Yup...and I'm quite curious how the author squares these two lines:
> [Thiel] will become the most prominent public face of a species so endangered it might as well be called extinct: the Silicon Valley Trump supporter.
and
> The danger, then, is that not only could Mr. Thiel’s public embrace of Mr. Trump backfire on him, but it could also become another plot point in the larger story line that Silicon Valley is exclusionary and narrow-minded and that its innovations are advancing global inequality.
So...the author thinks that there are almost no Trump supporters in the valley, and also thinks that a single public supporter of Trump will lead to people believing that Trump is the problem with Silicon valley...
That actually does make sense, negative signalling is powerful, there are many blaming silicon valley for all sorts of problems in society (AI killing jobs, rents in the bay area rising etc) and it would be easy to then take the views of a prominent valley figure and superimpose them onto all of the valley, even if <0,01% support trump.
Which is not an incorrect assessment. People consistently fall for the trap of taking the worst possible exponent of a group and extrapolating what the whole group looks like. With Bernie Sanders supporters, it was the "Bernie bro", with Hillary Clinton it's the "nothing's wrong with her, she's perfect" supporters, with Trump is the cesspool of hatred that is /r/the_donald (people celebrating pictures of a guy armed with an assault-style rifle wearing a "cuckhunter" shirt at the RNC convention... let that sink in.)
Tech workers already receive quite a bit of hate from some people (harassing at shuttle stops has become a semi-regular thing, I've been called a "fucking techie" when bar hopping, etc.) The last thing we need is the same people associating us with a political candidate who openly demonizes immigrants, insults women and disabled people, and who repeats "I'm RICH! SO RICH!" every time he's given an opportunity.
I'm all for Peter Thiel supporting whoever he wants, but I definitely don't want him to be the representative for the majorly progressive Silicon Valley population.
> [Thiel] will become the most prominent public face of a species so endangered it might as well be called extinct: the Silicon Valley Trump supporter.
and
> The danger, then, is that not only could Mr. Thiel’s public embrace of Mr. Trump backfire on him, but it could also become another plot point in the larger story line that Silicon Valley is exclusionary and narrow-minded and that its innovations are advancing global inequality.
So...the author thinks that there are almost no Trump supporters in the valley, and also thinks that a single public supporter of Trump will lead to people believing that Trump is the problem with Silicon valley...
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