USA 2024 Elections Thread

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Tue May 23 21:03:29 PDT 2023


Vivek Ramaswamy continues moving upwards in polls...

Vivek is pro crypto and accepts crypto donations.

https://vivek2024.com/
https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy
https://secure.winred.com/vivek-2024/website


Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy

U.S. Presidential Candidate. Speaking Hard Truths. Courage is Contagious.

Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
8h
Racially segregated graduations are divisive. They send the absolute
wrong message to young Americans. Victimhood is not the way forward. I
will cut federal funds to any college that engages in racially
discriminatory practices - period.
KanekoaTheGreat @KanekoaTheGreat
May 21
The University of California Berkeley proudly hosts a "black only
graduation ceremony," where participation is based on race,
contradicting the very laws established during the Civil Rights
movement, which vehemently outlawed racial segregation.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
1h
Parents know what is best for their kids, not the U.S. Secretary of
Education @SecCardona. I will shut down the U.S. Dept. of Education
without apology & use its $80+ billion budget on school safety, school
choice, and vocational programs, instead of foisting toxic ideologies…
Secretary Miguel Cardona @SecCardona
May 19
Teachers know what is best for their kids because they are with them
every day. We must trust teachers.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
8h
Racially segregated graduations are divisive. They send the absolute
wrong message to young Americans. Victimhood is not the way forward. I
will cut federal funds to any college that engages in racially
discriminatory practices - period.
KanekoaTheGreat @KanekoaTheGreat
May 21
The University of California Berkeley proudly hosts a "black only
graduation ceremony," where participation is based on race,
contradicting the very laws established during the Civil Rights
movement, which vehemently outlawed racial segregation.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
1h
Help me land a prime debate spot for these ideas. $1 vivekr24.com/424mdgcg
I just donated to Vivek for 2024!

I am standing with Vivek Ramaswamy to end wokeism and save America.
Donate today to help Vivek WIN the White House.
secure.winred.com
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
2h
Speak the truth. Even when it’s hard, when it’s uncomfortable. The
path to truth runs through open dialogue. We did it in the South Side,
and we’ll keep doing it throughout this campaign.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
3h
A friend sent me a link of Andy Frisella was talking about me on his
show. Hadn’t heard of him til today, but sounds like we both like
rooting out corruption.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
4h
I’m running to lead a nation, not just a party. We hunger for purpose
yet cannot answer what it means to be an American. We long for that
answer. I’m running for President to revive the very ideals that set
our nation in motion 250 years ago.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
5h
We’re not just running from something. We’re running *to* something.
We need a real outsider, beholden to no one other than America’s
citizens.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
6h
I left Chicago with friendships that will outlive my campaign. That’s
our path to national unity - not compromising on our respective
principles, but rediscovering the few that we do still share in common
while finding common cause in honesty and open dialogue.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
6h
The FBI now apparently purges agents who blow the whistle on
corruption. When an administrative agency is rotten beyond repair, you
can’t reform it. You have to shut it down & this is far more practical
than it sounds.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
7h
God. Nation. Family. Individual. Time to restore truth.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
21h
In 1996, Senator Joe Biden endorsed work requirements as a way to
reduce welfare reliance. Now he refuses to do the same. Reveals how
far our culture has “evolved.” Stop paying people to stay home, binge
TV, smoke pot, & be depressed. Adopt work requirements for welfare &
unlock…
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
20h
$1 secure.winred.com/vivek-2024…
I just donated to Vivek for 2024!

