WEBVTT - JD Vance & Peter Thiel, An Ideological Love Story 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:05.279 Also media. 0:00:06.640 --> 0:00:11.799 What's JD My vances? This is it could happen here 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:16.160 a podcast that's not behind the Bastards. But today we're 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:22.640 doing a little mini episode on our future possible vice president, JD. 0:00:23.480 --> 0:00:27.280 Vance Garrison. How are you feeling today? Welcome back to 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:27.960 the program. 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:29.560 Thank you. I'm feeling pretty good. 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:30.200 Yeah. 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:32.199 Yeah, I got a great five hours of sleep. I'm 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:32.800 good to go. 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:35.000 Oh, I slept eleven good for you. 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:38.080 No, I've also been in the researching bad people whole 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:40.080 which keeps me up late at night. 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:43.519 Yeah. I have to do the Walls episodes tonight so 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:45.640 we can go back to back on the vps. But 0:00:45.680 --> 0:00:49.080 I decided to start with JD. Vance, And you know, 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:52.440 I had debated with myself, is this guy worth a 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:56.480 full bTB episode? And I decided ultimately like no, you know, 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.480 I just don't think there's enough to him yet that 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:02.520 he deserves that. Perhaps that will change in the future. 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:05.920 But what I wanted to do was give the listener, 0:01:05.959 --> 0:01:08.760 who I'm guessing has mostly just heard a few disjointed 0:01:08.800 --> 0:01:09.960 things about JD. 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:12.760 A few a few things, one or two things, maybe 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:14.080 one specific thing. 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:17.400 One specific They probably they're probably aware of Hillbilly elogy 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:19.800 that was like a pretty pretty big book in the day, 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:22.600 and the movie was panned, and that was kind of news. 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:25.600 They've probably heard the couch fucking stuff, and then they've 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:28.440 heard allegations that he's like a straight up fascist, and 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:31.959 you know, he thinks that single women should be dragged 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:34.199 out into the street and shot or something like that. 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:36.040 If you have a cat and you're a single woman, 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:37.479 you are onto logically evil. 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:41.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, a socia path. And so I wanted 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:43.440 to provide some context for how he went from if 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:46.000 you can remember back to twenty sixteen, he was a 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:49.200 liberal darling for having written hillbilly elegy. Right, he was 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.520 this guy, this like never trump conservative who was explaining 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:55.800 to everyone how the evil of trump Ism had infested 0:01:55.880 --> 0:02:00.320 and you know, latched onto the minds of small town Americans. Right, 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:03.000 That's kind of how he was framed today, where he's 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:07.280 like this hard right maga guy, literally Trump's future right 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:11.560 hand man, with what sounds like explicitly dictatorial ambitions. And 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:14.160 the mystery of this story, all of it comes down 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:19.640 to Peterteel. Right, many such cases, Yeah, as is often 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:22.120 the case, he's a major part of life. Why things 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:25.520 wind up where they are. The bones of JD's background 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:27.320 story are kind of important, so I'm just going to 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:30.200 give them rapidly. He was born in August nineteen eighty 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:34.560 four in Middletown, Ohio, born under the name James Donald Bowman, 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:37.560 but his parents divorced when he was a toddler. His dad, 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:40.240 his biodad, is pretty much out of the picture right away. 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:43.400 He is eventually adopted by his mother's third husband, whose 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:45.560 last name is Hamil, and that's the name he's going 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:48.000 to serve in the Marines under His mother was not 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:50.800 very together. There's a lot of neglect and poverty and 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.680 some drug abuse in his early life before his grandparents 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:57.080 move him from Kentucky to Ohio. Now, a lot of 0:02:57.120 --> 0:02:59.680 ink has been spilled on the subject of Vance's supposedly 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:03.160 auto biographical book Hillbilly Elegy, which paints him as a 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:06.440 member of the aggrieved and abused white underclass, the forgotten 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:10.320 men of American politics. I'm not interested in relitigating this 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:12.560 stupid book, except to say that I had a kind 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:15.480 of similar background. My dad was in the picture, but 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:18.520 socioeconomically it was kind of similar. We grew up in 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:22.720 a very poor and troubled small town. Eventually, my caretakers 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:24.919 got me out of there into a more functional part 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:27.720 