• Corvidae@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Makes sense to me. While it’s probably implied in Buttigieg’s point, I’d like to add there’s a level of contempt for the poor, and by poor I mean folks who are not wealthy.

    • worldwidewave@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Gay billionaire knows his people are the billionaires, not the gays.

      Only the poors think about cultural conflict, the rich know we’ve got a class-based war a-raging, and the score’s not even close. The rich are the one’s stoking the cultural conflicts as a ruse to keep the onslaught on the poors out of sight.

    • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      In another thread about Grindr going down during the RNC convention, the general opinion is that they are repressed homosexuals and that is why they are fascists. I think Pete hits on, and you sum up, the real reason: some rich gay people feel insulated by their wealth from the problems that republicans might introduce, and think adding even more wealth is the way to go.

        • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          Think about it. Our entire western civilization revolves around how much money you have. Most billionaires are only concerned with accumulating more wealth, and historically Republican administrations are pretty good about supporting that (tax cuts for the wealthy, gutting of social programs to support those cuts, etc). They don’t give two shits about the rest of the population, as long as their wealth increases.

          Money is also power. The more power you have, the more you get away with. So even though someone like Thiel might be as gay as a rainbow, he’s in that echelon of people who are quite rich and powerful that being gay doesn’t matter, he has the money and power to sidestep the oppression his comrades seek. Their reason for the oppression of gays is the same as the oppression of any other marginalized group (LGBT+, women, POC, etc); it gives their supporters an enemy, which in turn galvanizes their base, and reinforces the party’s power. People like Thiel aren’t concerned with any of that because they have the resources and influence to sidestep that oppression.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It isn’t as though conservatives limit their derision to homosexuality. Any kind of sexual promiscuity is cause for condemnation and persecution if you’re poor. This isn’t homosexuality as taboo, this is sexuality as a luxury reserved for the wealthiest and most well-connected.

        FFS, we’ve got video recordings of Donald Trump groping Rudy Giuliani in drag as part of a sketch comedy routine. Lauren Boebert gives handies out at the theater. JD Vance himself is married to a migrant of color. Vanishingly few conservatives seems to mind. This has always been a question of economic privilege, rather than some universal social taboo. Its a tool for Othering the political opposition, not policing the party leadership internally.

        Wealth, along with the benefits of an obsequies mass media and mercenary police force, guarantee you can have all the Burning Man orgy tents you want just so long as you’ve paid off the right people.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Because being gay when you have enough money and power stops being a factor. You’re insulated from the overwhelming majority of any social problems that affect normal lgbtq people.

    So your decisions are going to be the same as most any others in the Uber-wealthy: you look to enhance your power and finances. Nothing else is your problem.

    • nifty@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Nazis, neo or otherwise, think of being gay as a mental illness. Being a billionaire might insulate Thiel from the face eating leopards, but only in so far as the leopards have other targets. Neo Nazis are going to clean up house of minorities and gays once they have sufficient legal foothold.

      As for conservatives, they don’t care about how much money someone else has, but rather how much they can use someone else’s money.

    • Gjolin@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      He subscribes to a branch of neo-reactionary politics coined “dark enlightenment” that basically rejects liberalism. In short, these fine fellows believe that we should be their literal serfs in a neo-feudal society. I think point for point, their ideology is even more fucked up than fascism.

      • LavenderDay3544@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Even serfs had to be treated halfways decently by their lords or they risked being overthrown or having no one left to work their land. With this capitalist dystopia we don’t even get that.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Its a shame for Thiel, that insulation via wealth only goes so far. Once oppression has been codified into law, and most of the streets have been sterilized of “undesirables”, the machine will drink its own juice and come for him, too.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Its a shame for Thiel, that insulation via wealth only goes so far.

      “You’ll get yours in the end” is a prophecy liberals make endless, while plutocrats continue to ignore it without real consequence.

      Once oppression has been codified into law

      Laws Are For Little People. My man Elon Musk should be serving a thousand year consecutive life sentence for the endless string of SEC violations, financial frauds, drug abuses, and sexual assaults he’s committed in the last five years alone. Donald Trump should be on death row. None of these assholes actually get prosecuted for any of this shit, precisely because they’re insulated through their wealth and social connections.

      JD Vance isn’t going to try and throw his sugar daddy under the bus, particularly when Thiel’s fortune is based around his enormous government contracts for mass surveillance via Palantir. It would be just shy of trying to pick a fight with Eric Prince (America’s premiere international warlord for hire) or Gregory Hayes (CEO of Raytheon, the company that makes all the high performance missiles, rockets, and smart bombs).

      • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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        2 months ago

        I’m sure Ernst Röhm thought the same thing. Inevitably, the alliance of convenience runs its course and the fascists decide it’s easier if they’re dead.

        Dead men can’t hire lawyers to defend their stock portfolios, after all.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I’m sure Ernst Röhm thought the same thing

          If you need to go back 90 years to make a point, it might be a weak one.

          Reagan had gay members of his administration while he joked about the AIDS epidemic.

          Nixon had gay men in his administration, a fact he complained about on tape.