I am standing with Vivek Ramaswamy to end wokeism and save America.
Donate today to help Vivek WIN the White House.
secure.winred.com
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
22h
We’re not a direct democracy. We are a constitutional republic. We
need to revive civic duty among young Americans. That’s why I’m for a
constitutional amendment to raise the voting age from 18 to 25, but to
still allow 18-year-olds to vote if they either pass the same civics…
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
23h
Unleash the American economy: achieve >5% GDP growth. We can *grow*
ourselves out of our economic problems. We’ve done it before. We can
do it again. End the climate cult. Stop paying people to stay home.
Abandon the culture of apology.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
May 22
Hardship isn’t the same thing as victimhood. Hardship is unavoidable.
Victimhood is a choice.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
May 22
We’re in the midst of a national identity crisis. Faith, patriotism &
family are disappearing. We embrace one secular religion after another
– from transgenderism to climatism – to satisfy our deeper need for
meaning. Yet we cannot even answer what it means to be an American.
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
May 22
The people I met in the South Side of Chicago couldn’t care less if
you had an R or D next to your name. Violence, homelessness, illegal
immigration, & drugs are the problem. That’s what we show up to fix.
America First. 🇺🇸
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Vivek Ramaswamy retweeted
Jay W. Richards @DrJayRichards
May 21
I ♥️ how @VivekGRamaswamy widens the Overton Window by saying things
most people agree with secretly but that almost no politician will say
out loud. This one seems like a no-brainer. Any other takers?
Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
May 21
We need to expose the Epstein client list. The federal government has
it. I’ll release it as the next U.S. President. We’re fighting
corruption & no one will be spared.
Show this thread
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
May 22
Even FDR was opposed to public employee unions. Think about it: if
you’re a public servant, who exactly are you unionizing against?
Answer: the very people you purport to “serve.” @PhilipKHoward
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
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Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
May 22
Some believe the path to national unity runs through compromise. I
strongly disagree. We will deliver national unity by being
*uncompromising* about first principles & embracing the *radicalism*
of the American ideals that bind us together.
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The Pluralism Within
By VIVEK RAMASWAMY

Who are we as a people? I can’t remember a time in my life when we
more badly needed an answer to that question.

Rediscovering our American identity begins with understanding who we
are as individuals. According to some, we are each defined by the
characteristics that we inherited on the day we were born. For
example, I am a man, not a woman. I am brown, not white. I am
straight, not gay. For proponents of this view, we are each defined by
the innate and immutable, by the visible and superficial.

This is essentialism — the idea that the characteristics we inherit at
birth define who we are, what we can achieve, and how we should be
viewed and be treated by others. It’s the idea that, for example, a
scientist’s application for an NIH grant should be judged not only on
the basis of its scientific merits, but also on the basis of the race
or gender of the applicant. It’s the idea that Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s
successor on the Supreme Court had to be a woman, just as Thurgood
Marshall’s successor had to be Black. It’s the idea that Joe Biden’s
pick for vice president had to be a “woman of color.” It’s the idea
that the diversity of a board of directors ought to be measured on the
basis of gender and color, rather than on the basis of diversity of
thought or experience. It’s the idea that if you’re a member of a
particular race, you are committed to a particular ideology — summed
up well last year by Repre­sentative Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.), who
famously declared: “We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want
to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a
black voice.”

According to this philosophy, I am merely a fault line at the
intersection of the tectonic plates of group identity. It denies my
status as a free agent in the world by limiting my choices to strictly
those that advance the interests of my “group.” I am reduced to
attributes such as the color of my skin, my gender, and my sexual
orientation. As Congresswoman Pressley would have it, my race isn’t
just about my skin color — it’s about my voice, my ideas, and my way
of thinking. When you look at me, you’re expected to see not an
American, but an Indian American. When I look at my neighbor, I am
expected to see not just my neighbor, but my black neighbor, and to
anticipate his worldview and lived experience based on his skin color.

This narrative of identity is becoming dominant in our country’s
psyche. But I reject the narrative, and I think every American bears a
responsibility to soundly reject it too.

I am not just a man — I am a proud father, a loyal husband, and a
grateful son. I am not just a person of color — I am a Hindu, a child
of immigrants, an American citizen, a native of Ohio. I am a CEO, but
I am also a scientist and an entrepreneur.

Most important, I am the author of my own destiny, sometimes for the
better and sometimes for the worse, but always unconstrained by
whatever limitations someone else may think I inherited. I am not
defined by any one of those things. Rather, I am all those things at
once and a great deal more. Each of those identities is part of my
personal mosaic — the mosaic that together makes up who I am as an
American.

Some people think of pluralism as getting a bunch of different-looking
people together in the same place and then celebrating the visible
tableau of diversity. That’s just putting lipstick on essentialism.
True pluralism isn’t about celebrating the differences between us as
people. True pluralism is about the diversity of identities within
each of us — rich identities that go beyond the color of our skin or
the number of our X chromosomes. Pluralism means rising above the
siren song of woke culture to recognize that there’s more to each of
us than our immutable characteristics. To be sure, our inherited
traits and abilities and circumstances will influence what we can
achieve in life. As a kid, I dreamed of becoming an NBA player; it
wasn’t meant to be, and no amount of training would have changed that.
But that’s the exception rather than the rule: the notion that basic
facts of our genetic makeup determine all that we can achieve denies
what it means to be American.

The fundamental problem with essentialism isn’t just that it offers
the wrong answer to the question of identity. The bigger problem is
that it forecloses the possibility of shared solidarity. If we see
each other as defined by a narrow set of attributes — the color of our
skin, our gender, the sex of the person we’re attracted to, or even,
for that matter, the size of our bank account — then it becomes
difficult to find commonality with those who don’t share those
characteristics.

But if we define ourselves by a plurality of attributes — the
pluralism of identities within each of us — then we find our path to
true solidarity. I may be brown, conservative in my politics, and
Hindu. My colleague at work may be white, liberal, and Christian. But
we share a passion for unlocking the mysteries of human biology to
discover new medicines for serious diseases. My neighbor may be black
and progressive, but we are both fathers of children who we hope can
play sports together, go to class together, and learn from one
another. We don’t need to have everything in common with one another.
We need to share only a few things that bind us together and focus on
those.

Consider our vulnerability to COVID-19 this year. Out of this tragedy,
we have seen many examples of shared sacrifice and patriotism. My
wife, Apoorva, is an airway specialist who faced a difficult choice
this spring — whether to head to the front lines to treat patients or
stay at home to begin raising our son, born in February. Ultimately,
we decided that, in this case, it was Apoorva’s duty to treat patients
during her hospital’s hour of need, when they were short-staffed at
the height of the pandemic; and it was my duty to become the principal
caretaker of our son during those months. She went on to become
infected in the line of duty and was separated from our family for
longer than we had planned. She would have been a good doctor even if
she had made the opposite choice; she was a good mother even in making
the choice that she did. The same went for my choices as a father and
as a CEO. American pluralism is about embracing the multitude of
identities in each of us, rather than reducing ourselves to just one
of them at a time.

It’s also about recognizing that our diversity is meaningless without
the things we have in common — even our vulnerabilities. Like 9/11,
COVID-19 offered us the stark reminder that our greatest
vulnerabilities are shared: The virus affected us whether we were
black or white, Democrat or Republican, common man or president of the
United States. Diversity means something only in the context of a
unified whole. As Americans we say E pluribus Unum (“out of many,
one”), rather than the reverse, for a reason. Without a common creed,
we are nothing more than a group of higher mammals sharing a common
space while staring at our iPhones. Without the sense that we are all
in this together, we cannot defend ourselves against the threats we
face together — be it a virus or a terrorist attack.

This year’s election, which was imminent when this article was being
prepared, is another example of our commonality as a people. That
might sound surprising, since partisan division runs deep and the
acrimony between our political leaders is painful. It reminds me of
the misguided feeling that I sometimes had as a kid when I heard my
parents in the depth of a heated argument and worried that they might
get divorced (they remain happily married to this day). But even
across those partisan divisions, we share an ideal as Americans that
we resolve our differences through democracy, not tyranny. This year
we cast our ballots for elected leaders in positions ranging from
county commissioner to president. Whatever disagreements we might
have, we are united by our commitment to participate in a free, open,
and deliberative process for selecting our leaders — and to live with
those results whether we like them or not, knowing that we’ll have
another chance to make our case in the future. If that sounds obvious
to you, then I am grateful: It should be rightfully banal to all
Americans, regardless of party.