of the country. And I can see I see JD's 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:30.680 book as kind of cynically positioned to take advantage of 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:34.200 the liberal outpouring of sympathy for rural whites that followed 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:37.360 Trump's twenty sixteen victory, an attempt to position himself as someone 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:39.760 who can explain why this part of the country swept 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:42.240 Trump into power. Now, the reality is that this part 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:44.440 of the country did not sweep Trump into power. The 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:47.000 core of Trump support in twenty sixteen were aggrieved, but 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:50.800 financially comfortable, suburban white people. Vance did not write about 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:53.280 poor folks addicted to oxy in the hollers with any 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:56.680 real empathy. He painted them as helpless fools and mental children, 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:58.840 in himself as better for getting out. And that's really 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:01.080 all I have to say on the matter. To me, 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:03.920 his early life suggests a young man who wanted to 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:06.480 set himself up for a career in public life and 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:09.400 took the most expedient actions to do so. And that 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:12.040 is the context under which I see his service in 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:14.960 the US Marine Corps. He joined the Marines and got 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:16.960 himself the job that would get him as close to 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:20.560 action as possible without requiring that he actually do anything. 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:24.479 His specific gig was public affairs for a marine aircraft wing, 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.159 so he is writing about the shit that this aircraft 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.440 wing is doing, which is about the least job that 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:32.919 you can actually have in the military. He wrote that 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:36.679 he was quote lucky to escape any real fighting. After 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:39.400 finishing his term, he got a BA in polysci And 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:42.760 I'm not saying that you have to fight, for most 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:45.400 of what the military does is not literally fighting. I'm 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:48.800 just saying I see his specific positioning himself with this 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:52.760 job as him wanting to have marine on his CV 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.680 when he goes into politics. Right, that's my allegation, right, 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:59.440 Not that there's anything wrong with not fighting. 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:02.279 Sure, I mean, and it's also just good to point 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:06.280 out considering most of the rights attacks against Walls right 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:09.960 now are also about him not actually like seeing combat, 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:12.320 and Vance has gone after him for that specifically. 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:14.160 Yeah, trying to like. 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:18.839 Allude to like Vance having more combat experience. Yeah, both 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.760 men did not like fire bullets at enemy combatants. 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:24.320 No, and most people don't. But what I see with 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:27.640 Vance's service is I did this because it was a 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.720 line in my resume, whereas you don't do twenty four 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:34.880 years in the National Guard like just to set up 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:37.240 your political career. Now you do that because you want 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:38.400 to be in the National Guard. 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:41.640 Yes, Walts was definitely more like a career man in 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:42.120 that sense. 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:45.839 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. After finishing his term, he got a 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:49.520 BA in polysci and philosophy from Ohio State and during 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:51.760 his first year in college he worked for a Republican 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:54.039 States senator. He's going to work for a couple of Republicans. 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:57.440 And his college in grad school, you know, law school 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:00.679 years then he attended Yale Law School. He made friends 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:02.760 with Jamil Giovanni, who would go on to be a 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:07.240 Conservative parliamentarian in Canada. He was mentored by professor Amy Chua, 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.560 who wrote a book about being a Tiger mom that 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:11.680 made a lot of people angry and was beloved by 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:13.719 the chunk of the country who thinks the children have 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:16.640 it too easy. Chua helped to convince him to write 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:20.320 Hillbilly Elegy, which might be her worst sin, almost definitely 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:22.960 is her worst sin. I can forgive some terrible acts 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:25.520 towards children if you don't write the book Hillbilly Elogy. 