MAGA Civil War: Another "Redneck Elegy"

Author: FlowHarbour Research

After winning an unprecedented election victory over the Democratic Party and completely eliminating external threats to the Democratic Party, the traditional MAGA camp represented by rural whites and the Silicon Valley technical elites who have recently turned to the Republican Party, represented by Musk and DOGE, soon realized that their interests are actually far apart. The alliance between the two sides was only based on the fragile foundation of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", and after the common enemy declined, the cracks appeared in front of observers around the world faster than anyone expected.

The origin and direction of the MAGA civil war

As mentioned above, the MAGA group and Silicon Valley tech elites who united under Trump to oppose DEI and deep state in the 2024 election are actually at two extremes on the political spectrum, just like the famous controversial tweet that Musk liked. In the normal distribution of Americans' IQ, the Silicon Valley elites with the highest IQ on the right and the rednecks with the lowest IQ on the left both support the Republican Party, while those with IQs near the middle mean support the Democratic Party. This clearly shows that Musk clearly knows that Silicon Valley elites and rednecks working with Trump are ultimately just a stopgap measure, just a compromise between the far-right MAGA and Silicon Valley elites, which happens to fall at the intersection of the traditional Republican establishment represented by Trump and moderate MAGA. This compromised and temporary alliance is very fragile.

From the perspective of Silicon Valley’s elite entrepreneurs, low-cost Indian and Chinese STEM technical labor entering through H1B is essential for technology companies to maintain their competitiveness. But as we all know, the far-right MAGA verbally opposes illegal immigration, but in fact opposes high-paid legal immigrants in the legal, medical, financial, IT, and semiconductor industries. However, due to the systematic failure of the US public education system, the lower-class white people with general functional illiteracy and dyslexia cannot replace the work of these professional and technical talents. Therefore, on the issue of H1B visa immigration, there is a huge contradiction between the Silicon Valley faction and the white MAGA, not to mention that the Silicon Valley faction’s talkers already have a large number of Indian executives who have entered the highest center of US federal power together with Musk.

The MAGA debate this time was caused by a tweet from Vivek Ramaswamy, an Indian-American who is Musk’s second-in-command at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE):

The reason why top tech companies often hire foreign-born and first-generation immigrant engineers instead of “native” Americans is not because native Americans are born with deficient IQs (this is a lazy and wrong explanation). One of the key factors comes down to the word that starts with “c”: culture. Tough questions require tough answers, and if we are really serious about solving this problem, we have to face the truth: our American culture has long (at least since the 90s, and probably earlier) promoted mediocrity over excellence. This situation did not start in college, but from childhood. A culture that values ​​prom queens over math olympiad champions, or jocks over valedictorians, will not produce the best engineers. A culture that values ​​Cory from A Boy Gone Wild, Zach and Slater from Saved by the Bell over Screech, or Stefan from Resident Alien over Steve Urkel will not produce the best engineers.

(Fact: I know multiple immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited their kids’ viewing of television shows that promoted mediocrity and ridiculed science “nerds”…and their kids went on to become very successful STEM graduates).

Watch more movies like Whiplash and less reruns of Friends. More math tutorials and less late-night parties. More weekend science competitions and less Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creative pursuits, less "relaxation." More extracurricular activities, less shopping. Most normal American parents are suspicious of "such parents." More normal American kids are disdainful of "such kids." If you grow up determined to be normal, you will eventually become normal.

Now close your eyes and imagine which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) raised their kids according to one model, and which families raised their kids according to another model. Please speak your mind. In the ultra-competitive global market for technical talent, "normal" does not apply. If we pretend it does, we will get smacked by China.

This could be our Sputnik moment. We have woken from our slumber before, and we can wake up again. Hopefully, Trump's election marks the beginning of a new golden age for America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. This culture once again prioritizes achievement over norm; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; and diligence over laziness. That is the task we set for ourselves, not to indulge in a victim mentality and simply hope (or legislate) that alternative hiring practices will emerge. I believe we can do it.

