IMO it probably is and Altman probably still (rightly) hates Trump. He's playing politics because he needs to. I don't really blame him for it, though his tweet certainly did make me wince.
That's the thing though right, that we all created this mess together. Like yeah, why don't you (and the rest of us) blame him?. We're all pretty warped and it's going to take collective rehab.
Super pretentious to quote MLK, but the man had stuff to say so here it is (on Inaction):
"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it"
"The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people"
It seems he was virtue signaling before. So it would be more accurate to blame him for having let himself become an ego driven person in the past. Or to put it nicely and to add the context of Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, who has also been showing public support for Trump, a mission-driven person.
Yes, the first mistake was a business leader in tech taking a public political position. It was popular and accepted (if not expected) in the valley in 2016.
Doing that then (and banking the social and reputational proceeds) created the problem of dissonance now. If he'd just stayed neutral in public in 2016, he could do what he's doing now and we could assume he's just being a pragmatic business person lobbying the government to further his company's interests.
I think “progressive” is probably the safest position to take. It also works if you want to get involved in a different sort of politics later on. David Sacks had no problem doing that when he was no longer interested in being CEO of a large company.
The evidence indicates not taking a position is the optimal position.
I have a lot of respect for CEOs who just focus on being a good CEO. It's a hard enough job as is. I don't care about or want to know some CEO's personal position on politics, religion or sports teams. It's all a distraction from the job at hand. Same goes for actors, athletes and singers. They aren't qualified to have an opinion any more relevant than anyone else's, except on acting, athletics, singing - or CEO-ing.
Sadly, my perspective is in the minority. Which is why I think so many public figures keep making this mistake. The media, pundits and social sphere need them to keep making this mistake.
I guess I think they should study what a neutral position looks like, and avoid going beyond it as best as they can. I had in mind a "progressive" who avoids any hot button issues. Someone with a high profile will be asked about politics from time to time. I think Brian Chesky is a good example of acting like a progressive in a way that stays low profile, but maybe he doesn't really act like one. https://www.businessinsider.com/brian-chesky-airbnb-new-bree...
Also it helps to have sincere political views. GitHub's CEO at the time of #DropICE was too cynical and his image suffered because of it.
There are no neutral positions in today's political landscape. I'm not stating my opinion here, this is according to most political positions on the spectrum. You suggested "Progressive" (but without hot button issues) as a way of signaling a neutral position. That may be true in parts of the valley tech sphere but it certainly doesn't hold in the rest of the U.S. "Progressive" is usually defined being to the left of "Liberal", so it's hardly neutral. Over half of U.S. voters cast their ballot for the Republican candidate. Almost all those people interpret anyone identifying themselves as "Liberal" as definitely partisan (and negative, of course). Most of them see "Progressive" as even worse, slipping dangerously toward "Socialist". And the same holds true for the term "Conservative" on the other side of the spectrum, of course.
No, identifying as "Progressive" wouldn't distance you from political connotations and culture warring, it's leaping into the maelstrom yelling "Yipee-Ki-Yay!" You may want to update your priors regarding how the broad populace perceives political labels. With voters divided almost exactly in half regarding politics and cultural war issues and a large percentage on both sides having "Strong" or "Very Strong" feelings, stating any position will be seen as strongly negative by tens of millions of people. If you're a CEO (or actor, athlete, singer, etc) who relies on appealing to a broad audience, when it comes to publicly discussing politics (or religion), the downsides can be large and long-lasting but the upsides are small and fleeting. As was said in the movie "WarGames", the only winning move is not playing.
