Peloni: Is the return of American exceptionalism really to be based upon H-1b visas? Is this really how Americans make America Great Again? With an immigration injection of the right stuff, so to speak? The problem with the likes of Ramaswamy, who owes his success to funds from the Soros family and the promotion of a failed Alzheimer drug which was known to fail before Ram promoted its successes, is that he is not “Trumpier than Trump”, as he once sardonically claimed. In fact, Ram has no appreciation of the American people, and in fact has a great disdain for them, their acumen, and the culture which initiated the concept of American exceptionalism in the first place. Indeed, the hallmark of American exceptionalism is not based on personal academic marks nor on personal academic acceptance, both of which the H-1b program would focus upon. Instead, I think that Eric Weinstein explains this point best in the following 2min video [LINK]
Arguably, American exceptionalism is, at least in part, based on accepting and promoting unconventional thought as often expressed by unconventional individuals, for if convention is to be the height of what is viewed as exceptional in America, we would be lowering the bar of potential success considerably, exposing an enormous Achilles Heal in Ram’s erroneously short sighted claim that a return of American exceptionalism must come thru the cultural change which will be led by foreign immigration forced thru the H-1b program. Indeed, the number of H-1b candidates which Ram would be injecting into American society would be woefully short of being capable of making any such cultural change possible as Ram is suggesting? Instead it might be better argued that one would be better situated to Make America Great Again by unleashing the American born initiative which would come from unburdening American individuality, American ingenuity, and American advancement. By doing so America will, without any need of foreign competition, lead the world towards greater heights than Ram’s plan to ram thru his cheap labor sourcing of compliant, conventional, and cost effective H-1b candidates.
Sundance | Dec 26, 2024
Six months ago, I was asked my opinion of the Silicon Valley alignment with MAGA. I said at the time I thought it would last around 18 months and finally climax with a large fracture in the political movement around 2026. I had no idea at the time, the group of technocrats would begin publicly advocating for replacing American workers before Trump took office.
For the past several days I have watched Vivek Ramaswamy, David Sacks, Elon Musk and his big tech influencers debating with their followers about the importance for them to continue expanding H-1b visas for foreign tech workers. It is stunning to see this crew double, triple and quadruple down on advocacy, while defining American workers as inadequate for their Silicon Valley needs.
Alas, it is what it is. Within the argument Musk, Ramaswamy, Sacks and group have presented multiple justifications for their foreign worker assistance programs, while advocating for expanded immigration support therein.
Within the tone of their argument, they essentially say the American worker is (1) not intellectual enough; (2) doesn’t have the right work ethic; and the latest point of justification is that (3) American culture is to blame for their need to import foreign workers.
As Vivek Ramaswamy recently said, “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.” Thus, as the narrative is sold, American workers need to be replaced with more culturally appropriate Indian tech workers.
When the Indian-American starts saying Indian culture is more adequate at creating workers for the American tech industry, he loses me completely.
If the Indian culture is the holy grail breeding ground for software engineers, then why isn’t New Delhi replacing Silicon Valley?
Considering that factually the Indian culture is entirely based on a caste system, the argument is even more absurd.
What we need are training and recruitment centers for American students. However, the larger issue within the billionaire tech team advocacy is an issue of self-interest.
What we see in the justifications and arguments of the Ramaswamy, Musk and Sacks group is a very specific point of immigration policy for their subset within a singular sector of the American economy. Perhaps this would not be such a big issue, if these points of advocacy were coming from outside government interest groups. However, with this tech team going into the administration, the influence becomes something a little bigger.
The part the Tech Group do not understand is the core of the American DNA, “Liberty“…
It is only from the position of liberty, intellectualism actualized in freedom form, that the working culture of America, the ingenuity part, can be understood.
If you attempt to quantify Americanism with math and algorithms, the translated outcome always fails.
Dear Vivek Ramaswamy, my counter take…
Several years ago, Florida Power and Light won the prestigious international Edward Demming Award for excellence in multi-platform engineering, efficiency superiority and total quality in the process of energy management.
However, the scruffy rednecks did not blow every PhD intellectual out of the water with slide rules, CAD programs, articulated and quantified quality improvement processes and engineering acumen. They did it with hard hats and dirty fingernails.
