#948: Vivek Who?
Truth to tell, the chances are slim to none that any reader of this blog will ever be casting a vote for Vivek Ramaswamy in the 2024 Republican presidential primary . . . let alone the general election itself. Despite being an accomplished young man (he was born “way back” in 1985), who possesses a truly impressive C.V., (B.A. magna cum laude Harvard 2007, J.D. Yale, 2011, by which time he was already worth more than $15 million from his work as a hedge-fund manager), the founder of a a big pharma company called “Roivant [R-O-I, standing for “Return on Investment], and Axovant Sciences, which purchased the patent to intepirdine, a possible treatment Lewy Body Dementia, from GlaxoSmithKline for a mere $5 million and then raised a staggering $315 million for its IPO. He quickly became a Wall Street darling; Forbes Magazine put him on its front cover in 2015.
Vivek Ramaswamy is also the author of 3 best-selling books, all of which spell out his political and social philosophy in bright, bold letters:
Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam (2021)
Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence (2022) and
Capitalist Punishment: How Wall Street Is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn't Vote For (2023)
It’s clear that Vivek Ramaswamy, the son of Indian Hindu parents V. G. Ramaswamy (who worked as an engineer and patent attorney for G.E.) in Ohio, and Geetha Ramaswamy, M.D. (who is a geriatric psychiatrist), is the embodiment of the American Dream. Horatio Alger must be beaming. The Ramaswamys are Brahmins, the priestly cast within Indian and Hindu society (roughly akin to the Cohanym in Judaism. ) Their native language is Tamil. Despite their religion, young Vivek, who attended the local Hindu temple in nearby Dayton (the family lived in Cincinnati), was a graduate of St. Xavier High School, where the 2003 graduate was both class valedictorian and a nationally ranked junior tennis player.
Despite all his accomplishments, it’s his political positions that will disturb Democrats the most; they reside, to borrow an album title from Pink Floyd, on “the dark side of the moon” (which, by-the-by, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year) How could any progressive vote for a person who, at the press conference announcing his candidacy, promised “As U.S. President, I will end federally mandated affirmative action - full stop. I will repeal Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 which mandates race-based quotas. Every Republican since Johnson had the opportunity to do it. I’ll do it on Day 1 without apology."
How could any progressive even consider voting for a candidate who has publicly proclaimed his support for abolishing the Department of Education, the FBI, and IRS; who asserts that the president has the unilateral power to abolish these agencies by executive order despite the fact that under the Constitution, Congress has the power of the purse; and has pledged to fire "at least half the federal workforce” and dismantle federal civil service protections, turning federal jobs into “at-will jobs.”
On his campaign website Ramaswamy promises to “take America First further than Trump.” Much of the site is filled with aphorisms: “God is real.” “There are two genders.” “Reverse racism is racism.” “Courage is contagious.” “Excellence over politics.” And simply: “Truth.” In a couple of his most outlandish proposals, he baldly states
“End civil service protections for bureaucrats: 8-year term limits instead”
“Move >75% of federal employees out of Washington D.C. and
“End pro-lazy “remote work” option”
Congratulations, Mr. Candidate: You’ve already kept these last two promises—exceeded it, in fact. Give or take 85% of federal employees already work outside the Washington area. The “pro-lazy” jibe at telework is a nice rhetorical flourish, though. Vivek has also promised to “Cut wasteful expenditures: White House, not individual agencies, will submit budget requests to Congress” I’m pretty sure this will come as news to federal agencies that they can submit their budget requests directly to Congress without the approval of the White House Office of Management and Budget. In virtually every one of his proposals dealing with bureaucratic reform (which, I am sure is not at the top of many MAGA Republicans’ “must list,” Ramaswamy seeks to one-up other GOP reformers. “I think a lot of well-intentioned folks focusing on bureaucratic reform will say that we need to be incremental about this,” Ramaswamy said in a February Twitter post. “I think the time and place for that has passed.”
From all I’ve learned doing research on Vivek Ramaswamy the man, the candidate, the Republican, I’ve neither seen nor heard much at all that would tempt Trump’s cultists to jump ship. Oh sure, he is gaining a bit of recognition as of late; there’s at least one in each presidential campaign cycle: the long-shot outsider who vows to shake up government and its workforce. But after a brief while, they fade into the heat-baked sunset . . . possibly to reemerge as a member of the Cabinet (can you say “Jeff Sessions” or “Ben Carson?”).
One of the things that will all but guarantee to keep the Republican nomination from going to Vivek - not to mention Nikki Haley (born Nimarata Nikki Haley (née) Randhawa - can be found in their genes: they are both children born to Indian families; Ramaswamy’s family is from from Kerala, in Southwest India; Haley’s come from Punjab; the Ramaswamy’s are Hindu Brahmins and speak both Tamil and Malayalam, while Haley’s parents are Sikhs who speak only the latter.
(n.b. all Sikhs are Hindu, but less than 2% of Hindus are Sikh. Sikhism rejects the Hindu caste system, priesthood, image worship and pilgrimage, although it retains the Hindu doctrines of transmigration and Karma. According to Hinduism, the soul is immortal. The souls are reborn into another being as per their karma. Sikhs believe that heaven and hell are also both in this world where everyone reaps the fruit of karma.)
In 1996 Nikki married Michael Haley; they celebrated their vows in both Sikh and Methodist ceremonies. The next year she officially converted to Methodism. Vevik is married to Apoorva Tewari, a throat surgeon he met when she was a med student at Yale and he a law student at the same university. The Haleys are practicing Methodists; the Ramaswamys practicing Hindus.
Already, there are signs that many members of the Republican-base have already rejected both Ramaswamy and Haley, not due to their platforms or positions, but rather due to their family’s religions. This is a far greater problem for the former than the latter. As journalist Tim Dickinson noted in a July 28 article published by Rolling Stone, Ramaswamy has a "major stumbling block" when it comes to winning over the evangelical Religious Right: he is a practicing Hindu. "He's been on a charm offensive with these evangelical audiences," Dickinson explains, "but the outreach appears to be backfiring, at least among the Christian nationalist set."
There are millions of practicing Christians — both Mainline Protestants (Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians) and Catholics — who have no problem with candidates practicing a religion other than Christianity. But far-right evangelicals have a very different viewpoint. As the Religious Right and Christian nationalists see it, only evangelical fundamentalists should hold public office in the United States.
One such fundamentalist is Trump supporter Hank Kunneman, who recently said of Ramaswamy, "If he does not serve the Lord Jesus Christ, you will have a fight with God….I don't care how good someone's policies are or how good they sound if they don't profess the name of Yeshua. What are we doing even entertaining the fact?" Kunneman continued while receiving thunderous applause from the worshipers in his congregation. "You're gonna have some dude put his hand on something other than the Bible? You're gonna let him put all of his strange gods up in the White House and we're just supposed to blink because he understands policies?”
Kunneman is not al one; just one of the first to have the temerity to speak his hateful thoughts from the pulpit for one and all to hear. What Pastor Kunnerman and Christian Nationalists fear the most is that America is boing to become a “majority-minority” country. You know something pastor? It already has. Besides two Republican aspirants coming from Indian families, the United States already has a V.P. - Kamala Harris - whose mother, Shyamala Gopalan (1938-2009) was an immigrant from India, who married a Jamaican and whose daughter married a Jew. Wake up all you Christian Nationalists: this is America in 2023!
Vivek Ramaswamy is currently doing everything in his power to convince white evangelicals that a practicing Hindu can be a far-right culture warrior. As he recently said, "The real divide in our country is not between people of Hindu faith and Christian faith and Jewish faith. It's the people who believe in a one true God, and those who have replaced that vacuum with new secular religions instead."
Despite the fact that both Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley (not to mention Vice President Harris) are the American Dream, it should be their political dreams and proposals - and nothing else - which should be the defining factor as to whether or not they should receive any American’s vote.
Is that gonna be the case? Likely not . . . but hey, that’s one of the reasons why prayer - whether it be written right to left, left to right or top to bottom - was invented.
Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone