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Whether we like it or not (I know I don’t), this is apparently the week when all media outlets are now required to start talking about Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Why? I guess because even though he’s still polling in the single digits, he’s coming in third behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Also because a leaked memo from the DeSantis campaign recommended that he “defend Trump” and “hammer Ramaswamy.”
So what is it that we need to know about this guy?
Ramasway is a 37-year-old multimillionaire who made his money in hedge funds and biotech and in recent years has tossed himself into the culture wars, creating an investment firm called Strive Asset Management that helps people invest in companies without any consideration of Environmental Social Governance (ESG) risk factors.
He’s best known outside of the tech bro landscape for going around whining about “woke-ism” all of the time, including writing a book called Woke, Inc. in which he criticized corporations for being socially responsible.
Ramaswamy has particular disdain for the idea of “victimhood,” writing another book called Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence that is surely just as compelling as its title. Except when it comes down to it, victimhood is unacceptable for some people, but understandable for others. As an example, he said that he did not feel like a victim when someone threw him down a flight of stairs and caused him to break his hip in the eighth grade, but his heart clearly breaks for conservatives who “feel victimized right here at home,” probably by people being woke and/or simply existing.
Via The Atlantic:
He told [reporter John Hendrickson] he doesn’t believe his race will negatively affect his electability in 2024. He said that among most GOP voters, the No. 1 political problem is “not, like, Arabs right now.” He spoke of what he saw as other underlying American anxieties, such as “the feeling of being victimized right here at home,” he said. “Forces that are different than Mohamed Atta,” he added, alluding to one of the 9/11 hijackers.
It’s not really that different, though. Republicans are always looking for a convenient group of people upon whom to direct their assholery. In the 2000s, it was Arabs and people who looked like Arabs, using the excuse of 9/11. Starting in 2015, it was immigrants, and lately it’s been LGBTQ+ people. They always need that target, because without it, they just can’t really feel good about themselves.
Last week, the media got all “So this is what it’s like to have a millennial running for president?!?!?” when he “rapped” along to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” at the Iowa State Fair.
News has also dropped that Ramaswamy actually had something of a musical past, having performed under the alter-ego Da Vek — a libertarian rapper who said all the truths people were afraid to say — while he was at Harvard.
“Oh boy, I wonder what that was like!” you are probably thinking right now. Luckily for you, Michael Smerconish convinced him to spit some bars during a recent interview.
And here’s what he came up with:
It’s Vivek like cake
I’m not fake
And I swim in the lake of TRUTH
That’s me, Vivek. Yeah.
It’s the coquettish little head dip at the “Yeah” that really sells it.
I am by no means an expert in this area, but I feel very confident in saying that this is not very good, even by drunk white girl doing “Shoop” at a karaoke bachelorette party standards.
One of my least favorite tendencies to emerge over the past few years is the term “my truth.” I’m sorry, but there’s no such thing as “my truth.” There is “the truth” and “my personal belief or interpretation of things and events,” but there is no “my truth.”
Ramaswamy, despite his legendary hatred of “victimhood,” which we’ll get to later, is fond of claiming that he speaks truths. Truths that are difficult to hear but are undeniably true nonetheless. Except for how they are not, because they are just his personal opinion.
Here is Ramaswamy’s list of 10 truths, which he shared with The Atlantic:
God is real. There are two genders. Human flourishing requires fossil fuels. Reverse racism is racism. An open border is no border. Parents determine the education of their children. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind. Capitalism lifts people up from poverty. There are three branches of the U.S. government, not four. The U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.
Some of these are opinions. Some of them are lies. Others are ridiculous and irrelevant because no one with any power is trying to make them happen (e.g. open borders, which we do not have.). What they are not are truths.
Just because Ramaswamy is the youngest contender in the race right now doesn’t mean that he has — or wants — youth appeal. Indeed, one of the first things he’d like to do as president is to raise the voting age to 25, despite everyone in his camp telling him that this is a terrible idea.
“There needs to be some civic experience you need to have gone through in order to actually vote,” Ramaswamy told POLITICO last week. “That experience could be living seven years as an adult and voting at age 25. That experience could be direct service to the country or some first responder service,” or, he added, passing a civics test.
A test for voting? What could possibly go wrong?
The New York Times reports:
Vivek Ramaswamy says he can achieve more than 5 percent annual G.D.P. growth, which is higher than modern averages even in good economic times.
The biggest component of his proposal is to “abandon constraints” on fossil fuel and nuclear energy production. He claims that efforts to reduce carbon emissions are “the No. 1 obstacle to G.D.P. growth in this country.”
This is obviously not actually true, but can you imagine how appealing this idea would be to conservatives who want desperately to be told that not only will trashing the planet bring them great personal joy and satisfaction, but it will improve the economy and make them richer? Hell, that would be even more exciting than a cover of Woman’s World promising that they can lose 15 pounds a week eating nothing but cake and pasta.
The best news anyone can get is “Get the thing you want by doing something you love that’s supposed to be bad for you.” It’s why they’ll never stop doing studies on the miracle benefits of drinking a glass of wine a day.
Alas, in reality, destroying the planet is something that will ultimately have some serious and terrible consequences for the world economy.
Elon Musk took one of the most important and relevant social media sites on the planet and absolutely ruined it. Destroyed it. Fired people who were good at their jobs and necessary to keep the site running smoothly. Made it embarrassing, full of glitches and annoying to use. He more or less did to the site what Donald Trump did to America, and now Vivek Ramaswamy wants to do it again. Fun!
“What [Musk] did at Twitter is a good example of what I want to do to the administrative state,” Ramaswamy said in an interview with Fox News. “Take out the 75 percent of the dead weight cost, improve the actual experience of what it’s supposed to do.”
Well, that is not remotely what happened.
Awkwardly, Ramaswamy said this on the very same day that Musk announced that he would be removing the site’s “block” feature and a day before this move caused him to burn bridges with his good buddies James Wood and Catturd. It is safe to say that the amount of people who want anything run like Elon Musk is running Twitter is diminishing by the day.
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