Because they lost the award, the jaw-agape Japanese spent 6 months visiting and reviewing FPL and later published a 1,000-page study essentially saying FPL “wasn’t really good, they were just lucky.”
You see, the reviewers couldn’t actually quantify the reason why the Florida-based energy company was so successful. In response the FPL field leadership laughed, took out magic markers and wrote on the back of their hard hats: “WE’RE NOT GOOD, WE’RE RUCKY.”
A few years later, every single Kuwaiti oil field was blown up by Saddam Hussein. Global analysts and think-tanks proclaimed it would take 5 years to cap them all off and restart the Kuwait oil pumping industry. Well, the Kuwaiti’s and Saudi’s called Texans, who had them all capped and back in working order in 6 months.
We are a nation that knows how to get shit done.
A few more years pass, and the Northern Chile mine workers were trapped two miles underground. The eyes of the world began to tear as the word spread. Most began to whisper no one could save them. Who did they call for help? A bunch of hick miners from USA coal country who went down there, worked on the fly, engineered the rescue equipment on site, and saved every one of them.
Yup, that’s our America. Ingenuity born from freedom.
Across the pond a half-breed Islamic whack job, armed with an AK-47 and a goal to meet his virgins, began opening fire on a train in France. The scruffneck Americans on board didn’t run to the nearest safe room and hide themselves amid baguettes and brie. They said, “let’s go”, and beat the stuffing out of that little nut with a death wish.
Legion d’Honneur or not, that’s us. WE ARE AMERICANS! That’s just how we roll.
In fact, Lady Liberty can stroll along the Champs-Elysées with a swagger befitting Mae West because without her arrival, they’d be speaking German in the Louvre. Yet, for the better part of the past decade, a group of intellectual leftists have been teaching our children that it’s better to be sitting around a campfire eating sustainable algae cakes and picking parasites off each other; because ‘save the planet’, or something similarly minded. It would appear, they hate the outcomes and inequities from freedom.
Warmest regards,
Americans First!
A very interesting view of the H1B visa problem:
@lindagoudsmit@gmail.com
As one who worked for 15 years supplying IT personnel (mainly contractors, some full time salaried) to end clients in Canada (and some in the US) I can say first hand that MUCH of the H1-B program is misunderstood BS. (These are not Steve Wosniaks or Tom Edisons who are coming over.) In many cases it is just cheap labour doing an equivilant (or lesser) job than those who they displace.
At the same time, Musk and Vivek have a point that the the domestic culture has wrecked havoc on Americans (and Canadians.)When I was a little kid we all wanted to grow up and be astronauts, presidents, batting champions. Starting in the 1990s, kids started thinking that Beavis and Butthead were role models. Then the cast of Jersey Shore. And then R Kelly and Snoop Dog. On top of that, the kids of those American tech workers who got screwed over by offshoring in the late 1990’s to the 2010s don’t want to get burned like their parents. The smarter ones are heading into finance. Many of the others are looking for a quick buck elsewhere (‘influencer’, online gambling, etc.) and many others are just plain lost.
That Erik Weinstein-Ben Shapiro clip mentioned elsewhere on this thread nails it.
@ Reader
December 2008
https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Jewish-victims-killed-in-Mumbai-tortured-before-death-13895.html#google_vignette
@Reader Good point. All the more reason to keep them out.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/notes-in-young-india-by-gandhi-april-1921
—
“Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs…..It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany…. As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”
– Mahatma Gandhi, June 1946, in an interview with his biographer Louis Fischer.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gandhi-the-jews-and-zionism
“…Can the Jews resist this organised and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. No person who has faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn. Jehovah of the Jews is a God more personal than the God of the Christians, the Mussalmans or the Hindus, though as a matter of fact in essence, He is common to all and one without a second and beyond description. But as the Jews attribute personality to God and believe that He rules every action of theirs, they ought not to feel helpless. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.
It is hardly necessary for me to point out that it is easier for the Jews than for the Czechs to follow my prescription. And they have in the Indian satyagraha campaign in South Africa an exact parallel. There the Indians occupied precisely the same place that the Jews occupy in Germany…” November 26, 1938 in response to Kristallnacht which was on November 9, 1938, less than 3 weeks before.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lsquo-the-jews-rsquo-by-gandhi
Table of contents with lots more
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/gandhi-the-jews-and-zionism
I recall posting my disgusted objection to a Jewish community center in Yesha naming itself after him a number of years ago.
