I’ve always thought it was good practice to transparently identify one’s analytical or journalistic faults, especially if you occupy any kind of public-facing role.
Nobody really cares about Vance. He's some sort of Thiel-adjacent monstrosity and serves only as a "I'm not racist, I have Indian wife" sort of a tool.
I mean, as long as he brings in even more Indians and reforms the H1Bs to allow a thousand times more in, what's even to dislike. Elon likes it, The Big Don likes it, everyone likes it! Make it like Bangalore!
I'm looking forward to how Vance is perceived as a VP in this admin. VP's are so often ridiculed and sidelined. Lets see if he can rise above that and be productive and a presidential hopeful in four years. He has the speaking ability. That's something.
I just read a little about Thiel. Not sure how Vance is/was a puppet of his exactly other than the fact he was mentored by him and supported by him in his political aspirations. Pretty much any politician has someone like that. Are we to believe that Thiel owns him in some way? That Vance has no mind of his own to work with now that he is Vice President of the United States? Is he calling up Thiel every day to ask him what to do now?
1. Biden had two scull surgeries in 1988 for brain aneurism (often accelerates dementia). In 2019 his mental decline become very noticeable. By 2021 he was no longer there – “English muffin”. Who ruled and rules now US??
• It is now evident -- Klein, Zientz and Blinken, the cabal who took over senile Biden to rule US and are all – rabid Zionists. Let that sink in….
2. In 2020 Biden got 81M+ votes – a mystery from where 3-4M extra votes came?? Trump got ~79M in a landslide
3. A bonus question: Why Trump has not “noticed” Biden’s genocide in Gaza yet…?
#1 and #2 were subjects of discussion on last nights ATW (Taibbi and Kirn). I did not know about #1. But it was so long ago, he may have developed dementia regardless.
Trump and his cadre seem to be tools to help facilitate a controlled demolition.
It's basically pro wrestling narratives of good vs bad happening in the X verse with this stupid h1b visa thing.
WTF, many of us knew the scam of h1b since the late 90s when they were posting jobs that wanted 5 years experience in Java which at the time was only 2 years old.
I'm glad they got their asses handed to them though.
Perhaps this is the slow reveal of how stupid Elon and the other tech hos are. Even Bill Gates and Steve Jobs knew very little. These new tech hos are equally stupid.
I care about Vance because he's not stupid and he has great potential. But I also have some healthy skepticism along the lines of Random's not unfounded cynicism, especially on account of his ties to the great subcontinent. I was frankly shocked by Vivek's nasty attack on the culture of MGC (my goddamn country). My hope is that J.D.'s trajectory will be more inspired by his own roots than by his friendship with Vivek or his attachment to his wife and her heritage, lovely woman though she certainly is.
According to Whitney Webb, Peter Thiel went to Mar-a-lago to convince Trump to choose Vance as his VP. Vance owes his political career and venture capital fortune to Thiel. So whatever agenda Thiel has (Palantir & mass surveillance), you can believe Vance will help push it through. Whether Trump survives his term or not.
Lots of bland midwit Repugnacogs fill the loyalty checkbox better than Vance, but none of them are at all charismatic. More importantly, no one stands a better chance of carrying the party forward four more years in ‘28. Trump knows half his agenda will remain unaddressed in 2028, and that Vance, being roughly three times smarter than all thirty likely Dimmercrank candidates, is a better bet than mediocre neocons like Rubio, or worse, simple non-ideolowogs like Burgum.
You might have erred on the VP pick since you still think bottom-up approach to politics (voters, popular will). While this isn't unimportant it isn't the whole picture - as you also know.
