The Myth of Gen X Leadership: Is There A Future For the GOP?
And a message for Peter Thiel.
Peter Thiel admits he’s not doing nearly enough. On this he’s right.
That’s the takeaway from the Weiss-Thiel interview.
Yes, for my sins I listened to the podcast between Bari Weiss and Peter Thiel the other day.
I had once worked for Bari Weiss at the Wall Street Journal editorial page and it’s no secret that I know Peter Thiel. We worked together to elect Donald J. Trump president and to defeat Gawker. Not bad work, if I say so myself. That was back when Thiel did stuff that was interesting.
Peter and I have drifted away from one another after I was a source for the Max Chafkin book, The Contrarian. That’s the official reason even though I told Thiel that I would be a source because I wanted the historical record to be correct. (I also knew what the publisher of Chafkin’s book was really all about but that’s a story for another time.)
The real reason Peter cut off ties is that I rescued him from getting in trouble with the U.S. government and made his hedging between the different countries rather difficult. Rather than get thanks for those efforts Peter decided to cut off contact. (At least Peter didn't go crazy on me like Musk did and try to blacklist me for telling him about a Russia poker player backed by the Chinese mob in his midst and to whom he was prepared to give $5.7B in overvalued Tesla stock. Silly Musk.)
The turning of Peter will be a very interesting moment should it come to pass at last. I hope it does. He’s fired some people — notably Eric Weinstein — but now he’s got to clean up his investments.
Bari Weiss and I do not like one another very much after I revealed her to be an Israeli-firster type not so long ago. She has at best a passing familiarity with journalistic ethics and her Free Press publication and Honestly. Everything is seemingly its opposite. How far removed is this from Lev Parnas’s “Fraud Guarantee” I couldn’t say.
Now there’s a lot of Peter playing the favorites in his interview — he has a very German can’t do attitude — with Weiss and candidly this stuff is getting a little tired. We get it. You’re an Xer. You’re a German-born Xer. You never stood a chance, did you? Poor thing.
Thiel goes on at some length about the stagnation thesis and what might be causing it. I have a different theory than his thesis that it’s all the political correctness.
I think the great powers worked to make it so that innovation could only happen jointly if it was to happen at all and that some of the best innovators were compromised and destroyed by hostile intelligence services.
In the 1980s monopolies became predatory agents of hostile powers rather than national champions. Bring back anti-trust policy. Bring back the WASP inventors.
The WASPs retired from the scene and the Chinese-Israeli alliance took over the major institutions, including corporate America. No WASPs in charge, no innovations. It’s not complicated. Our Edisons, Fords, and Watsons have been replaced by people pretending to be innovators — people like the “fearless” Elon Musk who would rather fuck around on Twitter than build the future.
Yes, there’s been a concerted effort since the 1980s to remove WASPs (and founding stock) Americans from higher learning and indeed venture capital. There are blacklists. Everyone knows this.
Thiel mentions the collapse of the WASP elite circa 1960s but he seems to neglect that the WASPs are very much back now. Bill Burns, director of CIA, is a WASP. Blinken is a WASP wannabe. So, too, is our president. (He only plays an Irish Catholic for the cameras.) The NSA is said to be one of the last vestiges of the New Deal.)
These things come in cycles which is what Peter seems to realize when he talks about the 1920s being the last time in which the cultural institutions were Republican. But even then those institutions were progressive. Teddy Roosevelt and Coolidge were essential here. They weren’t really “Republican,” though. They were WASP institutions and their weaknesses are, in some measure, because we’ve retreated from the field and they can coast. Not unlike today, the mob world tried to take over the country in the late 1920s and so new institutions had to form.
I know this history is lost on a lot of immigrants. My family, the Johnsons, founded the oldest prep school in America and then married into the Franklin Delano Roosevelt family. You can read the personal letters of the WASPs who switched from Coolidge Republicans to Roosevelt Democrats. They are the same people. Sure, a lot of people weren’t too keen on fighting the Krauts but when we were they went to fight the Krauts (or the Japs).
