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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025

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Revisiting Vivek Ramaswamy's Christmas Rant: One Year Later

The tome in question, in case you need to refresh your memory. One hundred and twenty five million views. This single tweet tore open a gash in the Republican coalition that has yet to heal (though I don't want to overstate the counterfactual impact here, this particular fault-line was inevitable).

Looking back, it is clear now that the controversy was never just racist shit-flinging. There is a real philosophical conflict underlying the backlash. It is perhaps most elegantly stated as a variant of the Euthyphro dilemma; is our culture good because it is American, or is it American because it is good? Vivek is a functionalist. If an aspect of American culture is non-functional, then it should be replaced. His opponents in the comments are overwhelmingly essentialists. Americanness is an ontological property that is good because of it's essential nature as American. In this context, the idea that someone might choose to discard prom queens or jock sports fandom is a threat to America itself. Of course, this begs the question, who counts as American? And we end up with the "Heritage American" discourse that has been popping up lately.

I'll step in an steelman Vivek here. Remember Vivek's presidential campaign ran to the right of Trump on one issue: ending affirmative action.

Let's start by loading into context the take-aways from Compact Magazine's "The Lost Generation" - that Heritage American sold out their own sons from taking positions they were as-qualified or often better-qualified for. Now imagine you're Vivek - you come to this country and you like the Red team's vision for the future, you want them to win - but everywhere you look in the halls of power tells you the Red team can't possibly win. They've walled their own people out, and the Blues are in no mood of letting any more Reds through their gate.

You're Vivek so you are familiar with one mode of social mobility: a generational compact where the older generation assists the capable and deserving strivers of the rising generation if they will demonstrate consistent work ethic. Is this not exactly what the doctor ordered for the Red team's ailment?

To dig a into a Straussian reading of Vivek's lament: Grill Americans have largely adopted a slave morality that elevates "Special Education" spending to multiples of Gifted and Talented programs. They've co-signed student loans for their daughter's gender studies (albeit through gritted teeth) while sending their sons into low level career training programs (that were good enough for the Boomers).

But you can't run for President and just tell your voters this "your cherished morality is wrong - stop spending more on literal retards then your future inventors - it's why you're losing!" Instead you need to find a rhetoric that is within the Overton window - and that's football programs and sitcom re-runs. Less of that you say but this isn't an exhortation for the kids to adopt Korean study habits (as many seem to think), but for Grill Parents and Grill Towns to make a new social compact of assigning social prestige and support to activities that generate more Power for the Red team. This is of increasing importance in this new American landscape of zero-sum or even adversarial negative-sum games, like the land where Vivek and his family escaped from.

Ramaswamy's mistake is backing the wrong horse. The Blue tribe has no shortage of meritocratic strivers (albeit, rarely to the degree of the stereotypical Asian immigrant). By contrast, meritocracy/achievement is not a premiere value for blood-and-soil conservatives, who generally prefer loyalty, hierarchy, and - above all - lineage. Some second gen immigrant with the wrong religion telling them they need to hustle harder is never going to fly.

America as an attainable idea is consistent with the founding meta-principles of the country, but is not really compatible with the present American conservative movement, which is dominated by nativists who view Americanness largely as a function of in-born traits rather than demonstrated values.

Of course, this begs the question, who counts as American? And we end up with the "Heritage American" discourse that has been popping up lately.

"Heritage American" is just the latest formulation of the idea of Real America, which goes back quite a ways under one guise or another. It holds that, white, conservative (and usually rural and uneducated) Christians are the true heart of America. To the extent that you deviate from this prototype, the legitimacy of your participation in American society and politics is questioned or outright rejected.

It's not a coincidence that the idea isn't very coherent. It's often invoked by people who trace their ancestry to Catholic immigrants from the mid-19th century, or by people whose heritage ancestors that give them a claim to special status are people who literally repudiated their allegiance to the United States. The point is not to assemble an intellectually consistent basis for who really counts. That would exclude many, if not most, proponents, and in any event they're not really interested in cutting out some Polish American whose ancestors came in the 1880s as long as he votes the right way. It's to create a fuzzy category that legitimizes the aforementioned idea of Real Americans while avoiding any question of values (which are largely anti-American).

Vivek’s big issue is he’s lived a sheltered life. He’s never been with normies. 95% of the people in any country are just too dumb to win as strivers (Israel excluded). Promoting striving culture is just bad politics because 95% of the voters can’t win that game.

I don’t think striving culture makes countries rich. I think the best scientist just enjoy being scientists and are having fun. It’s not grinding for them. I think few professions benefit from striving culture. The only potential exception being medicine.

I don’t consider myself a striver. I did do math problems for fun growing up. I went to math tournaments. Why did I do it? I was having fun.

Vivek is the only Republican I would vote against. The vision for the party he has is a cancer and it’s worth giving Dems a little more power to destroy him.

It’s stupid to let Vivek run in Ohio because I highly doubt I’m the only one in the base who vote against him.

Vivek is the only Republican I would vote against. The vision for the party he has is a cancer and it’s worth giving Dems a little more power to destroy him.