Vance appealed to the Trumpian but also to a segment of the donor-base elite, to whom Trump clearly had some sort of arrangement (as I think you've pointed out on twitter in other contexts). In retrospect it was the perfect fit since it made it seem like Trump was appealing to the MAGA core, but it was a pick that made the Silicon Valley Donors who backed Trump happy. (Note that these "oligarchs," while significant, are a minority - the majority of wealthy oligarchs, tech or not, donated to and supported the permanent establishment, whose avatar this time was Harris. Not arguing here tho that Trump himself is distanced from them but he is backed by the minority faction of billionaire "oligarchs, as well as the clear minority of clerisy "oligarchs" - for lack of a better term).
Aside: I recommend Parvini's book on the populist delusion. It's short and highly analytical-scholarly.
This is going to be long and ponderous but even then won't dot every 'i' and cross every 't' in the argument. But it is I think necessary to cover what I make of it (even if only you and I end up reading it at this point). It is also very rambling because I don't have time to clean it up, it's extemporaneous posting, unedited, not a 'clean' article-for-publication; apologies in advance though I'm trying to make it less rambling than Hyde's fairly good video:
This will be tl;dr because it's really a major thing at the heart of modern America and indeed what passes for the modern "West" (the artist formerly known as Christendom).
The reason it became such a big thing is that to the conscious mind of only some of the participants but to the unconscious mind of almost everyone is it revealed (exposed?) some more fundamental tensions not only in MAGA but in the postwar American "Conservative" movement and even in America as a whole. Our redoubtable host would say "well, duh the Tech Oligarchs are not what you think they are" but even most of MAGA knows where they stand on some things but did not think they would be involved with that (DOGE was to them something else). I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here but we're going to take that away in a moment.
For most of MAGA they view it as making America great for, well, Americans. Heritage Americans (this is not, for most of them, a racial thing - see also Academic Agent's article MAGA as Fulfillment of the Kali-Yuga: see, we're open to Indian influence!) - but they also see themselves as a people. Sort of.
But for the Tech Bros, indeed most of the corporate leadership, this isn't the case. They clearly see Making America Great Again as what is in the interest of the corporate bottom-line and the Federal tax farm. America is just a collection of individuals who should have to compete against anyone from everywhere for jobs on the basis of "MERIT" (and Bakke, and Griggs, and Footnote 4 of US v. Caroline Products - this is not a digression). This isn't just true of the "tech oligarchs" however; it is the mentality of the postwar clerisy (the workers-with words; whatever passes for a well-read, learned, and 'thoughtful' caste in the postwar world). For them, America is a propositional nation; a set of ideas that anyone from anywhere can benefit from if only they move to the magic dirt (why can't these ideas be embodied in people where they are? Blankout).
Note here though that for Elon, remember, he wants to defend H-1B despite, in his stated view, "A.I." becoming smarter than humans in five or six years, with his efforts, and his company working on human-like robots as fast as they can. So why do they need H-1B immigrants? Does he even put most of his workforce in America? This too is not a digression. He defends it on the grounds of "the next Tesla" but if you look at H-1B none of it is for that (or negligible); even Elon himself did not enter under H-1B.
