You have a few paragraphs on "the conservative says..." and you do an admirable job explaining what liberals think conservatives are - but that's not what conservatives are and it's not what they ever were!
I might write a post on this topic in a few weeks.
Resentment is a game-theoretically useful mechanism for social purposes. It is also a powerful hardcoded emotion to organize by. Neither of those in any way justify its existence, when we have things like principles. The point of principles is to minimize the ability of might to make right, and for injustice to occur as the result of feelings.
Of course, railing against hardcoded emotions that are game-theoretically winning by massive margins in modern times is pretty ineffectual. So, eh.
Nice write up, though I think Thiel's theology needs to be covered more deeply to understand his goals. Among other things, the desire for growth is, I think, very close related to a fear of death in Thiel's case. His views on human nature etc. all suggest an unusual and, imo, likely heretical view of Christianity—perhaps something like gnosticism.
Interesting... I've known him mostly as "that rich anti-college guy," so his uber-weird-transhumanist-christianity was very surprising & way too much to take on. May look more into it in the future, though...
The tech-bros are so immersed in technology that they don't think any other way of life exists. They invent whole political ideologies based solely on the needs of their particular industry. I worked 35 years in the criminal justice system. People would, correctly, call me a nut if I developed a political philosophy around Criminal Justice.
This. Why did we allow tech to become a leading principle or value of change when it's simply a tool? When else have we ever led change firstly by a set of tools? We came up with the design principles first. We dropped the ball in thinking that knowledge and information work was somehow different than any other discipline built upon thought and action.
The problem is the deeply indoctrinated, misunderstood, and now nonsensical left-right spectrum. The right is only toward decentralization and as limited a government as possible. The left encompasses all forms of collectivism and Statism. Instead, we have collectivist movements (Nazism, fascism) called right-wing when they’re nothing of the sort. Similarly, there’s no such thing as right-wing Zionism. Revisionist Zionism is framed as right-wing compared to labor, but both are still left-wing. Globalism is and can only be left-wing and it exhibits all the features of every brand of collectivism. Global governments partnering with corporations to implement a global agenda of control is not, and can never be, right-wing.
I think we're just awkwardly lurching through a really weird political realignment right now... for a while "Right" has described both libertarian-ish views about economy and Christian-ish views about society, and "Left" was mostly not-that. But then Bill Clinton embraced Reaganite neoliberalism, and then more recently the Left schismed on the question of identity-politics, and now we have a bunch of socially-conservative Marxists and Maoists and national populists running around, and neoliberalism is trying to reorganize itself into a big-tent center-left Abundance agenda, but the far-left is rioting, and it's just total chaos.
At some point, I imagine we'll settle into an educated-elite-Abundance vs. populist-nativist-Trumpist equilibrium, and conservatives will be about as homeless as True Radical Marxist Leftists have been since the days of Debs...
But those still are not right and left. You’re incorporating the confusion. The spectrum goes between centralization and decentralization. The social issues, the brands of economic theory, all of that is a function of leftism. There is a global government partnering with corporations to control the world and the world economy. Political theories that ignore this are useless. It has been this way for centuries. Left and right, as described in mainstream thought, are two sides positioned in a Controlled Opposition Dynamic, both of which are leftist. The Republican establishment in America is a leftist movement. Zionism is a leftist movement. So called right-wing media is leftist media marketed to people who don’t like the primary brand of leftism.
Well, there's a reason we have more specific words like "statism" and "libertarianism" (or maybe "anarchy"?) to describe the split you're talking about—because Left and Right have been really overdetermined for a while! Well into the 21st century, American libertarians were all Tea Partyists who *also* thought gay marriage sucked, and socialists were all progressive democrats who loved unfettered immigration and affirmative action. People have been pretty mixed up for a while...
Honestly, I'm not sure that "Right" and "Left" have *ever* been used in the perfectly-clean way you describe, and I'm not sure what benefit you derive from insisting that they mean exactly what you suggest. (Revisionist) Zionism is statist, sure (it's about building a state) but it also has fundamentally Rightist vibes (it's an ethnonationalist project). What's wrong with saying that, exactly?
