Regardless of thoughts on Thiel, the second link feels like a hit piece —- the entire article hinges on one paragraph “BuzzFeed News can reveal that in at least one instance during the summer of 2016, Thiel hosted a dinner with [white nationalist]… And then Thiel emailed the next day to say how much he’d enjoyed his company.“ How many other people were at the dinner? How many other people received this email? What were the contents of the email, i.e. was it a generic thank you? Left to suspect these details would make the story less interesting

Does it matter? You couldn’t pay me enough to dine with a known white nationalist and I certainly wouldn’t be sending any thank you notes as a follow-up. I can’t imagine I’m unique in this regard.

The article doesn't establish Thiel knew the guy was a white nationalist. Guilt by association is weak by itself, but if the two just attended the same party unbeknownst to Thiel and then Thiel spammed a list-serve of attendees with "THANKS EVERYONE I ENJOYED ALL YOUR COMPANY"--that's not association. The article is so threadbare its impossible to know whether that happened or whether Thiel purposely hosted a dinner specifically for the white supremacist. Or something in between.

What are the odds the person at your table widely known for founding "Youth for Western Civilization" turns out to be a white supremacist? Talk about bad luck, Pete. It could happen to anyone, really. And it's not like Thiel has access to troves and troves of personal data on just about every person with an internet connection and a program specifically designed to identify "extremists" by analyzing patterns in their social network and interests. Oh wait...

This analysis is based on many unfounded assumptions like he knew that the guy founded Youth for Western Civilization or even what that was. I traveled in right wing circles on colleges campuses in 2006-2008 and I never hear of them until today.

If Thiel was getting into bed with this guy, then yea, you can probably impute some knowledge b/c Thiel would do some diligence. But we are talking about a dinner and an email.

I met a new person this weekend under similar circumstances. You shouldn't take that as a a sign I agree with that person's politics.

What exactly would your objection be?

Personally, I would be open to such an experience. I am not so insecure in my beliefs that I would worry on that front. I might learn something about them and the nature of the world, and maybe they would too.

Shrug. I would — and have — had dinner with all kinds of people whose beliefs and behavior diverge sharply from what I think is advisable or ethical. Having dinner with someone is not an endorsement of their worldview, full stop.

Maybe this will sound corny, and I guess it probably won't land with non-Christians, but I'll offer my heuristic anyway: What would Jesus do? I don't think shunning is the answer.

WWJD also entails vandalizing unethical businesses rather than operating them, so let's not get too self-righteous here.

Moneychangers in the temple don't funge with other businesses. The issue was blasphemy.

Using quotes when the quote doesn't exist should be enough to get this comment deleted.

I know nothing about Thiel, but the actual quote is "hosted a dinner with" which like the one you responded to here said, could easily mean there were 50 guests at a party and one of them was this guy.

Your made up quote is something entirely different.

News? Not seeing a single thing that isn’t biased far left nonsense.

Hardly. Clearly they are left leaning but they back up their opinion with facts. For example calling out Republicans using half-truths against Jackson to try and make her look bad. That's some good reporting.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/paulmcleod/ketanji-brow...

We need more of this kind of journalism to keep the facts out there and point out lots of pols twist things to fool the public.

Could you summarize the facts? "Calling out half-truths" is not an example of a fact.

It's a clear slant of D good, R bad, here's how we explain away what R's are saying because we think X.

There's a million left-wing outlets to do this, Buzzfeed News will not be missed.

I didn't see much "D good". There was a bit of "Specific R bad", but they only quoted that left-wing rags like the National Review to back up that what they said was bad. I won't repeat them, because they were less half-truths and more "meritless to the point of demagoguery" - (National Review).

If you think NYT and Washington Post are "left wing rags" then there is nothing I can do to convince you of any logic. Have a good day sir.

I was calling the National Review, founded by William Buckley, the famous conservative pundit, a left wing rag as a tongue in cheek way of saying even super conservative publications call it meritless.

I considered it as obvious sarcasm as calling Fox News a left-wing front of the Democratic Party.

Just because a source looks biased doesnt mean its not factual. Saying "republicans are saying awful things to/about XYZ person", if they were doing it, wouldnt be biased, it would be the truth.

And I wouldnt consider them "far left" anyway, just left of some other mainstream news sources.

> Just because a source looks biased doesnt mean its not factual.

Definitely, unfortunately the facts are usually scarce and twisted in those hit pieces.

> And I wouldnt consider them "far left" anyway, just left of some other mainstream news sources.

https://wikiless.org/wiki/Overton_window

Still far-left in my eyes, but you're not wrong in the general sense, simply because most MSM is far-left nowadays.

> Still far-left in my eyes, but you're not wrong in the general sense, simply because most MSM is far-left nowadays.

What do you consider far left? Mainstream media pushes for larger police budgets, high defense spending, defends billionaires, defends foreign policies that cause death, destruction, and misery all over the world, they are almost never actually critical of politicians and/or what they say in a way that matters. They defend massive corporations that are working against Americans, push fossil fuels (and for adjacent industries, like cars), push against single payer healthcare, and many other policies that are even just slightly left of center.

No part of our mainstream media is even close to far left, basically no major source in the world is.

At best, you might get a left wing opinion article in the NYT or something, but thats still going to be sandwiched between police propaganda and the current week's article on cancel culture.