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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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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

Hi Vivek, nice to meet you!

(Leaving aside the arguments made within, this came across as rather fawning to me.)

At any rate, he'd have my vote if I was in a position to do so, he seems saner than the overwhelming majority of Republican candidates, and I think his claim to believe in God is one of those useful lies to the voter base rather than anything he sincerely believes in. If we were to ding politicians for being slightly two-faced, we'd have to elect only those who had half their face mauled by a pitbull to compensate.

I think his claim to believe in God is one of those useful lies to the voter base rather than anything he sincerely believes in

This is the second time I've seen this idea expressed. It's been funny both times because both times the commenters were praising Ramaswamy while they dismissed his statement realpolitik, not realizing they, you, are insulting the man. There's a reason he said "God exists" besides actually believing it, it's the idea he could have said without lying: "The Christian Church was foundational to modern civilization and remains the moral basis for all popular discussions of ethics, including those among individuals on the left whom espouse belief in obligate Christian treatment of others and not only sin but original sin and the perpetual atonement thereof. I forever reject their Godless branch of Christianity."

His religiosity would remain ambiguous, and were he an atheist it would mean he is not the sort of man to open a key political statement with a lie. "I'd totally vote for that [not-too-clever grifter]" isn't much for praise.

I'm no proselytizer, I'm not the right material for it and this isn't the place, not with its certain decorum. Decorum like I must be charitable, that I must take your comment as made in earnest and good-faith and originating from reason. Good-faith enough, yes, but the problem I face reading so much of the by-atheist, on-atheism comments here, like you saying Ramaswamy couldn't possibly be religious, is they do not originate from reason. You say this of Ramaswamy because of the solely emotional importance apropos your self-concept that intelligent men ought not be religious. Yet it takes little searching in our past to uncover rich fields of brilliant and highly religious men; it takes no searching at all to see the greatness of western civilization, directly resultant from biotruths Christianity identified and curtailed where degradative and saw flourish where beneficiary. What else is this but the final testament of transcendental intelligence? What would someone counter with, "appeal to tradition"? It worked then, it doesn't need to now, because now we "know better"? Okay--for its know-better Godless Christianity, Western Europe and the UK have maybe 25 years before war returns when the movements that rose a century ago rise again for bloodshed that will only be stopped with whichever side achieving permanent victory. At least we knew better.

There's a reason he said "God exists" besides actually believing it, it's the idea he could have said without lying: "The Christian Church was foundational to modern civilization and remains the moral basis for all popular discussions of ethics, including those among individuals on the left whom espouse belief in obligate Christian treatment of others and not only sin but original sin and the perpetual atonement thereof. I forever reject their Godless branch of Christianity."

His religiosity would remain ambiguous, and were he an atheist it would mean he is not the sort of man to open a key political statement with a lie. "I'd totally vote for that [not-too-clever grifter]" isn't much for praise.

I'm confused here. Are you saying the second statement is what he actually believes and that "God Exists" is a way of representing it? Or that he would just say the second statement if he didn't actually believe God exists?

Yeah that was verbose.

Ramaswamy is a very smart, very successful guy who takes positions like "climate change is a hoax" and "we should give Israel less money." He knows what he's saying, he has a real ethos and speaks from it. Opening a list of tenets with "God exists" is endorsing religion, and since this is the US, it's endorsing Christianity, and he knows this. Why would he lie about what he personally believes while nevertheless endorsing the church when he could just not lie and endorse the church? Unwilling or unable, either would disqualify him.

climate change is a hoax

This is a distortion of what he said, which is that the climate change agenda is a hoax. It's a statement about the policy prescriptions, not temperature measurements.

They're the same statement, his is the more intelligent way of phrasing it. This is my whole point: he shows clear care in framing his positions, meaning he could endorse Christianity without lying about what he believes.

I think there are actually real and serious differences between "climate change is a hoax" and "the climate change agenda is a hoax". Admitting that climate change is a real and serious problem that needs to be fixed and our current solutions won't do the job is incredibly different to "climate change is a chinese lie designed to hurt the US manufacturing industry".

"Hoax" is the critical term. He didn't say "the climate change agenda is profoundly misguided and by design can't solve its claimed problems." He said it's a hoax, a malicious deception, the same "we don't need to do anything about it" as just saying climate change is a hoax. The reason he didn't say "climate change is a hoax" is because he didn't want that floating around as a weaponizable quote but you reading that into his tweet is the benefit anyone could see coming from his particular phrasing, something that is once again my entire point in this line of discussion.

Meanwhile, his stated policy does say he thinks it's closer to the "Chinese lie" side of hoax.

Drill, frack & burn coal: abandon the climate cult & unshackle nuclear energy (Heading 02)