Peter Thiel is one of the most dangerous of the many billionaires supporting trump and MAGA. It is very troubling that his views are promoted by Catholic groups in Italy and one that is housed at the Catholic University of America in DC (a pontifical university). The evangelicals have been prime movers in electing the corrupt, dangerous administration now running America. It is not only harming America, but the rest of the world. Tragically, evangelicals were joined by conservative Catholics - 60% of white Catholics are MAGA. It seems most bishops and priests are also. Even though CUA has officially distanced itself from this talk in Rome, CUA harbors very right- wing groups, including this institute, and has accepted more than $13 million in donations by the Koch brothers, including the money for founding The Busch Business program, named for Timothy Busch, the NAPA Institute libertarian billionaire. Catholics in the pews help to fund CUA via their donations to Bishops/Cardinals appeals. They are funding a dangerous libertarian takeover of Catholic institutions. Thiel is worried about the anti- Christ? Who is the anti- Christ ? Is it the libertarian/ MAGA movement itself? Is it working deliberately to “ buy” the largest, most influential Christian church in the world?
Armageddon myths and the secret identity of the Anti-Christ in our midst seem to have the popular imagination in a stranglehold these days. Thiel's got enough money and influence to fool idiots: "He was smart a smart guy to make all that money, so he must know what he's talkin' about!!"
ReplyDeleteSome commanders, to the consternation of their troops, are framing the bombing of Iran as a holy war: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran-war-christian-rhetoric
Most people used laugh these nuts back under the dank rocks from whence they came. Now the nuts are running the country.
Peter Thiel is living proof that you can be rich and smart, and a wack job. And dangerous. He is a proponent of transhumanism. But that's not the main reason he is dangerous. The main reason he's dangerous is that he uses his considerable, seemingly inexhaustible money to promote the worst political leaders in the US.
ReplyDeleteThe wack job part is that he seems to have some kind of fever dream fixation with Armageddon, and the Antichrist, and the evolution of humankind into some kind of parody of life after the End Times. He kind of channels the Evangelicals on that in a weird way.
I'm not getting that he has very much focus on God or actual Christ.
I don't believe in *the* Antichrist. But I believe that there are antichrists in every age. I have to wonder if he's trying out for the job.
"But I believe that there are antichrists in every age. I have to wonder if he's trying out for the job."
ReplyDeleteThiel was high on effective altruism but soured on it and became an accelerationist--full speed ahead with human-AI hybrid convergence!
Effective altruism is the idea that you should help the greatest number of people overnthe long-haul, usually through bloodless calculations devoid of emotion. For instance, for the long-term good of humanity, people with hereditary disabilities should be incentivized (or forced) to have themselves sterilized. Elon Musk, another effective altruist, cut the federal workforce without regard to short-term chaos or damage to employees and their families because it achieves the long-term good of less expensive, smaller government.
Rich people are attracted to effective altruism because it embraces the idea of wealth used in the name of greater, long-term good, with "good" to be defined by them, of course. That might include getting themselves or their proxies elected to public office, pushing the ideas of a particular religion, or building an art museum or library that houses only works approved by them
Thiel's idea, I guess, is that you don't have to waste money endlessly helping your feckless neighbor if you can goose him up into some type of superman with AI enhancements.
Effective altruism seems very unchristian. Because it absolves you of the necessity of meeting people where they are (which Jesus always did). You just support your idea of the "greater good", but ignore Lazarus at your door.
DeleteThere are probably "christian" ways to achieve long-term good thru effective altruism, but tech billionaires tend to attack human problems like cyber problems: "Move fast and break things." Works with machines, but not so much with people. I think that's the billionaires yearn for the convergence, to make people more like machines and to replace people with machines as much as possible. People are slow, quirky, expensive, and have opinions.
DeleteYeah, "move fast and break things", the DOGE moto. They moved through like a hurricane with a dose of salts the first weeks of Trump's second term. Now we're about a hundred crises down the road, and Elon is (sorta) gone. And some, but not all, of his minions have gone on to other things. They get bored easily, that's about the only good thing I can say about them.
DeleteDOGE is getting sued by various entities that had grant funding rescinded under Trump's anti-DEI directive. In depositions, staff basically said they told ChatGPT to weed out anything with that referenced key words "women, trans, gay LGBTQ, black, tribal," etc. and denied all that. So we're basically at the point where the defense is that "the machine told us to."
