--- > Inspired by the political philosopher Albert Hirschman, figures including Goff, Thiel and the investor and writer Balaji Srinivasan have been championing what they call “exit” – the principle that those with means have the right to walk away from the obligations of citizenship, especially taxes and burdensome regulation. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k48fgmejzh6wvgjrb6tx0xzk) --- > Their high-tech private domains are essentially fortressed escape pods, designed for the select few to take advantage of every possible luxury and opportunity for human optimization, giving them and their children an edge in an increasingly barbarous future. To put it bluntly, the most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k48fp09jnt4k60kf0vsyycx3) --- > Reflecting on his childhood under Mussolini, the novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco observed in a celebrated [essay](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/) that fascism typically has an “Armageddon complex” – a fixation on vanquishing enemies in a grand final battle. But European fascism of the 1930s and 1940s also had a horizon: a vision for a future golden age after the bloodbath that, for its in-group, would be peaceful, pastoral and purified. Not today. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k48fstw2dpgtewde5t563zkj) --- > Trump has handed critical posts to people who subscribe to that fiery orthodoxy, [including](https://jacobin.com/2025/03/christian-zionism-huckabee-hagee-trump) several Christian Zionists who see Israel’s use of annihilatory violence to expand its territorial footprint not as illegal atrocities but as felicitous evidence that the Holy Land is getting closer to the conditions under which the Messiah will return, and the faithful will get their celestial kingdom. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k48g12xewcjnyc74w6xyxeex) ---