It’s basically the tranny conversation. There’s no such thing as rightist vibes detached from the actual dichotomy. What are rightist vibes? In the same way, there’s nothing to the concept of being a woman or a man detached from the natural sexual characteristics.
People have been totally unmoored on this because of the Regime’s desire to equate “the right” with Nazism/fascism. There are no collectivist movements on the right. The confusion persists to creat the illusion that collectivism is necessary no matter where you turn. It isn’t.
Also, I would suggest you read The Transfer Agreement by Edwin Black. It’s enlightening on the Controlled Opposition aspects of the period before and up through WWII. Understanding that the Nazis and Zionists were in a formalized for-profit business relationship for the purpose of creating Israel will make your understanding of left-right seem nonsensical.
And it is nonsensical. It’s a collection of characteristics that define what a thing is, claiming the thing is actually the one thing it cannot be. When you can successfully psyop that thought process into American minds for generations, a concept exists as itself and its opposite simultaneously. The disagreement then becomes, clearly, a side dealing with reality and a side totally detached from reality. When the media lies to you about everything, do you really think they don’t lie about who the smart people are?
The people the mainstream identifies as smart are the most gullible people in all of human history. They profess belief in hopes that the expression of the belief will earn them financial or social awards. When that happens, politics and geopolitics become easy to understand.
“Conservatives” is a meaningless label. The Republican Party is not remotely conservative. They facilitate the implementation of the global progressive agenda the same as the Democrats. This is true worldwide except in countries that reject the global Regime. You can identify them because Regime media calls their leaders autocrats and dictators.
I’ll take abundance liberalism seriously when it actually builds things. People have been writing about this shit for decades but blue cities still don’t build houses and nyc elected a socialist intifada member.
If you want to build just become a republican and move to a red state.
“Democrats are kind of sluggish and indecisive and sometimes they elect radicals so if you want to change things for the better you should join my cult led by a deranged, economically-illiterate imbecile.”
The mind of the American conservative is truly rotted beyond recognition at this point.
It seems like Thiel is pretty consistent, from what you wrote. He was a libertarian when he was young and is a libertarian now. And to be quite honest, the US and the world has seen absolutely enormous changes since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Basically all of the Industrial Revolution, antibiotics, birth control, electricity, automobiles, radio, television, the internet, smart phones, and even air conditioning are all sufficiently large changes that they run afoul of the kind of conservatish arguments about opposing change, caution, etc. The push for government to control things is hubristic and also an aberration in US history (excepting the quasi totalitarian slave south).
Thiel is neither crazy nor particularly conservative. Rather he is attempting do deal with the same fractured reality we are. Things are moving too fast, the center cannot hold.
For example, many were entirely too fast to write off Apple with regard to AI. A mistake for four reasons:
1) Apple is an enormous cash cow that focuses on consumer products and integrated systems.
2) Apple does not yet see AI as mature or particularly useful as a plug-and-play consumer product. Fair, though not quite in line with AI promotional dogma or doomerism.
3) Apple is now considering buying the entire AI tech stack from...somebody.
4) The internet and AI will reshape education top to bottom. Harvard is cooked. Future technocrats are home grown, literally. Count on Apple to facilitate this transition with consumer oriented AI-teaching-tech (largely unbiased and terribly cheap), deployed to homes and to whatever the schools of the future look like. Apple wins again.
Not that I own any stock in Apple. Well, maybe a little.
"Thiel and his ilk have totally given up on principled conservatism. The idea that personal responsibility matters, that stability should be valued, that society should be conserved has fallen completely out of favor on the Right."
The most obvious reason for this is that conservatives do not conserve anything. There once was a 'moral majority' based on an idea of America as governed by a majority of evangelical Christians. This was killed and buried via immigration and atheism. And liberals, including Abundance liberals, are still holding the smoking pistol in their hands while asking for an olive branch.
This is a bizarre thing to think! Throughout American history, conservatives were mostly not evangelicals. The moral majority was not a majority in any sense; and the idea that a rise in atheism killed the *civic* religion is totally ridiculous! Non-Christian conservatives can still support the Constitution and the Enlightenment, and all kinds of conservatives can still value personal responsibility and hard work.
