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<\/p>\nIn the case of the billionaire tech bros and the MAGA masses, who will win?
\nThe post In Defense Of Intelligence appeared first on Above the Law.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This year is gonna be fun after all!<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
When lawyers suggested that you\u2019d never win a case in court if you wrote briefs in non-standard English, the criticism from the left simply broadened: \u201cThat\u2019s because the whole judicial system is infected with systemic racism! If the judicial system were fair, the system would recognize cultural diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the left\u2019s criticisms were limited to written English, they wouldn\u2019t be an onslaught against intelligence generally. But no: Mathematics, too, reflects a Western-centric culture, and math is used to perpetuate inequality.<\/p>\n
While we\u2019re at it, the entire typical college curriculum is unfair, compelling, as it does, students to read the works of dead white men.<\/p>\n
To be a good liberal, one must reject learning.<\/p>\n
I was dismayed by all of this until I heard the response from the right:<\/p>\n
Hold my beer.<\/p>\n
MAGA chose to wage war on the elites \u2014 the folks who actually know things and run many of the institutions in society. Who needs \u2019em? Throw the bums out!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s funny, isn\u2019t 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\u2019m pretty sure he qualifies as an elite. And I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n
But if you ask Joe Bag-o\u2019-Donuts how he feels about smart people, he\u2019ll tell you that he has no use for damned pointy-headed intellectuals. And by the way, do you have another cruller?<\/p>\n
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 \u201cmediocrity over excellence\u201d and the \u201cjock over the valedictorian\u201d \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
Who\u2019d a thunk it? Vivek, like Hillary Clinton, thinks that many Americans are deplorables!<\/p>\n
The MAGA crowd\u2019s response to Ramaswamy\u2019s tweet was predictable:\u00a0 He should go back where he came from!<\/p>\n
(No; I\u2019m kidding. Ramaswamy was born in Ohio. But Ohio\u2019s in the Midwest, which is probably near the Middle East, which means that Ramaswamy is a jihadist! Quick \u2014 spread the word on Twitter!)<\/p>\n
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\u2019t want to put America first.<\/p>\n
So, too, is Elon Musk. As are all of the other fabulously rich tech bros who recently decided to buy their way into government.<\/p>\n
Poor Donald Trump\u2019s got himself a heck of a problem here. Who\u2019s he going to support? The populist wing of the party, which elected him? Or the moneyed wing of the party, which financed him?<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
It turns out that the billionaire bros and the MAGA masses won\u2019t always agree on these issues.<\/p>\n
Will it be possible to thread this needle?<\/p>\n
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\u2019t mind being guided in fields that I don\u2019t understand by people with advanced degrees (or specialized experience) in those subjects.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019m obviously in the minority.<\/p>\n
In any event, Trump\u2019s not one of my people: Read Trump\u2019s tweets and you\u2019ll see that he has no command of the English language. Look at Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and you\u2019ll see that Trump doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s important to understand a field in order to administer it.<\/p>\n
But standing by the MAGA deplorables will cost Trump the billionaire bros, and Trump won\u2019t like to be rejected by the rich.<\/p>\n
I thought 2025 would be a depressing year.<\/p>\n
Perhaps so, but it will be a heck of a lot of fun to watch.<\/p>\n
Mark\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Herrmann<\/em><\/strong> 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 <\/em><\/strong>The Curmudgeon\u2019s Guide to Practicing Law<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strateg<\/em><\/strong><\/a>y<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(affiliate links). You can reach him by email at\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>[email\u00a0protected]<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":99318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law","category-legal_matters"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Brain-jail-oK2emO.jpeg?fit=636%2C578&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}