@Reader OK. So, Indian-Muslim-Americans have two issues. I remember kind of losing my taste for Bollywood when I discovered that my favorite actor, Shah Rukh Kahn – and all of his brothers, also actors – were Muslim Israelophobes. And I remember this Indian owned and run pharmacy where for some reason the people who worked there suddenly started grilling me about my position in H1b visas, long before they were in the news. Many years ago.
Oh! “That’s different. Never mind.” – Gilda Radner
The lower quality education for the masses is a conscious policy.
I’ve read scientific (I am really tempted to put this word in quotation marks) articles where the authors aver that since only a small percentage of people end up in higher level occupations, giving excellent education to everyone and then having most of these people end up in the jobs they are overqualified for creates a high level of dissatisfaction for them.
The assumption here is, apparently, that those people who deserve to be in high-level jobs will somehow obtain the higher quality education they will need.
It is, probably, cheaper to get a few foreigners in if and when case this scientific decision backfires.
@Sebastien Zorn
Indian-Americans vs. Muslim-Americans –
there are still plenty of Muslims in India, and they could come in on those visas, too.
@lindagoudsmit
Have you even TRIED to read my post about those qualified high-tech workers who came in in the early 90s, lied on their resumes, learned their skills on the job, and displaced the American computer people.
You cannot have a business approach to the government bureaucracy – it sounds really good but it isn’t.
As hated as this bureaucracy is, if it is taken over by business, the state will die – and I am not talking merely about a coup, I am talking about THE END.
It will DESTROY the state.
Why would the Indians who were lucky enough to come here to work making money they could never dream of back home want to go back to India most of which still $$its and pi$$es in the streets, and if you visit it, you might come back with a case of smallpox or leprosy?
That’s what the caste of untouchables does – picks up that stuff in the streets to keep them clean.
It is too late to do anything about the open border policies – there are 62 million Hispanics in the US, and if anyone tries to restrict them in any way, they can easily put a million people into the streets.
In response to Peloni, H-1B workers are not forced to come to America, they are free to leave, and they are not citizens of the United States. Their employment can be considered an experiment in American life and culture. If they choose to become legal citizens of the United States they can go through the legal channels, become United States citizens legally, and then be afforded the privileges and protections guaranteed to every United States citizen in our constitutional republic.
Also, it is important to remember that the current H-1B visa debate applies to a minuscule number of foreigners being allowed to legally enter the United States, compared to the astronomical number, estimated at 23 million, of unvetted known illegals invited into the country by the Biden/Obama regime open border policies! A population invasion of millions of unvetted illegals, especially those with hostile norms, including young men of military age and military training, is an existential threat to our national security. It occurs to me that the louder the attacks against the businessman perspective of the Trump/Musk/Ramaswamy triad on the H-1B visa issue, the less people are paying attention to the border crisis.
It is NOT about SKILL, it is about PRICE and PROFIT!!!
The US government is the FIST of the giant corporations.
This is ALL you need to know.
This is why they opened the Southern border in 1965 and this is why they have kept it open.
This is why they want those visas increased, it started in the early 90s.
The real income for an average American stagnated since then.
You’re doing good…. Sister Linda! the problem with most people they don’t think, or should I say – they do not think deeply enough about the subject matter at hand.
Indian-Americans have one issue: H1b visas. Muslim-Americans have one issue: destroy Israel. Automation aside, Orban has solved the problem of labor shortage in Hungary by giving women who have 4 children tax exemption for life. Israel has no such problems. Even secular Jews have many children out of patriotism.
@Linda
This is an important point which must be addressed, so thank you for raising it.
Musk is picking qualified foreign help over domestic foreign help – See charts halfway down the article HERE.
Also, while Musk’s solution to raise the price of foreign workers is important because it levels the financial end of things, it doesn’t solve the fact that the H1b workers are dependent upon their employment to stay, thus making them more pliable and less independent than American workers.
So, let me know what you think of these factors in regards to the H1b debate.
