Reminder that Ellen hung out with George w bush
When called out for going to a sports game with someone who endorsed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, opposed adoption rights, anti hate crime laws, and anti discrimination laws, she doubled down and did a little segment on her show about how he’s alright and posted a selfie
While it is true that bush softened on gay rights issues later that was almost exclusively after he had left the presidency and thus was basically irrelevant. When the man had extreme power his policy was disgusting. When he listened to gay republican groups he did not soften at all. It was merely when his image needed to be rebranded after he was known mostly as a war criminal responsible for murdering 1 million Iraqis that he decided to soften his stance a bit. By then the Republican Party had gotten so fucking loony plenty of people accepted him as downright rational and kind. Instead of what he was, which is basically trump with a bit of impulse control and decorum
The takeaway is exactly what you said. The unifying factor here is social class. Ultra rich gays will happily throw you under the bus for 1 more dollar. Tim Cook will happily support someone who will stop him from adopting children or getting married if it means apples market share grows by 3%. He does not care because if it truly matters to him he will just find a way to circumvent the law with his enormous wealth. He does not worry about spousal decision making because he will hire a private live in physician. He will hire a surrogate to act as a legal agent for adoption in name only. If it comes to camps he obviously won’t go to the camps. If it gets to the point where he would be anywhere near at risk he would expatriate at a moments notice on a private jet. Etc. but you won’t have those luxuries. Fuck you, got mine.
80s, 90s, and a few years into early 2000s. Gates ruthlessness lasted decades, destroyed many businesses and lives, and is mostly whitewashed thanks to his philanthropic efforts and a few reddit amas and some secret santa participation
Not to mention the destruction he did to computing as a whole. The nightmare of proprietary bullshit is something that he did not architect but he pushed heavily and lobbied for constantly. He had the position to push for interoperability from an early stake in computing, to set the stage for computers to have a strong precedent to work together. Instead he and microsoft made every effort to work against open standards. They would adopt open standards and extend them with proprietary extensions to intentionally ruin them. A lot of what is infuriating about modern tech can be traced back to precedent that microsoft set at his direction
Reminder despite every donation he has made his net worth is higher now than it ever was and this has essentially always been the case. His philanthropy, while objectively good, is a measured pr effort that does not impact his overall obscene wealth and basically never has