Charles Lindbergh, notwithstanding his support of the America First movement, joined the war effort and collected intelligence about the Nazi war machine.
Here’s how Lindbergh’s museum describes his efforts.
Despite being a civilian, Lindbergh flew on dawn patrols, joined rescue missions, and flew any combat mission that would get him to the front lines, and taught young pilots how to conserve fuel and fly longer-range missions.
When Lindbergh left the South Pacific in September 1944, he had participated in 50 combat missions, and was credited with at least one kill — an event that profoundly affected him and which he wrote about in his book-length essay, Of Flight and Life (1948).
This, too, could be a model for Thiel. He could put aside his weird behavior and use the Ukraine war or the birth of his daughters as a reset. Will he? Time will tell.
Weiss compares Thiel to Soros but that’s the wrong model — at least as she conceives of it. For one, Soro’s foundation was taken over by British intelligence in 2021. I mean, just look at the history of Mark Malloch Brown and tell me that he isn’t mi6! For another it’s not totally clear how much Soros was actually writing the checks (and how much the compromised consiglieres were calling the shots).
Of course the work done to roll back the anti-cash bail Kushnerite/Koch policies on criminal justice — what I’ve called “the hug a thug” initiative — was by a colleague of mine at Traitwell, quietly, with a security clearance and stats background and no doubt one of her kids running around. My colleague’s report contributed to the passage of SB6, a bill which requires cash bail for those accused of violent crimes, and became a model for the nation. All it took was the will to fight this sort of thing and roll it back.
If Thiel isn’t careful what happened to Soros will happen to him too. His foundation — and his massive tax shelter — will be seized by the state and put to the state’s purposes.
Has Thiel really tried to be helpful? No, I submit that he’s been extremely destructive. Consider his investment in Tilray, a cannabis company.
The research is coming in and it’s not good: a new study found that heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men.
What accountability, if any, should Peter take for that? What accountability should Geoff Lewis — who sourced the deal — take for this?
And let’s not even get started on Facebook—one of the most exploitative companies ever designed. Or Palantir, which would be terrifying — if it actually worked.
****
The problem is the WASP elite was selected against in the false name of meritocracy — a term which was really a cover for ethnic nepotism rather than noblesse oblige. (This is why Thiel’s co-author, David Sacks, strong defender of the “meritocracy,” is so keen on people knowing that the PayPal folks were largely Jews.)
But the WASPs simply moved. You can see this in the way that the prestige seems to have fallen from the Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Yale types. It’s played out. It’s finished.
When you talk to the Chinese or Jewish Yallie you’re not talking to the Porter Gosses or George H. W. Bushes. When you have Amy Chua grooming a young J.D. Vance at Yale Law and sleeping with her students, you’ve got a problem. Listen we know about Rumble and its weird ties to Likud Israelis. We know about a lot of the stuff you’ve been up to. We were watching.
Yes, yes, Harvard and Yale and Stanford will continue to have large donations paid to it in tribute by foreign-compromised oligarchs — Ken Griffin anyone?— but that’s not where the energy is. Nor is it where the future is going.
If you listen closely AUKUS will tell you what it actually wants and needs. Peter’s current approach of constantly hedging isn’t going to work in the moment ahead of us. If Peter doesn’t understand that he should retire.
We are rolling things back now. The question at hand is whether or not Peter will be onboard and if so, what form that shall take. My sense is that he will try to have some sort of go between between the American deep state and himself. This won’t work. Peter needs to make the effort himself.
Once upon a time Peter and I sat at his home and looked out to the Pacific Ocean. I told him that we didn't lose the frontier; it was taken from us. The reason Peter didn’t see much hope is that he, along with the other Stanford grads, doesn't really know the founding stock of America.
Or if you will, the problem is that we’ve allowed immigrants to come in and roll over us with ready access to foreign cash at the expense of a genuine vision for the country.
Maybe our “learned helplessness” was done to us by the very immigrants — Thiel, Murdoch, Musk — that we were supposed to venerate. Time has revealed that they, too, didn’t have our best interests at heart.
Peter has been given a reprieve but will it last?
