [Edit: I think you were trying to say just this.]
Bear in mind, too, that Silicon Valley is one of the few market institutions that's had any degree of public support recently. People are skeptical towards the medical industry, detest politicians, loathe insurance companies, distrust pharmaceutical firms, despise lawyers, fear law enforcement, are disgusted by petroleum, and hate finance with incandescent passion -- all justifiably (although, in fairness, to varying degrees). Until recently, though, Silicon Valley had escaped this opprobrium -- our youth and talent for narrative-weaving shielded us. Those days are ending.
Shlock. The writer is satisfied with the world he inhabits, is not particularly aggrieved by the powers that be, has not been particularly failed -- and therefore takes umbrage at the suggestion that the established order might not be both benevolent and competent.
But guess what? This isn't the general experience! Most people are constantly, crushingly immiserated and failed -- a societal "failure mode," as he so charmingly terms it, has already come to pass. It's unclear, in fact, that we've ever /not/ been in a failure mode -- begging the question of /why/ things are so consistently fucked up.
I recently watched "Command And Control" (http://www.commandandcontrolfilm.com) on a whim. I hadn't read up about the film before seeing it, so I understood "nuclear missile accident" to mean, presumably, almost accidentally firing a warhead -- a more-or-less standard nuclear nightmare.
This, of course, is not what happened. The Damascus Titan accident did not involve a nuclear weapon being mistakenly, but intentionally, armed. The very real fear was, instead, that the explosion of a damaged missile could accidentally detonate the warhead as well -- or, in a case only slightly better, blast it into radioactive dust.
I'd never considered the risk entailed by the simple existence -- intentional use entirely aside -- of nuclear weapons. Reading the list of (public!) broken arrow incidents is harrowing.
While there's a grain of truth to this, to insist on this generalization is to twist Stallman's meaning to suit your own purposes. It's quite clear that Stallman is, here, speaking /quite specifically/ about corporations -- inveighing against them, in fact. I am sure that he would agree that governments can engage in similar behavior, but the target of his criticism here is corporations alone. Forcing governments into the conversation is a way of derailing specific criticism of corporations.
"If corporations dominate society and write the laws, then each advance or change in technology is an opening for them to further restrict or mistreat its users."
Also, you definitely can, tongue-in-cheek, call a general statement a "law." It's not meant to be taken in a literal sense; it's meant for humorous or broadly pragmatic effect.
I very much disagree that they do nothing to promote constructive discussion. They put a fine point on the absurdities of the position mocked -- hardly unconstructive.
God forbid those proles vote, or -- horror of horrors -- have one of the most fulfilling human experiences! They should all be disenfranchised and sterilized.
I'm sympathetic to your point. But ultimately I gotta disagree with the premise of your argument -- specifically, that the misery of being a cuckold makes the use of the term "cuck" unacceptable. Much to the contrary, I think that it makes the term /suitable/ for many situations -- situations that are, in some way, emotionally analogous. I'm hesitant to make this claim unequivocally -- I can see arguing that the mechanics of the use of the term "cuck" exceed mere metaphor in objectionable ways -- but I think that the ability to speak directly to emotional reality supersedes any such argument.
For the record, I'm not defending the alt-right in any capacity. They're loathsome fascists. And that's key -- the problem is the content of their positions, not the language in which they're expressed.
Look, dude, it's not about inherent worth. Framing these discussions in such terms is a rhetorical trick to evade their actual subject matter. The real issue is that being cheated on, of losing "sexual control" over your partner (and that phrasing is another rhetorical trick, a way to disguise the real emotional structure of the desire for fidelity as, instead, some sort of patriarchal construct), is /subjectively/ devastating. It /does/ make you feel diminished as a person. It /does/ make you feel "worth less" -- which is, in fact, essentially the message semaphored by your partner deciding to seek satisfaction elsewhere than you. It is a terrible feeling to be told -- explicitly, or even more horribly, implicitly -- that you are not enough for your partner.
This isn't about sexist, fascist, or racist(???) language. It's not a fiction concocted by the far right. It's about the emotional realities of being a human being -- not some fantasy caricature.