Peter Thiel on 'The Straussian Moment'

Thanks for watching.

MM.

[victorsavkov]

Michael, thank you very much for your reading and commenting. First time I encountered the essay in Thiel's interview on Hoover's Institute channel, Unknown Knowledge. Your comments are helping to get better understanding.

[grecko]

Your analysis helps me understand these essays Michael - I have learned so much from your read throughs. I look forward to the next!

[Queenfisher]

Even though we diverge on many points, the intellectual consistency and rigour of your investigations are truly a unique thing in the modern world.

If the many opposing viewpoints of todays age were presented with the brilliance you present yours we would be an intergalactic species by now.

Thankyou.

[cb]

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice” from the great philosopher, Geddy Lee

[herlocksholmes]

Interesting stream. By the way, at 59:32 when he talks about how people are “amusing themselves to death”, it is probably a reference to Neil Postman’s book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” from 1985. I haven't read the book myself, but it seems that it has only become more relevant in our time where most of the information we obtain is mediated by the internet, social media and smart phones.

[vantagepointmoon]

Billionaire aside, also an interesting thinker. And quite symptomatic that when faced with the problems that push the established boundaries, he returns to both history and philosophy. It will be interesting to see how his ideas develop as he has the means not just argue and reason, but act on them and build the systems that embody those ideas. We shall see

[MihailGeorgeNeamtu]

Good job! Great exegesis. Merry Christmas 🎄

[tuckerbugeater]

And I bet he knows who really carried out the 9/11 attacks because he's a genius and all.

[josepharimathea]

"Why not *reflective* defense of the city?" ...Consider reading Guénon, among other works, his "Crisis of the Modern World", especially chapter six on the social chaos

[tomv]

😅I've read the article twice, but hearing this talk helped me to understand it more. I'll need to read it again with underlining, etc.

[brianbob]

I am a fan of deep analysis but also we should not forget the simple explanations. Man sees violence and injustices against his people from an ultra powerful foe, man plots revenge.

[NicoFromTheWaves]

Excellent video. Glad I discovered your channel, thanks for making this.

[jaysphilosophy]

Did the IMF give the third world money, or did they LOAN the third world money? Finance capitalism tends to ask for that money back...

[jbsweeney]

Where you been Mike?! Make more videos!

[blockpartyvintage]

Hey Micheal. Ive heard you mention in a recent video that Dugin has a volume or a book about the Spiritual aspect of warfare or something to that effect but hasnt been translated to English. If you can recll what the name of that book is? Thanks

[ebad]

Thanks for this. After the discussion on Heidegger's Black Book, this is my favorite post by you.

[Wypipo]

You did this really well. You seem cool and funny and could probably get a lot out of not forcing the dryness.

[dava]

That made me reflect a lot, thanks!

In the section about how we should have reacted to 9/11 in a more or less crusade like manner... I was wondering, the fixation on the crusades and the memory hole around the level of violence the Islamic expansion required tells a great deal about the differences between the two points of view in the modern world.

[plaiche]

Was this actually written in 2019? If it were 2003 maybe (and I stress maybe) it would have been somewhat relevant, but the entire foundation, like the essence of Strauss’ great man, elitist lens, is preposterous on its face.

Strauss is hardly “obscure” unless you slept through the 1992-2008 and missed the multi trillion dollar debacle from PNAC, and the ensuing neoconservative reshaping of the middle east, and, for convenience, ending with the new cast brought in with Obama (which measured by countries being attacked by the US, quietly escalated high tech military adventurism substantially wherever the “wretched” and disgruntled (now universally relabeled “terrorism”) showed signs of displeasure, hunger, or other consequences of the shifts induced by the largely unilateral mobilization of an empire in decline (see Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia etc), but I digress).

For Thiel to frame the world based on the official 911 narrative in 2019 is uber-Straussian indeed, as it attempts to presume the world largely still believes the infantile fiction of the box cutter bandits, despite the immense scholarship that long ago annihilated every inch of this transparent false flag and the attempted installation of this next chapter in the “good guys vs bad guys” binary that Strauss and his ilk are famous for anachronistically believing was sufficient to control the wretched and their domestic, overfed, pharmaceuticalized counterparts.

Its almost infantile to hear it referenced as the foundation for the present, while no doubt being true to some degree, but being at best a durable, force fed fiction (ala JFK in 63) that lingers from the force of will and discipline of intellectual gatekeepers unwilling to “go there” despite the obviousness that in the internet era, you can’t hide something so vast and absurd under a rug anymore. Even for those who might tend to uncritically accept official narratives and who will never dig deep to understand it, intuition and the absurd, self defeating nature of all that has followed, manifest in the measurable and precipitous decline in trust of governments and their collaborators in the private sector. Ignoring this is akin to ignoring a ticking time bomb in the room.

With that as a foundation, I didn’t get very far. I’d learn more from a children’s story or a Hollywood movie, where at least I’ve agreed to suspend my disbelief at the onset before allowing my empirical observations to be shredded by some manipulative storytelling only worthy of any attention based on the net worth of the author in this case.

Drivel (no disrespect to the earnest efforts of the professor to take this self serving, awkward, insecure buffoon seriously. Gawker rolls over in its grave).

[edwardmclaughlin]

"You can't have a political theory or a model of the world that makes the election of Donald Trump impossible..."

MSM "Hold my beer"