Employee donations shows over 99% bias towards Democrats, in some top tech corps (opens in new tab)

- personal freedoms, including the rights of free speech, free assembly, and freedom from unreasonable electronic search and seizure

- protection of 2nd amendment rights, admired and envied by many around the world

There's a joke that reality has a well-known liberal bias.

At least, it used to be a joke. As with Poe's Law, it has become increasingly difficult to tell.

As one Republican political commentator put it this year, "Democrats have lost their way, but Republicans have lost their minds." There are many Republican policies that are simply delusional. Not merely differences of opinion, but clearly at odds with reality. And not merely crank extremists, but leadership at the very highest levels.

Furthermore, these policies often manifest in very hostile ways. The only way to support them is to believe the Democrats are actively engaged in attempting to destroy the United States. As you can see on HN and elsewhere, they express this in uncivil ways.

Because of this, it's not surprising that companies would tend to hire people who don't reject basic science and basic human rights. And further, that they won't hire people who disrespect the rest of their staff.

This is difficult, because we want to believe that the parties simply represent different value systems. There may even have been a time that it was true. But today, that assumption leads to false equivalences. Well-educated, more-intelligent-than-average techies will not be evenly distributed among political parties when one party is explicitly rejecting the intellectual tools that smart people use to distinguish truth from falsehood.

I believe Musk's tweet is an exaggeration -- another example of his party's willingness to reject reality and substitute their own when it suits them. But I don't doubt that Democrats are massively overrepresented. And that's not a bad thing if smart people prefer their policies.