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Tonight, mainstream audiences around the nation will be introduced to Vivek Ramaswamy - multi-disciplinary genius, serial entrepreneur, modern renaissance man, and nigh-messianic wünderkind who in this commenter’s humble opinion offers our beleaguered country’s best hope of national redemption
The story of Vivek is the story of the American Dream par excellence. A first generation American, Vivek was born to industrious immigrants who came to this land with nothing and went on to become a geriatric psychiatrist and engineer / patent attorney, respectively. Vivek’s giftedness shone through from the start, overcoming severe bullying - to the point of being hospitalized + needing surgery after being thrown down a flight of stairs - to become an accomplished pianist, nationally ranked tennis player, and class Valedictorian by time he left high school to attend Harvard via scholarship
Thriving among the nation’s intellectual elite, Vivek became President of Harvard’s Political Union (as a conservative!), won the Ivy’s prestigious Bowdoin prize for his senior thesis, and graduated summa cum laude with a degree in biology whilst working for top hedge funds in the biotech investment sector, all while moonlighting as as a rapper (Da Vek) and making club appearances as an amateur stand-up comedian while publishing scientific articles in the nation’s top papers and founding a 7-figure networking business. Upon graduating, Vivek made partner at a major hedge fund while simultaneously attending Yale Law School on a lark, having earned $15M by the time he graduated with his J.D. with a scholar’s grounding in the principles of Constitutional governance
Shortly after, Vivek founded a revolutionary biotech company that created a paradigm shift in pharmaceutical development. Developing an ingenious business model that leveraged market forces to determine the promise of various drug candidates (by spinning off a new company for each treatment and holding IPOs) he cut through the pharmaceutical bureaucracy to develop 5 FDA approved drugs (including life-saving treatments) in under a decade. His company, Roivant, is now worth over $9 Billion(!), with Vivek maintaining an approximately $650M stake
Vivek left his company following internal and external pressure to make a corporate statement in favor of the controversial - and in his view - socially corrosive #BLM movement, during a period in which nationwide race riots killed dozens, caused $2 billion in damages, and coincided with an enduring crime surge with an immediate ~30% homicide increase that represented the largest year-to-year murder spike in our nation’s history. Choosing to stand on principle rather than genuflect to the reigning hysteria, Vivek went on to write 3 best selling books in 18 months exposing the pernicious spread of radical left wing ideology throughout the corporate world. One such book shone a light on the ESG movement by which asset managers BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street leverage the assets of everyday Americans to force partisan political agendas across the nation’s corporate boardrooms. Not satisfied to merely expose this undercovered movement, Vivek started his own asset management firm, Strive, that serves as a counterbalance to the major institutional players and their attempts to politicize the very free market itself. (Strive currently approaches $1billion under management.) Simultaneously, he founded another company, Chapter, to help citizens navigate the federal bureaucracy with regard to Medicare, all while raising two young children with his loving and accomplished (surgeon!) wife
A fearless iconoclast, intellectual titan, and charismatic orator, Vivek has now taken on the audacious goal of becoming our country’s next President. Swearing off Super PACs and institutional backers, Vivek has self-funded an ambitious campaign, seizing upon earned media to make a name for himself despite virtually no ad expenditures by appearing on a litany of podcasts and programs across the political spectrum. This young and daring patriot - the first millennial to run for President - boldly aired his policy briefings as almost daily podcasts to give every day Americans insight into how the political process truly works. With a uniquely invigorating platform, full of heretofore unthinkable ideas, Vivek has thrown conventional political wisdom to the wind in the name of running a campaign centered on truth and national revival
Encouragingly, this dazzlingly bright young maverick has found his message resonating with the electorate, surging to third place in the all important race for the 2024 Republican nomination. Polling ahead of sitting senators, former governors, and even a former vice president, Vivek as a Hindu, dark-skinned political neophyte has already achieved the impossible and situated himself as the arguable heir apparent to the American nationalist movement
Tonight he makes his true debut on the national stage and makes his case to take on the political establishment, impose constitutional limits to a federal bureaucracy run amok, and restore a unifying sense of national purpose. Excited to watch - stream on Rumble at 9pm Eastern
https://rumble.com/v3ak5c2-fox-news-republican-presidential-primary-debate.html
I didn't watch the debate (mostly because it's in America, I'm not, and I didn't know it was on last night) but reading the accounts of it on our national broadcasting service, I'm laughing and kicking myself for missing this.
