Email #42: The Tech Party & Why We Need Them (10/21/16)

I have never been particularly interested in politics and never write about it. Until this election.

It seems unbelievable that at this enormously challenging time in the world’s history, we are faced with the prospect of voting for two people with the worst approval ratings…ever. There’s no way our founding fathers thought this was the way things would turn out when they drafted the Constitution! How we got to this point, that out of 320 million people we’re down to these two to lead us, is beyond me.

Leadership – the quality that allows one to rise to the occasion and surpass expectations, that gives hope and belief to others that we can come up with creative, thoughtful, useful ways to deal with major issues – is gone from the political spectrum.

Where have you gone, Winston Churchill, JFK, Dwight Eisenhower?

The truth is leadership DOES exist in this country. It exists in our tech industry. Mark Zuckerberg. Jeff Bezos. Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Bill Gates. We’re not being male-specific! Look at this article profiling fifteen young women who are changing the world daily in the digital realm.

The minds are there. The innovation is there. The leadership is there. The country needs it now more than ever. The two-party system that’s been in place for 240 years is not working. We need a third option.

Let’s call it The Tech Party. 

This generation of thinkers (and DOERS) will not live in a world denying climate change or allow countries to be without clean water and education levels to struggle at all-time lows. These individuals understand that when someone from a foreign country studies at one of our universities, America should do everything in our power to keep that brain in this country!

I’ve used this blog to talk about decimated forests, an over-heating planet, polluted oceans and endangered kiwi birds. This generation, the tech generation, cares about these issues passionately. They care about their planet and are using their considerable brain power to make it better.

I have no doubt that Google engineers can build a fan to blow the excess heat from the ozone; that the minds at Amazon can find the most precise method of getting food to the needy; that a team at Microsoft could find a way to destroy the 250 million spare tires left at the sides of our roads, now disintegrating into and polluting our soil and water.

These thinkers are not Democrats or Republicans. They don’t fit into those boxes. They believe creating wealth is not mutually exclusive to protecting the environment for their children, for our children. They want a smarter, healthier country because the smarter people become and longer they live the more of their products will be purchased.

They are the most brilliant minds of our time. A recent article in the New York Times featured the following quote from Dave McClure, who runs a tech incubator: