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 groups try to sort themselves out, stumbling across new strands of racism and xenophobia along the way, Department of Government Efficiency co-grifter-in-chief Vivek Ramaswamy has blessed us with a new theory for why America has supposedly fallen behind in its ability to produce elite engineers: we worshipped Stefan instead of Steve Urkel.
According to Ramaswamy, “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” and it all dates back to 1990s sitcoms and America’s preference for the jock and prom queen over the “math olympiad champ” or valedictorian.
“A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy tweeted publicly in a message that can be read by other people and everything.
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if…
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 26, 2024
This whole thing is so incomprehensible that it’s hard to really know where to begin, but I guess it’d be worth starting with the fact that this isn’t even an accurate recounting of Family Matters. Steve Urkel was so popular with audiences that the show got re-written to center the character. It went from a run-of-the-mill family sitcom to a sci-fi-dipped comedy centered around America’s favorite nerd. Even the Stefan character was the product of Urkel’s whole nerd shtick. (If you aren’t up on Family Matters lore, Steve alters his DNA to be a cooler version of himself and woo his love interest Laura, and eventually he creates a clone who can be cool guy Stefan full time instead of requiring Steve to transform between the two. Laura ends up choosing Steve over Stefan anyway.)
Frankly, this isn’t even the most egregious example of Ramaswamy’s piss-poor media literacy on display in this tweet. He says “More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of ‘Friends,’” presumably because he falls into the camp of people who think the abuse J.K. Simmons’ character levies on his young students in Whiplash is justified because it pushes them to greatness rather than viewing him as a tyrannical lunatic.
Also—look, I know I’m really hammering the media takes but I swear this is the last one—what a wild drive-by of Cory from Boy Meets World. He has to try extremely hard to seem cool and it just never takes for him. He’s ultimately a quintessentially average guy who figures out how to be himself. He’s certainly not a jock or prom king material.
Anyway. What prompted Ramaswamy to break out this take was an ongoing battle about H-1B visas, which allow American companies to hire foreign workers for specialty occupations and have become a commonly used tool in the tech industry to attract global talent. The top H-1B visa issuers are pretty much all tech companies, and while the visas undoubtedly bring skilled workers into the fold and benefit the economy broadly, Big Tech firms have also been accused of using the employment tool to outsource work while laying off domestic staff.
The immigration hot-button topic is the biggest DKE situation I’ve ever seen 😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 26, 2024
Trump restricted H1-B visas during his first term—a policy the Biden administration reversed and tweaked to make it easier to hire immigrants. But, as Trump prepares to take office again, the program appears on the chopping block.
The divide between Trump loyalists and Tech industry players reared its head over the course of the past week after a16z’s Sriram Krishnan was named senior policy adviser for Artificial Intelligence for the Trump White House. The appointment drew the ire of prolific racist Laura Loomer, who believes Krishnan wants to “remove all restrictions on green card caps.” That would lead to more foreign students coming to the US, which is bad in Loomer’s eyes. She also accused Krishnan of donating to the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, but it turned out she confused him for someone with the same name, which seems about right for her whole deal.
Now Ramaswamy and his fellow Trump-aligned tech bros have taken to defending immigration programs for skilled workers and students as they find themselves at odds with the nationalist front of the MAGA movement. This was bound to happen, it’s just a little surprising that the war broke out before Trump even took office—and on Christmas day, no less. I guess if your family has disowned you, you’ve got a lot more time to argue immigration policy on Twitter during the holidays.
If there is one thing Ramaswamy correctly identifies, albeit likely accidentally, it is the jock-nerd divide. The writer John Ganz presented his “Jock/Creep” theory of fascism in 2023, and it feels pretty prescient here. The theory posits that Americans are particularly drawn to the jock/bully archetypes for their authoritarian leaders, while the creep/loser types do the plotting behind the scenes. “The dull seek to give their actions the appearance of historical grandeur, while the dowdy look for a figure who embodies the strength they lack,” he writes.
Trump is undoubtedly a jock in this alignment, so there is little question that his supporters are drawn to that type of energy—the very kind that Ramaswamy argues should not be lionized in American culture. Prior to placing himself directly atop the splintering ground beneath him, Ramaswamy served as a sort of go-between of the jocks and the nerds: able to capture the imagination of MAGA better than any other Trump replacement, but still very much in touch with the people pushing the tech world’s rightward bend. Now it appears he’s cast his lot with the nerds in the eyes of MAGA.
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