In the case of the billionaire tech bros and the MAGA masses, who will win?
The post In Defense Of Intelligence appeared first on Above the Law.
This year is gonna be fun after all!
For years, folks on the left criticized intelligence. If you preferred that people write in standard English, the left said that you were propagating systemic racism. Since you, a member of the middle class, grew up using standard English, you inflicted that improper cultural norm on others.
When lawyers suggested that you’d never win a case in court if you wrote briefs in non-standard English, the criticism from the left simply broadened: “That’s because the whole judicial system is infected with systemic racism! If the judicial system were fair, the system would recognize cultural diversity.”
If the left’s criticisms were limited to written English, they wouldn’t be an onslaught against intelligence generally. But no: Mathematics, too, reflects a Western-centric culture, and math is used to perpetuate inequality.
While we’re at it, the entire typical college curriculum is unfair, compelling, as it does, students to read the works of dead white men.
To be a good liberal, one must reject learning.
I was dismayed by all of this until I heard the response from the right:
Hold my beer.
MAGA chose to wage war on the elites — the folks who actually know things and run many of the institutions in society. Who needs ’em? Throw the bums out!
It’s funny, isn’t it? Americans take pride in technological advances made possible only by brainpower. Folks huddled around television sets in July 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong take a giant leap for mankind. Thomas Paine, the administrator of NASA at the time, had a Ph.D. from Stanford; I’m pretty sure he qualifies as an elite. And I’m no rocket scientist, but I have a hunch that the equations that took Apollo 11 to the moon were probably solved by mathematics, and the memos exchanged by NASA scientists were written in standard English. The same people who today struggle to scratch together money for food own fancy iPhones. Society loves what smart people create.
But if you ask Joe Bag-o’-Donuts how he feels about smart people, he’ll tell you that he has no use for damned pointy-headed intellectuals. And by the way, do you have another cruller?
The Republican Party is now tearing itself in two over this divide. Vivek Ramaswamy criticized American anti-intellectualism in a recent tweet. He insisted that American culture favors “mediocrity over excellence” and the “jock over the valedictorian” — which, to his mind, means that the H-1B visa program should be expanded to allow educated foreigners to fill jobs in the tech industry.
Who’d a thunk it? Vivek, like Hillary Clinton, thinks that many Americans are deplorables!
The MAGA crowd’s response to Ramaswamy’s tweet was predictable: He should go back where he came from!
(No; I’m kidding. Ramaswamy was born in Ohio. But Ohio’s in the Midwest, which is probably near the Middle East, which means that Ramaswamy is a jihadist! Quick — spread the word on Twitter!)
MAGA deplorables think that there are plenty of talented Americans to fill jobs in the tech sector, and Ramaswamy is just a misguided billionaire who doesn’t want to put America first.
So, too, is Elon Musk. As are all of the other fabulously rich tech bros who recently decided to buy their way into government.
Poor Donald Trump’s got himself a heck of a problem here. Who’s he going to support? The populist wing of the party, which elected him? Or the moneyed wing of the party, which financed him?
The dichotomy between the two halves of the Republican Party will reveal itself repeatedly in the coming year or two: Should America decrease regulation in ways that hurt the man on the street but increase corporate profits? Should America punish China with tariffs to protect American jobs or let Tesla build its factories there?
It turns out that the billionaire bros and the MAGA masses won’t always agree on these issues.
Will it be possible to thread this needle?
For me, this would be easy: I side with intelligence. I prefer people who can write in standard English and understand math, and I don’t mind being guided in fields that I don’t understand by people with advanced degrees (or specialized experience) in those subjects.
But I’m obviously in the minority.
In any event, Trump’s not one of my people: Read Trump’s tweets and you’ll see that he has no command of the English language. Look at Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and you’ll see that Trump doesn’t think it’s important to understand a field in order to administer it.
But standing by the MAGA deplorables will cost Trump the billionaire bros, and Trump won’t like to be rejected by the rich.
I thought 2025 would be a depressing year.
Perhaps so, but it will be a heck of a lot of fun to watch.
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at [email protected].
