You could argue that people who moved away from Bayarea to other places are not as aligned with the far left, so in theory their ideology and politics should be more deviated from the Bayarea norm.
I think this is an important point to make. The degree to which people will abandon what seem like core principles when it comes to fighting change in their neighborhood, school district etc. is one of the unpleasant things about living in a left-leaning area like the Bay.
Bay Area politics are much more nuanced than that.
For example, there's always been a strong Libertarian community in the larger Tech community. And over the last couple years a lot of online Libertarian communities have shifted to more right (and far-right) ideology.
There's also a strong Leftist community in the Bay Area, arguably much stronger than the rest of the country. This shouldn't be forgotten. You're way more likely to meet a Communist at a bar in SF than most parts of this country.
There's a strong "liberal" community in the Bay Area, these people will support liberal social issues (Gay/Trans inclusion, virulently anti-Trump, supporting of Muslims and other oppressed communities, reigning in the banks, etc.). But, a lot of these people also suffer from the Not-In-My-Backyard syndrome and will balk at modest reforms to Schooling or Housing Policy.
There's also Reagan Republicans, Antifacists, Anarchists, and people who aren't checked into Politics at all.
I'm not saying everyone in the Bay Area fits into one of these groups or even that my characterizations of these groups are accurate. These groups aren't monoliths.
I would just encourage you to not let your heart get broken, things can get better. The Bay Area is still very Progressive. Volunteer for a Progressive Campaign, DSA, or some other progressive organization and I think you'll get your hope back!
The point is that it's not everywhere, it's very much specific to the Bay area. The claim is that the Bay was a lot more open to controversial ideas in the past, and it's closing down as of today to only leave room for local ideological orthodoxy. Many of those ideas aren't controversial in most other parts of the world.
The point, I'm assuming, is that Sam doesn't want to pack up his stuff and leave, he wants the Bay to become more open.
You would need to look into the history of the Bay Area going back to at least the 1960's, and probably one or two decades further.
It's more a case of counter-culture vs. mainstream; with the tech scene appearing Left-leaning only to the extent that the Right tries to portray their agenda as the mainstream in the media. (The Left does that too, it's just that the Right has been more successful since about the 80's when the pols roped in the Christians. Before then, Christians mostly stayed out of politics. Mostly. E.g. "liberal" becoming a "dirty word", etc.)
That's why you see e.g. Left-wing sentiment and Libertarian sentiment (as well as Furry sentiment; pro-gun sentiment; anti-gun sentiment; weird-sex sentiment; non-binary-gender sentiment; ... I could go on at length. CA is a weird place, and SF is the weirdest place in CA (except for Berkeley)) in SV. Really, it's a political and social kaleidoscope out here. If it looks Blue or Red it's the tinted filter.
Yes. I have lived in the Bay Area for a long time now, but never really liked the general holier-than-thou attitude (interestingly, I keep meeting older people who have never turned conservative, but have instead turned even more rabidly leftist.) It's dispiriting to realise that moving elsewhere, to Texas, say, is no guarantee of being rid of this. The same cycle will likely be repeated, perhaps in the next decade or so!
Honestly, Bay Area is like >50% recent immigrants. I think a lot of the problem arise because we ascribe the American label of "conservative" and "liberal" to a population who grew up in a very different society. A lot of behaviors that we assign to conservatives and liberals do not line up that way in other societies. For example, in Europe, the far right has very little interest in free markets, and has policy goals that are perhaps more common with the far left. In Asia, you will find deeply religious parties (e.g., BJP) who at the same time are pro-science and climate change. Also, a lot of recent immigrants in the Bay Area "escaped" deeply culturally conservative societies where freedom of sexuality is unheard of and really appreciate the tolerance that is in the fabric of Bay Area culture. So, in that sense, yes, it would seem to be a mono culture here of "liberals", but if you dig deeper the layers are not that simple.
I think its too progressive where you cannot be a centrist or people will look at you like they look at centrists in alabama.
Bay area has one of the most closed minded people when it comes to politics. Jack Dorsey (Twitter CEO) talked about it in his interviews with Joe Rogan and such - how do we make sure that voices across the spectrum are represented on Twitter and just not what silicon valley thinks is acceptable? There is definitely bias.
I don't want to open a can of worms, but I personally don't like living in the bay area.
Moving some of the folks on the right side of the bell curve to a new city won't necessarily help out the folks on the left side. The Bay Area has lots of tech jobs AND unemployed and smelly people.
The bay area is 'conservative' on issues that actual American conservatives are not very conservative on. For example, bay area people seem to hate building housing, whereas most red states are building like crazy.
Seems like you can't win. If you stay in bay area you get accused of concentrating wealth in the bay area and not spreading it. If you move to other areas you get accused of gentrifying the area and pushing poor people out.
I think the last several years have clearly proven that SF's polarized politics are absolutely no good at solving any problems and quite good at creating countless new ones, so it would be ridiculous for the rest of the Bay Area to follow them.
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