Of course, I understand that Christians might want to return to a world where their faith had more influence over government—but Thiel’s reactionary politics won’t accomplish that at all! Better to work on improving their image and, yes, telling people that Christianity is peaceful and safe, as if that’s a flat-out good thing.
"Throughout American history, conservatives were mostly not evangelicals."
This should highlight how ineffectual American conservatism has been in the long term. America as a nation of WASPs was killed by immigration. America as a land of self reliant farmers is dead from land mergers and panics and agricultural regulation. America as a land of states with autonomy is dead from the Civil War and then FDR's sweeping tide of legislation. America as the land of the free under the Bill of Rights is in the process of being strangled. Anything you try to conserve, liberals will kill for power.
"Of course, I understand that Christians might want to return to a world where their faith had more influence over government—but Thiel’s reactionary politics won’t accomplish that at all!"
Sane Christians are coming around to the view that nothing productive can be done until the murderer in the room is first removed, or at the very least disarmed.
It depends on what you mean by evangelical. Present day “non-denominational” evangelical Christians are an off-shoot of low-church Baptism, though they cannot bring themselves to admit it. Here in America they have evolved into their own very-weird thing. It shouldn’t even be called Protestant at this point given how divorced its theology is from the Reformation.
And, America “as a nation of self-reliant farmers” was killed by the tractor, combine harvester, etc. 88% of American farms, today, are smaller than 250 acres. Pass a law that the remaining 12% be split up in similar fashion and you still will not have anything near a Jeffersonian, agrarian society. Pass a law capping farms at 100 acres, to all be individually owned, and you wouldn’t reach 10 percent of total employment in the ag sector. You’d need an American Khmer Rouge for that. And, given the pull of horseshoe theory, who knows. The reactionary right in America is probably happy to go there.
The televangelist Christianity that was a major political force in the past couple of decades was a definitely a novel thing separate from prior American Protestant denominations. It was the reaction of a bunch of confused and scared peasants trying to create a new religious force to anchor American society after the prior religious and social norms were dissolved by Civil Rights. So that again highlights the failure of conservatives to maintain religious and social norms.
I have also seen a growing affinity for Khmer Rouge type movements in the far right, and not without reason...
Oh, no, without reason is the point. As it is for all tantrums.
And it extends far beyond televangelists. With different relatives in town and trying to coordinate schedules, Christmas service at a nearby Eaglebrook franchise was all we could manage, not yet knowing what we were in for. Which was a pastor telling the congregation he’d read the Bible so it didn’t need to. Which, again, low-church weirdos now but simultaneously untethered from Reformation theology.
An idea. That’s all that it was. You’re entitled to your own self-serving ideas but you aren’t entitled to hoist them upon me or anyone else. There is nothing more American than that.
The same Bill of Rights you otherwise appeal to guarantees freedom of religious practice (or lack thereof) and no law establishing any religion.
The same Bill of Rights which predates any notion of “evangelical” Christianity. The mere notion of “evangelical” Christianity presupposes the ability to evangelize at all. Which is only allowed in states which do not allow the establishment of religion. Otherwise there would be just one Christian denomination and thus no need or ability to “evangelize”.
As one of those evil deists (same as most of the Founding Fathers) wrapped in Catholicism nothing would make me laugh in old age more than seeing ever fractious Protestant denominations get stomped by the RCC or just otherwise kill each other to their own devices. If European states had machine guns during the Thirty Years War the European continent would be like the Congo 300 years on. The American continent would resemble the Balkans.
Spinoza and Hume have brought more peace and joy to your life than any charlatan Christian preacher. They just weren’t willing to trade money for your smug self-satisfaction.
No law establishing any religion, and yet every organ of the state reacts like an offended immune system if you make any sort of vaguely anti-semetic noise. Curious.
You have a few paragraphs on "the conservative says..." and you do an admirable job explaining what liberals think conservatives are - but that's not what conservatives are and it's not what they ever were!
I might write a post on this topic in a few weeks.
“A god that works in mysterious ways bears a suspicious resemblance to shit just happening.” -some internet person (Adrian Briggs?.. I don’t know)
Resentment is a game-theoretically useful mechanism for social purposes. It is also a powerful hardcoded emotion to organize by. Neither of those in any way justify its existence, when we have things like principles. The point of principles is to minimize the ability of might to make right, and for injustice to occur as the result of feelings.