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:28.919 It was when Vance graduated from Yale that he first 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:31.400 made contact with the man who would come to define 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:35.679 his adult political journey. Peter Teel, the PayPal co founder 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:39.280 and serial entrepreneur investor, had taken a rapid turn from 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:42.560 his earlier libertarian politics thanks to a growing interest in 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:46.440 a line of political philosophy known mostly as neo reactionary 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.640 or NRX thought, although today you'll more often hear it 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:52.400 described as the new right. I'm not in love with 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:55.560 either of those terms for this particular chunk of the right. 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:58.520 But I think neo reactionary is better than new right. 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:00.000 Not as bad as dark and life. 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:02.600 It's not as bad as dark and we'll talk the 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:05.440 worst of these three terms, by far the worst of 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.680 the three terms. So I tend to stick with neo reactionary. 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:11.640 Although if you hear new right being used, that's that's 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:12.880 also what this refers to. 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:14.680 That's a term I've used sometimes. Yeah. 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:15.040 Yeah. 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:17.760 What time period is is just like twenty seventeen, like 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:19.040 where are we at here? 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.960 Twenty eleven is when he sees Peter Teal speak at Yale, 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:26.400 which he describes as like the moment around which his 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:27.160 life pivots. 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:29.440 So this is pre the publishing of his book. 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:32.720 Yes, yes, yes, he publishes He'll BILLI Elogy in twenty sixteen. 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:34.760 Okay, so he kind of got in on the ground 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:35.960 floor of some of this kind of stuff. 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:38.920 Yes, he is very early in teal world. He's one 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:40.280 of the first, he's going to be one of We're 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:41.680 getting to that. But I want to talk about what 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:44.040 neo reactionaries are because the rest of this isn't going 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:45.480 to make sense unless we go into that. 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:46.200 So sure. 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.640 Vanity Fair writer James Pogue rather ably described the New 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:52.720 Right as a worldview in direct competition to the liberal 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:56.280 idea that economic growth and technological innovation would lead us 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:59.440 to a better future. Instead, the growth of big tech surveillance, 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:02.880 nanny state governance, and social justice culture war dominance has 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:06.560 created a system of oppression that will destroy everything good 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:10.120 in the world if not stopped. The primary high priest 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:12.560 of this school of thought is Curtis Yarvin, who in 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:14.560 the early aughts from about two thousand and seven to 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:19.800 twenty fourteen blogged prolifically as Mincius Moldbug. Now, Jarvin is 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:22.680 a computer programmer. He is this guy who has had 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:25.160 for most of his career this desire to create a 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:28.960 new computer operating system that would like fix the way 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:31.800 in which knowledge is disseminated in a way that sounds 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:34.760 kind of magical to me. He never quite gets it working, 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:37.880 and he blogs about political philosophy the same way he 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:41.720 talks about programming, which he has this dream for a 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:46.560 way to reorient society after a soft, kind of peaceful coup. 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:49.160 He always emphasizes how peaceful it needs to be, that 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:51.520 will be, you know. Again, it's his way if he 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:54.880 wants to program society to make it work perfectly, you know, 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:57.480 based on his sort of set of values. And he 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:02.679 writes a series of essays how he wants to reorient society, 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:06.920 and these essays become kind of the central underpinning ethos 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.360 of the messy assortment of philosophies that we call neo 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:13.280 reactionaries or the new right. Now. The basic idea is 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:16.000 that this liberal nightmare healscape can only be stopped and 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:19.600 turned back by replacing democracy with an essentially monarchic system. 