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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 was getting a bit excited about Vivek but then he started slobbering Israel's dick and talking about how we have to be tough on China for some reason (Why, so they stop sending us cheap shit? Or for some kind of ethical reasons that he did not bother to mention?) and I lost all interest in this debate because he was the only one even remotely interesting.
He did proffer some extremely-subversive-by-republican-standards ideas that aid to Israel should be mildly reduced, that the US shouldn't provide billions of dollars to a rich country, that the US should pursue its own national interests: https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-755250
I expect the powers that be frightened the hell out of him for that one, compelled him to change course. In terms of sycophancy to Israel, he's nowhere near the heavyweights like 'Grand Marshal of the Salute to Israel' Trump and 'we're gonna go after anti-semitic countries' DeSantis.
I was always under the impression that the aid to Israel was mostly about them not shutting down the Suez again.
Pretty sure it's Egypt that makes that decision not Israel. Aside from the occasional boat oopsie.
Egypt is also the second largest recipient of military aid, and they're much larger a nation than their adversary in Israel.
Aid to Egypt increased enormously after they signed a peace treaty with Israel, as a sweetener. Likewise with Jordan IIRC. Keeping Suez open certainly had something to do with it, yet the primary factor in US ME policy seems to be whatever is most advantageous for Israel. If US just wanted to be friends with Arabs, secure Suez and secure oil, they wouldn't support Israel at all.
What would it take to convince you otherwise?
Obviously if we hung Israel out to dry on anything important. But since that seems pretty unlikely, is there any way you might be convinced that Israel really is the most practical ally in the region?
They’re relatively westernized. They aren’t Islamic fundamentalists, which has made Americans nervous since at least the Iranian Revolution. (Though we put up with the Saudis, so it can’t be too much of a dealbreaker…) Most importantly, they owe their security to us in a way that none of the other ME states can match.
I also wouldn’t underestimate the wedge that is Palestine, at least on the left. While my understanding is that the neoliberal, pro-Israel wing still dominates foreign policy, there’s at least some tension going on. If there’s a point where we really break with Israel, that’ll probably be it.
Practical ally? In strategic terms, there are two groups.
The Arabs/Islamic world, with population about 600 million in MENA alone. They have a lot of oil. They have a lot of useful bases. They have Suez. They have the power to create all kinds of problems for the US, by allying with US enemies like the Soviet Union, Russia and China.
Israel, population 10 million. No oil. Barely any useful bases, at least compared to the rest of MENA. They're better at fighting and high technology, yet the only people they fight are the Arabs (and usually do so with US equipment). They're hated by about a third of the world, see pic related (https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/693544044241076224/most-disliked-country-in-each-nation-2022).
Why on earth would any sane, unbiased strategic thinker choose to ally with Israel over the Arabs? The US wouldn't have any enemies in the Arab world if it weren't for Israel, that's by far the biggest problem with US-MENA relations.
Israel is the absolute worst ally the US could possibly have. And the alliance is the most one-sided alliance you could possibly imagine. On no occasion has Israel actually contributed troops to a US war. They soak up huge amounts of resources (consider the economic impacts of the Arab Oil Embargo caused by Arab hatred of the US-Israeli alliance), incite enormous amounts of anti-US sentiment, get free US equipment, billions of dollars in aid. They sell loads of US technology to China, they lure the US into stupid wars like Iraq with false intelligence and their political influence.
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