You're also missing the issue. It's not so much about Thiel but the message it sends: your professional career is at stake if you support the wrong candidate. I do not support Trump but I find that completely unacceptable.
Or is that different somehow?
Consequences of being on the "wrong" side of things will cause people to think first and speak later, rather than loudly stake out territory without thinking things through. I'm all for that.
Look, I didn't like GW Bush, I didn't like Mitt Romney, but I would not shun folks who voted for them, or donated to their campaigns. Donald Trump is running on a platform centered around the belief that certain people deserve fewer rights than others. Donating to the Prop 8 campaign was taking an explicit position that certain people deserve fewer rights than others.
What's the monetary threshold beyond which it's okay to harass people and fire them for their jobs for their political beliefs? Let's have a number.
"Political beliefs" is another word for "opinions", and the crazy thing about opinions is you can change them. And the ones that you hold reflect on you.
Who, specifically, is Thiel harassing? Let's have some names, since you seem so confident in your accusation.
>"Political beliefs" is another word for "opinions", and the crazy thing about opinions is you can change them. And the ones that you hold reflect on you.
Exactly. All those screenwriters have to do is change their opinions about Communism, and they're good to go.
If somebody's up on a soapbox giving speeches about their views, and I disagree with their views, should I not get up on my own soapbox and explain why I disagree and think people shouldn't buy that other guy's arguments?
If I think someone has a poor business history, should I keep silent when somebody else considers a partnership? Or should I speak up and say "I think that's a bad partnership" and try to persuade them?
You seem to have a view of speech being allowed so long as the first speaker is privileged never to be disagreed with by a later speaker, and never to have anyone try to persuade others not to accept the first speaker's argument. That's not how free speech works.
Or is it a percentage thing? When 50.0000001% of a group of people share an opinion, would you like the police to swoop in and start forcibly preventing speech just in case more people might be persuaded of the idea and join the "groupthink"?
(also, funny thing, there's a lot of diversity in the anti-Thiel/anti-Trump opinions, but a whole lot of "wow, these people all seem to be reading the same script" in the pro-Thiel/pro-Trump, so maybe consider carefully who you'd like to accuse of groupthink. Oh wait, crap, I just tried to persuade someone to take an action; never mind, I'll see myself off to the labor camp)
Oh, surely they can. I just won't be a part of a groupthink community and would oppose the effort of turning whole technology community into such. If you want to organize "Trump haters of Silicon Valley" meetup, feel free to. As long as you are not going to demand that "Trump lovers of Silicon Valley" meetup is shut down and meetup.com deletes their account. See the difference?
> Or is it a percentage thing?
It's not a percentage thing, it's a mindset thing. The fact that you turn to police and coercion all the time is another sign. The point is that we need to be open to coexisting with people that disagree with us, and that's a good thing. The urge to run for a safe space and surround oneself with a warm fuzzy cloak of groupthink is a natural one, but it's not a good thing if you want a healthy and intellectually honest and vibrant community around you.
> but a whole lot of "wow, these people all seem to be reading the same script" in the pro-Thiel/pro-Trump,
Of course, people that agree with you are all independent intellectual powerhouses, and people that disagree with you are all mindless drones zombified by Evil Powers. Funny how it happens like that all the time, eh?
And double funny: it started with trying to persuade someone to disassociate from the campaign/supporters of a man who literally talks about wielding the law to silence journalism he doesn't like.
> who literally talks about wielding the law to silence journalism
This is, of course, despicable and should be condemned. I certainly think it's one of the worst qualities in Trump and understand how that could be a deal-breaker for people not to vote for him.
On the other hand, he is running against the candidate who has promised to use not just private libel law, but the full force of federal government regulatory machine to suppress the speech of her political opponents (and when I say "her opponents" I am not being rhetorical - it's the speech against her personally that she found so objectionable that needed the First Amendment to be overridden). And who was the member of the administration that was documented to use federal government to oppress political opponents.
So I can also understand how for other people it can look prudent to choose the lesser evil (private lawsuits) over the bigger evil (systematic governmental oppression).
In any case, both positions are legitimate and should be debated and put forward on the market of ideas. The idea, however, that association with one of these must make you a pariah - I don't think that will market very well. Or that I want to visit a market where it markets well.
For you? A lot of situations are morally acceptable. For you to demand others to do it, even though they clearly not inclined to? Very narrow set of situations, mostly involving heinous crimes.
Yet one satirical comment lampooning it is "jump to police and coercion all the time" and "why is that".
I suggest you get checked out, you've got more projection going on than an overbooked IMAX theater.
tl;dr: does YC doing nothing about Thiel mean "culture fit" is dead as a concept?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_July_...