Vivek is a different and even more revealing case; he rather openly takes the side of his co-ethnics. You see, on the one hand there is the argument, made not only by Vivek but Elon as well (and their supporters, and the various run-ins by members of the aforementioned intellectual clerisy, whether MAGA-oriented or not) that America is a propositional nation, a set of ideas, and everyone from everywhere should be hired and fired and promoted on the basis of merit and a willingness to work 80+ hours a week or more for less pay (this "Making America Great"); at least when applied to people other than themselves. But the extended argument reveals a darker flip-side: while castigating the people who do not interpret "MAGA" this way as "wanting DEI for white people" they themselves reveal they are arguing from the premises of the left. Vivek takes the side of his co-ethnics and even Elon and the intelligentsia suddenly stop seeing people as individuals but instead all the sudden group characteristics re-emerge as part of the discussion but only to negatively describe heritage Americans as benighted & unworthy: bigoted, lazy, privileged, ignorant, raycis. As a group. And the "other" as fundamentally worthy, hard-working, knowledgeable, and not at all gaming the system to bring in and benefit their group (see also the figures for proportions of people brought in under H-1B, as well as the job descriptions). All the while this group of people (here I am now talking about the corporate elite as well as academics, the broader clerisy) precisely do game the rules ("manipulate procedural outcomes") to obtain advantage (lower cost and an indentured caste of helots when it comes to the corporate 'oligarchs' and a population more fitting the postwar, post-50s 'diverse' cadre of clientelea when it comes to the clerisy who have come to see heritage Americans and indeed heritage Europeans as unworthy subjects). This then gets too at the darkly perverse incentives for bringing in future votebanks and consoomors even while working feverishly to create "A.I." and robots, where even people like Elon openly wonder what sort of world this will produce for the average person who is already struggling and for whom the American dream (and making that great again) is something other than skyrocketing housing costs (due to increased population pressure) and more immiserated job prospects no matter how hard you bust your butt in education & training; at least if you do not fit the criterion that incentivizes business (academe, etc as well) to favoring some groups or another, and nothing about MAGA, whether it be of the top-down Trump-Elon-Oligarch sort or bottom up MAGApede-voter sort who certainly doesn't think of themselves as any kind of racialist and loves MLK (pbuh), Civil Rights (the postwar creed/state faith) and all the Court opinions, laws, and bureaucratic rules that constitute it (even while chafing under the annual training which describes how one must both comply with and believe the dogmas/doctrines, under penalty of law).
Nobody except a few fringe Jones, Aaronsons, and Rutherfords see this as the nettle that must be grasped, as well as a cadre of genuine died-in-the-wool racists (only white people can be racist! Vivek is just sticking up for his people! Perfectly fine in the postwar West! But see yourself only as an individual, dear reader: unless you qualify as a member of the literal "protected classes" of our great Global American Empire (G.A.E.).
What I've been reminding my liberal friends in New York and California about is the history of British imperialism. Sorry to throw this in your face, Siddharth and Vivek, but as a cultural matter the MAGA movement seems to me no different from the movement of the Congress Party in pre-partition British India and its comparators in the former Gold Coast and British East Africa and Rhodesia. In that regard, our Mr. Trump is a latter-day Gandhi, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, or Mugabe. What these men shared was the notion that their respective countries should be ruled not by pasty Englishmen but by Indians and Africans respectively. As a matter of fact, I don't recall Gandhi and the others being labeled "racists!" for wishing their non-white colonies to be governed as free nations by their own ethnic people and not by non-native Englishmen. Similarly, we MAGAmen want America to be run by AMERICANS. And part of what that means, Elon dear, is that whether we choose to be industrious, hard working people who make good employees, or lazy and shiftless fat asses, I beg your pardon, folks, but that is up to us Americans, not a first-generation immigrant or crypto-immigrant who considers America an economy as much as a nation. You may recall Gandhi famously posing next to his spinning wheel. His point was, yes, British industry and products are more advanced than cottage industry products of India, but India is a country and a culture and it belongs to India and Indians, and we don't need your high-tech British products and your salt. And so, I think you are correct, and that this battle is nothing more than a latter-day battle against MERCANTILISM, only today in place of British manufacturers based in Birmingham and Leeds we have global tech oligarchs based in Mountain View and Peking (because profit knows no borders).
I care about Vance. Hope you don't mind
That's it?
Nobody really cares about Vance. He's some sort of Thiel-adjacent monstrosity and serves only as a "I'm not racist, I have Indian wife" sort of a tool.
Thiel enthralled. I think that is his significance and danger. He could become the next president.
Sounds positively horrifying.
I mean, as long as he brings in even more Indians and reforms the H1Bs to allow a thousand times more in, what's even to dislike. Elon likes it, The Big Don likes it, everyone likes it! Make it like Bangalore!
Vance could bring back the presidential beard. It would instantly reverse any gender hormones and make America masculine again.
