Summary
Vivek Ramaswamy criticized American culture for prioritizing “normalcy” over excellence, which leads tech companies hiring foreign-born workers over Americans.
In a post on X, he argued that U.S. culture celebrates mediocrity and undervalues nerdiness, hard work, and academic achievement.
His comments sparked backlash across the political spectrum, with critics labeling him out of touch with American culture.
The controversy may jeopardize his standing in the Trump administration.
Sounds like someone wanted to be prom king.
He is trying so hard to be cool and it’s just not working.
I’m not just dunking on maga when I say, I think that might be what the leaders of the movement all actually have in common. When weak people try to act strong, it turns into cruelty. When uncool people try extra hard to be cool, they become maga. It’s why they’re all such dorks.
In a post on X, he argued that U.S. culture celebrates mediocrity and undervalues nerdiness, hard work, and academic achievement.
I can’t really argue with that part.
I would; rich fucks like him destroying our education system for profit is the reason we don’t value academic achievement anymore.
I would say that here in the U.S. and Canada:
Mediocrity is less celebrated and more just that anyone with real skill will probably stand out as troublemaker at work because they’ll know that their bosses are wrong.
Hard work is definitely celebrated because morons can always work longer hours but they aren’t capable of understanding how to work smart. Then the very worst people, the braindead managers, come along and ignore every single piece of documentation showing how working long hours is both unnecessary these days and just straight-up unproductive.
Academic achievement is massively worshipped here. In fact it is one of the number one arguments dumbasses who were good at school but not at real work make when spouting their other garbage. See: so many engineers, lawyers, and even doctors.
So I’m really not sure why you believe that that statement is true.
Because that’s what management values.
How is mediocrity celebrated? Well, other than the existence of social media influencers.
Trump.
Let me spare you all some false hope: he wasn’t literally dragged.
Dang it
One day
But was he slammed, blasted, or ripped?
Not yet. All it takes is one hero
Isn’t this the same guy who said “weekends were a mistake”?
People like this have fully infiltrated the US tech sector, and have been kicking and screaming about how the workers there aren’t killing themselves for their jobs anymore. They have completely embraced classism and believe they are at the top of some imaginary tower or food chain that allows them to make idiotic statements like this. Anti-egalitarian at the core.
They’ve already stripped all the benefits of working in tech away from the workers, and are now complaining that the horse won’t pull the cart anymore now that the carrot is gone. Pieces of shit.
Isn’t this the same guy who “weekends were a mistake”?
No, that is Narayana Murthy, the billionaire founder of Infosys - a company that makes its money through indentured servitude by exploiting H1B visas.
Lol. Well that makes total sense. Guess they have similar mindsets then.
It’s kind of true. I don’t think it’s necessarily that there is a culture of mediocrity but that other foreigners have a really high bar to get citizenship here in the states so they have to be exceptional. Leading to a massive amounts of underpaid intelligent H1B people.
Also, America can’t get shit done with technological improvements. Our infrastructure is shit, no high speed rail systems and we’re dependent on oil. We try to change but change takes way too long. Take a look at China and Japan, these countries are living in the future and we’re stuck in the past.
Edit: fixed visa type name
Japan is only living in the future in very select and narrow areas. Source: a decade in Japan sending faxes, having to use a physical stamp on hand-written paperwork, and working with/at japanese companies whose IT practices are still sitting around 2008.
Ah yes, have they gotten rid of their tape drives yet? I’m just nitpicking these technological advancements and highlighting how fast these countries can move whereas our California High Speed Rail is taking fuck long.
This year the government (at least national; not sure on more regional and local) updated their systems to allow submitting data on something other than literal 3.5" floppy disks so there’s that!
I’m not sure exactly how rail will continue to evolve here. Some argue the maglev stuff is a waste of money. We also have our own infrastructure issues going on here, particularly in the more rural areas.
Conservatives actively killing education be like Y NO ENGIUNERS?!?!!?
