In the current setup, having enough money protects you from the laws of the country and the judgment of others. Thiel is rich enough and therefore powerful enough that these culture wars will never personally affect him or anyone he cares about.
I've always suspected this mentality had a lot to do with why Peter Thiel is like that. Growing up in the wreckage of the AIDS crisis and thinking to yourself, "I don't have to go down with them. I don't ever have to be like them. I'm still here, because I'm smarter, I'm better than them." I'd never admit any of this publicly, but I have a lot of similar thoughts as a trans woman who slipped through all the cracks and ended up wealthy in my thirties. Poverty is the tip of the discrimination spear and you really could buy your way out of it all.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition...There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
I'm quite aware of the origin, but I appreciate you posting the link for others' edification.
For one with less confusion about the speaker: "For my friends everything, for my enemies the law." --Oscar R. Benavides, President of Peru from 1933 to 1939
The weird part isn't that a socialist got elected mayor of New York. The weird part is that the Democratic party didn't have anyone better to primary him out of the nomination.
The two-party system seems pretty cooked at this point.
Personally I find that quote tired and trite. But so-called "conservatives" could certainly stand to clear up the matter by articulating what their constructive political stances actually are these days - that is beyond merely vice signalling, performative cruelty, and a cult of personality around Dear Leader.
As a libertarian, I certainly have my problems with the progressive orthodoxy. But every time I've tried to work out current conservative principles, by generally appealing to what they claim to be, I've basically just gotten a brush off of why those traditional ideals are not applicable and then a bunch of whataboutism to justify why they have to kill our society to purportedly save it.
TBF Trump isn't a conservative. He's a populist that overthrew the Republican party without firing a single shot and the "conservatives" are all too busy running around in circles to do something about him.
Sure, I agree and I've made similar arguments. But there are still throngs of people self-identifying as conservative and considering Trump conservative. The best I've been able to surmise is that to them, "conservative" merely means in line with the reactionary talk radio of the past several decades, and that anger has replaced all of their ideals.
This is kind of understandable, because that reactionary talk radio was always a form of managed dissent. They kept getting tricked by it, and as communications democratized they somewhat realized this (hence the whole RINO thing). But as usual they're unable to see the larger overall picture, and so direct blame at whomever scapegoats their new info-bubble managers point at.
I used to think this was deep, but it equally applies to progressivism as well as well as a range of human institutions. It's a restatement the basic observation that humans are prone to in-group bias. What's really dangerous is that some refuse to see the same flaw within themselves and instead always ascribe it to "the other".
It's in the proud tradition of Roy Cohn, Grover Norquist and countless others that cause a huge surge in grindr usage whenever there's a Republican event anywhere.
I think it's more and more evident that the ultra rich (and their circles of subordinates) don't actually care about the common divisive topical areas. It seems to be the playbook that they have a divisive stance to put them in a specific camp (at their convenience). History has shown us that those ultra rich have no regard to flip flopping as it sees fit to their outcomes. It has nothing to do with self hate or being savvy - the reality is: it doesn't matter for them because nobody in their circle cares. I think that's very evident with Thiel.
If you don't think so, play this game: how would things change for Peter Thiel if he was of a different race? It wouldn't. Greed is blind to these superficial facets that drive the normies up the wall. It's truly by design. And it's so broadly accepted you don't even need to hide these things anymore which only adds insult to injury.
The superrich in general don't care about being hypocritical, so I wouldn't pay too much attention to his personal preferences. Just look at the Epstein situation. The superrich frequented there.
That maybe why he seems to be targetting Catholics rather than evangelicals.
The problem is that in much of the world (e.g. the UK) Catholics are historically left wing, AND uninterested in apocalyptic ideas so it seems a big ask.
The article does not leave me with any understanding of what his ideas actually are.
"In late modernity, where science has become scary and apocalyptic, and the legionnaires of the antichrist like Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom and Greta Thunberg argue for world government to stop science, the antichrist has somehow become anti-science."
It also explains some of the contradictions in JD Vance - if Thiel is influencing him, or if he is simply saying things to keep Thiel's donations coming in.
the rube demographic, e.g. the ones who believe the anti-christ stuff, will eat it up.
they already pander to trump, who is about as un-christian as you can get.
thiel will make all of the right moves and do the secret "actually one of us" handshake and those idiots will eat it up; his billionaire buddies will do the rest.
Imagine you’re an elite billionaire in America. Half your peers have made a "party" trip to Epstein island. What difference does a little gay sex make in that context?