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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30126 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Update. Perhaps I should just include it in the thread I created below but I feel like they go dead.

I complained at the Iowa State Fair that Vivek wasn’t taking the mask off. Here he is. Calling transitioning as a child barbaric. Perhaps this is a sign of really good public speaker that he can be aggressive in one venue and come off compassionate in a different venue.

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/status/1691880080866263319?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

Musks also retweeted this speech and I’ll include his summary so you don’t have to click thru.

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/status/1692267994490060817?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

TRUTH.

  1. God is real.
  2. There are two genders.
  3. Human flourishing requires fossil fuels.
  4. Reverse racism is racism.
  5. An open border is no border.
  6. Parents determine the education of their children.
  7. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.
  8. Capitalism lifts people up from poverty.
  9. There are three branches of the U.S. government, not four.
  10. The U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.

Strategy interests me. The billionaires who were backing Desantis seem to be looking at Vivek now. They like myself don’t like Trumps persona. I now think Vivek is probably the best salesman for the GOP. Especially if they want to make arguments the PMC will listen to. Desantis I believe is the best get shit done member of the GOP. If you get where I’m going Vivek will make a lot of sense as the frontman President with Desantis as VP. Trump is the best at throwing a raving party and he’s really good at taking punches from the left and keeps moving forward. Which has bought him a lot of trust in the gop.

Strategically the GOP best move is to keep Trump as the poll lead until like March/April. Let them develop their lawfare election strategy. Then slide the nomination to probably Vivek maybe Desantis. The issue with this and one of my biggest problems with Trump is he doesn’t care as much about advancing an agenda as he cares about Trump winning. But for winning an agenda my thoughts today is this would be a very good strategy for winning.

Next thought. Vivek said “God is Real”. I assumed he was Hindu so was trying to figure out what he meant. So I had to go look at his Wikipedia and find out what that meant. He’s a monotheistic Hindu. I don’t know if that’s a true belief or something adopted to be more palatable to the right. Could be something explored in the election that he at some point will likely need to explain.

The other thing I thought of when he said God is Real is Marginal Revolution ran an article on St Thomas preaching the gospel in India. So I thought with him saying God is Real it might mean he was a member of that community. I didn’t even know about old Christian communities in India until yesterday. So perhaps there is a connection between St. Thomas and Monotheistic Hinduism. I do recommend reading the marginal posts as initially they thought St. Thomas wasn’t real but then some archaeologist found some stuff that confirmed a lot of the story.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/08/no-doubt-saint-thomas-reached-india.html

God isn't real, of course, and I doubt Vivek thinks so either. Hinduism is remarkably tolerant of atheism.

As a sidenote, I've been impressed by him. I think his willingness to be ruthlessly realistic about limits to America's commitments to Taiwan is a breath of fresh air. Reminds me of 2016 Trump. I still think Ye Olde Orange Man is a clear favorite, but if he gets barred from running due to legal issues, I think Vivek is a top contender. I wouldn't call him very charismatic, but he at least isn't robotic like DeSantis and unlike DeSantis, his campaign feels less controlled by donors and GOPe activists.

I think Trump's secret was that he intuitively understood that GOP conventional wisdom isn't actually that popular among the grassroots and so breaking with it hardly carries punishment with the voters - quite the contrary, in fact. If Vivek grasps the same fundamental truth then he has a very good shot.

God isn't real, of course, and I doubt Vivek thinks so either.

And so it begins. Second Great Internet Atheist War, exactly 20 years after the first one.

No idea if Vivek wanted it, but if he insists in returning to God talk of halcyon times of Bush admin, this is what he will get, together with second, even more crushing defeat.

And it was completely unneccessary, nothing about current material and cultural battles is about religion.

The other nine proposals lead to concrete political demands and actions, but what about this one?

"God is real", then what? Teach creationism intelligent design in schools?

If there was something good about Trump and Trumpism, it was dropping this futile and embarrassing stuff. Now you want to bring it back?

Just start your points with "America is great" or something similar. This will energize your base and enrage your enemies much more.

"God is real", then what? Teach creationism intelligent design in schools?

It means ‘defend me, fellow monotheists, it’s not any more of a bridge that voting for a Jew’. Prejudice against East Indians and mistrust of the few remaining actual believing pagans(which is what Hindus are, far more so than the fools dancing naked and calling themselves pagans) are things he has to deal with, even if as I suspect his real goal is to secure a powerful minister without portfolio position in a second trump admin. The upper 1/3 of the GOP base- where he gets his support from- is basically all practicing Christian and have a formal doctrinal commitment to seeing Hindus as savages that would be burning widows to appease the cattle they worship if the British hadn’t stopped it and casting himself as a monotheist is a way to turn that from outgroup to weird fargroup.

He's trying to play to the Republican base which is still very Christian. He wants to paint himself as a monotheist like them, not some polytheistic animal worshiper like how most Christians view Hindus. Maybe he would be better off ignoring it, but he thinks it's important to be ahead on this issue.

Pence still has 4-5% of the vote. Which might be the best represtantitive of the nice Christian vote.

Trump voters do seem to be somewhat post-Christian. The ones who grew up Christian but quit going to church.

Some of my current threads I believe have a bit of how do I deal with racial gaps and lbtq while being a nice Christian.

Pence is not popular among the ‘Christian’ vote, any more than among any other voters.

He's going to be savaged by also-rans in the debates. "Vivec, since you decided to bring up religion, you think Jesus Christ is not our Lord and savior, don't you?"

I think his willingness to be ruthlessly realistic about limits to America's commitments to Taiwan is a breath of fresh air.

While he's honest about wanting to defend Taiwan only because of semiconductors, his claim that domestic manufacturing will supplant TSMC by 2028 seems patently absurd to me.

The only reason I’d be much more keen to keep Taiwan is the microchip issue. They’re making most of the high end chips and have had trouble moving those factories elsewhere. That makes Chinese control of Taiwan a big issue.

I do not know on Taiwan. Especially on his timeline. Overall I like protecting allies. At some point you do need to draw a line. I do think Ukraine has been the right line for us in Europe. If Ukraine is lost then the Baltics too. But Russia is very different than China. Russia is on 19th century ideology and clearly declining. China I disagree with but is still a functional power today. A lot will change by 2028 so no idea if his plan is right. But I do believe in the relatively free world.

They're not allies. They're satellites and subject states. 'Ally' implies an association with a being of the same order.

The only actual 'ally' of the US might be France. And look at their reputation - they're accusing the Feds of racial subversion of their laicité and have generally been very unsupportive of US war effort.

France, Japan, Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia- all maintain very independent foreign policies while being firmly US Allies. So does, albeit more bumpily, Israel.

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