It’s stupid to let Vivek run in Ohio because I highly doubt I’m the only one in the base who vote against him.

Thankfully, Casey Putsch (a car YouTuber) is running as Republican specifically against Vivek. The party probably won't be fucked in Ohio.

95% of the people in any country are just too dumb to win as strivers (Israel excluded).

Israel has its own underclasses of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews that feel like they are being screwed over by the disproportionately Ashkenazi upper classes.

And in point of fact, Israeli Christians are local version of orientals, in having incomes and educational outcomes that handily best the majority. Jews do better than Muslim Arabs or Druze but behind Christians. Basically nobody disputes that this is for IQ reasons- Arab Christians are a genuinely high IQ group.

Hmm I wonder why that is. Arabs are generally low iq. So why is this one group high iq? Do they not practice cousin marriage unlike Muslim Arabs

Arab Christian’s have globally normal rates of cousin marriage compared to the very high ones among Muslims, yes. There’s a few HBD just so stories(sub-Saharan African DNA in the Muslim population and jizya forcing conversions among the poor), too, but they seem like just-so, and also it’s a pretty even spread; Maronites who lived in enough isolation to get away with stuff aren’t any dumber than Copts who didn’t.

He's also just really scuzzy, even by the low standards of Ohio politicians. Musk can make these sort of arguments stick by pointing at one of several giant factories. Vivek can point to... failed biomedical stuff in an even-more-scammy-than-normal field, a politically-focused investment fund, and partial ownership of BuzzFeed.

None of it's clearly fraud, or illegal, or even likely to get the New York AG going after him, but I wouldn't be surprised if he loses more Red Tribe support than Jay Jones lost Blue Tribe support.

I just don’t see who in the Republican Party that Vivek appeals to. He seems to believe in blankslatism which is very unpopular in the high IQ parts of the GOP. He made fun of football and cheerleaders so I don’t think he’s cool with the blue collar guys. He’s not Christian. I will be completely honest that I don’t think someone can be American without conversion.

Who’s his voter base? Boomer neoliberals? I thought they all became Democrats already.

This anti - Vivek rhetoric is wild to me. He was one of the most eloquent avid culture warriors and had the skin color and balls to say what everyone was thinking more than Trump or DeSantis.

I am tired of presidents that play dumb or are dumb. I want 4-syllable words in speeches and the worship of merit. I want to crush pro-black racial spoil systems, salt the earth so they never return, and I'll take any ally anywhere to accomplish it.

I understand that many in the red tribe don't want these things but I would have voted for him, easily, even with the scuzzy businesses.

If you believe in hbd and are concerned about racial spoils systems then how could you do anything that might increase the number of Indians in America? The vast majority of Indias population is no more intelligent than American black (probably lower due to race mixing). A few Brahmins are fine but anything that risks potential immigrants of 100’s of millions of lower class Indians is a gigantic risks.

Infinity Indians isn't the argument I'm making, and I don't think Vivek ever made it either.

But that seems like what we will get. Heritage Americans don’t like being racists or mean. Indians will advocate for other Indians. Without limiting Indians today we end up with infinite Indians which eventually means the large amount of low IQ Indian populations.

I don't know the statistics about how Indians advocate for one another. I work in tech, so I see plenty of the ingroup preference there. I agree it's a risk, but I also don't think high-caste indians are interested in importing their lower-caste brethren.

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This anti - Vivek rhetoric is wild to me. He was one of the most eloquent avid culture warriors and had the skin color and balls to say what everyone was thinking more than Trump or DeSantis.

Huh? Vivek went on a rant about American laziness wherein he listed a bunch of reasons why America would crush India in a war and somehow came to believe they were bad things.

Do you doubt in any way the pervasive culture of laziness in this country? His comment hit a nerve because deep down we know it's more true than not. It transcends racial lines. Talk to a millennial or Zoomer about hard work or striving. They're almost alien concepts.

I think American culture would be improved dramatically with 10% more striving: white included.

His rant isn't really about laziness though. Laziness is not what causes people to prioritize "prom queens" and "jocks". Indeed, the prom queen and the jock are examples of excellence in their own fields, that being maintaining physical beauty + good social status and athletic prowess. And what he further gets wrong is thinking these things are somehow anti-correlated with the things he would personally like to see popularize like "math olympiad champ" and "valedictorian", while in America they are not. Perhaps if he were more in tune with real American culture he wouldn't be buying into left wing movie tropes as indicative of real life. But here, in the real world, you can be prom queen and get a 1500 on your SAT and maintain a quality GPA (whatever that means in 2025 is not something I know, when I went to HS 4.0 was still considered exceptional, but grade inflation has probably changed that). In the real world you can win a science competition while making all conference or all state on the football team (or in my case winning a regional title in an individual sport).

