What Makes J.D. Vance Something Far Worse Than Merely 'Weird'
When political observers describe J.D. Vance as “weird,” what they usually mean is the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s ranting about childless people, his extremism on questions like abortion and divorce, or perhaps his choice of eye makeup.
But there is a deeper level to Vance’s political weirdness that places him amid the most sinister forces in the nation today – and calls into question the supposed patriotism that motivates him and the “America First” movement he and Donald Trump now represent. To understand what Vance really stands for, and why his ideology is so distant from the Constitutional democracy he has sworn to uphold as a United States senator, it is necessary to examine the chief sponsor of his political and business career: a Silicon Valley billionaire named Peter Thiel.
Born in Germany and raised in South Africa, Thiel made his enormous fortune as a venture capitalist and executive in tech companies such as PayPal and Palantir. Attracted from an early age to far-right ideologues like the addled author Ayn Rand, the tech mogul has identified himself as a “conservative libertarian” and a critic of democratic systems. Not so long ago, he was heard to say that democracy and freedom – or at least his idea of “freedom” – are no longer compatible.
If that sounds ominous, it is a sentiment that Thiel has advanced for over a decade now – and that has long characterized a strain of anti-government extremism on the American right. It is a worldview that dates back at least three decades, when a self-proclaimed economic guru named James Dale Davidson began promoting it in his investment newsletters and video presentations.
Back then, Davidson’s seething enmity for President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton led him not only to make the preposterous claim that they were behind the death of their friend Vince Foster (who had tragically committed suicide), but to insist that Clinton’s policies would soon plunge the nation into a cataclysmic depression. The internet boom under Clinton, which boosted incomes and balanced the budget for the first time in decades, left Davidson looking foolish.
Undaunted by failure, he went on to write The Sovereign Individual, a 1997 tome that predicted the rise of digital currencies, along with other less prescient notions. It eventually won favorable attention from Thiel, who provided a gushing preface to a new edition in 2020, two decades after its original publication, that emphasized its influence on his own political outlook and urged it upon readers as “an opportunity not to be wasted.”
Why was Thiel drawn to Davidson’s obscure screed? Aside from its advocacy of what we might now call cryptocurrency – a dubious special interest promoted heavily by Vance ever since his elevation to the Senate – The Sovereign Individual foretold a world ruled by people like him. Governments, nation-states, and the social order would all collapse; digital currencies would replace all other forms of money, except among the poorest populations; taxation and regulation of corporations would become impossible. In its conclusion, Davidson and his co-author Lord William Rees-Mogg, a British peer, denigrated democracy as the twin of communism and welcomed the advent of a brutish and largely lawless world dominated by a tiny minority of the super-rich. (The fascinating tale of Davidson's checkered career is recounted in The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.)
It isn’t hard to imagine that Thiel, who has financed research aimed at human immortality, envisions himself as one of those godlike rulers. Does Vance agree with Thiel’s jaundiced view of democracy? Does he push crypto because digital finance will allow billionaires and their businesses to evade taxes and launder money? Does he look forward to a plutocratic dystopia replacing our republic?
No doubt the embattled Republican veep nominee would deny any such disturbing views. Yet Thiel isn’t the only ultra-reactionary influence on Vance. The Ohio senator has also endorsed Curtis Yarvin, a cranky computer programmer who says America needs “a national CEO, or what’s called a dictator,” and embraced Rod Dreher, an American writer who now serves the illiberal regime of Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban.
All that makes Vance something far worse than merely weird.
Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His new book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.
