Coalition Building

 

 

I start the day by taking a quick look at the online news with Breitbart News and Townhall. If I seek an occasional article that intrigues me, then I may do a blog entry about it.

 

Yesterday—12/24/24—I came across an editorial by Kurt Schlichter. I pasted and copied the entire article below and will comment on it where necessary.

 

Kurt: “

Based Tech Bros and MAGA Learn About Coalition Politics The Hard Way “

 

My response: I am an old fossil, out of touch, and I have never heard of Based Tech Bros. It turns out that these data engineers are the computer programmers and tech wizards based in Silicon Valley and they called, or perhaps self-refer to themselves as Tech Bros. or brothers ruling the tech world.

 

I will have more to say about them, good and bad below, but for the sake of starting my review of Schlicter’s editorial, it seems as if this huge controversy and angry fight between Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and the Tech Bros who are quarreling bitterly with American nativists like Charlie Kirk and Americans in the MAGA movement to  reduce or eliminate H-1B visas, which bring in thousands of foreign software engineers and other skilled workers, because nativists argue that those jobs should go to America, and we need to limit or eliminate H-1B visa driven immigration from India, China and elsewhere to be fair and consistent with greatly reducing immigration of poor and unskilled, illegal immigrants from rest of the world.

I think Kirk and crowd have a point and the way Musk was ranting and cursing, his counter-argument seems over the top.

 

Kurt: “Kurt Schlichter  |  Dec 30, 2024

So, the America First coalition celebrated Kwanzaa – a communist nonsense pseudo-holiday recognized only by Kamala Harris and her fellow oaky Chardonnay-soaked lonely middle-aged cat women who typically teach in public schools – with a giant dust-up about foreign worker visas. Welcome to our new coalition! We’re going to have growing pains. We’ve got different factions with different views. We’re going to have to work a lot of things out. And we should do it without ritually disemboweling each other.”

My response: Kurt seems honest, reasonable, and conciliatory here. He likely captures the problem and solution in the few sentences listed above.

The new MAGA coalition of nativists, blue collar workers and populists are enraged that the Tech Bros do not want a restriction of foreign worker visas along with other immigrants, and many of the Tech Bros, from India and elsewhere, furiously accuse white Americans of being racist against Indians.

We all need to calm down and quit hurling baseless accusations. We are a coalition with new growing pains, and we must work things out without disemboweling each other, and derailing the Trumpian agenda.

 

K: “It turns out that the tech bro contingent of the coalition that elected Donald Trump has very different ideas about importing foreign labor to work in Silicon Valley. Their pro arguments rely largely on the hoary old cliché about how there’s a giant labor shortage and we can’t find Americans to do the work and blah blah blah blah blah. But they also ignore the life experience of millions of MAGA Americans who noticed that not only is our educational system garbage, but there seems to be systemic prejudice against regular Americans, particularly white males, both in the colleges that operate as a gateway to employment and with the HR departments of the big tech companies. Whether it’s true or not remains to be seen – and I don’t know how much either side is being accurate rather than self-serving – but there are a lot of lived experience stories of regular Americans who just can’t seem to catch a break and claim to have been replaced by clannish foreigners who seem to hold them in contempt.”

My response: The tech bro contingent of the coalition complains that there are not enough skilled Americans to do the high-tech jobs, and white males with the requisite skills are not be hired, and there are clannish foreigners that treat them with contempt.

Note that whites likely now are being discriminated against by an industry that seems to favor East Asians (the highest per capita income earners in America right now, as an ethnic groups, are Indians from India). If that is so, that is of course not right but it is also very interesting, and here is where my unique take on racism, its core problem and its only workable solution, could be suggested.

First all people, from anywhere across the globe, are created more or less equal. Second, all are smart enough with hard work, original, creative thinking and the principle of self-realization applied by her to herself as she practices it in her life, that anyone from anywhere should be able to compete in Silicon Valley and do as well as anyone else.

