Speaking About Deep Weirdness

     It's well known that tech zillionaire and all-around oddball Peter Thiel is a major backer of U.S. Vice-President J. D. Vance -- and look, I'm not the boss of him; he can spend his money any way he likes.

     But he's got some far-out notions, and he's happy to share them in front of a sympathetic audience, stuff that seems like it would be a better fit in a Jack Chick tract than in a speech from a supposedly forward-looking, high-tech Silicon Valley figure: he's thinking the Pope might be the antichrist.

     Religion is not my beat; I'm not going to tell anyone how they should be practicing theirs when I have never figured out my own.  Nevertheless, this old and highly-charged trope, from a major backer of a politically prominent adult convert to Catholicism, is way over the top.

     Much of this article is paywalled; you can noodle around and find most of the details of Thiel's talk online.  The Veep needs to hear some pushback.  I'm sure his good buddy (and sometime employer) has a smooth line of stuff, but it's a line that diverges radically from the mainstream of American thought, and we are better off with politicians who aren't being towed along in the wake of one set of outré opinions.

     Make Dr. Strangelove a dark fantasy again.  Kubrick wasn't supposed to be a prophet, just a storyteller.