Fractures, Divides, Realignments

 (This one is long, and the internal links at Grim's and Breitbart [via Althouse] are long as well. And I think it's a good one to talk a walk after reading as well. We are in the beginning of major realignments in our politics, and there will be a lot of false starts and theories before we work this out.)

It was only three weeks ago that I mentioned that Public Radio was trying create a self-fulfilling prophecy by announcing fractures in the Trump coalition. I did not mention at the time, but certainly mentally included until a few days ago the split over immigration between the techbros and the cultural nativists. I thought they were only arguing over a middle ground and uneasy compromise.  I now believe I was wrong about that.  While both sides are against illegal immigration, there is not general agreement on legal immigration. There are work visas and there are work visas, after all. The agricultural workers from Latin America and the H1B Silicon Valley visas affect entirely different groups. The latter are only 85,000 individuals a year, but they make far more than then could in say, India, so they settle in, keep getting extended and can eventually establish chain migration an turn into an estimated 600,000. That adds up.

There is currently irritation among many in the tech world that in contrast to the original intent of the visas, which was to get from other countries specialty workers that we don't have enough of here, these foreign workers are replacing Americans because they will work for less. This is not always said out loud because they want to keep working somewhere and don't want reputations as troublemakers.  But some are forced to train their replacements as a condition of their severance package.

But the CEO's love it, and here is a part of the Elon Musk story: his goal is to go to Mars, and he felt the Democrats kept putting up barriers.  I don't say he doesn't believe the other things he says about America and entrepreneurship and competing in the global market.  I'm pretty sure he does. But all of that is in service to Mars.  Getting the most engineers into America at the best price is something that needs to happen, in his mind. His goal is America First in terms of global competition. Vivek Ramaswamy's comments in December articulate the position well. (Quote from a House of Strauss transcript.  Apologies if I got any of it wrong.)

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers over "native" Americans isn't because of an innate American IQ deficit, a lazy and wrong explanation. A key part of it comes down to the c-word, culture. Tough questions demand tough answers and if we're really serious about fixing the problem we have to confront the truth. Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long, at least since the 90s and likely longer.  That doesn't start in college. It starts YOUNG.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympian champ or the jock over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers. A culture that venerates Corey from Boy Meets World or Zack and Slater over Screech and Saved by the Bell or Stefan over Steve Urkel and Family Matters will not produce the best engineers. Fact.

I know multiple sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity.  And their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates.

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of Friends, more math tutoring, fewer sleepovers, more weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons, more books, less TV, more creating, less "chillin'." More extracurriculars, less hanging out at the mall, Most normal American parents look skeptically at those kind of parents.

More normal American kids view such the kinds of kids with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve. Now close your eyes and visualize which families you knew in the 90s or even now who raised their kids according to one model versus the other. be brutally honest.

Normalcy doesn't cut it in a hyper competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we'll have our asses handed to us by China. This can be our Sputnik moment. We've awakened from slumber before and we can do it again. 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. That's the work we have cut out for us rather than wallowing in victimhood and just wishing or legislating alternative hiring practices into existence. I'm confident we can do it.

Well, there's a lot to like here for a certain type of parent - we had no TV, we stressed science fair, etc. But there's few things wrong with it as well. The Brahmins will work for less because the company controls their H1B. South Asian IQs are far below American, but the superselect group of Brahmins is higher than the American average. So this "well, our kids just work harder" is mostly self-congratulatory nonsense. Look also at some common American virtues that aren't mentioned... Generosity, community service, compassion, honesty.  Plenty of Asians South and Northeast have those qualities, but if we are going to talk about culture, as Vivek says we are, how often are those mentioned?

Which culture is American, sleepovers or science fairs? What have you got against normalcy? Do we trust people who think all those blind people could see if they just tried harder? Learn to code? When we have the discussion for the 1000th time that lots of kids should go into trades like welding because they could make bank, while our betters are expressing contempt disguised as motivational speeches for them, do we then get why they don't go into trades? People want importance, respect, not just money.

This would be a good place to go over to Grim's and read his post Triumphant, Broken America. He focuses on the rural/urban divide which I also think is neglected. But that bleeds over into the suburban, small town, family farm vs agribiz, and tech island - y'know, this is getting messy fast - divides. America First has at least two powerful meanings in our culture. Foreign Affairs is not the only one. Steve Bannon says he will have Elon Musk out of the White House immediately. He is more for cultural America First rather than America First to Mars. 

Trump is definitely America First, but which one? I think both. His thought is to get rid of the illegals and the rest will fix itself. He will support both versions of America First and try to paper over the division, largely because he doesn't see it as that large. Neither did I until a few days ago.  This is only the beginning. The Democrats have a different version of the same divide.