Vivek Ramaswamy started an almost literal culture war as he prescribed
early bed, science fairs, and a jock and prom-queen ban for America.

Donald Trump’s DOGE appointee Vivek Ramaswamy set MAGA social media
alight Thursday after he called U.S. culture “mediocre” in a screed that disparaged prom queens, high school jocks, and even “Saturday morning cartoons.”

The controversial post came amid debate on whether the U.S. should
continue approving H-1B visas to foreign workers or not. Ramaswamy made
clear he favors the program, concluding modern day Americans simply
aren’t focussed enough to create the world’s best engineers.

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way
too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer),” he wrote. “That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.”

Ramaswamy continued: “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the
math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not
produce the best engineers. A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy
Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best
engineers.”

That wasn’t all. The 39-year-old failed presidential candidate, who’s recently been tasked to work with Elon Musk to cut government spending
once Trump returns to the White House, said Americans need to turn off
Friends and watch more movies like the 2014 drama Whiplash.

Ramaswamy added that kids need to stop hanging out at malls and say
goodbye to sleepovers. Instead, he believes they need to stick to
reading and having weekend science competitions. (His own parents had a windowless study in the basement for him, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported.)

He said fixing these supposed societal failures could be America’s
“Sputnik moment”; a turning point for U.S. society.

“We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again,” he wrote. “Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once
again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.”

Ramaswamy’s message that the real problem DOGE needs to solve is America itself wasn’t embraced by many on the right, however, including a swath
of the MAGA world’s most popular influencers.

The right-wing media personality Mike Cernovich responded to Ramaswamy’s post, writing, “The Woodstock generation managed to build out aerospace,
the one before went to the moon, America was doing great. Underlying
your post is that we were all living in squalor until being rescued by H-1B’s. Then why did everyone want to come here?”

Ramaswamy wrote back: “That version of America, the one that used to
embody unbridled exceptionalism, is exactly what we want to return to.
That’s a point about culture, not immigration policy.”

Another popular post about Ramaswamy that received over 10,000 likes
read, “Vivek is tweeting about how we need Asian immigrants because
Americans are bad parents who raise dumb kids, and I’m not sure this guy
has a big future in Republican politics.”

Musk, 53, has also angered some Trump supporters with posts that called
out Americans as lazy—though, none of his posts garnered as much outrage
as what Ramaswamy’s did.

“There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” Musk
wrote on Wednesday. “It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.”

Musk, a South African who was a H1-B recipient himself at one point,
came to his DOGE partner’s defense on Thursday. He wrote on X that the “number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated
in the USA is far too low.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-doge-guy-vivek-ramaswamy-sparks-maga-civil-war-with-slam-on-american-culture/

It's elementary, folks. You don't get your Sputnik moment by insulting
the parents of dumb kids. You get the Muttnik moment.

--
“We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him. We shouldn’t have listened to him, and we can’t let that happen ever again”.
-- Nikki Haley

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