Based on his pudginess and apparent weight, I can guarantee you he's quite low testosterone
Yea but it’s a modern masculinity based on facial hair and support for genocide. Who needs testosterone when you’ve got god on your side?
Hail Vishnu!
Sheesh.
I'm looking forward to how Vance is perceived as a VP in this admin. VP's are so often ridiculed and sidelined. Lets see if he can rise above that and be productive and a presidential hopeful in four years. He has the speaking ability. That's something.
Vance is a Peter Thiel puppet, so whatever agenda Thiel has…
I just read a little about Thiel. Not sure how Vance is/was a puppet of his exactly other than the fact he was mentored by him and supported by him in his political aspirations. Pretty much any politician has someone like that. Are we to believe that Thiel owns him in some way? That Vance has no mind of his own to work with now that he is Vice President of the United States? Is he calling up Thiel every day to ask him what to do now?
Peter thiel convinced jd Vance to become a catholic. If that ain’t control I dunno what is.
lol
Two Questions for shitty US state media:
1. Biden had two scull surgeries in 1988 for brain aneurism (often accelerates dementia). In 2019 his mental decline become very noticeable. By 2021 he was no longer there – “English muffin”. Who ruled and rules now US??
• It is now evident -- Klein, Zientz and Blinken, the cabal who took over senile Biden to rule US and are all – rabid Zionists. Let that sink in….
2. In 2020 Biden got 81M+ votes – a mystery from where 3-4M extra votes came?? Trump got ~79M in a landslide
3. A bonus question: Why Trump has not “noticed” Biden’s genocide in Gaza yet…?
#1 and #2 were subjects of discussion on last nights ATW (Taibbi and Kirn). I did not know about #1. But it was so long ago, he may have developed dementia regardless.
How many people listened to that outstanding episode? Any little additional spreading helps…
Are the podcasts paywalled? I'm unclear on that.
Trump and his cadre seem to be tools to help facilitate a controlled demolition.
It's basically pro wrestling narratives of good vs bad happening in the X verse with this stupid h1b visa thing.
WTF, many of us knew the scam of h1b since the late 90s when they were posting jobs that wanted 5 years experience in Java which at the time was only 2 years old.
I'm glad they got their asses handed to them though.
Perhaps this is the slow reveal of how stupid Elon and the other tech hos are. Even Bill Gates and Steve Jobs knew very little. These new tech hos are equally stupid.
https://posthumousstyle.substack.com/p/neuralink-does-not-read-minds-and
I care about Vance because he's not stupid and he has great potential. But I also have some healthy skepticism along the lines of Random's not unfounded cynicism, especially on account of his ties to the great subcontinent. I was frankly shocked by Vivek's nasty attack on the culture of MGC (my goddamn country). My hope is that J.D.'s trajectory will be more inspired by his own roots than by his friendship with Vivek or his attachment to his wife and her heritage, lovely woman though she certainly is.
No, it will be 100% “inspired” by Peter Thiel.
You sure as shit weren't wrong with that Vermin Supreme interview!
According to Whitney Webb, Peter Thiel went to Mar-a-lago to convince Trump to choose Vance as his VP. Vance owes his political career and venture capital fortune to Thiel. So whatever agenda Thiel has (Palantir & mass surveillance), you can believe Vance will help push it through. Whether Trump survives his term or not.
Lots of bland midwit Repugnacogs fill the loyalty checkbox better than Vance, but none of them are at all charismatic. More importantly, no one stands a better chance of carrying the party forward four more years in ‘28. Trump knows half his agenda will remain unaddressed in 2028, and that Vance, being roughly three times smarter than all thirty likely Dimmercrank candidates, is a better bet than mediocre neocons like Rubio, or worse, simple non-ideolowogs like Burgum.
You might have erred on the VP pick since you still think bottom-up approach to politics (voters, popular will). While this isn't unimportant it isn't the whole picture - as you also know.
