Peter Thiel: Donald Trump Gets ‘Big Things’ Right: Support for the Republican candidate for president is about backing the outsider instead of another insider, by Scott Martin.
Mr. Thiel, the billionaire and co-founder of PayPal and founder of venture-capital firm Founders Fund, two weeks ago revealed plans to donate $1.25 million to Mr. Trump’s campaign. …
Mr. Thiel said that U.S. debt is out of control and that the nation is involved in five wars, which he sees as problematic.
Most Americans, he said, are financially worse off than their parents, and are saddled with student-loan debt and weak retirement savings.
We’re voting for Trump because we judge the leadership of our country to have failed. This judgement has been hard to accept for some of this countries most fortunate, prominent people. …
Louder voices have sent a message that they do not intend to tolerate the views of one half of the country. …
For a long time our elites have been in the habit of denying difficult realities. … Whenever there is a hard problem, but people want to believe in an easy solution, they will be tempted to deny reality…
Something about the experience of the baby-boomers, whose lives have been so much easier than their parent’s or their children’s, has led them to buy into bubbles again and again. The trade bubble says everyone’s a winner. The war bubble says victory is just around the corner, but these overoptimistic stories simply aren’t true and voters are tired of being lied to. …
Trump doesn’t think the force of optimism alone can change reality without hard work. …
Voters are tired of hearing conservative politicians say that government never works. They know the government wasn’t always this broken. The Manhattan project, the interstate highway system, the Apollo program — whatever you think of these ventures, you cannot doubt the competence of the government that got them done. But we have fallen very far from that standard. We cannot let free market ideology serve as an excuse for decline.
Whatever happens in this election, Trump represents isn’t crazy, and it’s not going away. He points towards a new Republican party beyond the dogma of Reaganism.
Well worth watching if you have 15 minutes to spare.
hat-tip Matthew