****
"I think @RonDeSantisFL would make a terrific president. If he's the Republican nominee I will strongly support him in 2024." — Peter Thiel.
Knowing Peter he knows so little about this his adopted country that it’s hard to know where to begin. Could this be why he collects citizenships from different countries? We didn’t quite get an answer.
Rather interestingly Peter does not seem to understand why J.D. Vance ultimately won — Gaetz secured the Trump endorsement after Vance supported Gaetz during his troubles — or why Blake Masters was doomed before he even began. I told Peter as much at the home of Adam Ross, the plastics magnate turned Palantir board member. My father was there.
I said, rather clearly, that it was impossible to defeat an astronaut in elective office and that no one had ever done it before. “They literally have the right stuff,” I said before Thiel backed a gay dating site called the Right Stuff started by the very compromised Johnny McEntee.
Nor does he get — at least publicly — why DeSantis will never be president. It’s the rednecks, sir.
The rednecks are with Mr. Trump and the rednecks are to the Republicans what the blacks are to the Democrats.
As I explained to Peter when I advised him to back Trump Trump’s ethnicity made him ideally suited to winning the presidency in 2016. He is half German/half Scotch-Irish. This coalition is the only one Republicans can assemble if they want to win. The Germans demand manufacturing whilst the rednecks like low taxes and light regulation.
Surely Peter must have seen that Trump ran as an independent — he praised the National Health Service in 2015 before turning against it in 2018 — and that that what was the source of Trump’s appeal.
DeSantis struggled with the rednecks which is why Congressman Matt Gaetz and President Donald Trump had to rescue DeSantis’s campaign in 2018.
For what it’s worth I asked Peter to back DeSantis then but he didn’t believe that DeSantis would win. He was wrong.
DeSantis’s transition was headed by Matt Gaetz — just as I predicted it would be. When Matt Gaetz was targeted by the Likud agents Thiel wrote him off. I said that Gaetz would survive. “Someone has to stand up to the blackmailers,” I replied. It certainly wasn’t going to be Peter who stood up to them — not after he bought that Beverly Hills property for his now deceased lover from NXIVM — the Israeli-connected cult.
Peter is right that culture war is all DeSantis has. This is because, like a lot of Gen Xers, DeSantis has no imagination. He has been running for president since I first met him in 2010.
A vision of a technofuturistic Florida is possible but it won’t come from the deeply compromised Founders Fund. They’ve already bet wrong — on DeSantis and on Mayor Suarez, easily one of the most corrupt mayors in America. Peter would be wise to cut them loose. I mean really? Making Joey Krug a partner at Founders Fund? Really? Founders Fund still doesn’t have a partner based in DC.
Isn’t it interesting, too, that groomer Keith Rabois (who is an agent of Netanyahu) condemns Saudi Arabia while also getting money from Saudi Arabia?
To some extent Peter seems to get this failure on the part of DeSantis because he’s talking about housing and how expensive it’s getting. Could it be its because the free state of Florida is free from government oversight?
I once asked Peter what businesses he thought might be built in the future. He suggested it might be government contractors helping the government be more efficient. I agreed.
Sure but the real money is in helping the government crack down on the mob. We could, of course, talk honestly about U.S. infrastructure and how mobbed up it is. San Francisco just arrested a mobster and that’s a good start.
America is a forgiving place. We once allowed John Kluge — German-born American — to become the richest man in the country. He had to pay his dues, of course, and he did. There’s a John Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, for goodness sake.
We could do that again but only if Peter stops hedging and starts listening. He will find that the path he is on is as a man without a country.
Just watch what we do to Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk.
****
All the Democrats know the future is Millennial (AOC, Omar, etc.), but the GOP still doesn't get the electoral math and so it will suffer for it as history unfolds here.
Reforming the GOP, if there is any future for the GOP, it's with the millennial team.
Ron DeSantis, also knows as fat Patrick Bateman, gets you another Jan 6th event, except this time it would likely work and the US actually becomes a Bukele-style dictatorship.
