04 August 2024

JD Vance Is Worse than You Think

Short version is two words, "Peter Thiel."

The longer version is that Vance is entirely a creation of Peter Thiel, a right winger enamored with the delusions of Ayn Rand, part of the "PayPal Mafia," and a literal vampire.

When one looks at at Vance's pre-Senate career it is a nearly record of failure where he has continued onto new projects only because of the support of his patron.

Peter Thiel is one of the few public figures out there who is indisputably worse than Donald Trump:

When political observers describe J.D. Vance as “weird,” what they usually mean is the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s ranting about childless people, his extremism on questions like abortion and divorce, or perhaps his choice of eye makeup.

But there is a deeper level to Vance’s political weirdness that places him amid the most sinister forces in the nation today – and calls into question the supposed patriotism that motivates him and the “America First” movement he and Donald Trump now represent. To understand what Vance really stands for, and why his ideology is so distant from the Constitutional democracy he has sworn to uphold as a United States senator, it is necessary to examine the chief sponsor of his political and business career: a Silicon Valley billionaire named Peter Thiel.

Born in Germany and raised in South Africa, Thiel made his enormous fortune as a venture capitalist and executive in tech companies such as PayPal and Palantir. Attracted from an early age to far-right ideologues like the addled author Ayn Rand, the tech mogul has identified himself as a “conservative libertarian” and a critic of democratic systems. Not so long ago, he was heard to say that democracy and freedom – or at least his idea of “freedom” – are no longer compatible.

………

It isn’t hard to imagine that Thiel, who has financed research aimed at human immortality, [Thiel has funded the use of young people's blood to extend human life, literal vampirism] envisions himself as one of those godlike rulers. Does Vance agree with Thiel’s jaundiced view of democracy? Does he push crypto because digital finance will allow billionaires and their businesses to evade taxes and launder money? Does he look forward to a plutocratic dystopia replacing our republic?

No doubt the embattled Republican veep nominee would deny any such disturbing views. Yet Thiel isn’t the only ultra-reactionary influence on Vance. The Ohio senator has also endorsed Curtis Yarvin, a cranky computer programmer who says America needs “a national CEO, or what’s called a dictator,” and embraced Rod Dreher, an American writer who now serves the illiberal regime of Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban.

JD Vance is a real horror show.

The only question is how to couch his awfulness in appropriate terms.  (Pun intended)

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