Third all people everywhere are born evil, self-hating, groupist and non-individuating. This makes all us racist, prejudiced and discriminatory from birth (Those from our group are genetically superior to people from any other group, so it is morally right that those belonging to our race and our group are preferred and treated better than we treat outsiders and individualists.), and by individuating and living as individuals, we can learn to discriminate against none, tolerate discrimination from none, and this will end discrimination, racism and prejudice.

Let Tech Bros jobs be filled by individuals from all backgrounds, but we still need to limit severely for now immigration, illegal or legal—including most foreign skilled worker visas—from other countries into America, and that is what Republican Congress and Trump must sell to the American people for the next four years.

Kurt: “American Sucks seems an odd flex for America First, though that’s a simplistic distillation of the Vivek argument. Still, that’s how many people read Vivek’s take, ironically set forth on fellow tech bro Elon Musk’s former Twitter, America’s true free marketplace of ideas. Vivek echoes some old critiques of American workers, calling them lazy and entitled, and let’s face it – a significant number of our countrymen, countrywomen, and countrynon-binaries are lazy and entitled.”

 

My response: Vivek Ramaswamy ignited this controversy by claiming America needs these skilled foreign workers because tech bros employers cannot find skilled or diligent American workers.

His criticism of Americans, that they are lazy, entitled and mediocre, is more true than it should be, and more true of today’s young people than it was of American youth in 1952.

Still, if we teach these kids to maverize, and nudge their parents to motivate the kids to work hard, study hard and plan to achieve, then we will have the kind of workers Vivek wants to hire. He justifies tech giants hiring foreign engineers over American engineers because the foreign engineers are smarter and work harder. That may be so but most of those jobs should go to Americans, and our Amiercan-born engineers, if hired first over foreigners, need to have their feet held to fire, and fired if not smart enough and not working hard enough. They do not lack the motivation, only schooling and stick-to-itiveness.

Vivek denounces America’s lousy culture and its inferior values taught to the young, a society that rewards mediocrity over excellence, that we favor jocks over math whiz kids and nerds. In one article online Vivek excoriated the normalcy, our domestic cult of average performing or mediocrity, of American laziness and mediocrity, that we are raising children ill-equipped to compete with elite talents, engineers and technicians that win in the marketplace, the factory, the university and in manufacturing, productive and skilled enough to compete against anyone globally.

I think he is largely right, but the way to solve this problem is to teach all American youth to self-realize, and that will give them the cultural and ethical motivation and standards upon which they can grow, develop and be the high quality STEM field worker of the future good enough to work here or anyplace in the world.

Still, we must reduce but not wipe out the amount of foreign skilled workers allowed in because we must limit immigration for elites as well as for unskilled, uneducated people pouring across our borders. That is only fair, and we must close the border, and we must give those jobs to people at home that might need some company-provided tutoring to bring them up to speed, or Trump and Congress could perhaps offer grants or tax breaks for high tech companies to grow their own high-tech employees at home.

If each child was taught to maverize then world-class excellence of skill, competence, industriousness and ambition in the average American worker by 2035 could be the new American normalcy.

Vivek’s tough-love criticism of lax, low standards in education, work ethic and skilled worker mastery of content in his specific specialty hurts but is bracing. He emphasizes achievement, worker superiority in knowledge, skill and surpassing performance, a love of learning and gaining skill over just-get-by low performing and industriousness over goldbricking. I cannot find fault with his criticisms of American education, educators, employees, and parents with low expectations for their children.

Kurt: “ He was criticized for drawing on some cultural references about how we prioritize jocks over nerds. However, the jocks versus nerds thing was played out before the first Revenge of the Nerds sequel. He seems to argue that every American should be a party-free grind overseen by a domineering dragon mom focused on nothing but achieving high SATs and admission into the prestigious University of College. This, of course, is a terrible idea. We already suffer from a foreign policy run by people who’ve never been in a fistfight. The last thing we need is a culture dominated by people who’ve never kissed a girl, never chugged a Coors, and can’t drive a stick.”

My response: I think I will contradict myself and then try to resolve the inconsistency. Vivek’s denunciation of American culture for preferring and rearing up a generation of mediocre jocks overs hyper-excelling nerds that do so well as data engineers is put down rightly by Kurt that nerds are incomplete persons, cut off from life and normal popular teenage enjoyments and real-world interaction; to allow insecure, low self-esteeming nerds then assume they should be the educated elite that rule society and tell the masses how to run their lives? I think not.

