GraniteM

It's fucking rich Thiel trying to coopt Robert A. Heinlein. The man believed in people being free to do as they wish, but he was no fucking kleptocrat. I'm not convinced that his philosophy would comport particularly well with modern libertarians, who amount to sock puppets for the GOP.

He believed fiercely in being politically knowledgeable and involved:

The former Berlin businessman I referred to earlier told me that he blamed his own group, people with the time and the money and the opportunity to know better, for what happened to Germany. "We ignored Hitler," he said. "We considered him an unimportant fellow, not quite a gentleman, not of our own class. We considered it just a little bit vulgar to bother with him, to bother with politics at all."

They thought of the government as "They." The only possible route to a clear conscience in politics is to accept political responsibility, either as an active member of the party in power or as an equally active member of the loyal opposition.

He believed in rationally-considered governance:

If you believe that laws forbidding gambling, sale of liquor, sale of contraceptives, requiring definite closing hours, enforcing the Sabbath, or any such, are necessary to the welfare of your community, that is your right and I do not ask you to surrender your beliefs or give up your efforts to put over such laws. But remember that such laws are, at most, a preliminary step in doing away with the evils they indict. Moral evils can never be solved by anything as easy as passing laws alone. If you aid in passing such laws without bothering to follow through by digging in to the involved questions of sociology, economics, and psychology which underlie the causes of the evils you are gunning for, you will not only fail to correct the evils you sought to prohibit but will create a dozen new evils as well.

And while he sure seemed to hate Communism, something I don't find all that surprising for a man of his generation, he arguably hated corruption and capitalist decay even more:

Of what use, then, are the American Communists?

They serve one function extremely useful to you and to the country, so useful that, if there were no Communists, we would almost be forced to create some. They are a reliable litmus paper for detecting real sources of danger to the Republic.

Communism is so repugnant to almost all Americans, when they are getting along even tolerably well, that one may predict with certainty that any social field or group in which the Communists make real strides in gaining members or acceptance of their doctrines, any such spot is in such bad shape from real and not imaginary social ills that the rest of us should take emergency, drastic action to investigate and correct the trouble.

Unfortunately we are more prone to ignore the sick spot thus disclosed and content ourselves with calling out more cops.

All of those quotes are from Take Back Your Government, a nonfiction book about how and why to get involved in politics, and one that I wish more people would read and take seriously. All of his fiction... you have got to take with at least a grain of salt. He loved to put political philosophy rants into his writing, but he also loved exploring weirdo scenarios that he may or may not have totally believed in, himself. Just because someone took a given interpretation from one of Heinlein's fictions does not mean that he would be chill with a bunch of vampires bleeding the planet dry.

Red Cross

The cholla cactus:

Which, fuckin' honestly, should be an object lesson for anyone who wants to advance progressive politics in this country. Engage in primary after primary and take over the party from within until the old guard are appalled at what it has become, except do that with good goals instead of horrifying ones.

And remember that by the time the election itself is at hand, it's too late to make meaningful change in the party platform. The primaries are what actually matter when it comes to changing course. Everything after that, it's just a binary choice between which of the major candidates you actually want in power.

Counterpoint

I was watching Labyrinth on a loop as a young boy, and I thought David Bowie was awesome, but I turned out... more or less straight. Mostly. Pretty much. I mean, of course Bowie is gorgeous, I'm not an idiot.

https://youtu.be/yGe7p98Wagg

I'm so fucking sick of people complaining about what the Democrats should have done years ago when the Republicans have been actively disassembling this country for my entire adult life, and are really getting down to the "rip out the wiring and sell it for scrap copper" phase.

Oh no!

With size adjusted to account for population! It becomes useless as a map, but significantly more illustrative of the political realities.

The US 2020 Presidential Election Cartogram:

Oh, and here's 2024

a goofy mascot that keeps doing weird things.

Sounds like exactly what a king should be.

They're working on that.