Americans train their kids to become engineers, but after they graduate, companies like Musk’s won’t hire them because foreign H1-B engineers work cheaper.
h1-b visas make up a vanishingly small percent of the workforce. There are plenty of reasons to hate immigrants but this ain’t one.
He didn’t say anything that implied hatred of immigrants.
Companies undercutting local workers ≠ hating immigrants.
What really sucks so hard is when you work at a company flooding the place with H-1Bs and not being able to really discuss in frank terms what they are doing. Because there are just enough people that have not really thought things through (as well as the idiots in HR) that will call you a “racist” for pointing out the scam.
This asshole can just go fuck himself.
Lol first musk, now this guy. These techbro wranglers are about to discover what getting into bed with fascist nationalists really means.
Lolol yes do it, keep talking Vivek and Musk. Burn all your bridges to the actual elected GOP. Make yourselves and DOGE hated before it even begins.
Make sure all DOGE executives and agents must always fly on Boeing aircraft.
To fly others is UnAmerican, Communist, and Woke.
As an anticap American, made so by our worship of greed and glut and sociopathic cruelty in the name of profit, I make it my mission at work to do as little as possible, and gum up the works at my greedy employer’s as much as possible without it looking like I am.
I’m doing my part to stifle GDP! Are you?
(In a non-captured oligarchal dictatorship, if you wanted worker buy in, remake the tax code to punish corporations and incentivize cooperatives. That can’t happen here, we’re too captured, but theoretically)
dragged 😒
Tbf, he’s probably saying a lot of this because he’s experiencing prejudice for being an outsider, kind of like Steve Bannon at Harvard syndrome. People like that just want to burn the world when they find out that conservatives really only favor an in-group of their own kind, and people like them will never truly belong.
That said, hard fucking lol. The only reason India gets so much support is because US wants to prop up a puppet in SE Asia. Indians also get ahead on political fronts in America because they’re currently the “safe minority” and not scary Chinese, Arabs or Latinos. He’s literally a DEI hire for white supremacists.
Also, America has most noble prizes than any country. But dumb cunts like him will never admit that the public education and progressive policies in America favored it a lot. All of these conservatives should FAFO, but their bad ideas will only make it worse for vulnerable people.
lol @ India gets so much support USA started pulling down restrictions around 2009, and even after that it’s been transactional arrangements, rather than support
Wait, Bannon felt like an outsider? That guy gives off such insider energy, but an insider that is aggrieved about very stupid things.
He got close to the bubble by acting the part.
MAGAts will forget. There will be no consequences.
Their amygdilas have been rewired to short out long term memory.
I’d definitely say that Americans value hard work. To the point of their own detriment. I’d also say they often strive for excellence in product making, but it rarely comes out excellent. When comparing product quality between Europe and the US, Europe almost always comes out ahead. Plus, Europeans value a good balance between work and life. That’s true excellence in my book. The US seems to mostly survive on size and quantity rather than quality.
everyone talks of germany and japan as being efficient but its the US that the priority is efficiency. Thing is we don’t give a fuck about quality which is what allows for such great “efficiency”. What germany and japan were doing was maximizing efficiency while maintaining quality. We had a japanese shipping company bring some stuff for an NTT project. Truck came. Several guys. fully equipped. Got their lift gate going right away and zoom did that stuff get off the truck and right up to the rack and unboxed and man. just full service. incredibly fast and everything in very good condition. Compare that to the typical american shipping with just the one guy driving and unloading. They would often try to lie and say their liftgate was not working (they were worried about the few minutes it took and they had unreasonable schedules breathing down their necks). No handtrucks or belts or any other equipment. Once they got it onto the dock they are gone. So yeah the savings on improperly equiped trucks and only one guy is huge. Economically efficient. Meanwhile the japanese company with several guys and costly equipment is costing more, but they spend about the same amount of time and you get the equipment right to where it belongs and in perfect condition and your just happier about the whole experience. Efficiency while maintaining quality.
