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This whole debate between Elon and the rest of the right hinges upon what people understand the purpose of a state to be.
Is it an ideological organization like the Comintern, the Ummah or Christendom (or e/acc aerospace/digital foom)? Is it a commercial area, devoted to making the green line go up? Alternately, is the state a suit of political power-armour for a nation, devoted to advancing their national, ethnic interests?
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1871978282289082585
Elon is in with the neocons, the fundamentalists and the woke on this one, he lacks a national concept for the state.
At the end of the day, I believe in the nation-state as the fundamental unit. Blood is thicker than ideology, you can see Chinese recruitment officers (who somehow got into the US military) say on Tiktok 'obviously I'm not going to fight against China' - maybe some other wars. Relying on foreign talent leaves you wide open to treachery and manipulation as the US has experienced and is experiencing. And it corrodes the necessary spirit of sacrifice. People are happy fighting wars to defend their nation, they are not so keen fighting for abstract causes. If migrants make a logical decision to migrate to a richer, more lucrative economic zone, they'll likely make the logical decision to leave when the going gets tough. On a collective level, logical individual decisions are no good. It makes more sense to evade duty and responsibility - but then you end up living in a poor, unsafe and weak state, you're worse off than before.
The US has mostly avoided these problems because the going never got tough. They were bigger and better than everyone in their region and enjoyed allies who did most of the hard fighting in the big wars. Even then, there have been significant political problems in America due to a lack of ethnic homogeneity. There can't be any race riots if there's only one race present.
Nobody wants to join the British Army today. Despite constant fearmongering and war propaganda it's actively shrinking. Turning a nation-state into an economic zone corrodes its integrity.
The idea of filling up your elite with people who left their home land for a better economic deal that isn't even that much better is absurd. The US is filling the upper class who would ditch their culture, homeland, family and friends for 2-3x salary increase. The US elite is going to drift far from the general population if it largely consists of rich arabs, Vietnamese computer nerds, wealth Chinese business people, eastern European jews and other groups who find Milwaukee as relevant as a white guy in Singapore finds Bhutan. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the US is deeply divided when the elite view the country as a vehicle for their own personal success and have no real ties to it.
It’s a problem for electoral systems in general. You don’t win by loyalty, in fact loyalty is often detrimental to the project. Being of, by, and for the people doesn’t matter, in fact the opposite, as the money lies in selling out the people to global interests. What matters is the ability to imitate the people enough to not trip alarms while you work to sell the country to the highest bidder while using propaganda to convince the people that all of this is to their benefit.
I don’t know that changing the demographics changes much, if anything I think it might accidentally help as it becomes increasingly obvious to the public that not only do the elites not care about them, but often have no serious connections to the actual country or its citizens. It might be possible for white guys with American accents to convince Amerikanners that they’re on side and not working for international interests. It’s not going to land nearly so well when the same “free trade! More immigration! Stop practicing your culture and religion you bigots!” Rhetoric comes from people with pajeet or mandarin or Arabic accents living in coastal global cities that have nothing in common with what average Americans people want.
It's like Vivek read this and said, "hold my beer"
https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1872312139945234507
Seems like he's torched his political career, or at least presidential ambitions, in one post.
Does he really think sports culture doesn’t celebrate achievement? It might not celebrate a particular kind of achievement but competitive sports are in fact meritocracy.
I do think Vivek has a point that Americans have gotten soft (eg participation trophies) but the point is that softness influences everything; not just math.
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On an unrelated note, It's funny, surprising, and interesting how much of Trump II politics is taking place before he even got inaugurated.
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Seems like a dumb argument. In Indian popular culture the hot male action hero who saves the girl is no less a Bollywood trope than a Hollywood one. I doubt that in Indian colleges the math Olympiad champ is more popular than the person who has drugs and money and throws big parties.
I also don't know how "nerd representation" is in any way lacking in recent US media.
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