Thanks for sharing some personal context. I'll admit, when people use the terms "hard", "extreme", "alt" before a political direction, I don't really know what

Thanks for sharing some personal context. I'll admit, when people use the terms "hard", "extreme", "alt" before a political direction, I don't really know what they're actually signifying in terms of substantive views. I'm still having trouble squaring what his views are from the description (not a demand for more rigor here, just an honest appraisal) here. Sure, Trump was looney/incompetent/corrupt, and JD Vance/Blake Masters have said a few things that we can criticize, but I don't know if those pieces of evidence shed a light on Thiel's actual views. As an example, I voted for Biden/Democrats, but if you were looking at what they say/do (particularly the most controversial things in the media) as the only evidence for my views, you wouldn't understand my positions very well. To share my version of a steelman for Thiel (I'll admit a lot of ignorance here, so anybody please correct me), it seems like there is a major throughline in a lot of what he does around Centralization vs Decentralization. I get the impression he is for Decentralization of governments/power at large. This can show up in national politics as showing support for local nation ideals (as opposed to a more globalist perspective), limiting the scope/size of government, support for federalism, support for cryptocurrencies, support for individual rights/freedoms, support for testing new government models (i.e. Seasteading Institute), pushing back on the entrenched establishment, etc. Is every politician he supports going to follow that playbook directly? I wouldn't expect them to. But the Centralization vs Decentralization dimension seems like something he may be thinking about if I'm reading the tea leaves. About how the individual relates to powerful entities, and what is the best relationship between the individual and the state/power for the future of humanity. If that is in fact what his views are, I don't think they are insane myself. Yes, individual politicians can be wacky/insane, but I think there are a lot of reasonable positions/considerations on both sides that come out of thinking about that broader topic, whether any one politician is truly representing it.