          Hoover crossdressed as head of the FBI, and he was at the heart of a fascist white terror during the 1950s.

          It’s strongly believed that James Buchanan was in a relationship with Senator Rufus King, while President.

          Reactionary attitudes towards sex did not seem to affect any of these economic elites.

      • hglman@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        Elites do fall they are often just replaced with new ones but its absolutely plausible the snake eats him

      • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        This is real life, anything could happen. The rich get fucked just as much as they get away. There will be no warning. Even for those like Thiel if Project 2025 was fully implemented. He would automatically be branded a pedophile and receive the death penalty. Don’t think they wouldn’t be quick to consume each other. The vacuum of power would be ripe for anyone remaining. We’re getting to the point where the greedy must devour each other to grow.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          The rich get fucked just as much as they get away.

          The rich get fucked way less than what they get away with. That’s why you’ve got prisons overflowing with low-income felons while everyone from Donald Trump to OJ Simpson seem immune to prosecution.

          Even for those like Thiel if Project 2025 was fully implemented.

          A big facet of 2025 is the way it immunizes members of the political elite from the policing they intend to inflict on everyone else. The “Freedom Cities” (often referred to as Charter Cities in other libertarian wet-dream proposals) revolve around granting dictatorial control in municipal districts to a handful of powerful property owners, fully exempt from a normal democratic process. The police, the judges, the prosecutors - they’re all just employees of these oligarchs. In the same way that a CEO isn’t threatened by the HR department, a guy like Thiel granted his own private fief through a California “Freedom City” charter would be immune to whatever anti-LGBTQ proposal Mike Johnson cooked up in the House.

          The vacuum of power would be ripe for anyone remaining.

          The vacuum is being filled by these techbros.

          • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Getting fucked does not mean going to prison. Getting fucked for rich people is when a meme tanks your stock 50%. The reason they’re trying to codify this is so they dont ever get fucked again.

            In this hypothetical (we hope) future, where being LGBTQ+ brands you as a pedophile and serves you the death sentence, the populace will become angry with the fact they are ruled by “one of them” and question why this is so.

            Laws, after all, are not physically existing things. The law can say Thiel is fine on his fiefdom of lower SoCal. But it won’t stop the head dictator from feeling like sending his gay crusher squad to all of Thiel’s addresses in one night. And the only thing needed to make that decision happen is the swinging mood of the orange.

    • InternetUser2012@lemmy.today
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      2 months ago

      Just keep in mind, there’s a shit ton of republikkklowns that are closet gays. They just use it as more outrage because scared idiots eat it up and join the cult.

      • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        It doesnt matter. They’ll march us off the cliff over coming out. Which is also a shame. I may have been depressed, but I have come to terms with who and what I am and can be content with it. I couldn’t imagine rejecting yourself to such an extent. It has to cause serious mental harm.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      or at the very least he will be spending so much on bribes to keep himself out of a prison that he’ll eventually run out of cash.

  • collapse_already@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    When being gay is criminalized, I will be at the forefront of calling for Thiel’s prosecution because I am that petty.

  • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I actually “met” Thiel once. I was working for a limo company and we picked him and his luggage up. He booked 2 limos, one for himself, one for his luggage. I was driving the luggage car. We picked him up on the Tarmac at the private Jetway. He was walking towards me, and I greeted him with my hand out and said something along the lines of pleasure to meet you Mr Thiel, I’ll be getting the luggage today, your driver is over there. He walked past my outstretched hand and didn’t even acknowledge me. Then when they unloaded his “luggage” it was literally a single backpack. The guy ordered a whole separate car "probably $500+) to avoid the hassle of carrying a backpack 90’ from the private jet to the limo. When I arrived at his home to drop off the “luggage” I was told I couldn’t go in the front and had to use the service entrance. Guy seemed like a cunt then and still does today.

  • notanaltaccount@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    A lot of gay people are financially kind to people they have had sex with. I am not saying that’s relevant in this situation.

    There’s another person who Theil “randomly” put a lot of money and clout behind too.

    I guess it’s possible it’s not related to sex both times? But it seems really random if it’s not related to sex.

    Pete gave the kind safe answer.

    Looks like both the big political parties offer people opprtunities to fuck their way up to the top.

  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I found a lot of people like him who would say whatever they needed to, to get ahead

    Including one in the mirror. And he said this on Real Smugness With Bill Maher.

    Not that he’s at all wrong about Vance. He isn’t. He’s just also an enormous hypocrite.

  • anticolonialist@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    He’s steering away from the real connections between JD Vance, Peter Thiel and his connections to government infiltration, which includes democrats.

    • meeeeetch@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      There’s plenty of Dems caught up in it, but the worst of the Silicon Valley scene supports the GOP.

      Bilaji Srinivasan’s Gray Pride pipe dream is based on using street paramilitaries to remove the (quite pro-capital) Democrats from power in the Bay area.

      Now thankfully, he’s too much of a fuckin’ weirdo to bring a movement like that together, but the right wing already has groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Front working on a similar political project.