The Build-a-Bear Statesman: Peter Thiel’s Technocratic Tinkering and the J.D. Vance Conundrum

If there were ever a modern political fable to match Aesop’s classics, it would surely feature a Silicon Valley magnate wandering into a Build-a-Bear workshop, and with a flick of his digital wallet, assembling a candidate perfect for the job of political ventriloquism. This is not fiction but a curious reality. J.D. Vance, the senator fashioned by Pete…