I’ve discussed the expected rupture of the Republicans several times over the years, so this remark from a post by Professor Richardson concerning how the MAGA/Republicans may be going to pieces is more surprising for the details, which I didn’t expect, than the general overall fact that a movement built on, even advocating for, self-interest will tear itself apart:
Civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republicans. On the one side are the traditional MAGAs, who tend to be white, anti-immigrant, and less educated than the rest of the U.S. They believe that the modern government’s protection of equal rights for women and minorities has ruined America, and they tend to want to isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world. They make up Trump’s voting base.
On the other side are the new MAGAs who appear to have taken control of the incoming Trump administration. Led by Elon Musk, who bankrolled Trump’s campaign, the new MAGA wing is made up of billionaires, especially tech entrepreneurs, many of whom are themselves immigrants.
I suppose that, in retrospect, I should not be surprised that some of the business community would try to take advantage of the chaos that is the mendacity machine, Mr. Trump, in order to increase their profits even more. It’s important to note that the top management is often under heavy pressure to continually increase profits by investors, who tend to view themselves as the most important part of the organism well call big business – rather than the least important.
In any case, Professor Richardson’s post, if accurate, is one of the more important that I’ve seen from her for those attempting to understand the current American political scene.
One of her citations of participants in the right wing brawl is that of Vivek Ramaswamy, a proposed partner in the government efficiency effort:
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.
A post full of logic errors that doesn’t get to the heart of the problem: money is widely accepted as a proxy for earned social prestige, and, in an allied way, the importance of social prestige in today’s society is not what it used to be. It used to be the smartest people didn’t go into engineering, but medicine. Now? No longer true. Now they go into business & finance, trying to make money from selling useful & non-useful stuff to folks, or playing games with financial loopholes, such as odd derivatives which sought to transfer risk from those seeking to enrich themselves to those supplying the cash, a dubious practice concealed through obfuscation.
Meanwhile, medical personnel are considered severely understaffed. Even medical doctors, who remain admired, are in short supply for many specialties.
In any case, Ramaswamy has written an inspirational, rather than logical, rant, and for those of us who are paying attention to such details, it just comes off as fakery.