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:23.040 Pogue describes Jarvin as arguing for quote a Caesar like 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:26.120 figure to take power back from this devolved oligarchy and 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:28.920 replace it with a monarchical regime run like a startup 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:32.080 As early as twenty twelve, he proposed the acronym rage 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:35.680 retire all government employees as a shorthand for a first 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.880 step and the overthrow of the American regime. What we needed, 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:43.679 Yarvin thought was a national CEO or what's called a dictator. Now, 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:47.079 a lot of guys in the aughts become enraptured by 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.480 Jarvin's ideas because the way Jarvin writes, he spends most 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:53.000 of his free time because he gets bought out of 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:55.120 a company he's in, and he doesn't wind up like 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:57.560 super rich, but he winds up comfortable enough that he's 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:00.120 for a while just spending like five hundred bucks a 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:03.599 month on books and reading like old reactionary tracts, like 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:07.640 books from the eighteen hundreds of like monarchists arguing against 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:11.320 you know, the Enlightenment and socialism and the like. And 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:14.080 so he peppers his essays with a lot of different 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:17.800 kind of archaic flourishes, a lot of Latin, a lot 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:21.640 of like references to Greek and Roman philosophical figures. And 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.880 that is fucking catnip for a certain kind of guy. 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:27.800 Now, it makes it makes it seem like esoteric. It's 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:30.240 like it's kind of like, yes, like hidden knowledge, it's 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:33.160 being like rediscovered that like holds the key to fix 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:34.080 all of our problems. 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:38.760 Yes, he is. If you've read Enders Game, he's doing 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:41.840 what Ender's brother does at Enders Game, where he's writing 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:45.120 his little essays for the Internet, trying to like overthrow 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:47.840 the government using them. And there's a certain certain kind 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:50.520 of guy who is just deeply attracted to that idea. 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:52.880 One of those kinds of guys is a philosopher called 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:57.040 Nick Land. Land is an interesting character. We talk about 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:00.240 him a little during our AI Cult episodes. He's a 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:02.960 dude who comes out of academia and kind of has 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:07.920 now moved around to essentially like fascist political philosophy would 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:10.480 be kind of the quickest way to describe Land today. 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:13.400 Although he's a complicated fellow. But he is the guy 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:16.520 who who comes up with the term dark enlightenment for 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:19.120 Curtis's writing. And this is the way in which a 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:21.720 lot of these guys, a lot of the guys especially 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:25.080 who are going to come into Jarvin's work around the 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:27.880 mid aughts, are going to think about it right where 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:31.319 it's this, he has pulled the wool from my eyes, right. 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:34.920 He has made it clear how doomed democracy is that 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:37.679 it's fundamentally evil. And now that I've had this dark revelation, 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.000 I can never look at the world the same way again. 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:42.480 Right, And like Land was trying to do the same 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:45.319 thing for like the previous like fifteen years, and he 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:49.640 attracted a small batch of like kind of like academic followers. 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:52.400 A whole bunch of his colleagues kind of got more 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.120 popular than him because they were slightly more reasonable in 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:56.080 many ways. 0:11:55.880 --> 0:11:58.440 Because Land's writing is never going to be like the 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:03.120 most viral thing on earth, right, Like, yeah, and mold 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:05.560 Bugs is a little better written for that, although both 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:08.800 of them are too dense. The guys who are going to, 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:10.920 like like Vance is going to be the guys who 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:13.440 are going to take his theories into like mainstream politics, 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:15.640 are going to need to trim the fat off. You know. 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:19.359 It's also worth noting Jarvin is the guy who introduces 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:21.760 the term the red pill to right wing politics. 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:23.160 Right, Oh, I didn't know that. 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:27.400 Yes, as far as I've ever seen, Jarvin is the 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:30.440 guy who like starts using the red pill in like 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:33.200 a really concerted way to describe like coming to these 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:36.079 understandings about you know, race science has a decent amount 0:12:36.080 --> 0:12:38.320 to do with it earlier in Yarvin's writing career. But 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:41.280 like all of these ideas that we now call neo reactionary, 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:44.600 like that's that's a Jarvin original. He thinks the matrix 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:47.240 is a work of genius, of course, which it is, 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:51.080 but maybe not in the way that he thinks slightly. Yeah, 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:55.240 So anyway, Peter Teel falls in love because Teal is 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:57.680 by by two thousand and nine, Teal's writing stuff about 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:00.880 how he thinks democracy is incompatible with liberty. Right, And 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:03.280 when Peter Teel refers to liberty, he's not talking about 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:06.720 like your freedom to like to love the people that 