You don't think that was always their plan? Look around you. Basically they've run out of options. The last ones crazy enough to try something want to desperately turn the US into DeSantis' Florida, which basically means a Russian-Chinese style despotism by Meatball Ron and as imagined by Curtis Yarvin, yup. That's why Peter Thiel will be supporting him despite everything. This is how bad things are for them.
Peter, in particular, is an embarrassment for thinking DeSantis, fat Patrick Bateman aka Meatball Ron is someone to bet on and that this Gitmo sociopath would make a "fantastic president."
The most ironic thing is, of course, that even if DeSantis did win, Peter would still be screwed because he has no clue what he's dealing with in the Sunshine State. This is not his natural habitat. Florida is a mob state and Peter can only be taken advantaged of there.
The GOP has a future if and only if the Millennials like Gaetz and Loomer take it over, or AUKUS might as well destroy it completely--who needs a natsec threat masquerading as a legitimate political party? Those are the only two options. Which one sounds more fun, Republicans? A DeSantis GOP is not a game that you can win— only a game you must destroy. And Mickey Mouse is already beating the hell out of it. You've tried all this before and it didn't work. Imagine trying it again. It won’t go well.
The future of the GOP can exist only this way, and the donors better realize it as well. Peter Thiel's bullshit "hedging strategy" will not be tolerated—if you want to "hedge" against AUKUS and the US, you're not an "investor", you're a traitor, and it's not like you were looking too loyal before this, Peter. The worst thing an investor can do is not bet on the future.
If you're not on the Millennial team, the emerging anti-DeSantis coalition, and instead you're in the GenX rolodex, then you're out of the future. It's time to recognize your friends and enemies. There is no place for GenXploitation or the GenX rolodex in the GOP, go short your own stocks and retire, you losers.
Thiel, instead of retiring after all this sedition, keeping his head down, and, frankly, hoping for mercy, he does this podcast with Bari Weiss, of all people. This is why the GenX simply cannot be saved. Don't say we didn't try to save you guys. (The disappointment, and similar betrayal, from JD Vance, shows he is more on the GenX rolodex side as well. The Yale Chisraelis stick together.)
The only alternative to outright destroying the GOP is a Millennial-led GOP as a contingency plan, and that's already seen with the Gaetz-AOC coalition with things like the bill to ban congressmen from owning or trading stocks — insider trading being a typical GenXploitation modus operandi from Silicon Valley. The Millennial Team is what needs to be prioritized and invested in when it comes to the GOP contingency plan, the mediocrities just won't do, they can't capture the Trumpist energy. The cost of not doing so is huge and time is running out. AUKUS must take care of the GenX rolodex and GOP one way or another, it is its primary domestic threat at this point.
You actually need the real politicians, that's the lesson of DeSantis—and Laura Loomer is everything the GOP needs in 2024 and beyond distilled in one Jewess.
Would DeSantis have preferred she lose to Webster or another compromised RINO? Absolutely. (Though she claims she actually won, similar to Trump. And it does seem rather obvious that McCarthy’s PAC used that Sam Bankman-Fried cash to take her out.)
At the very least, one thing is clear with Loomer, she punches so far above her weight she might as well be her own party. She almost won her 2022 Florida primary, without a Twitter account. Do you really think if the Milos and Arthur Schwartzes of the world couldn't take her out by this point with all the resources expended on her that it is possible to take her out at all—do you like your chances, punk? No, after all this, actually, Loomer is more powerful than ever. A lady with conviction is hard to kill. She inspires others simply by her mere continuation.
Is it time for the GOP to get Loomered? If it doesn't, then it's just DeSantis, McCarthy, and MTG, and the imminent destruction of the GOP. That’ll start up in earnest next year.
You're just giving DeSantis a clean path forward for his suicide and as he takes the whole mobster political machine down with him—he will not be deterred by Democrats in Florida, that much is obvious. McCarthy and DeSantis were both recently visiting Bibi, of course, who is slowly turning Israel into a dictatorship. Not surprising, but yet another reason they must be surgically neutralized out of American politics. Their capacity to run their ships is falling apart, Bibi has not been at peace for some time and likely won't ever be again.
MTG can and will be removed from Congress as well but that's for another time.