Far more jarring than Donald Trump’s solemn promise last night to protect LGBLTBBQ sandwiches from “foreign attackers” (as opposed to his own supporters or running mate) was PayPal founder Peter Thiel’s claim that “fake culture wars only distract us from our economic decline” (“when I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom,”).
Let’s get the obvious out of the way : Thiel is a white male BILLIONAIRE. If someone doesn’t want to let him use their bathroom, he can just buy the fucking building and turn it into his own private toilet. I’d like to see him tell someone that’s been bullied, beaten or murdered that culture wars (or more to the point, struggles for civil rights) are phony and we’ve got bigger fish to fry, except he already said it on TV.
Though most commonly ID’d in the media for his long-running feud with Nick Denton, Thiel was also cited last night for past claims that democracy is a bad idea and plans to use his vast wealth to extend his personal existence into some sort of cyborg perpetuity (which may or may not have been the inspiration for the Johnny Depp megaflop, “Transcendence”). Here’s hoping Ted Williams comes back first.