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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   29748 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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I don't know if this post is a parody or not, but I have to ask how anyone looks at Vivek Ramaswamy and doesn't clock him as an obvious grifter.

What's the grift? He's already pretty rich. I'm not clear what the angle is that would be better than just building another company. If the "grift" is that he doesn't really want to be a politician and is just pretending to be a politician so that he can get political power, I find that I'm puzzled.

What's the grift? He's already pretty rich

The next step in the pyramid after money is power and admiration of the masses. But it doesn't really matter. In fact, a selfless adherent to an idiotic ideology is far more dangerous than a mere grifter. Or, as immortal C.S. Lewis said:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

I'm going to be more concerned with the power-seeking nature of the career power-seekers on stage with him. If the claim is simply that politics is a grift, I don't disagree, but that's hardly an indictment of the only guy there that wasn't part of the swamp for decades.

Hard to say DeSantis was part of the swamp for decades

Decade, singular anyway. We may differ on the quality of his pre-political life.

I think being a jag attached to navy seals isn’t your paradigmatic example of the swamp.

I don’t think standing up to…pretty much everyone in 2020 re covid isn’t very swampish. Nor was actually fighting back in the culture war with schools in Florida or fighting with Disney.

I just see very little evidence he is part of the establishment. I do think he has the wrong people telling him how he needs to run his candidacy and needs to just be himself (which honestly is someone who is a bit of a dick but a relatively honest one).

I think the person talking about Vivek being the only person not ensconced in the swamp or whatever is being silly.

But, look into DeSantis pre-2020. He was deep with the Club for Growth, Chamber of Commerce, Koch Brothers, etc. Which is ya' know, what you do if you're a rising conservative star, but he wasn't some independent go-getter and hell, his SuperPAC currently has backing from every right-wing billionaire not on the Trump train.

Chamber of Commerce

LOL. I just got back from a local Chamber meeting. I'm not sure what you think it is, but I am sure it doesn't belong in the company you think it does.

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