I am most definitely in the Trump MAGA camp and offer a very different opinion and perspective on the H-1B visa debate about importing highly-skilled foreign tech workers to fill the void in America’s high-tech industry. Importing highly skilled foreign labor is not what threatens American exceptionalism. It is the weaponized influence of amoral Marxism on American culture in American education that is the existential threat.
What is revolutionary about the views of the Trump/Musk/Ramaswamy triad is that they are businessmen, who focus on the real-life cause and effect facts of business. If you want to be first in the world you must compete in the world. To compete in the world, you must have the talent, knowledge, skill, determination to compete, work ethic (diligence, discipline, frugality––also known as the Protestant work ethic), and perseverance to win. American education no longer produces a winning product. I am not advocating replacing the American work force––far from it––I am talking about the ability to hire top-tier talent from any country in the world to help America get back on track until our failed educational system is resurrected and restored.
American education is no longer based on meritocracy, and the results have been catastrophic. Ask any entrepreneur––not politician––about hiring qualified hard-working employees today, from the most elementary position to the most advanced, and you will hear the same answer. It is a cultural problem––the absence of the work ethic has been catastrophic for America in a competitive world marketplace. Collectivist mediocrity has replaced individual excellence academically in American schools and culturally in the American workplace––by design. The globalist scheme that brought Marxism to America after WWII, ultimately expanded Marxism in America with Barack Obama’s deceitful promise that fundamentally transformed America.
The Marxist Culture War on America has been wildly successful, and reversing the damage will take time and a complete overhaul of the American educational industry, including student attitudes.
I love America and value freedom above all else––we cannot pretend that we are competitive when illiteracy is rampant across America, universities graduate students with useless degrees who are incompetent, or less than competent in the work force. While Chinese students and Indian students are studying mathematics, American students are learning LGBTQRS lessons in social engineering and DEI.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are saying the unsayable. They are businessmen making rational business decisions based on very inconvenient and unwelcome facts. They are appalled by the consequential mediocrity that replacing American meritocracy with Marxist indoctrination, has intentionally produced. Marxist indoctrination does not produce excellence, and relativism is not the answer to making America great again––meritocracy is. Excellence will only come from an overhauled educational system that restores Americanism, American meritocracy, celebrates American excellence, and most importantly, restores American Judeo-Christian morality.
We live in the 21st-century world of advanced science and technology, and science and technology are the keys to our future––specifically our individual and national sovereignty. Everything is connected. As globalist Bertrand Russell explained in his 1952 classic, The Impact of Science on Society––the one with the science and technology will prevail. We simply must win the ideological war between Americanism and Globalism, in order to restore Judeo-Christian morality as the ethical foundation for the advanced science and technology that is determining our future. The protection of individuals, individual sovereignty, and national sovereignty, must replace globalism’s amoral ends justify the means operating principle. It is the choice between freedom in our constitutional republic, or becoming slaves in the globalist totalitarian Unistate.
By the way, Elon Musk just ended the H-1B debate with this clarifying statement, “Easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically. I’ve been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform.” Trump/Musk/Ramaswamy are businessmen who deal with facts, and who reject the emotional soundbites about replacing American workers that will only preserve America’s mediocre status quo.
This stuff with visas started, as far as I know, in the early 90s when the U$$R was destroyed from within and the US no longer needed to show how life is so much better here than there.
The US manufacturing was largely moved to China and computer programmers, as an example, started to come in on those visas from India.
At first, there were special firms that obtained the visas for them and brought them in.
The Indians’ salaries were 1/3 of those of the American programmers, and they successfully competed with their American coworkers (in spite of the fact that many of the Indians doctored up their resumes) because Americans compete with each other as individuals but Indians cooperate and share knowledge within their group, and permit each other to learn new things by working on a project together even if the project was assigned to only one of them.
Several years later, someone realized that there was now no need to bring them in – they could work online from India and be paid their local salaries in rupees, or the natives of other countries could work online and be paid in their local currencies – this is still true, as far as I know, so why Ramaswamy has to start hauling them in again?
This is what the American business wants – CHEAP LABOR, no matter where it comes from or who it hurts in the US or anywhere else.
After the US manufacturing was moved to China, we were told that the US is now at a higher stage of economic development – it is called “service economy”.