Both men have a point. My envisioned high school superachiever of the future, who could develop into an individuating supercitizen who can compete with or even surpass just about any nerd out there; for now at age 17, he works as an auto-parts deliverer or lawn-mower after school and during the summer, who has kissed a girl, drinks an occasional Coors and can drive a stick shift.

Young people like him, idealistic, accomplished, and on fire, could be that Renaissance boy or girl in high school that is a skilled technical worker able to work for the tech bros (or run his or her own startup competing business from one’s garage like Steve Jobs did) while being a normal teenager with real-world friends and is able to function among the masses as one of the masses.

Nerdish tech workers and engineers without that common touch among the masses will end up being part of the intellectual elite that Hoffer warns about that live off of and direct the masses tyrannically, and Vivek comes from a society with old-fashioned strict caste classes, and we do not need nerds, as part of the global elite, running America like a caste society.

Kurt below anticipates that we cannot have society ruled by nerds, jocks, or anyone, that we should rule none and be ruled by none (let the indivduating supercitizens run society to keep it free and roughly equal).

 

Kurt: “Unspoken is the assumption that these people should rule over us, presumably instead of the jocks ruling over us. Now, anyone who has ever watched The Simpsons remembers when the local nerds took power and became hideous tyrants. The idea that nerds are some sort of self-sacrificing moral paragons immune from the flaws of human nature is silly. I don’t want to be ruled over by nerds. I don’t want to be ruled over by jocks, either. Frankly, I don’t want to be ruled over by anybody.

The fact is everybody can’t be a nerd, and everybody can’t be a jock, and we don’t want everybody to be a nerd or a jock. In fact, we don’t want anybody to be just nerds or just jocks. You can be multiple things. You can be a jock who can read, and you can be a nerd who can do a push-up. The idea that we should engineer society into utter conformity is ridiculous. We shouldn’t be engineering society at all.”

My response: I am all about moderate young maverizers, part-jock, part-nerd, but all individuators doing multiple things, and one or two things very well.

Kurt: “We also shouldn’t be destroying American opportunity by importing Third World foreigners for indentured servitude at sub-market wages. Look, the real reasons that tech companies want foreign workers are 1) our educational system largely sucks, producing halfwits; 2) colleges and tech’s own HR departments discriminate against white male workers, which creates shortages; and 3) the tech overlords don’t want to pay what it costs to get Americans to do the work they want done. They seek minions to toil for long hours in total obedience. You can have that if you have the whip of potential deportation to crack, but you can’t talk an American into it. He’s not going to take that guff, at least without a huge paycheck. So, they seek to overcome that obstacle via government intervention. And when we recoiled at it, they got a little upset.”

My response: In the paragraph above Kurt lays out the controversy fully if baldly. We do need skilled technical workers, but we should grow them at home mostly, and we should pay them well, hire white males and others, and not work them to death like some foreign serf underpaid, overworked, and threatened with deportation. We need to find middle ground here while limiting all types of immigration, even reducing H-1B visas numbers allotted.

 

Kurt: “Now, we’re going to work this all out somehow. We’re going to come to some compromise that at least attempts to address the legitimate needs of Silicon Valley and the legitimate concerns of Americans who feel excluded from opportunity. Sure, there will be some ham-handed attempt to slide in some giant visa giveaway into some omnibus bill, but here’s the new reality – one made possible by Elon Musk himself. We’re going to catch it. We can’t be fooled anymore. Hordes of hypervigilant autists with Twitter bullhorns are a game changer.”

My response: I like Kurt’s happy prediction that it will all work out somehow (By 12/25/24, Elon Musk is starting to sound conciliatory, and this promising.), and MAGA factions will internally reunite for their own good, and for the well-being of the country.

Note that Kurt is celebrating how hordes of hypervigilant autists with Twitter bullhorns being a public interest gamechanger and will spread the alarm once the Swamp-Dwellers in Washington conspire to slide some giant visa giveaway into some Congressional omnibus bill.

