Vivek Ramaswamy Says America Doesn’t Have Enough Engineers Because We Mocking Steve Urkel
The unholy union between the Trump-loyal MAGA right and the opportunistic grifters of the Tech Right have found their first major clash: H-1B visa policies. As the two parties try to sort themselves out, stumbling upon new problems of racism and xenophobia, the head of the Department of Public Works, Vivek Ramaswamy, has blessed us with a new theory as to why America is said to be lagging behind. its ability to produce quality engineers: we worshiped Stefan instead of Steve Urkel.
According to Ramaswamy, “our American culture has valued gentleness over achievement,” and it all goes back to 1990s sitcoms and America’s preference for the jock and prom queen over the “math olympiad champion” or valedictorian.
“A culture that honors Cory on ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater on Screech on ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ on Steve Urkel on ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers, ” Ramaswamy wrote on Twitter. public in a message that other people can read and all.
The reason top tech companies tend to hire immigrants and first-generation engineers over “native” Americans is not because of America’s lack of IQ (a lazy and inaccurate definition). The main part of it comes in the word: culture. Tough questions call for tough answers and if…
– Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 26, 2024
The whole thing is so confusing that it’s hard to really know where to start, but I think it would be good to start by saying that this isn’t even an accurate recount. Family Matters. Steve Urkel was so popular with audiences that the show was rewritten to focus on the character. It went from a run-of-the-mill family sitcom to a sci-fi-drenched comedy centered around America’s favorite romantic. Even Stefan’s character was a product of Urkel’s whole nerd shtick. (If you are not there Family Matters Lore, Steve changes his DNA into a cooler version of himself and falls in love with his love interest Laura, and eventually creates a clone that can be cool guy Stefan full time instead of requiring Steve to switch between the two. (Laura ends up choosing Steve over Stefan anyway.)
In fact, this isn’t even the worst example of Ramaswamy’s piss-poor media knowledge on display in this tweet. “A lot of movies like Whiplash, a few reruns of ‘Friends,'” he says, perhaps because he falls into the camp of people who think JK Simmons’ character abuse is taxing on his young readers. Whiplash he is forgiven because he pushes them higher rather than seeing him as a cruel madman.
And look, I know I’m really ignoring the media but I swear this is the last one – what a way Cory drives. Boy Meets World. He has to try hard to appear cool and he doesn’t need to. He’s finally a normal guy who knows how to be himself. He’s definitely not jock or prom king material.
Anyway. What prompted Ramaswamy to issue the decision was the ongoing battle over H-1B visas, which allow American companies to hire foreign workers for specialized jobs and have become a widely used tool in the tech industry to attract global talent. The top H-1B visa issuers are almost all technology companies, and while the visas undoubtedly bring skilled workers into the fold and benefit the economy at large, Big Tech firms have also been accused of using the employment tool to outsource work while undermining the economy. employees.
The immigration hot button topic is the biggest DKE situation I’ve ever seen 😂
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 26, 2024
Trump limited H1-B visas during his first term—a policy the Biden administration reversed and modified to make it easier to hire immigrants. But, as Trump prepares to take office again, the plan appears at a crossroads.
The rift between Trump loyalists and Tech industry players reared its head during the past week after a16z’s Sriram Krishnan was named senior adviser on Artificial Intelligence policy for the Trump White House. The nomination angered bigoted Laura Loomer, who believes Krishnan wants to “remove all restrictions on the green card caps.” That would lead to more foreign students coming to the US, which is bad in Loomer’s eyes. He also accused Krishnan of donating to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, but it turned out that he confused someone with the same name, which seems to suit his entire career.
Now Ramaswamy and his Trump-aligned tech allies have taken steps to protect immigration programs for skilled workers and students as they find themselves at odds with the nationalist MAGA movement. This would happen, ironically, the war started before Trump took office—and on Christmas day, no less. I guess if your family has abandoned you, you have plenty of time to rail against immigration policy on Twitter during the holidays.
If there’s one thing Ramaswamy pinpoints rightly, or perhaps wrongly, it’s the jock-nerd divide. Author John Ganz presented his “Jock/Creep” vision of fascism in 2023, and it sounds pretty clear here. The theory posits that Americans are particularly drawn to the jock/bully archetypes of their authoritarian leaders, while the creep/failure types conspire behind the scenes. You write:
Trump is arguably the jockey for this alignment, so there’s no question that his supporters are drawn to that kind of power—the kind that Ramaswamy says shouldn’t be assimilated into American culture. Before putting himself directly on top of the cracked ground below him, Ramaswamy served as a kind of liaison between comics and nerds: able to capture the MAGA mindset better than anyone in Trump’s position, but still very much in touch with people pushing the curve to the right of the tech world. Now it seems he has thrown in his lot with the intellectuals in the eyes of MAGA.