The serious bit - I think Mike Pence's only chance is to sell himself as the Defender Of Democracy over the whole Jan6th kerfuffle. The only problem there is (a) the Democrats will still paint him as Second Next To Hitler because of being Trump's VP and his conservative, Christian, views and (b) for the Trump and don't support Trump personally but love how he drives the libs wild types, he's now someone who's a turncoat. He's not really able to portray himself as reining in or holding back Trump, and even if he did follow the rules and resist the pressure, that's not a strong enough image of him to overcome the negatives.
The semi-serious part - DeSantis may be holding back waiting to see who will emerge as the contender against him and then go on the attack, but I still think this was the wrong election for him and waiting for 2028 (if God spares us all) would have been better. I know the argument for going now, while he has momentum going, and that waiting will just dissipate anything he has built up but my opinion is that taking on Trump right now is the wrong thing to do. Better for him to wait until Trump really is out of the running and done with, and let the Culture War cool down a little. If there is a backlash against woke starting, he'd be better positioned next time to take advantage of that by building up more wins as Governor of Florida. In 2028 he will still only be 52, young enough to run. By running now, I think he's going to be the new Mitt Romney: shot his bolt and no chance later.
Abortion, and they're all trying to shuffle around that. Cue Nikki Haley leaving herself wide open for the view, expressed on here as well, that if pro-lifers reeeeellly believed it was murder, they'd put the woman in jail, and so if they don't, that means they don't reeeeellly believe it's taking a human life, it's reeeellly about punishing women for exercising their sexuality:
That's not going to help her; the pro-choice side will still hate her for supporting any kind of limitation on abortion and paint her as a gender traitor etc. and if she looks to be weakening or mushy on the pro-life side, then that loses her support there. I'd kinda like to see Nikki selected as again, it would be a difficult angle of attack for the Democrats to go after a minority-descent woman after all the "vote for the First Female Ever", but they'd go for her on social issues like abortion I suppose.
Now the fun part. Oh Vivek, I had no idea you were so feisty! 😁
I almost want to see him be the serious contender, because I do want to see the Democrats grapple with trying to attack the Republican nominee without falling into the pit of accusations of racism or attacking a minority person. While he is rich, cis, het and male, he's not white or Christian, so that removes an angle of attack. I guess they would have to hammer on the "rich entrepreneur who doesn't care about the poor and sick", there's a mini-maybe scandal on his Wikipedia page about boosting and hyping an Alzheimer's drug, cashing in and getting out before the thing tanked (as expected because GlaxoSmithKline had sold it off as a no-hoper):
But right now? Trump is still the 800lb gorilla they have to wrassle before they can get the nomination.
I think this is arguably a form of what Scott called the non-central fallacy, aka "the worst argument in the world". There are plenty of instances of taking a life that aren't generally or universally reckoned to be murder (self-defense most obviously, but also killings in war, assisted suicides). Likewise, we understand there to be different moral shades attached to murder; many would choose not to incarcerate a domestic abuse victim who kills her spouse, for example (depending on circumstances). I think it's perfectly consistent to say that abortion is taking a life or even a form of murder without committing to the idea that women or doctors who perform it should be incarcerated.
But even on here we have had people putting forward "I can't understand why if pro-lifers are serious they don't want the woman imprisoned" argument, so it clearly works for a sub-set of pro-choice or people who could be persuaded to vote on abortion 'rights'. They don't really mean it, it's all about control and imposing their religious zealot bigot morality on others.
Look at the outrage over the woman in Britain who lied to obtain medical abortion pills to terminate her pregnancy well into viability and over the legal limits and was sent to prison for committing a criminal offence. It was only a 'late-term abortion' and shows the need for decriminalisation and doing away with archaic legislation. Now law-breaking is no reason to condemn the 'safe, legal and rare' late term abortion (which we've been told is not something that ever happens and is not the correct term to use):
I'm only half-joking when I say next it'll be "decriminalise infanticide now".
There have been straws in the wind for quite some time:
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Proposal+to+decriminalise+infanticide+in+the+UK-a0126316373
https://www.liveaction.org/news/maryland-decriminalize-infanticide-birth/
Going back to the 19th century, Jeremy Bentham argued that infanticide should be decriminalised, since it couldn't always be prevented, and so one could only reduce the harms involved.
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