Of course, railing against hardcoded emotions that are game-theoretically winning by massive margins in modern times is pretty ineffectual. So, eh.
Nice write up, though I think Thiel's theology needs to be covered more deeply to understand his goals. Among other things, the desire for growth is, I think, very close related to a fear of death in Thiel's case. His views on human nature etc. all suggest an unusual and, imo, likely heretical view of Christianity—perhaps something like gnosticism.
Interesting... I've known him mostly as "that rich anti-college guy," so his uber-weird-transhumanist-christianity was very surprising & way too much to take on. May look more into it in the future, though...
I think Peter T is your typical libertarian, which in my mind is almost synonymous to anarchist.
Scaramucci once said that society/country is not a business, and good businessman may not necessarily understand how to govern.
The tech-bros are so immersed in technology that they don't think any other way of life exists. They invent whole political ideologies based solely on the needs of their particular industry. I worked 35 years in the criminal justice system. People would, correctly, call me a nut if I developed a political philosophy around Criminal Justice.
This. Why did we allow tech to become a leading principle or value of change when it's simply a tool? When else have we ever led change firstly by a set of tools? We came up with the design principles first. We dropped the ball in thinking that knowledge and information work was somehow different than any other discipline built upon thought and action.
The problem is the deeply indoctrinated, misunderstood, and now nonsensical left-right spectrum. The right is only toward decentralization and as limited a government as possible. The left encompasses all forms of collectivism and Statism. Instead, we have collectivist movements (Nazism, fascism) called right-wing when they’re nothing of the sort. Similarly, there’s no such thing as right-wing Zionism. Revisionist Zionism is framed as right-wing compared to labor, but both are still left-wing. Globalism is and can only be left-wing and it exhibits all the features of every brand of collectivism. Global governments partnering with corporations to implement a global agenda of control is not, and can never be, right-wing.
I think we're just awkwardly lurching through a really weird political realignment right now... for a while "Right" has described both libertarian-ish views about economy and Christian-ish views about society, and "Left" was mostly not-that. But then Bill Clinton embraced Reaganite neoliberalism, and then more recently the Left schismed on the question of identity-politics, and now we have a bunch of socially-conservative Marxists and Maoists and national populists running around, and neoliberalism is trying to reorganize itself into a big-tent center-left Abundance agenda, but the far-left is rioting, and it's just total chaos.
At some point, I imagine we'll settle into an educated-elite-Abundance vs. populist-nativist-Trumpist equilibrium, and conservatives will be about as homeless as True Radical Marxist Leftists have been since the days of Debs...
But those still are not right and left. You’re incorporating the confusion. The spectrum goes between centralization and decentralization. The social issues, the brands of economic theory, all of that is a function of leftism. There is a global government partnering with corporations to control the world and the world economy. Political theories that ignore this are useless. It has been this way for centuries. Left and right, as described in mainstream thought, are two sides positioned in a Controlled Opposition Dynamic, both of which are leftist. The Republican establishment in America is a leftist movement. Zionism is a leftist movement. So called right-wing media is leftist media marketed to people who don’t like the primary brand of leftism.
Well, there's a reason we have more specific words like "statism" and "libertarianism" (or maybe "anarchy"?) to describe the split you're talking about—because Left and Right have been really overdetermined for a while! Well into the 21st century, American libertarians were all Tea Partyists who *also* thought gay marriage sucked, and socialists were all progressive democrats who loved unfettered immigration and affirmative action. People have been pretty mixed up for a while...
Honestly, I'm not sure that "Right" and "Left" have *ever* been used in the perfectly-clean way you describe, and I'm not sure what benefit you derive from insisting that they mean exactly what you suggest. (Revisionist) Zionism is statist, sure (it's about building a state) but it also has fundamentally Rightist vibes (it's an ethnonationalist project). What's wrong with saying that, exactly?
It’s basically the tranny conversation. There’s no such thing as rightist vibes detached from the actual dichotomy. What are rightist vibes? In the same way, there’s nothing to the concept of being a woman or a man detached from the natural sexual characteristics.
