Cut a "rationalist centrist moderate" and a fascist who doesn't want to get cancelled because he still needs VC funding and Linkedin connections bleeds.

US politics has been increasingly polarized into positions congruent with facts and policy and our traditional ideals, and positions associated with a general stance of grievance, with an insistent selfishness, with anti-empathy, anti-intellectualism, with "palingenetic ultranationalism". This has been a test of your ideals, of your humanity. It wasn't very hard.

Yes, there is often a lot of nuanced truth in the middle of any argument. But less now, in politics, than in a long, long time. Only a very particular sort of person walks into a liberated Auschwitz and starts shouting "Both sides are too extreme and I'm better than them!" from the rooftops.

Speaking as somebody who spent a lot of time there: A lot of the tropes in the "rationalist" community are inherently conservative-pointing, and it's a general prerequisite for participating there that you have a coherent base of progressive terminal ideals and an attitude suited towards introspection and iteration of your beliefs. Because otherwise you go from zero to Nietzschean ubermensch to Nazi ubermensch to Musk/Thiel brownshirt in no time, having weaponized everything present there to support your priors and idly expand your confidence.