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:09.360 you want to love, or do with your body what 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:11.000 you want to do with your body. He's talking about 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:12.800 his freedom as a guy with a lot of money 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:15.760 to not have to pay taxes. Right, That's primarily what 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:19.160 all of these guys mean by freedom. So Teal by 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:21.559 two thousand and nine is already enraptured with these anti 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:25.080 democratic ideas and he finds Jarvin. It's kind of unclear 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:27.640 to me, does Jarvin actually start him on that road 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:30.000 or I think it's more that he has started down 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:32.520 that road, and he thinks Jarvin is doing a really 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:36.160 good job of setting up what he's been thinking. So 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:38.640 he starts pumping money into Jarvin, he funds some of 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:42.440 his like software ambitions. He's just kind of generally supporting him, 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:46.000 and he begins pumping money increasingly over the early to 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.280 mid aughts into an array of influencers and thinkers who 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:51.920 are in alignment with what we might call mold buggy 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:54.400 in thought right, and he's doing that up to this 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:57.760 present day, Pog writes. Teal has also funded things like 0:13:57.800 --> 0:14:00.640 The Edge Lordy and Post Left Infected New peaceople Sinema 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:02.960 film Festival, which ended its week long run of parties 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:05.600 and screenings in Manhattan just a few days before nat 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:08.720 Con began. He's long been a big donor to Republican 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:11.679 political candidates, but in recent years Teal has grown increasingly 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:14.079 involved in the politics of this younger and weirder world, 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.480 becoming something like an afarious godfather or genial rich uncle, 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:20.760 depending on your perspective. Podcasters and art world figures now 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:23.120 joke about their hope to get so called Teal bucks. 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:27.560 And if you're familiar with like the Red Scare podcast, 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:30.680 and those ladies you're familiar with, like the Dime square set. 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:34.640 A lot of them are into neo reactionary thought and 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:38.240 are the people that that paragraph is referring to right now. 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:42.240 While podcasters and cultural influencers have long been useful to Teal, 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:44.960 he's also tried to collect up and coming politicians with 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:47.880 uneven success. In twenty eleven, he gave a talk at 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:50.200 Yale while Vance was still a student, and discussed the 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:54.080 stagnation of technological progress in the United States. Vance wrote 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:56.760 that Teal was then quote possibly the smartest person I'd 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:59.480 ever met, and this moment is the moment that his 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:02.960 whole life pivots around meeting Peter Teal at Yale in 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:05.800 twenty eleven. We're gonna talk about what comes after, But Garrison, 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:09.320 you know what isn't receiving any money from Peter Teal. 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:11.960 We also cannot say that there's no way to. 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:16.360 It's entirely possible. It's entirely possible that we are funded 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:19.240 one hundred percent by Peter Teal. And if so, thank you. 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:21.760 Got to get those Teal bucks. 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:34.200 And we're back. I've just uncovered that Peter Teal is 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:37.640 the mind behind Chumba Casino. Garrison, this goes so much 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:39.640 deeper than I thought, what. 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:42.680 If Petertield instead just got really into sports betting, you know, 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:47.960 instead of dealing with all this weird like esoteric traditionalist, 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:53.440 like like eighteen eighties racism philosophy. What what if instead 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:56.280 he just got really into I don't know, the Bucks. 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:57.760 That's probably a sports team, right. 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:01.760 He put eight billion dollars on the Raiders. He took 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:02.920 a bath. He's fucked. 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.600 He got addicted to it too. God, he could save 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:09.360 so many lives sports, but I really couldn't save lives. 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:13.320 I've always said that Vance decided to abandon his planned 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:15.040 career in law, although I'm not sure I believe that 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:16.160 was ever his intended path. 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:17.120 Absolutely not. 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:21.080 No, he does a couple of years in law, and 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:23.880 he claims that Teal also is who made him decide 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:27.120 to convert to Christianity by defying the social template I 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:30.240 had constructed that Christians were dumb and atheists were smart. 