But a few years later, if you called a company’s customer service number, instead of hearing an American-born representative, you heard someone with a heavy foreign accent.
Now, you would be glad to hear any accent, as long as someone live picked up the phone instead of some sadistic automatic system.
So, what stage of economic development are we at now?
It’s the same lie that they have been telling us for decades – “We don’t have enough quality teachers, computer programmers, etc, etc., this is why we desperately need to increase the number of those visas to bring in the quality workers.”
This is pure BS, replace the word “quality” with “cheap”, and you will have what it is they are after, this is a really old trick.
This Hindu guy wants what is good for India but not what is good for the United States.
While we are on the subject of the divergence between High Tech and MAGA, Sundance had his concerns about Musk long before Trump invited him into his campaign.
An email I received today was from We the Patriots USA and stated that despite Musk’s statements about wanting to protect freedom of speech, “we have been consistently censored since he took the helm, perhaps worse than ever before. That’s because Musk never really made a commitment to free speech. In fact – as I also pointed out in the thread – in November 2022, he publicly declared that X (then Twitter) would have a new policy: “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.”
“But there cannot truly be freedom of speech without freedom of reach. If the government told all of us that we could only exercise our right to free speech in deserted places, it’s pretty clear we’d have a slam dunk victory in a First Amendment violation lawsuit. Or, as Gab Founder and CEO Andrew Torba posted just this morning, “You know where you have ‘freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach?’ Prison.””
Now there are two different instances of divergence between the tech moguls and MAGA: one of them is on prejudice against Americans entering the high tech workforce and the other on the not-so-free speech advocated by Musk.
It is unclear at this time what the outcome of the H1b visa conflict will be. One suggestion has been that people from other countries can work from home, no need for a visa. Another suggestion has been made that US students should be chosen first, and when all the qualified US candidates have been hired, then hire from other countries.
In theory, when adults of different persuasions want to find a solution together, a solution will be found.
@leonkushner
Antisemitism is not an exception, it’s the universal rule (there are some exceptions but not too many).
Esav hates Yaakov, and there is nothing anybody can do about it.
Personally, I think the term “antisemitism” is incorrect and outdated, I like the term “antiJudaism” a lot better.
I worked with people who were good people in every way, it is just that they disliked Jews, and they didn’t keep it a secret.
When I asked one of my coworkers not to say it to me, he claimed his right to the freedom of speech.
Many US states are making child factory labor legal.
I am wondering how soon corporations will be again allowed to have their own forces who will shoot the striking workers.
Why bring in foreign workers?
Just keep the border open – this is the cheapest labor.
If Trump keeps these guys around, the US will crash in no time at all, and – FOREVER.
I think these type want another Great Depression to “clear out the trash“, of course, everybody who thinks it’s a good idea, think that the trash will be someone else and not them personally.
I haven’t much use for Vivek.
Ramaswamy is a first cousin to Usha Vance, and one of JD’s children is named Vivek.
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship was awarded in 2011 to Ramaswamy to pursue a JD in Law at Yale University, same alma mater as JD and Usha Vance.
On page 41 of “Superclass” by David Rothkopf he writes, “Wu Xiaoling governs the foreign reserves of the People’s Bank of China, which amount to more than $1.4 trillion. The bank controls more financial assets than any other single public financial institution in the history of the world, with the total expected to pass $2 trillion by 2010. It has already extended its reach overseas with a $3 billion investment in the New York-based Blackstone Group from a bank controlled by the CCP. Wu also ranked eighteenth on Forbes’s list of the world’s most powerful women in 2007 — probably an understatement of her global influence.”
Blackstone was the forerunner to BlackRock, where Larry Fink shared managerial duties with his partner Stephen Schwarzman. They had a falling-out and Fink created Blackrock. It would be Blackrock that later synthetically boosted Vivek’s company Roivant Sciences by buying their stock and inflating its value.
Fink is also on the steering committee of the World Economic Forum. They named Vivek as a young global leader. Once this was discovered, he disavowed it and claimed that they used his name without his knowledge. (Very unlikely.)
Vivek has been “managed” by the Davos crowd since he was a kid, groomed for power. You can see both he and Pete Buttigieg masquerading as “average college kids asking questions” on Chris Matthews’ show “Hardball” when Vivek was 19.