Indeed, if we drill down into Vivek's screed, it is simply self serving ignorance. It was a bunch of jocks, who happened to also be brilliant, who ran the British Navy as it established an empire that easily subjugated Vivek's people, and Americans of the same ilk then won the world wars and beat back communism (which, again, Indians thought was really cool). But he attacks things he does not know, and/or cannot compete on (and in fact many other Indians tend to struggle in these realms as well). No mention of his sporting in his background, and we would expect from his rant he was not prom king. Indians as a whole struggle with athletics, having the lowest Olympic medals/capita of any large nation.

And is there a laziness problem? Yes, but it is not some problem with Prom Queens failing to cram in a dozen extra problem sets a day so they can get their SAT score from a 1400 to a 1450, and its not because some jock does a half ass job on some meaningless homework assignment given to him by an overeducated English teacher who couldn't get with the jock she liked when she was in HS. No, its the stoners and the antisocial kids that need to be reformed, but since Vivek buys into the Hollywood high school myths of dumb jock and repressed genius that gets shoved into lockers he doesn't have any real applicable solutions. Instead he has a dumb rant against the very great things about America that cause America to put every other country into the metaphorical locker.

Honestly, now this is all I can remember about Vivek's culture warring. Sad!

I want to crush pro-black racial spoil systems, salt the earth so they never return, and I'll take any ally anywhere to accomplish it.

How do you feel about pro-import the world to compete with your children? Maybe no slots at our top research institutions should go to Americans who are American, but this will translate into a better America via culture. Then again, what if this were but a guise to continue importing the rest of the world to compete with your roofer's kids, too? Same old, same old.

I agree with a significant creedal or ideological element in the American spirit. I also don't believe I'm opposed to America, the nation and its people, improving in some way. I agree that America should try to brain drain places where or when appropriate. Yet many people before Vivek have said they want to brain drain the world of its genius and that being American is something more than blood, soil, or whatever fairy dust is in the air. Others have made defenses of certain visas or programs as important or valuable things for the nation. Had he made a limited defense of his preferred program he might been booed but forgotten. Instead, he said we Americans must change because of and motivated by a specific, topical visa discourse. Not the nationality that needs to change, but the culture-- for the race with China. Nobody bought it as, in my opinion, they shouldn't have. They still shouldn't.

Say what you will about black Americans, but at least they've spilled blood for the country. That's not something adequate software engineers are going to do even if we double our efforts or import them wholesale. Not even if they did improve the culture.

Vivek's problem is that his whole persona is designed to appeal to edge-lords on twitter, when edge-lords on twitter are a overwhelmingly Democratic Party constituency. Meanwhile the MAGA crowd having taken his statements at face value have concluded that he must be either a beltway grifter or a progressive Trojan Horse.

I think you’re hitting the core here.

If Vivek moved here, converted to Catholicism, named his kids Sean and Brad, starter personally going by Jim and became an obsessive football fan, maybe I’d buy it.

Because that’s basically what my ancestors did. They changed their names, punished their kids if they tried to speak the old language, named their kids almost comically American names, and just thanked god they were allowed to be here. They wanted to be American not lecture Americans on how to be better.

Four generations from now if some Vivek descendant wants to “rediscover their roots”, then fine. But America does have a culture, actually, and if you want to be an American the good news is they you can! You just have to actually do it.

Here is the actually comically American list of names

If Vivek moved here, converted to Catholicism

Shouldn't he be converting to, like, Episcopalianism or Presbyterianism or something? Catholicism is the religion of low-skill immigrants trying to replace the founding stock of America.

I think the internet has just been devastating for Protestantism. I don’t really think there are any “serious” Protestants left.

If Vivek “converted” to some pointless Evangelical mega church, it would just feel hollow and unserious.

Catholics (and I include the orthodox in this) have basically just won. Protestantism isn’t taken seriously anymore, and so a “conversion” to Protestantism would similarly not be taken seriously.

Hi there. I'm a serious Protestant.

It's worth bearing in mind that in the real world, as opposed to the internet, evangelicals are doing a much better job of holding on to faith than Catholics or Orthodox. News stories about youth conversions to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy are usually looking at a few high-profile outliers rather than the overall demographic trend.

The Catholic Church in the United States, demographically, is buoyed up by large numbers of Hispanic Catholic immigrants, but if you restrict yourself to looking at people born in the US who were raised Catholic, they look very similar to mainline Protestants, i.e. in decline. They have noticeably lower retention than evangelicals. Church attendance is consistently higher among evangelicals than Catholics, as is consistency on moral or social issues. (Go through and compare if you like - 59% of Catholics are pro-choice, 70% support same-sex marriage!) If you compare what Protestants and what Catholics say about why they stay in their church, Protestants are significantly more likely to say that they believe in the religion's teachings and that it gives them spiritual comfort, while Catholics are more likely to say that it's because it's just the religion of their family or community. Note also that 1% of Americans are ex-Protestant Catholics, and 4% of Americans are ex-Catholic Protestants, which seems suggestive.