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:32.360 I don't know how much to believe that he's actually 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:34.520 a Catholic. Maybe I don't. 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:37.360 Know, but like there's this whole new batch of like, yes, 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:40.320 people who are like a philosophically Catholic or like they're 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:43.480 Catholic in like a quote unquote Hegelian sense when when 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:46.840 they instruct these like larger models of like human evolution 0:16:47.200 --> 0:16:50.240 and they view like Christianity as this like thing that 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:53.360 will drive the human species towards its like perfected form. 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:58.200 And definitely the dark Enlightenment people are a significant chunk 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:00.640 of kind of what caused you to who develop And 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:02.680 we're seeing that now with like these fake movements like 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:05.280 the Hegelian egirles, which are kind of like the weird 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:08.479 step child of some of these like Dimes Square like 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:10.119 influencer philosophy stuff. 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:14.160 Yeah, and I would say he's definitely not a Catholic 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:16.320 in the sense that your aunt is right. 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:18.840 No, no, no, no, no, no, no no. 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:20.679 He is a Catholic in the sense that, like he 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:24.240 believes there are things about social order and the roles 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:28.000 that people should have in society that Catholicism gets right. 0:17:28.200 --> 0:17:31.640 And exactly that's that's the sense in which he's a Catholic. Right. 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:35.400 So in twenty sixteen, the same year that Vance publishes 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:40.040 Hillbilly Elogy and becomes a liberal darling, he joins Mythral Capital, 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:43.560 a venture capital firm founded by Teal Peter Teel. Advance, 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:46.440 all of these guys pretty much every time they create 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:48.600 a company, it's named after something in the Lord of 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:49.040 the Rings. 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:51.360 Fucking A J. R. R. Tolkien bullshit. 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:53.919 He would be so unhappy with this. 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:56.960 Because Tolkien was also a Catholic monarchist, but in a 0:17:57.080 --> 0:17:58.000 very different. 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:02.320 Way, in a super different way. Yes. So, the two 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:04.600 young men that Teal adopts that he makes what are 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:08.879 called generational bets in is Blake Masters and JD. Vance. 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:11.199 And his bet is that if I really bankroll and 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:15.320 back these guys, they are going to be major figures 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:19.840 in US politics right for decades to come. And his 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:21.760 first step is he makes them rich. He helps them 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:24.439 get jobs and stuff that they get wealthy in. You know, 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:27.040 Masters is recruited in the same way as Vance. He's 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:29.320 given a cushy job in venture capital. He's handed a 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:31.159 shitload of Teal books to see what he can make 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:33.159 of them. And Vance is, you know, both of them 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:35.199 are decent enough at this. Vance is okay at it. 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:37.880 And within two years he gets hired for one hundred 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:40.760 and fifty million dollar fund out of Washington that focuses 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:44.040 on finding young companies and overlooked US cities, places that 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:47.040 weren't seen as traditionally tech Hubs. Soon after this, he 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:49.320 goes into business on his own, if we can call 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:51.840 it on your own, when Peter Teal is the guy 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:54.240 who backs your new company entirely right. 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:57.320 Sure, I do love that that Peter Teel somehow picked 0:18:57.359 --> 0:18:59.800 the two most uncharismatic up and. 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:03.239 Come dudes, I mean, look at Peter, what does he 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:05.119 know about charisma? 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:08.680 Yeah, but like it is fun that he made these 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:12.560 two bets and Mark Kelly just destroyed one of them. Yeah, 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:14.840 criticize the man for what you will, but. 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:19.639 One of these weirdos go up against an astronaut on 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:20.960 a public debate. 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:25.720 Jesus Christ, you know, say what you will about electoralism. 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:28.359 I'm excited to see the Walls Vance debate because I 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:29.159 think it'll be funny. 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:33.159 Yeah. Well, because Vance has big daddy issues and Walls 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:36.639 has strong daddy energy, so we could be in for 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:40.639 a very interesting night. So Vance forms his own venture 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:44.119 capital form Narya Capital. This is another Lord of the 0:19:44.200 --> 0:19:47.240 Rings reference. Narya is one of the rings of power, 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:51.400 which the rings of power are bad. Very famously, you're 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:55.280