Welcome to Trump’s America, The i Paper’s World Insight series presenting the sharpest, deepest thinking on an era-defining shift in history and politics, investigating how Donald Trump and his administration have changed the US and the world – and where we go from here.
• America can’t afford to retire• The middle-class American Dream is being eaten away• The White House I worked for would have condemned this image. Trump refuses• Maga leaders want ‘traditional American families’ – but can’t stop having affairs• Sin City has lost its shine. It shows how far America has fallen• The Florida street that exposes America’s growing homophobia• Childish Hegseth thinks killing is a goal in itself
As recently as a decade ago, you could imagine Silicon Valley as a nerdy and male-dominated but ultimately progressive place. It seemed like the future, both in terms of technology and its values.
In the 2016 presidential campaign, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and even the more conservative Marc Andreessen lined up to support the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.
Barack Obama had actually been chided for embracing Silicon Valley’s money and mindset during his two terms. Broadly speaking, that meant technocratic solutions, technology investment and a commitment to the major progressive issues of the 2010s. Meanwhile, in 2013, 278 companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook, Oracle and Twitter, signed on to a court brief in favour of same-sex marriage.