I'm not American, but I work in a religious field and I will say that just anecdotally I have run into a number of ex-Catholic evangelicals, and I would say that for every person raised a Protestant who felt that they were given a shallow spiritual education, and looked longingly at the riches of tradition and liturgy in the Catholic and Orthodox churches (and I count myself as one such person), I have met a person raised a Catholic who found that faith numbing and deadening, but who came alive on discovering evangelical Protestantism, which gave them the tools to cultivate a more passionate, heartfelt relationship with God.

I don't say this as a triumphant evangelical myself. I'm a mainliner, and I will forthrightly confess that the mainline churches are hollowed out, frequently heretical, and dying. I'm part of what I hope will be a small but devout rump of surviving mainline Protestants. My own institutions are largely betraying the faith and receiving in their own congregations the due penalty for their error.

But I would suggest that if you think that Protestantism in the broader sense isn't being taken seriously any more, or that Catholics have just won, or are in a healthier position overall, you may be in a bubble. Evangelical Protestants are probably the healthiest large church tradition in America.

What’s the point here? If Reddit claimed itself as a Christian church, there would be more Redditors than Catholics too. They could say that posting on Reddit is “attending church”, that being a Reddit moderator is being a “pastor”, claim each subreddit as a denomination even!

The point here is about how seriously a conversion by Vivek would be taken. Vivek attending a mega church every week would move the needle either 0 or negatively.

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It's funny, this is a particularly Catholic argument, in that whenever I see a Catholic culture warrior online, they are usually saying basically this ("I mean, the culture wars are basically over, we won" - first saw it during the Clinton administration). Not sure if it's an aggressive and slightly delusional form of conviction or cope, but it's almost charming, for the vast majority of us, especially in the US, who really don't care much about the schism. It's almost like seeing a "papist!" epithet in the wild.

I think the internet has just been devastating for Protestantism. I don’t really think there are any “serious” Protestants left.

I don't know what you mean by "serious" Protestants. There are clearly plenty of Protestants who are serious about their beliefs. If you mean that Evangelicals are tacky and unintellectual, I won't argue, but I don't see why that would make it unserious (plus, I think the main difference between megachurch evangelicals being tacky and Roman Catholics having ornate gravitas is about 1500 years). I'm also unsure on the role of the internet in this - Evangelicals started on their current trajectory well before the internet. And, of course, Evangelicals are not all American Protestants.

I don't think it's true that Protestantism isn't taken seriously. Rather, Protestantism lacks the centralized hierarchy, unified style guide, and Ancient Traditions^tm of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, which puts it at a disadvantage with people who really like those things. The aesthetics/values/ideas of American Protestantism (especially capital-L Liberal Protestantism) are heavily conflated with general American aesthetics/values/ideas, and, much like American culture as a whole, lives in an eternal present. The power of Catholic identity is not that it is inextricably tied to America, but that it isn't.

What I mean is that Protestants are not intellectually serious, and that most of the claims keeping people in their church don’t stand up to basic scrutiny.

“The Church is hiding the Bible from you they don’t want you to read it only WE have the true words of God!” was a convincing argument when it wasn’t easy to find out that this is just very literally not true.

As far as conversation to Protestantism being unserious: not only could I become a Protestant tomorrow if I wanted to, I could become a Protestant pastor, and so could Vivek.

Vivek Could announce tomorrow that he is starting a church, could call it a “Christian” church, and go around trying to convince people in Ohio that he’s a very serious Christian of some kind.

But this would all take 5 minutes, and be meaningless.

If he wanted to become Catholic, there’s a process to it, he’d need to get his marriage convalidated, baptize his kids, etc. If he wanted to become a priest (to contrast this with the seriousness of becoming a Protestant pastor), it would take him around a decade of philosophy and theology classes, he’d need to leave his family, etc. (Although I'm not sure The Church would take

That’s the point I’m making. It Vivek went through OCIA, got confirmed, convalidated his marriage, went to mass at least weekly, and baptized his kids, I think people would see it as more likely to be genuine.

If he showed up at some mega church or revivalist thing a few times and bought a Bible, I think it would read as performative.

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Just your daily reminder that in the US, the average Roman Catholic Sunday mass is tacky, and does not particularly follow unified style guides. That isn't even trad griping about things which aren't my preference like altar girls and the like; I am the Lord of the Dance Said He is a much more common hymn than anything like Faith of our Fathers, let alone the lovely classical music that inspired so many composers. Mass prayers may differ much less in verbiage, but when sung they are often set to cheesy folk music, or evangelical praise-and-worship light. Guitars are more common instruments than organs. Catholic churches vary strongly in architectural quality but the average Catholic goes to mass in an uninspired pseudo-amphitheatre decorated with designed-by-committee religious art that has nothing in common with the historical churches of Europe that nobody goes to, in a brutalist style if they're unlucky. The typical vestments look, literally, like burlap sacks. The 'ornate gravitas' that you speak of is uncommon enough in America to have special names for it(and is far less available than the other common strong liturgical preference- 'charismatic style' which apes evangelical worship services much more strongly. The majority of deeply religious Catholics in the USA imitate Evangelical outward forms). It's popular with Hollywood because it's easy to show on a screen looking and sounding cool. Most American Catholics have never heard Gregorian chant in a church service, see incense a couple of times a year, and dress worse for mass than protestants do.