People have been totally unmoored on this because of the Regime’s desire to equate “the right” with Nazism/fascism. There are no collectivist movements on the right. The confusion persists to creat the illusion that collectivism is necessary no matter where you turn. It isn’t.
Also, I would suggest you read The Transfer Agreement by Edwin Black. It’s enlightening on the Controlled Opposition aspects of the period before and up through WWII. Understanding that the Nazis and Zionists were in a formalized for-profit business relationship for the purpose of creating Israel will make your understanding of left-right seem nonsensical.
And it is nonsensical. It’s a collection of characteristics that define what a thing is, claiming the thing is actually the one thing it cannot be. When you can successfully psyop that thought process into American minds for generations, a concept exists as itself and its opposite simultaneously. The disagreement then becomes, clearly, a side dealing with reality and a side totally detached from reality. When the media lies to you about everything, do you really think they don’t lie about who the smart people are?
The people the mainstream identifies as smart are the most gullible people in all of human history. They profess belief in hopes that the expression of the belief will earn them financial or social awards. When that happens, politics and geopolitics become easy to understand.
“Conservatives” is a meaningless label. The Republican Party is not remotely conservative. They facilitate the implementation of the global progressive agenda the same as the Democrats. This is true worldwide except in countries that reject the global Regime. You can identify them because Regime media calls their leaders autocrats and dictators.
Thiel thinks a stock market of capital is a communist plot. He is incoherent. And another bloody immigrant.
I’ll take abundance liberalism seriously when it actually builds things. People have been writing about this shit for decades but blue cities still don’t build houses and nyc elected a socialist intifada member.
If you want to build just become a republican and move to a red state.
Bill passed in California... let's see!
Another bill... where is the will?
“Democrats are kind of sluggish and indecisive and sometimes they elect radicals so if you want to change things for the better you should join my cult led by a deranged, economically-illiterate imbecile.”
The mind of the American conservative is truly rotted beyond recognition at this point.
California is home to almost 40M people. They’ve already built a lot more housing than any other state.
If they start building a lot more, other states won’t be able to compete.
Peter Thiel is emblematic of what the people who call themselves conservatives are now.
It seems like Thiel is pretty consistent, from what you wrote. He was a libertarian when he was young and is a libertarian now. And to be quite honest, the US and the world has seen absolutely enormous changes since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Basically all of the Industrial Revolution, antibiotics, birth control, electricity, automobiles, radio, television, the internet, smart phones, and even air conditioning are all sufficiently large changes that they run afoul of the kind of conservatish arguments about opposing change, caution, etc. The push for government to control things is hubristic and also an aberration in US history (excepting the quasi totalitarian slave south).
He never was
Does anybody really know what Thiel it is? Does anybody really care?
Thiel is neither crazy nor particularly conservative. Rather he is attempting do deal with the same fractured reality we are. Things are moving too fast, the center cannot hold.
For example, many were entirely too fast to write off Apple with regard to AI. A mistake for four reasons:
1) Apple is an enormous cash cow that focuses on consumer products and integrated systems.
2) Apple does not yet see AI as mature or particularly useful as a plug-and-play consumer product. Fair, though not quite in line with AI promotional dogma or doomerism.
3) Apple is now considering buying the entire AI tech stack from...somebody.
4) The internet and AI will reshape education top to bottom. Harvard is cooked. Future technocrats are home grown, literally. Count on Apple to facilitate this transition with consumer oriented AI-teaching-tech (largely unbiased and terribly cheap), deployed to homes and to whatever the schools of the future look like. Apple wins again.
Not that I own any stock in Apple. Well, maybe a little.
The man looks physically unwell! Ketamine, MDMA, shroom abuse? Messes with the mind as well as the body. He looks to have a "wasting" type of illness.
"Thiel and his ilk have totally given up on principled conservatism. The idea that personal responsibility matters, that stability should be valued, that society should be conserved has fallen completely out of favor on the Right."
The most obvious reason for this is that conservatives do not conserve anything. There once was a 'moral majority' based on an idea of America as governed by a majority of evangelical Christians. This was killed and buried via immigration and atheism. And liberals, including Abundance liberals, are still holding the smoking pistol in their hands while asking for an olive branch.
