Thiel on the Election and the Triumph of the Counter-Elites

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Bari Weiss interviews Peter Thiel.  There’s a two-hour video and, below it, an edited transcript.

3 thoughts on “Thiel on the Election and the Triumph of the Counter-Elites”

  1. We may have won a battle but the shenanigans in PA and AZ show the war is still ongoing. Let’s see what things look like in a year or two. I notice that McConnell, whom I think of, unaffectionately, as the toad has promised to do all in his power to make Trump’s victory meaningless with as many as 30 “Republican” senators signing on.

    Triumph is premature at best.

  2. An election outcome is mostly about possibility. The most definable opportunity is some form of ideologically-neutral Torysism where simply the zeitgeist of the day isn’t denied but simply happens at a somewhat slower pace. This is the Republican Party of the past 20 years.

    An election outcome is simply the first act of a larger play; it defines the players and where they initially stand in relation to one another in terms of power and claimed ideology. We are now in the second part/act of the play where the various actor are now busy interpreting/”spinning” what that election means in order to set up the third act, which begins on January 20.

    After its electoral thumping, the Left is busy trying to find its ideological footing in opposition terms, throwing up road blocks, nit-picking on appointments but has little to offer in terms of substance. That’s fairly normal for a losing party, to break the momentum of the winning side in order to limit policy damage. They are in the dog nipping at the heels mode because for the moment that’s all they got,

    As far as the mandate of the winning side need, historically it’s whatever you claim it be. I don’t remember Obama in 2008 running on nationalizing the health care system, but that’s what he centered his first 2 years on. Same with Biden, I missed the parts of his campaign where he said he wanted to investigate parents of school children supporting DEI in the military, and kneecapping the energy sector but that’s what he (or whoever was pulling the string behind him) did – nobody thought he had a mandate to appoint Rachel Levine and his admiral’s uniform.

    The thing about Trump’s cabinet appointments is that 1) they are less the traditional spoils than an open declaration of policy 2) they are congruent with how he ran his campaign. Elon, Gabbard, and Kennedy were there front-and-center during his campaign, somebody to take an axe to the rot in Defense as well. They were elected to be Genghis Kahn and not George W. Bush. Contrast the picks with his first administration. Rex Tiller? Jeff Sessions? The Democrats only wish.

    The election was only 2 weeks and there is an air of triumphalism in the Trump camp, but I think he’s well aware from his prior administration that this air will soon dissipate and that looking ahead for the next 12-18 months he’s in desperate race against time

    A mandate is largely subjective what you make out of it. I think the Left right now is a little shell-shocked that Trump meant what he said, after all they didn’t really mean what they said about his being Hitler and an insurrectionist.

    Good for Trump, we’ve been waiting a long time for this and we’ll see where it goes.

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