Confessional protestantism and fundamentalist evangelical-adjacent protestantism are going strong, and they don't restrict the internet anymore than hardcore Catholics do. They're hard to track and more geographically constrained but they do exist.

Can you link me to an example of a church where, if Vivek Ramaswami converted to it, Americans would see this as a strong signal that he was all in on America?

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I think the internet has just been devastating for Protestantism. I don’t really think there are any “serious” Protestants left.

The Mennonites don't count? I mean, Anabaptists are very much Protestant (a product of the "Radical Reformation"), and they seem rather "serious" about it to me.

Doesn't this prove my point pretty cleanly? The Mennonites are not using the internet.

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The conservative true elite is increasingly Catholic, but evangelical megachurchianity is more common for the masses. Episcopalians and Presbyterians are… not common, and don’t go to church anyways.

Wasp churches have largely died out. Catholicism still has an intellectual class which makes Catholicism the closest thing to a national religion now. Evangelicals lack intellectual rigor and have outsourced that to Catholics. Mormons are honestly probably the number 2 Waspy Christianity today.

It does seem like we’ve already had one great replacement. True heritage Americans seem to have already died out.

Evangelicals lack intellectual rigor and have outsourced that to Catholics.

I don't think this is actually true per se, but evangelical intellectuals who are known for being evangelical tend to be theologians. Evangelical intellectuals in other fields exist, but they often aren't known for their evangelicalism – and conversely, evangelical theologians often aren't known outside of evangelical communities or sub-communities. (I reckon it's very Protestant to double-down on theology, do a better job developing it than Catholics, and then mostly drop the ball in other areas because they're of "secondary importance" with the predictable consequences.)

For a variety of reasons I think Catholics are better at bridging the gap between mainstream culture and Catholic culture – one of the notable reasons being that "Catholic" isn't shorthand for "right wing" whereas "evangelical" is, which tends to make Catholic intellectuals more respectable. (However I also think it's true that the Catholics have built better mechanisms/pipelines for their intellectual elite. They deserve both kudos and study for that.)

Episcopalians are still going- shrinking congregations that skew much older than the average church, but they're not about to die out, there'll just be fewer of them. Methodists are still there, albeit older and slowly shrinking, PCA has managed to avoid full collapse even if it's got hard times for the forseeable future. ELCA(mainline lutherans)- famously not a waspy denomination- are the real mainliners who won't be around when their current congregants kick the bucket(which won't be that long).

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There were Catholics here from the start.

The efforts by modern Catholic nationalists to insert themselves into the founding ideology of the United States is a weird sort of stolen valor. They were always a small minority, even in the places that were meant to be tolerant of them like Maryland, and American Republicanism was strongly associated from the outset with Protestantism. One of the Intolerable Acts pertained to toleration of Catholics! And, of course, anti-Catholicism flared up again with large scale Catholic immigration in the mid-19th century.

(You can, of course, admit Catholics into the founding mythology, but then you have to admit basically everyone)

You can sneer at Maryland but you can't make it go away. Many have tried, none have succeeded.

One of the Intolerable Acts pertained to toleration of Catholics!

Establishment of Catholicism, by giving the Midwest to Quebec.

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Yes that’s one thing I dislike about Vivek. That he seems culturally alien to America.

My second complaint is that at about a 70% probability I think his mental model of the world is incorrect. Striving only boost output in maybe medicine. I don’t think striving culture would boost American wealth.

The red tribe elite is probably more blank slate than the blue tribe, if anything. They unironically believe that black underperformance is due mostly to culture and that removing blacks from the ghetto culture(and forcing them to assimilate to a better one, namely theirs) is what is necessary to fix issues in their communities. They can respect the oriental grindset but think they should age out of it with assimilation. Twitter is not real life.

I think it depends on which groups of elites you talk about. The young congressional aides types I tend to think are big on Fuentes and hbd. The 80 year old congressman may still be blankslatist.

I think rent tribe elite people want to think like Romney but I think the blacks have bad culture people have died out. Intellectually the right needed to develop a thesis on disparate impact after woke and blacks are just dumb makes a lot more sense now.

The thesis on disparate impact is 'they're uncivilized, and they should be more like us'. That is what normie red tribe elites think. The ultrapolitical ones not so much, but they're a small fraction. The fuentards are far outnumbered by people who think blacks should go to church, study, and work harder and they'd achieve white outcomes.

The fuentards are far outnumbered by people who think blacks should go to church, ... and they'd achieve white outcomes

Isn't Black church attendance already significantly higher than white church attendance?

The African American female church attendance rate is much higher than any other demographic sees; the male church attendance rate is not. ‘The men need to go to church more’ is a criticism of black culture that most black people themselves would agree with, and the usual red tribe elite formulation is that blacks should go to churches with stronger family values moralism anyways(the black church is not that).

I don’t even know how you would calculate the normie belief. Even anonymous surveys don’t work because people still don’t like answering things that sound racists. The belief you think they have I would agree was there belief pre-2020 but now I have no way to measure it.