Vance appealed to the Trumpian but also to a segment of the donor-base elite, to whom Trump clearly had some sort of arrangement (as I think you've pointed out on twitter in other contexts). In retrospect it was the perfect fit since it made it seem like Trump was appealing to the MAGA core, but it was a pick that made the Silicon Valley Donors who backed Trump happy. (Note that these "oligarchs," while significant, are a minority - the majority of wealthy oligarchs, tech or not, donated to and supported the permanent establishment, whose avatar this time was Harris. Not arguing here tho that Trump himself is distanced from them but he is backed by the minority faction of billionaire "oligarchs, as well as the clear minority of clerisy "oligarchs" - for lack of a better term).
Aside: I recommend Parvini's book on the populist delusion. It's short and highly analytical-scholarly.
What do you make of the present H-1B visa kerfuffle?
This is going to be long and ponderous but even then won't dot every 'i' and cross every 't' in the argument. But it is I think necessary to cover what I make of it (even if only you and I end up reading it at this point). It is also very rambling because I don't have time to clean it up, it's extemporaneous posting, unedited, not a 'clean' article-for-publication; apologies in advance though I'm trying to make it less rambling than Hyde's fairly good video:
This will be tl;dr because it's really a major thing at the heart of modern America and indeed what passes for the modern "West" (the artist formerly known as Christendom).
The reason it became such a big thing is that to the conscious mind of only some of the participants but to the unconscious mind of almost everyone is it revealed (exposed?) some more fundamental tensions not only in MAGA but in the postwar American "Conservative" movement and even in America as a whole. Our redoubtable host would say "well, duh the Tech Oligarchs are not what you think they are" but even most of MAGA knows where they stand on some things but did not think they would be involved with that (DOGE was to them something else). I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here but we're going to take that away in a moment.
For most of MAGA they view it as making America great for, well, Americans. Heritage Americans (this is not, for most of them, a racial thing - see also Academic Agent's article MAGA as Fulfillment of the Kali-Yuga: see, we're open to Indian influence!) - but they also see themselves as a people. Sort of.
But for the Tech Bros, indeed most of the corporate leadership, this isn't the case. They clearly see Making America Great Again as what is in the interest of the corporate bottom-line and the Federal tax farm. America is just a collection of individuals who should have to compete against anyone from everywhere for jobs on the basis of "MERIT" (and Bakke, and Griggs, and Footnote 4 of US v. Caroline Products - this is not a digression). This isn't just true of the "tech oligarchs" however; it is the mentality of the postwar clerisy (the workers-with words; whatever passes for a well-read, learned, and 'thoughtful' caste in the postwar world). For them, America is a propositional nation; a set of ideas that anyone from anywhere can benefit from if only they move to the magic dirt (why can't these ideas be embodied in people where they are? Blankout).
Note here though that for Elon, remember, he wants to defend H-1B despite, in his stated view, "A.I." becoming smarter than humans in five or six years, with his efforts, and his company working on human-like robots as fast as they can. So why do they need H-1B immigrants? Does he even put most of his workforce in America? This too is not a digression. He defends it on the grounds of "the next Tesla" but if you look at H-1B none of it is for that (or negligible); even Elon himself did not enter under H-1B.
