Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words

Gay Entrepreneur Peter Thiel addresses Republican National Convention

But today our government is broken. Our nuclear program still uses floppy disks

Peter Thiel, the founder with Elon Musk, of Paypal, just addressed the Republican National convention. The speech was much anticipated because he is openly gay, and also because he is from Silicon Valley. Donald Trump is popular with neither groups. Here's what Thiel said:

Where I work in Silicon valley, it's hard to see where America went wrong. But Silicon valley is a small place. If you drive across the bridge to Oakland, and you won't see that same prosperity. That's how small it is.

Meanwhile, Wall Street inflates everything from Hillary Clinton's speaking fees to the bank accounts

If you understand me today, you understand that wages have gone nowhere for years.

Back when my parents came to America looking for a dream, they found it right here in Cleveland. They brought me as a one year old and it's where I became an American-right here in Cleveland

My father studied engineering at Case Western University. All of America was high tech. Our government was once high tech too. The Apollo program was just about to put a man on the moon. The future felt limitless

But today our government is broken. Our nuclear program still uses floppy disks. Our latest jet fighters, can't even fly in the rain

We don't accept such incompetence from Silicon Valley, and we shouldn't accept it from our government

We don't need to see Hillary Clinton's e mails, her incompetence is in plain sight. On this mot important issue, Donald Trump is right, it's time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country

When I was a kid the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union, and we won.

Now we're being told the great debate is about which bathroom we should use. This is a distraction from our problems. Who cares?

Every American has a unique identity, of course. I am proud to be gay, I am proud to be an American most of all.

I don't pretend to agree with every plank in our party's platform, but fake culture wards distract us from our problems

While it's important to remember who we are, it's also important to remember where we came from

When Donald Trump suggests "Make America Great Again," he is not suggesting a return to the past, but to lead us to that bright future.

Thank you.

Peter Andreas Thiel, 49 is an openly gay, German-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist and hedge fund manager. Thiel co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin and Elon Musk and served as its CEO. He also co-founded Palantir, of which he is chairman. He was the first outside investor in Facebook, the popular social-networking site, with a 10.2% stake acquired in 2004 for $500,000, and sits on the company's board of directors.

Thiel serves as president of Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund with $700 million in assets under management; a managing partner in Founders Fund, a venture capital fund with $2 billion in assets under management; co-founder and investment committee chair of Mithril Capital Management; and co-founder and chairman of Valar Ventures

 

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