Getting the New York AG to go after him would be one of the better things for Vivek's popularity.

I don’t think the Westerner has the genetic disposition to compete against the Brahmin or Han in terms of raw Olympian memorization and test-taking, but he makes up for this lack with greater prosociality, collaboration and novelty. Unfortunately, the West has decided to structure its educational culture on the oriental mode of study, rather than leaning into its generic and cultural strengths. (An elite British university in 1800 was more about the cultivation of social skills than learning; lectures were nonexistent, learning was one-to-one with a tutor, and tests were fewer). The Brahmin has been selected by his religion to master the art of memorization and recitation in complete obedience to authority, but this is not so for Christian-derived Europeans. I think there may be clever ways to structure education to uniquely benefit the European genotype, by adding more independence, fellowship, and sense of moral purpose, but that’s just a hunch.

An elite British university in 1800 was more about the cultivation of social skills than learning; lectures were nonexistent, learning was one-to-one with a tutor, and tests were fewer

The big problem with this is that it doesn't scale. It's fine to educate a small elite this way, but you can't teach the masses like this. (Though you could keep doing it for your small elite and educate the masses in a more assembly-line-like manner, which kind of is what ended up happening anyway.)

During the course of the 19th century, the British Empire quite consciously copied elements of the Chinese imperial examination system in order to find talent and staff their civil service.

It's not even necessarily about meritocracy, though it does help. If you need a large civil service to run a somewhat centralized empire, there aren't enough nobles, you will need to recruit commoners and you will need to be able to figure out which commoners to recruit. You will also need to educate said commoners. Something like the Chinese system is the natural result. The British just didn't have or need a large civil service before.

So this:

Unfortunately, the West has decided to structure its educational culture on the oriental mode of study, rather than leaning into its generic and cultural strengths.

is simply a necessity for a large, centralized society, which China had and European countries did not really start developing until the rise of absolutism, at which point they ran into the same problems China had had and solved them similarly.

The problem with meritocracy is that it’s pointless.

If you want meritocracy, just administer a single IQ test to every child at 10 years old and distribute every accolade and job based upon that and whatever protected characteristics you want to prioritize (‘Other Backward Castes’, ‘Pardo’, ‘gender diversity’, ‘URM’, ‘BAME’, whatever) and you will be more efficient than the entire wretched body of meritocracy - not just in America - but in even more degenerate systems like those of South Korea, India and elsewhere.

The whole making kids study for 7 hours after school to pass bullshit tests isn’t meritocracy, it isn’t education, it doesn’t make for a successful society. It’s pure ideology. It doesn’t serve the objective of allocating power, resources or status in any way, since along whatever lines you want, you can do it more efficiently in another way.

Well, except one line.

Imagine your children are second or third generation immigrants. You are wealthy. Pure meritocracy will see your children (due to IQ reversion to mean) likely outcompeted by others - either immigrants or natives. Pure status hierarchy, legacy, families with centuries of history and deep social ties to those who run the august intellectual bodies that are the leading universities will outcompete you. Looks and charisma will also largely favor the beautiful, tall, etc, which probably isn’t your kids.

So what is one to do?

Build a ridiculous status system that specifically prioritizes an absurd and unreasonable level of parental investment. Monetarily yes, but also in terms of time, your children’s and yours. Make the kids suffer, so that parents from nicer cultures that care more about kids choose not to push them through the ridiculous pantomime. Poor families won’t have the knowledge, time or money to compete with you. Very rich ones won’t care to. And the future is yours.

(‘Other Backward Castes’, ‘Pardo’, ‘gender diversity’, ‘URM’, ‘BAME’, whatever)

Tell me about Bame! Why is it a protected class?

Tell me about Bame! Why is it a protected class?

AIUI, "BAME" stands for "Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic," and is the UK term for non-whites, originally for statistical and data collection purposes, later for the various "diversity" programs.

We used to use BIPOC as an imported term until irate English people pointed out that we were indigenous.

The UN has unofficially defined indigenous people in a gerrymandered way that excludes the English.

Yes, but that only works in refined circles. It still makes people snigger in public so they changed it in the UK.

A lotta loyalty for a hired gun!

Who the [censored] do you think you are, calling me a "hired gun"!? Who am I supposed to be a "hired gun" for, in this baseless accusation of yours. Who am I supposedly displaying "a lotta loyalty" for, by daring to explain what BAME stands for?

I must confess that I've never really understood the US habit of self-censoring profanities. You are allowed to say "fuck" here - there is no word filter - and implying you said "fuck" is approximately as discourteous as actually saying it. So, what is gained by censoring yourself?

Somebody get this HOTHEAD outta here!

Okay, the bit was kind of funny, but you've got to know when to call it quits. Switching to a different part of the movie is a sign!

So because I responded with a bit of a temper to your baseless accusations, I'm a "hothead" and you're calling the mods to ban me?

