I think we spend too much time trying to ascribe an internal consistency to famous people. Finding internal consistency with somebody doesn't change the destructive trajectory of their politics.
Indeed, any sufficiently mature ideology can be rendered self consistent, either on its own or by applying layers of apologetic obfuscation. Yet innumerable self consistent ideologies are mutually irreconcilable. Self consistency is the lowest of low bars for any ideology to surmount.
There is a common progression, though, from certain 'outsider' ideologies when one is an outsider to a particular form of conservatism when one gets power.
I mean, this is pretty obvious, right? Power-hungry people only hate it when other people have it.
I thought it was incredibly even-handed. At least, I know I wouldn't be able to write such a dispassionate post about someone like Thiel (a baddie in my opinion, for the record).
If anyone is interested in Thiel's motivations and interests in politics, I recommend Geoff Shullenberger's discussions:
Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook: Peter Thiel’s French Connection: Broad discussion of Thiel's writing and actions pre-2016 (when the essay was written), along with his relationship to Strauss and particularly Girard.
If the republicans were smart, which they mostly aren’t, they would let Thiel be their nominee for president next time around. I would vote for him over nearly anyone the dems are going to throw out there.
I'm losing track of how this works, of late. Canadian-born Ted Cruz was able to run for president, with at least one state ruling that he was eligible[1]. Of course there were the made-up controversies about Barack Obama, which I think can be dismissed. John McCain, meanwhile, seemed to get some kind of clearance from Congress to be able to run, as we was born in the Panama Canal zone[2].
Proudly declaring "I have a great solution that no one has ever thought of before," without putting in the due diligence to understand feasibility and consequences, is close to the literal definition of the reactionary mindset.
More concisely, it is hubris plus gumption minus diligence.
Is that actually smart though? I think such a strategy would rely a lot on inertia of existing voters (he is kind of Christian but how many republicans would vote in a gay man?) as well as finding new voters (hoping for masses of new voters after a big ideology shift sounds like a good route to failure, though trump had success with it). And obviously he would need to run and win the primaries, both of which seem unlikely to me.
Honestly I think the republicans will have to stick with trump for a while yet after having tied themselves to him in the last four years. Unlike Thiel, Trump can definitely win a lot of votes. He managed to come a very close second in what, after four years of trump and half a cocked up pandemic, ought to have been an easy win for the dems.
Or here's a "hot take" he's not fucking stupid and knows something removing the USA's power without crippling China's means he's never going to get his libertarian utopia.
The USA needs to win every battle against China if he ever wants his dreams to come true is it really surprising he supports it so much???
If everything we know about a person, whether it be a Thiel, a Gates, a Soros, a Barak, a Trump, we learned through the media, and, we believe the media is biased, how much confidence should we have in our opinions of them?
I spend a lot of time working out why I believe what I believe about people I know strictly from 2nd or 3rd hand information, and for the most part, it stands on pretty soft foundations. Hence, I remain flexible in my opinions in such cases.
Meaning, I wouldn't write and publish articles that ascribe confidence in my conclusions.
You can be the biggest free market capitalist in the world but it would be foolish not to acknowledge that the American government-industrial-military complex has propped up this capitalist paradise for the better part of a century.
You can be bullish on a crypto future but it would be foolish not to acknowledge that at the moment the "decentralized" part is mostly a myth, and a few early whales + Chinese miners wield a disproportionate amount of power.
None of these views are contradictory or hypocritical. The problem is really that the boxes of possible viewpoints and philosophies keep getting smaller and further apart, and everyone is expected to neatly fit into one of them.
Peter Thiel, like everyone else, makes decisions in order to maximize his own benefit, not for the sake of presenting consistency of thought to the world. Not being libertarian when it suits you is perhaps the most libertarian thing of all.
Readit News
I mean, this is pretty obvious, right? Power-hungry people only hate it when other people have it.
Palmer Luckey started Anduril.
I'm waiting for a complete set of Lord of the Rings company that will "defend the West"
Surprised it hasn't been founded already.
3 paragraphs later and that turned out to be a big old lie.
Is that a good thing? It's unfortunate that we have lost the ability to evaluate ideas without constantly signaling our political positions.
Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook: Peter Thiel’s French Connection: Broad discussion of Thiel's writing and actions pre-2016 (when the essay was written), along with his relationship to Strauss and particularly Girard.
https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/08/13/mimesis-v...
Theorycels in Trumpworld: Published recently, and on the role of postmodernist-adjacent figures, including Thiel, in justifying the politics of Trump.
https://outsidertheory.com/theorycels-in-trumpworld/
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz#Citizenship 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain#2008_presidential_...
More concisely, it is hubris plus gumption minus diligence.
Honestly I think the republicans will have to stick with trump for a while yet after having tied themselves to him in the last four years. Unlike Thiel, Trump can definitely win a lot of votes. He managed to come a very close second in what, after four years of trump and half a cocked up pandemic, ought to have been an easy win for the dems.
The USA needs to win every battle against China if he ever wants his dreams to come true is it really surprising he supports it so much???
I spend a lot of time working out why I believe what I believe about people I know strictly from 2nd or 3rd hand information, and for the most part, it stands on pretty soft foundations. Hence, I remain flexible in my opinions in such cases.
Meaning, I wouldn't write and publish articles that ascribe confidence in my conclusions.
You can be the biggest free market capitalist in the world but it would be foolish not to acknowledge that the American government-industrial-military complex has propped up this capitalist paradise for the better part of a century.
You can be bullish on a crypto future but it would be foolish not to acknowledge that at the moment the "decentralized" part is mostly a myth, and a few early whales + Chinese miners wield a disproportionate amount of power.
None of these views are contradictory or hypocritical. The problem is really that the boxes of possible viewpoints and philosophies keep getting smaller and further apart, and everyone is expected to neatly fit into one of them.
Peter Thiel, like everyone else, makes decisions in order to maximize his own benefit, not for the sake of presenting consistency of thought to the world. Not being libertarian when it suits you is perhaps the most libertarian thing of all.