DeleteI’m not worried about his wacky beliefs about the anti-Christ or Armageddon. There are plenty of crazies out there pushing those ideas.
ReplyDeleteI’m worried that he may be using his billions to commandeer Catholicism as a force to advance his extremist political aims. His talks in Rome were arranged by a Catholic group in Italy and the Cluny Institute at CUA. The Koch fortune funded the business center at CUA, named for Timothy Busch, an extremist libertarian Catholic - founder of the Napa Institute. CUA has said that they were not involved in setting up this event in Rome, but the Cluny Institute is part of CUA and it was. Italy is currently governed by a far-right group. As is Poland. And, of course, Hungary. Several other Catholic Eastern European countries are veering hard right also. Thiel bought Vance. Are he and other right- wing billionaires trying to buy other influential Catholics, and maybe the church itself via funding extremist Catholic politicians like Vance, as well as founding “Catholic” institutes like NAPA and programs like those at CUA?
The Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination in both the US and the world. It can be a powerful force for good, but also for the not good. Several of our most important institutions - the SC, Congress, the administration - have been stacked with right- wing extremist Catholics. Are Thiel and other billionaires trying to harness the most powerful christian church to further their agenda in the world by buying them with their donations?
NAPA Institute and Cluny, etc. may think they own the church with their money. But they don't. I don't think Pope Leo is very sympathetic to their aims.
DeleteI'm not worried about Pope Leo. I'm worried about bishops, cardinals and priests. Especially in the US but I think it's a movement growing in Europe and Latin America too. They were a big help to trump in the US. But if this cabal is taking over CUA and other Catholic schools the future looks bleak here. Bannon and others have been working to set up an extreme right-wing Catholic organization in Italy. Hungary is already lost. Poland teeters on the edge. They don't go over because they border Ukraine and don't want to be under Russian rule again. But the right-wing govt there is strongly supported and helped by the Catholic church. Are all of the trump friendly right-wing leaders of the several Latin American countries who were at Mar a Lago a week or so also being supported by the Church there? I don't know. But many former right-wing dictators in Latin America were. Chile is swinging far right again, and also Peru I think.
DeleteHard for me to imagine anybody commandeering control of Roman Catholicism from the Vatican powers. Catholicism survived the barbarian hordes, the Reformation, European fascism, and Vatican II.
DeleteI guess Thiel could influence a lot of conservative Catholics, including clerics, who might become a nutty wing of the Church. Here in Michigan pizza magnate Tom Monaghan had his Ave Maria cult going for awhile, with dreams of Catholic communities where drugstores could not sell birth control. That ran into a brick wall when a judge in Florida ruled that Monoghan could not dictate what drugstores carried as long as it was legal. And enthusiasm has died way down as Monaghan aged.
So I guess that's why I am more concerned with the effect billionaires and their adolescent fantasies have on society generally rather than on Catholicism.
Wonder if Ave Maria University is still going, down in Florida. That always struck me as a little fringey.
DeleteI am also more concerned with the effect of billionaires and their adolescent fantasies on society in general, particularly on our government. I think the church has more resilience than the government does at present. The guard rails are in bad shape.
Well, yes, the billionaires have succeeded in buying many of those in government including Trump and Vance. But if they succeed in buying influential folk in the Catholic Church it will make things even worse. And they seem to be working to achieve this.
DeleteWe once drove through the town of Ave Maria when we were in Florida. It has a population of more than 6000, He didn’t just found the college, he founded an entire town meant to attract uber right- wing Catholics. The university is the heart of the town. Scary.
It would be creepy living in a place where you had to be uber right wing to be there.
DeleteAve Maria is creepy, but so is The Villages and it's even bigger--95 percent white, 70 percent Republican, predominantly evangelical. Ave Maria is predominantly Republican Catholic, but much more ethnically diverse, about half white and a third hispanic.
DeleteI got a mailing from a group calling itself Lumen Christi. Mary Ann Glendon is a player so I assume it’s pretty conservative. I don’t know if it’s competing with Evangelical nationalism or what.
DeleteLumen Christi is a Catholic brain trust that sponsors lectures, student groups, and seminars for college profs, ostensibly to get the intelligentsia thinking more Catholic. Given that there's $$ behind it, I expect it fosters Catholicism with a side of political conservatism, or political conservatism with a veneer of Catholicism. It operates in Chicago, so maybe Jim knows about it.
DeleteIs Lumen Christi associated with the Legionnaries of Christ? Glendon’s daughter married a Legionnaire spokesman in Rome who left the order after it was revealed that he was the father of her son. Big scandal, especially since he was known for speaking on topics of sexual modality. I guess I’ll google it
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DeleteThe cost of gas here in the Stroudsburg area is now exceeding $4/gallon. That means energy gobbler AI is getting expensive, too. Of course, they’re probably already lining up subsidies for AI. Nevertheless, I better get on the stick and crank out that video of me with Cyd Charisse before it’s too late.
ReplyDeleteNot only energy gobbler AI, but Iran choking off the Strait of Hormuz is driving up gas. Because who would ever have thought they would do such a thing? I don't know, maybe they should have gamed that out before they went full throttle into war?
DeleteIt has been known for decades (by other administrations) that that could happen, and they needed to exercise caution.
"It has been known for decades (by other administrations) that that could happen, and they needed to exercise caution."
DeleteThis crowd doesn't know anything about history, so haven't learned any of the lessons of history.
They haven’t even learned the lessons of the history that has transpired during their lives. I think the US public’s thinking is mostly shaped by movies and TV with Fox Nooz and the mainstream media putting on the finishing touches. This delusion of military omnipotence may finally be shattered by reality. Iran is obviously not a pushover and they’ve demonstrated a well planned out response. They have prepared for this for a very long time. The US-Israeli Axis of Aggression has already, I believe, attacked Iran’s desalinization capability. Israel may be more vulnerable than Iran if their four desalinization installations are destroyed. Iran, at least, has mountains with ice. Bottom line, the US was insane to initiate this war at the behest of insane Israel. What worries me most would be that when the conventional war goes really bad, the US or Israel resorts to nuclear weapons. Interestingly, Hegseth is being criticized for a large procurement of Alaska crab snd other luxuries. Combat troops are given a luxurious meal right before deployment.
DeleteI filled my tank yesterday at one of the more convenient (more expensive) gas stations in my community. Regular was $3.49. It was $3. 29 in a bordering county I had gone to on an errand but I didn’t stop until I was almost home. In DC it’s been over $4.00 for a very long time. DC doesn’t have very many gas stations so they charge a lot with little competition. When we were in California from Oct 23 - Sept- 24, regular was $4.75-$5.15 depending on part of town. Hybrids and EVs sell very well there. My eldest has a hybrid for road trips out of LA (easier to find gas stations than charging stations) and a Tesla for in city LA driving - bought before he knew about Musk’s derangement.
DeleteNot sure that the majority of Americans think at all. They don’t care much as long as they have their amusements. But if the price of gas goes up too much, along with their health insurance premiums, they may begin to notice that all is not well.
I have spent no time thinking about the Anti-Christ. I have encountered the term when I have read about the development of many American evangelical sects.
ReplyDeleteFrom Old Testament times it was clear that there were false prophets. So, the notion that there are false Christs follows. In fact, there is a social science book called something like the Three False Christs of Ypsilanti. Never had enough interest to read it.
Billionaires whether Catholic or Protestant, Republican or Democrat, Black or White are simply dangerous because they are billionaires. It is very clear that unless we tax the wealthy not for income but for their net worth, we are headed for the economic collapse, another great depression. Our present tax system favors investors. There is no way the average person can match their wealth accumulation.
Billionaires are dangerous because they can and do buy power. If Citizens United were to be rescinded it would cut back on some of that.
DeleteThe Three Christs of Ypsilanti wasn't about false prophets. They were just three guys in an Ypsi mental hospital who all said they were Jesus Christ. A doctor wanted to see if it would dispel the delusion if they met each other. It didn't. It's been 50 years since we were assigned to read the book in Psych 101, but as I recall it just led to arguments and physical fights. A case of doctors messing around with indigent patients who had no family and no legal way to refuse whatever bizarre "treatment" the shrinks thought would be fun.
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