Vandelay

I told you. I told you all. I told you over two years ago. I told you over two years ago that Vivek Ramaswamy isn't an American and never will be. And what did you say? OMG you just don't like him because he's brown you horrible basement dwelling racist. That's what you said. So I waited. I'm not stupid. I know better than to be right too early. Now I'm going to repeat myself. Vivek Ramaswamy is not American. Everything he says or thinks about America, he must mentally translate into the closest equivalent concept from his own culture, rather than understanding it in its own right. When he says that the founding fathers "sacrificed their honor", he reveals that he does not understand what Americans mean by honor. He is instead translating it to the third world concept of "face" or "izzat", which is not what we would call honor at all, but social standing or reputation with the existing power structure. Similarly, when he thinks that Amy Acton is somehow compromised by having been raped at the age of 12 by an adult charged with her care. Under third world values, this is a loss of "face" for her. Under American values, it's considered dishonorable to rape kids. But the largest and most obvious clue, the one that should have dialed you all in, came earlier. Came two years ago. You know the one. The issue isn't that he called Americans lazy and mediocre. That's just third-world woofing, and we can absorb a simple insult. The third world insults us constantly now that we are selling them smartphones and internet access. Around here, we call that "Tuesday". No, the significant point here is that he revealed his complete lack of understanding of how Americans innovate and succeed. Being dragged into cram school by a tiger mom every summer, to drill trigonometry problems, may be how the Chinese and Indians personally succeed in their societies, by passing examinations and winning secure niches in their society's top institutions gaining much face thereby. But this is not how Americans succeed, and it is not what propelled America to the pinnacle of civilization, technology and wealth. We succeed by how we cultivate, motivate, and allocate talent. This is something you can't explain to third-worlders, no matter how many times you repeat yourself. If they could understand it, they would not be third-worlders, because their countries would long ago have turned into first world countries. They just think we are saying that we are so talented that we don't need to work hard. That we are so much smarter than they are that we can watch Saved By The Bell and have sleepovers and go to prom while they are drilling math problems. This might actually be true. Our average IQ is about 20 points higher, give or take. But that's not what's really going on here. What's going on here is that Americans do work hard... but not in the context of an institutional pipeline set up by the state. Americans work hard by playing. When two American kids invent heavier-than-air flight, they don't do it by going to drill trigonometry problems and sitting for the state college exams. They just play around with kites, and bicycles, and bicycle kites, without asking anyone's permission or blessing first. And they keep obsessively tinkering until something works. They are working hard. But they are not working hard because someone is standing over them with a whip. They are working hard because they are obsessed with bicycle kites. Americans greatness comes from three guys in a shed. We innovate by fooling around. Is every American like this? This talented? This obsessed? Of course not. But the secret sauce has another ingredient, and that is respect for results, not for credentials or riches or titles or izzat. If some American shows up wearing stained overalls, with straw sticking in his hair, and says that his name is Jimmy Ray Hatfield, and he reckons he just mighta dun figgered out this fusion containment thing, ya'll, then Americans don't throw sticks at him. We say... show me. Guys like Vivek don't get that. They don't understand that in America, credentials and job titles are just something you pick up along the way to learning to actually make something, and it is the making of something, not the titles, that we consider to be success. Vivek in office would be a disaster for Ohio, not only because he is a grifting scumbag, but because one cannot foster American greatness if one does not understand what makes America great. The greatness of America is in its people. If the republican party does not realize that, then it must be replaced by a party that does, because the goal is not for republicans to win, the goal is for America to win. And TransAmericans are not Americans.