Do I trust him? Nope, not on your life I don’t, but he’s not the worst of the president-elect’s choices.
Thankfully Stephen Miller is in the administration and if Trump is smart, he’ll listen to this brilliant fellow!
PELONI-
What you’re describing right down to his “Long Johns” is Super Used Car Salesman.
Or James Whitmore’s Ultra-sudden switch from accuser to defence attorney when he learns that the guilty man is retaining him for his defence..Comical of course to see actually in mid-sentence the steer to the opposite side.
@leonkushner
Like you, I was never taken in my Ram’s salesmanship, and it was salesmanship, devoid of principle or consistency, as demonstrated more than once in the primary.
The Soros supported, Big Pharma advocating chameleon former Democrat, who has now come to champion all that he once opposed.
After noting his preference to end aid to Israel and treat them no different than any other Mideast ally of the US, and it was the latter more than the former of these which gave me real pause, Ram came out to announce that he had been “misunderstood” and that he was in fact the greatest champion of Judeo-Christian values among all of those running for president, even though he was a practicing Hindu and the others were all Christians. As per usual, Ram made these protestations with sincere conviction that either his sincerity was quite real or he was charming the public with the same snake oil charm set that he used to convince his Big Pharma investors that the already failed Alzheimer drug would actually be successful going forward, which of course, it was not.
In fact, I wouldn’t trust Ram further than I would throw him and I would rather keep my distance from in in any event.
I question if Trump is appointing such obvious swamp creatures such as Ram simply to expose them for their chameleon natures, as in particular, the empty suit which Ram represents can hardly have been missed by Trump.
With regards to Ram, I agree with you that Trump will be in charge and will likely intercede as needed to prevent Ram from doing much damage. This contrasts with the appointment of someone such as Tulsi Gabbard whose alignment with Iran & the Pals over the years could hardly be difficult for anyone to detect, and yet whose input will likely have a large effect on the rating of intelligence which Trump receives which will in turn impact any decisions he makes based on intelligence, which would include everything related to the Iranians and their nuclear program.
I have said it many times, but the policy of Trust but Verify is overrated. This is why it is important to find people whose worldview and outlook would mimic that of Trump and his MAGA movement to move his policy forward. Notably, neither Ram nor Gabbard honestly fit the MAGA posture…and they are easily not the only appointees made by Trump which outwardly don’t.
I was never a fan of Vivek. Do you recall what he said during his campaign for president? That he would stop all aid to Israel?
Now that he’s on the Trump train, he’s changed his tune. I’m glad that he has but can he be trusted? Is he sincere of his support for Israel now?
When people change their opinions drastically on important issues I am always suspicious. What are their motivations?
In Vivek’s case, it’s obvious. He wants to stay relevant. He’s now become an important asset to the future Trump administration. He’s in the news almost daily. Are we being duped? I think so.
I’m not overly concerned however. Because President Trump is in charge and I trust him and other true blue (blue and white that is) cabinet posts that he appointed who will no doubt keep Vivek and anyone else who strays, in line.
I blogged about the danger of Vivek when he was running for president
https://leonupsidedown.blogspot.com/2023/08/dont-fall-for-vivek-ramaswamy.html
because at the time, many of my dear Jewish friends and others were putting him up on a pedestal as an alternative to that mishiguna orange man. Perhaps many missed his speech about not helping Israel.
Lately we’ve witnessed the horrific antisemitism that has spilled out from our former right winged ‘friends’ like Candace Owens, Kanye West, Tucker Carlson and others. Were they antisemites all along and just hid it in order to get to where they are now? Maybe. Is Vivek one of them? Maybe. I will follow the Jewish precept of not judging harshly. But I am entitled to look warily upon him based on his prior behaviour. I will not call him out as an antisemite today. But I will issue the following warning: Be careful who you chose as your friends. Recall the Israelis (Leftists all of them) who befriended those sweet arabs in the Gaza strip prior to Oct 7.
Batya Ungar-Sargon:
What is more is that he is doubling down on the policy failure which help establish this system. So it isn’t just that he is celebrating the failure, but he is one of those whose appointment was intended to help fix the problem which he is celebrating.