@erwgv3g34

@sun_the_second

@ToaKraka

@CapitalRoom

The report I just filed with the Moderators lists me, my men, and Dr. Alexander here, but only one of you! First one to talk gets to stay on my message board!

I can't tell whether you're joking. If you aren't, see Baneposting.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=9OXbfo3Mbx0

Low effort. And you're supposed to actually make a reply, not post a link to an unknown video, without even a mention of what it is or why it's relevant?

Because I'm not going to just click some video link.

@ABigGuy4U's post "A lotta loyalty for a hired gun!" is a quote from the memetic first scene of The Dark Knight Rises (his username is also a quote from said scene, the line immediately preceding the "loyalty" quote is "Tell me about Bane! Why does he wear the mask!", and "Somebody get this hothead outta here!" is a quote from later in the movie).

@sun_the_second linked to a video of said first scene.

So, instead of an attack aimed at me, this is, what? Low-effort "chan behavior," not making a clear point, not writing for everyone, and not in keeping with the standards of the Motte, then?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Or perhaps he is wondering why someone would create an acronym for non-whites if all races are equal.

Strongly agree on removing the bullshit. I think it's especially bad in science. I think most of the disciplines do next to no useful work because of it. If you're going to give someone the title, just give them the money and let them work on whatever they want. Fewer scientists - fine - but full freedom.

America is what America is. Vivek being upset about what it is does not change that. This is, literally, tautological.

Now you can of course argue that we should improve America by making it more like some other country which does things better. That is, historically, not a GOP position, to put it mildly, and race as such is kinda irrelevant- because the GOP reaction to we should have socialism like Denmark is also sharply negative. Our culture is American because it is American; Fourth of July is an American holiday because it is celebrated by Americans in America. Literally that is what makes it so.

Vivek is arguing ‘we should have oriental grindset study obsession like they do in the orient’ and nobody seems to like that- including the orientals themselves, the Koreans are refusing to bring children into the world because they don’t want to subject them to that. Obviously it’s unpopular, although there’s certain elite circles which like the idea. They are, however, not GOP elites.

Vivek needs to learn his audience instead of crashing out on Christmas every year. Republican politicians keep track of college football because that is what elite red tribers do(NFL is much more working class and much more politically neutral). They don’t rant about SAT scores.

Obviously it’s unpopular, although there’s certain elite circles which like the idea. They are, however, not GOP elites.

Which American elite circles like it? Plenty of Democratic elites want to make us more like Europe. But "bring on the Asian grind" doesn't seem to be popular anywhere. I remember the "Homework Gap" (with Japan, not the modern DEI wikipedia version), but I'm pretty sure the most fervent supporters of more homework would recoil at modern South Korea.

Hmm, you might be mostly right. I do remember some very blue educator bigwigs pushing for more homework because it was bonum in se to study like the orientals. But they might not truly be elites anyways, I suppose.

Which American elite circles like it?

Capital holders. They benefit a lot from having a workforce that is more skilled and less lazy.

I have to wonder who would've won an actual primary, if Dave Yost or Jim Tressel stayed in the race. I honestly would not expect Ohioans to pick Vivek if a real primary happened. Very frustrating to not have a proper choice.

We had the discussion last time. Vivek was (and presumably is) just wrong. Zach on Saved by the Bell was all-around competent. He's not mediocre at all. Canonically he gets a 1502 on the SAT. He was almost as good at sports as Slater, almost as book smart as Screech, he had Tom Sawyer's social skills and business skills on top of that. And a rebellious streak a mile wide, which gives lie to Vivek's later complaint about "nerdiness over conformity". Perhaps Ramaswamy's own immigrant parents sheltered him too much from American culture, and he is criticizing that which he does not understand.

This is brilliant.

If an aspect of American culture is non-functional, then it should be replaced. His opponents in the comments are overwhelmingly essentialists. Americanness is an ontological property that is good because of it's essential nature as American. In this context, the idea that someone might choose to discard prom queens or jock sports fandom is a threat to America itself.

I don't think that's what's going on here. There may be some root value differences that are due to different cultural backgrounds, but the Boy Meets World fans don't think "I don't care of Cory's life sucks; it's ontologically American so I support it!" No, they think that living a good life (functionally) is not just about being valedictorian and going to the best college. I think a big part of why America is so successful has to do with values such as individualism, experimentation, exploration, personal integrity, and kindheartedness. That's what Western "mediocrity" narratives teach.

Ramaswamy is doing some motte-and-bailey nonsense here, pointing out a few flaws in American culture, but then using that as a non-sequitur to justify his ridiculous immigration views. The simple fact is that the H1B system is used to undercut American wages. While ostensibly only permitting "foreign experts", companies game the system by allowing diploma mill bachelor's degrees in India to be valid, and then pay them garbage salaries. An easy solution would be to just require anyone hired on an H1B visa to have high relative wages. Basically everyone agrees this would fix the problem, but nobody makes the change because they actually want to use it H1B's as a cynical vehicle for mass-migration.