Let me create a scenario for making 340 million Americans into totally engaged, politically active, astute individuating supercitizens with about 3,000 paid or appreciated hypervigilant autists pouring over every federal and state document to see what the bureaucrats and legislators are up to and scheming, and then alerting the entire smart-phone carrying public with hourly Twitter updates as to what elites are doing or plotting.

If the supercitizens have a majority of consensus among themselves on an agenda for the country to run on and by, and then they watch what their government and elected officials are up to, they can respond quickly and firmly to get corrupt, slippery, plotting bureaucrats, federal agencies and legislators back on track, obeying the people, doing only what the people order, or being voted out the next election go-around. This citizen-run constitutional republic could stay what the Founders grew it to be, with its free markets, and smart, principled, empowered masses calling the shots, making money in our capitalist bastion.

 

Kurt: “The beauty of X is that it acts as a giant spotlight. Senator Joni Ernst found that out when she decided to posture for her own advantage against Pete Hegseth. People looked deeper at her positions and figured out that she was a giant squish. Then they publicized, it not in the regime media, which loves narcissist/maverick Republicans like Joni Ernst, but on X where the truth couldn’t be gatekept. That spotlight got her to change into a MAGA avenger but quick.

The same thing happened with the visa imbroglio. It came to our attention and thousands of folks on the spectrum immediately started researching visas and what they found was that the clichés were all baloney. These weren’t super-genius prodigies that we were bringing over, but mostly entry-level timeservers. And it wasn’t just in the tech industry. Did you know we have to bring in McKinsey consultants? Apparently there’s a shortage of eager Buttigieg clones that we must address by importing Third World peasants. How about accountants? No Americans can count? And did you know that giant law firms are somehow short of attorneys willing to work for a quarter million dollars a year? Hey, if America has any problem, it’s too few lawyers and too many unicorns.”

My response: It was the users of X that discovered that there was much abuse in this H-1B visas program.

Kurt: “The radical transparency made possible by X is going to change everything. No longer can secrets be kept or issues obscured by regime media, whose main job appears to be curating the debate by hiding inconvenient truths and promoting convenient lies. Of course, the media is trying to take advantage of these disputes within the America First coalition by pushing this as some giant schism. But you don’t need to be a historian – I’m sure there’s some visa listing for those to come in and do history for five dollars an hour – to understand how coalitions develop. Coalition partners work out their issues. That’s what’s going to happen here. The tech bros can’t really go to the Democrats who hate them with a passion. America Firsters can’t win without tech money and savvy. We need each other. We’ve got to make this work. And we will.”

My response: Kurt is calling for the tech bros and the American Firsters to quit yelling at each other and work together to make and keep the MAGA coalition strong: they do need each other. Sage advice from Schlichter.

Kurt: “But one thing we need to do when we are debating is to understand that it’s a debate. It’s not personal unless you make it personal. You may feel strongly that Vivek's critique was wrong or even insulting. Get over it and grow up. We’ve been taught that disagreement must be a bloodsport, but that’s not true. Save the vitriol for the real enemy, the communists. You can have people tell you things that you think are wrong and survive. You don’t always have to go for their throat. Try going for their argument instead. And to their credit, many, if not most, of those of us within the America First coalition did just that. If you were on social media last week, you saw a bunch of facts and arguments used to respond to Vivek’s arguments. Yes, there were insults, and there was some emotion, and there was some critiques that crossed the line into ugly bigotry against Indians, but those were not the primary response. The primary responses were facts and arguments. That’s how we win. Not by becoming leftists. Not by trying to stamp out any hint of non-conformity but by confronting arguments, debating them, and figuring out a solution. We’re going to do that. And that’s why we’re going to win.”

My response: We must not allow cultural or political opinions, public stated, that run counter to our own, to trigger us into attacking or seeking to silence our critics. We speak frankly but courteously in sharing our disagreements, and come together where we can, and agree to disagree peacefully and civilly when we cannot. We are still all one people, and all are welcome and have a voice and a say that will be neither silenced nor crushed.