Vivek is a different and even more revealing case; he rather openly takes the side of his co-ethnics. You see, on the one hand there is the argument, made not only by Vivek but Elon as well (and their supporters, and the various run-ins by members of the aforementioned intellectual clerisy, whether MAGA-oriented or not) that America is a propositional nation, a set of ideas, and everyone from everywhere should be hired and fired and promoted on the basis of merit and a willingness to work 80+ hours a week or more for less pay (this "Making America Great"); at least when applied to people other than themselves. But the extended argument reveals a darker flip-side: while castigating the people who do not interpret "MAGA" this way as "wanting DEI for white people" they themselves reveal they are arguing from the premises of the left. Vivek takes the side of his co-ethnics and even Elon and the intelligentsia suddenly stop seeing people as individuals but instead all the sudden group characteristics re-emerge as part of the discussion but only to negatively describe heritage Americans as benighted & unworthy: bigoted, lazy, privileged, ignorant, raycis. As a group. And the "other" as fundamentally worthy, hard-working, knowledgeable, and not at all gaming the system to bring in and benefit their group (see also the figures for proportions of people brought in under H-1B, as well as the job descriptions). All the while this group of people (here I am now talking about the corporate elite as well as academics, the broader clerisy) precisely do game the rules ("manipulate procedural outcomes") to obtain advantage (lower cost and an indentured caste of helots when it comes to the corporate 'oligarchs' and a population more fitting the postwar, post-50s 'diverse' cadre of clientelea when it comes to the clerisy who have come to see heritage Americans and indeed heritage Europeans as unworthy subjects). This then gets too at the darkly perverse incentives for bringing in future votebanks and consoomors even while working feverishly to create "A.I." and robots, where even people like Elon openly wonder what sort of world this will produce for the average person who is already struggling and for whom the American dream (and making that great again) is something other than skyrocketing housing costs (due to increased population pressure) and more immiserated job prospects no matter how hard you bust your butt in education & training; at least if you do not fit the criterion that incentivizes business (academe, etc as well) to favoring some groups or another, and nothing about MAGA, whether it be of the top-down Trump-Elon-Oligarch sort or bottom up MAGApede-voter sort who certainly doesn't think of themselves as any kind of racialist and loves MLK (pbuh), Civil Rights (the postwar creed/state faith) and all the Court opinions, laws, and bureaucratic rules that constitute it (even while chafing under the annual training which describes how one must both comply with and believe the dogmas/doctrines, under penalty of law).
Nobody except a few fringe Jones, Aaronsons, and Rutherfords see this as the nettle that must be grasped, as well as a cadre of genuine died-in-the-wool racists (only white people can be racist! Vivek is just sticking up for his people! Perfectly fine in the postwar West! But see yourself only as an individual, dear reader: unless you qualify as a member of the literal "protected classes" of our great Global American Empire (G.A.E.).
I found this incredibly helpful. It's long but worth the read. https://barsoom.substack.com/p/the-great-christmas-h1b-war-of-2024
Tardigrade, that piece is STUPENDOUS. EVERYBODY TUNING IN HERE SHOULD READ IT IMMEDIATELY.
What I've been reminding my liberal friends in New York and California about is the history of British imperialism. Sorry to throw this in your face, Siddharth and Vivek, but as a cultural matter the MAGA movement seems to me no different from the movement of the Congress Party in pre-partition British India and its comparators in the former Gold Coast and British East Africa and Rhodesia. In that regard, our Mr. Trump is a latter-day Gandhi, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, or Mugabe. What these men shared was the notion that their respective countries should be ruled not by pasty Englishmen but by Indians and Africans respectively. As a matter of fact, I don't recall Gandhi and the others being labeled "racists!" for wishing their non-white colonies to be governed as free nations by their own ethnic people and not by non-native Englishmen. Similarly, we MAGAmen want America to be run by AMERICANS. And part of what that means, Elon dear, is that whether we choose to be industrious, hard working people who make good employees, or lazy and shiftless fat asses, I beg your pardon, folks, but that is up to us Americans, not a first-generation immigrant or crypto-immigrant who considers America an economy as much as a nation. You may recall Gandhi famously posing next to his spinning wheel. His point was, yes, British industry and products are more advanced than cottage industry products of India, but India is a country and a culture and it belongs to India and Indians, and we don't need your high-tech British products and your salt. And so, I think you are correct, and that this battle is nothing more than a latter-day battle against MERCANTILISM, only today in place of British manufacturers based in Birmingham and Leeds we have global tech oligarchs based in Mountain View and Peking (because profit knows no borders).