I think it’s important to note that striver Vivek does not work in an industry where striving is necessary. He’s literally a politician. He’s not an engineer or Doctor. Being good at problem sets has very little to do with the skills you need as a politician. Most people end up in careers that striving doesn’t produce any tangible value.

There were some big changes to the H1B program announced this month, https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-changes-process-for-awarding-h-1b-work-visas-to-better-protect-american-workers

Applicants will have their applications weighted based on salary for the job occupation code and location. Devil is in the details, but they are trying to change things.

Amusingly, this will only make it easier for smart Indians to import their countrymen. It’s just that instead of Infosys it will be some motel owner in Iowa who figures out that there’s a local shortage of massage therapists or health administrators or insurance salesmen or machinery operators or vegetable traders or whatever is both in demand and locally deemed hard to hire for and sets up a business that brings over people who did a bullshit 3 month fake degree in whatever it is from an amendable university in his hometown.

The only thing that would really fix the program (other than scrapping it) is to limit no more than 10% of visas to a single country.

I'm of the opinion that the best way to stop these sort of games is to do random audits and fine the companies violating it 10x the amount of money they saved.

Random audits? You don't even need an advanced AI to simply produce a table showing every single H1-B employee and how much they're getting paid. If I had access to government systems I'd be able to put out a list of every single H-1B getting paid below market rate for their job in five minutes. After that you'd want to go target all the ones working in positions that weren't really advertised to Americans in good faith - the ones that appear on sites like jobs.now. This isn't exactly a hard problem to solve - the actual issue is that the government is corrupt, and everyone in a position to do something about this problem is profiting off of it instead.

Very much so, same with other forms of illegal immigration. It's infuriating that it hasn't been done already, it's pretty much the only way to seriously disincentivize abusing immigration loopholes.

Indirect solutions like this always sound good but in practice end up as anarcho-tyranny -- people end up having to do a LOT of work to prove their workforces are legal (some of which work may itself be illegal according to other laws), if they screw up they get nailed to the wall, and meanwhile someone else who operates completely unlawfully gets away with everything.

Keep it simple, reduce collateral damage, if you want to stop illegal immigration, go after illegal immigrants.

I mean if you want to keep it even simpler- the wage premium for legal workers is actually pretty small, the lack of healthcare/hr overhead is what makes illegals so attractive. Just remove employment regulations. Prevailing wages and working conditions in the vast majority of the USA are already governed more by supply and demand than by regulation, you're mostly cutting red tape.

Indeed, only the jobs they're taking are as you note, degreed jobs. Gated sinecures reserved for the aristocracy, or at least the striving class being told they're the aristocracy. The "white collar" college jobs have been using anti-white racism to justify the wholesale displacement and attempted replacement of the working class (previously white catholic ethnics and black people) with more tractable hispanics. Now they find out their precious college degree-gated industries aren't safe from a billion indians, and the actual ruling class finds them as disposable as they found the Poles or Guatemalans.

Now they find out their precious college degree-gated industries aren't safe

The H1B program has been going on for 35 years, so I don't know what the "now" is referring to.

And why are you lumping together all "white collar" jobs, as if software engineers agree with the nonsense coming out of HR?

Software is special because the previous wave of applicants didn’t just need the H1B, they also needed whatever local cartel was required. The bar and going to law school in America and the fact the law is a verbal heavy field strongly preference native speakers raised in the US. The AMA locks foreign doctors out of any desirable residency places (which it mandates for almost all foreign doctors). Engineering has various local licensing requirements, and a lot of federal stuff requires you to be a citizen anyway. Meanwhile, sales, consulting, finance and a lot of other professional service jobs have a strong sales/relationship component which again makes it harder for Indians and Chinese applying from overseas.

Software engineering was unique in that it didn’t really require social skills, doesn’t usually require client interaction, paid well enough to get the visa, didn’t have a domestic licensing cartel and could be taught as a technical skill in foreign universities and schools.

Yep, I agree with all of this. Software engineers really should do what other engineering fields have done and set up that rent-seeking licensing cartel. It's bad for society overall, but most other fields do something like that, so why not us?

Oh, kick me out of the one field that pays me well despite the lack of credentials, why don't you?

You could just... get the new credentials? Plus, this would likely cut down on the impetus for nearly every shop to do Leetcode style interviews, so you'd be just exchanging one set of nonsense for another.

You could just... get the new credentials?

Yes, going back to school for 3 years (to learn things I already know, mind you) is just what I want to do when I'm 40.

Plus, this would likely cut down on the impetus for nearly every shop to do Leetcode style interviews, so you'd be just exchanging one set of nonsense for another.

Hearing Americans talk about Leetcode is one of those things that makes me go "wait what?". Every job I had over the past decade just handed out an assignment to be completed over a couple hours / a day, and they judged based on that.

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Right. However bad infinite Indians are, the "real engineering" gerontocracy is far worse.

The H1B program has been going on for 35 years, so I don't know what the "now" is referring to.

Hasn't the scale of the phenomenon changed over the years?

I'm sure its waxed and waned, but SWEs have been complaining about H1B's since at least the Dotcom boom in the 90s.

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