Just like you and me, America isn’t just one “thing” either. That’s
what makes America special. Most countries in the world, and indeed
most nations throughout human history, are defined based on a single
attribute — whether it’s a single ethnicity, a single language, a
single religion, or a single monarch. Not America. We were the first
and greatest country defined pre­dominantly on the basis of a set of
ideas. We came into being through a set of ideas that unified a
polyglot, religiously divided group of people. America wasn’t just a
place; it was a vision of what a place could be.

The foundations for that vision were plural: life, liberty, the
pursuit of happiness, democracy, free enterprise, reason, faith,
exceptionalism. And, of course, the American dream — the idea that no
matter where you are born or who your parents were, you can achieve
your dreams with hard work, commitment, and your own ingenuity.
America isn’t just one of those things. It’s all of them.

I believe that part of rediscovering American identity begins with
separating these identities from one another, so as to preserve the
integrity of each. That’s part of what gives me pause about the modern
fad for concepts such as “stakeholder capitalism” — the idea that
corporations shouldn’t just make products and provide services, but
should also address other social and cultural issues — or the
influence of “woke” culture over our civic and community institutions.
It’s not that social activists don’t have a point; it’s just that
they’re often mistaken about the right way to drive positive change.

For example, as a biotech CEO, I am charged with making new medicines.
Some of the younger employees at my company were disappointed earlier
this year when I chose to focus on this mission rather than on leading
our company — like many in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street — to
weigh in publicly on the difficult matter of addressing racism in the
United States. As a citizen, I care deeply about these issues and the
right way to create true equality of opportunity in America. Yet as a
CEO, I cared foremost about developing safe and effective medicines. I
felt that the best way for America to be the best version of itself
wasn’t to expect CEOs to solve racism and politicians to develop cures
to diseases, but to let each make their own unique contributions with
integrity and humility.

Democracy, capitalism, reason, faith, science, freedom, speech,
exceptionalism — all of these are quintessentially American values and
institutions. As Americans, we should care about preserving the power
of each of them. Sometimes that means leaving each one of them alone
and keeping them separate from one another. That, too, is part of what
it means to reject essentialism and embrace pluralism, at the level of
America itself.

The antidote to the siren song of identity politics and tribal
division in our country isn’t to double down on our division. We’ve
spent so much time celebrating our differences that we have forgotten
all the ways that we are actually the same. The cure to our division
isn’t to celebrate our diversity between one another. It is to
celebrate the diversity within each of us. That is the key to our
shared identity as Americans — one so strong that it makes both racism
and woke culture superfluous, one that is achievable even if we don’t
share every attribute, or even most attributes.

I recognize that much of this message may sound aloof to many
Americans who find themselves suffering during this particularly
difficult year. I recognize that not everyone has experienced the full
arc of the American dream in the same way that I have. Rediscovering
shared American identity may sound like a load of high-minded chatter
to a working family that is struggling to make ends meet during the
current recession, or to a family member of a victim who died at the
hands of excessively forceful police, or to a small-business owner who
had his or her store raided in the name of racial justice, or to
someone whose parents may have died of COVID-19. Rebuilding shared
American identity may seem abstruse in the face of these practical
challenges.

Yet I believe it is a necessary precondition to making real progress
on the more tangible problems that we face. In the end, all we can do
is make progress, bit by bit. America is imperfect and always will be.
Indeed, America was born in part from the idea that perfection is
impossible. Our system of checks and balances reflects an
understanding that humans are fallible, including the leaders we
elect.

Still, more than any nation in history, America is the pursuit of
perfection — call it the pursuit of a more perfect union, the pursuit
of happiness, the pursuit of liberty, equality, and justice for all.
If we can elevate these ideals above fractious group identities, then
nothing — not a nation, not a virus — can beat us.

— This article is adapted from a speech Mr. Ramaswamy delivered at the
2020 annual meeting of the Philanthropy Roundtable.

Vivek Ramaswamy (born August 9, 1985) is an American entrepreneur in
the biotechnology sector. He is the founder and executive chairman of
the biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences


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