This is a bizarre thing to think! Throughout American history, conservatives were mostly not evangelicals. The moral majority was not a majority in any sense; and the idea that a rise in atheism killed the *civic* religion is totally ridiculous! Non-Christian conservatives can still support the Constitution and the Enlightenment, and all kinds of conservatives can still value personal responsibility and hard work.
Of course, I understand that Christians might want to return to a world where their faith had more influence over government—but Thiel’s reactionary politics won’t accomplish that at all! Better to work on improving their image and, yes, telling people that Christianity is peaceful and safe, as if that’s a flat-out good thing.
"Throughout American history, conservatives were mostly not evangelicals."
This should highlight how ineffectual American conservatism has been in the long term. America as a nation of WASPs was killed by immigration. America as a land of self reliant farmers is dead from land mergers and panics and agricultural regulation. America as a land of states with autonomy is dead from the Civil War and then FDR's sweeping tide of legislation. America as the land of the free under the Bill of Rights is in the process of being strangled. Anything you try to conserve, liberals will kill for power.
"Of course, I understand that Christians might want to return to a world where their faith had more influence over government—but Thiel’s reactionary politics won’t accomplish that at all!"
Sane Christians are coming around to the view that nothing productive can be done until the murderer in the room is first removed, or at the very least disarmed.
It depends on what you mean by evangelical. Present day “non-denominational” evangelical Christians are an off-shoot of low-church Baptism, though they cannot bring themselves to admit it. Here in America they have evolved into their own very-weird thing. It shouldn’t even be called Protestant at this point given how divorced its theology is from the Reformation.
And, America “as a nation of self-reliant farmers” was killed by the tractor, combine harvester, etc. 88% of American farms, today, are smaller than 250 acres. Pass a law that the remaining 12% be split up in similar fashion and you still will not have anything near a Jeffersonian, agrarian society. Pass a law capping farms at 100 acres, to all be individually owned, and you wouldn’t reach 10 percent of total employment in the ag sector. You’d need an American Khmer Rouge for that. And, given the pull of horseshoe theory, who knows. The reactionary right in America is probably happy to go there.
The televangelist Christianity that was a major political force in the past couple of decades was a definitely a novel thing separate from prior American Protestant denominations. It was the reaction of a bunch of confused and scared peasants trying to create a new religious force to anchor American society after the prior religious and social norms were dissolved by Civil Rights. So that again highlights the failure of conservatives to maintain religious and social norms.
I have also seen a growing affinity for Khmer Rouge type movements in the far right, and not without reason...
Oh, no, without reason is the point. As it is for all tantrums.
And it extends far beyond televangelists. With different relatives in town and trying to coordinate schedules, Christmas service at a nearby Eaglebrook franchise was all we could manage, not yet knowing what we were in for. Which was a pastor telling the congregation he’d read the Bible so it didn’t need to. Which, again, low-church weirdos now but simultaneously untethered from Reformation theology.
A tantrum is only a tantrum if they lose. Not if they win.
An idea. That’s all that it was. You’re entitled to your own self-serving ideas but you aren’t entitled to hoist them upon me or anyone else. There is nothing more American than that.
The same Bill of Rights you otherwise appeal to guarantees freedom of religious practice (or lack thereof) and no law establishing any religion.
The same Bill of Rights which predates any notion of “evangelical” Christianity. The mere notion of “evangelical” Christianity presupposes the ability to evangelize at all. Which is only allowed in states which do not allow the establishment of religion. Otherwise there would be just one Christian denomination and thus no need or ability to “evangelize”.
As one of those evil deists (same as most of the Founding Fathers) wrapped in Catholicism nothing would make me laugh in old age more than seeing ever fractious Protestant denominations get stomped by the RCC or just otherwise kill each other to their own devices. If European states had machine guns during the Thirty Years War the European continent would be like the Congo 300 years on. The American continent would resemble the Balkans.
Spinoza and Hume have brought more peace and joy to your life than any charlatan Christian preacher. They just weren’t willing to trade money for your smug self-satisfaction.
No law establishing any religion, and yet every organ of the state reacts like an offended immune system if you make any sort of vaguely anti-semetic noise. Curious.
Coward
Elaborate
blank stare