International Man: JD Vance’s early political rise was fueled by over $13 million from Palantir co-founder and current chairman Peter Thiel—support that far outstripped grassroots contributions.
What do you think drove Thiel to pour big money into launching the political career of someone virtually unknown to the public?
Doug Casey: I’m innately suspicious of anyone and everyone involved in politics on any level. And frankly, I don’t really know anything about JD Vance other than what I learned in the movie about him, a spinoff of his book Hillbilly Elegy. Of course, it presents him in a very favorable light.
However a video by a chap named Nick Fuentes offers a different view. He digs deeper into who JD Vance may or may not be. I suggest everybody watch it now (link).
Is what Fuentes says about Vance true? I don’t know that any more than I know what’s true in JD’s book and movie. Like Vance himself, Fuentes has an axe to grind. It’s hard to believe almost anything you read or hear about any political character.
They’re capable of being shaped and reshaped into whatever form seems like a good idea at the time. Don’t forget that JD went from being a Never Trumper to a Mega MAGA almost overnight. Is he just a more intelligent, non-alcoholic, Republican version of Kamala? They both came out of nowhere, inexplicably. In today’s media-driven world it’s possible to create a character out of whole cloth.
The fact that he’s backed (maybe created or controlled are better words) by Peter Thiel might’ve inclined me favorably towards Vance, because Thiel is thought to have libertarian values. But does he? Thiel is a founder and the chairman of Palantir, which is arguably the most evil and invasive corporation in existence today (link). I’m amused that Theil, who’s obviously got a sense of humor, is giving a four-part lecture in San Francisco on “The AntiChrist” starting Sep 15. I’m interested because the projected fifth book in the series of novels I’m doing with John Hunt is called AntiChrist.
Vance has established some very good-looking credentials during his rise from nowhere—ex-US Marine, graduate from Yale, a lawyer, an author, a venture capitalist. It really looks good. Maybe it’s all real; he could just be a smart young man who lifted himself up by his bootstraps. And there’s no shame in Theil having taken a liking to him, acting as his patron. Forbes estimates that Vance is worth about $12 million. Not bad for a 39 year-old who came from nothing.
What do we really know about JD? He appears to be a cultural conservative. He’s the front runner to be the Republican presidential candidate after Trump. And he’s almost certainly Thiel’s stalking horse.
International Man: What’s your take on JD Vance’s dramatic 180° on Trump—from comparing him to Hitler and publicly calling him “reprehensible” to embracing him just as major donor money and an endorsement fell into place?
Do you see this as political evolution, opportunism, or something else?
Doug Casey: Most people in politics are made from silly putty. Is Vance the rare exception? It’s possible that he’s a sincere guy. But it’s more likely he’s just doing and saying what he must to climb the political ladder.
We all evolve in our philosophical views. For instance, when I was a kid I must have been a liberal, because kids don’t think critically or even rationally.
After I read Barry Goldwater’s book The Conscience of a Conservative in 1963, it offered some new thoughts, and I identified as a conservative. The next year I started reading HL Mencken, and identified as a skeptic. After I read Ayn Rand’s Virtue of Selfishness, the problems with conservatism became apparent, and I identified as a libertarian—although Rand disliked libertarians. Then, after I read The Market for Liberty, I recognized that the State itself was the real enemy. It made me realize that I’d always been an anarcho-capitalist, but hadn’t been concerned enough with politics to figure it out.
Of course people’s views can change and evolve over time. How they evolve depends on their essential character, with inputs from random experience. I’m just surprised that Vance conveniently found The Donald on his political road to Damascus. I suspect he’s an opportunist, with few real principles. For instance, it’s said he was an atheist who converted to Catholicism, under the influence of Thiel. But his wife is a Hindu, which doesn’t make it with the Church.
It’s impossible to know without having a real acquaintance with the man. But I can say for sure that he’s not a libertarian. My guess is that he’s just an opportunist.
International Man: What are some other things you like and dislike about Vance?
Doug Casey: Well, he grew up in the same part of the country portrayed by the series Justified, starring Timothy Olyphant. I like the show, and it gives some insight into the type of people that Vance might have grown up with—salt-of-the-earth, lower-middle-Americans with a genuine touch of hillbilly.
But I don’t really know who he is. Perhaps he’s a version of Steve Martin’s character in “The Jerk”, who believed he was a poor black sharecropper’s son. The image we’re presented is both propaganda and reality. But who knows which is which.
I only know that no one in politics should be trusted. Especially someone who’s risen quickly out of nowhere for no good reason.
International Man: Some say JD Vance is a product of Silicon Valley, GOP mega-donors, and political elites—crafted to channel white working-class discontent in a direction they control.
What’s your view?
Doug Casey: The problem is that Americans—including mega donors, the elites, urban blacks, the white working class, and new immigrants from the Third World—are all looking to politicians and politics for answers. This is foolish. They’re looking for the problem to give them the solution.
All of them want something from the US government. They want the State to direct favors and capital toward the things that they like. Things that the rest of the country must pay for.
That’s certainly true of Trump. Neither Trump nor the people around him have any philosophical center. They’re classical Mussolini-style fascists, who think merging the State with big corporations is a good idea. We have to assume JD is on board with that.
Trumpies are shocked when I label their man a fascist. But it’s accurate. Fascism is essentially an economic system, like communism, socialism, and capitalism.
Take Trump’s acquisition of 15% of MP Materials. Or his so-called Golden Share of US Steel. Or his trying to designate who can or can’t be the president of Intel, plus buying 10% of its shares. These actions are antithetical to the free-market. They more thoroughly involve the state in the economy—which is very bad news. They’re right out of Mussolini’s or Peron’s playbooks.
International Man: Do you see JD Vance becoming the face of the next generation of MAGA politics, or will another figure rise to carry Trump’s mantle?
Doug Casey: I’m not sure that either the Democrat or Republican parties will last another decade. At least not in their present forms. We’re looking at the Greater Depression. Plus WW3. Something like a civil war. The Singularity. And lots more.
Half the Democrat Party are active, rabid socialists, like AOC and the Squad, Bernie Sanders, and many, many others like them. They want to overturn America itself. The other half are just garden-variety welfare statists. I don’t think they can live in the same house together. The Democratic Party is going to break up. It’s gone insane. Half of it will disappear. It’s already happening.
Meanwhile half the Republicans are MAGAs who follow Trump in a cult-like way. That’s understandable, because they see that America is in dire trouble, and Donald is a rallying point. They know something must be done, even if the solution is radical and scary. The other half are traditional, Rotary-going Republicans; Trumpers scare them. And they can’t live in the same house either.
Ron Paul fans will be evicted; they don’t belong in the Republican Party anyway. I don’t know where they’ll go. But it won’t be to the worthless and embarrassing Libertarian Party, which has proven itself to be a total liability to the cause of freedom.
JD Vance, as a controlled opportunist, will likely be the face of whatever’s left of MAGA politics three years from now. But maybe we’ll get a right-wing general. People go for the military in chaotic times. You might want to be somewhere that you can watch it on your widescreen, as opposed to out your front window.
Editor’s Note: Doug Casey’s perspective on JD Vance underscores a bigger reality: political figures come and go, but the real power lies with the financial and corporate forces shaping both politics and the economy. The same forces behind sudden political “stars” are also steering us toward what may be the most dangerous economic event of this century.
The urgent question isn’t just who leads next—it’s whether you and your savings are ready for the coming reset.
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