A little explanation:

Synopsis of Boy Meets World: This is an American teenage sitcom that tells the story of Cory Matthews's growth from childhood to adulthood; Saved by the Bell mainly revolves around a group of students at Bayside High School, in which Zach Morris is one of the core characters. He is smart and naughty, often causing trouble but always able to solve it cleverly; Slater is a sports star in the school with a straightforward personality; Steve Urkel from Family Matters is a very distinctive character in the show, he is a nerd, wearing big glasses, wearing weird clothes, behaving clumsily but kind-hearted and smart. The film Whiplash mentioned in the article tells the story of an ambitious drummer who constantly improves and works hard under the strict guidance of a strict teacher; the "Sputnik moment" refers to the fact that on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched the Sputnik 1 satellite ahead of the United States, plunging the Western world into a period of fear and anxiety. Since then, the United States has become alert and has launched an education program to cultivate a new generation of engineers. Ramaswamy, who graduated from Harvard University, is a disciple of Soros, the cousin of JD Vance's wife, the founder and CEO of several innovative pharmaceutical companies, and once ran for the US presidency but gave up after Trump's candidacy. He is one of the most successful second-generation Brahmin immigrants. His remarks caused an uproar. On the one hand, MAGA supporters believe that Indians have no right to point fingers at American culture and education, and have no right to say that white people in rural America have inferior IQ and culture. On the other hand, with Musk's betrayal of MAGA already a foregone conclusion, the fact that Ramaswamy, an Indian who points fingers, and Musk, a South African immigrant, "have direct access to the emperor's ears" and "follow the dragon to enter the pass" to become "iron-hat kings side by side", and that MAGA representatives such as JD Vance have to marry into their family to gain a foothold, has deeply hurt the self-esteem of the MAGA group.

Objectively speaking, the ancestors of American rednecks did sacrifice their lives for the American cause of conquering the south and the north. The addiction of traditional white Americans to drugs, promiscuity, general reading dysfunction, and inability to remember multiplication tables are also closely related to the collapse of the American public education system, the high cost of higher education, and the excessive popularity of cheap entertainment. It cannot be simply attributed to the bad nature of rednecks. But the fact is that the MAGA group and the Rust Belt workers have been abandoned by American society. Apart from the votes in their hands, they no longer have any "united front value." So after MAGA cheered for Trump and Musk, it became an abandoned child casually discarded by the Trump and Musk camps. The "illegal immigrant" Musk directly tweeted this explicit content:

"The reason I was able to come to the United States and build Spacex with many key missions Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made the US strong are all because of the H1B visa." This is tantamount to a naked denial of any significance of redneck to the US, and attributes all the credit for the US's technological competitive advantage to H1B visa STEM talents. What MAGA cannot tolerate is that MAGA's poster child Trump liked this tweet.

This blatant provocation and contempt aroused huge opposition. While former U.S. presidential aide Bannon and other elites warned Musk against getting too involved in politics and not interfering in the H1B cancellation process, MAGA ordinary people also fought back mercilessly in the Internet public opinion field, such as the following questions: "Why doesn't China introduce Indian immigrants?" "Why is the threshold for H1B talent introduction so low?" "Why do truck drivers also have to be introduced through H1B visas?" are indeed difficult questions to answer and cannot be reasonably explained. The MAGA group directly launched a vigorous anti-Indian immigration movement across the United States. Even well-known politicians from different camps such as Bannon and Sanders held a consistent position and jumped out to oppose H1B. However, at a time when H1B visa review has been controlled by Indians and H1B visas have become an industry, reversing the trend of Indian immigrants entering the United States is an unsolvable problem, whether from the perspective of the current situation, the demand for talent by technology companies, or inflation, or whether the expensive public education system in the United States can train enough engineers to replace Indians. What's more, MAGA rednecks like to boast that they are willing to die for their country, but the military enlistment rate in red states is generally lower than that in blue states, so their promises seem even less credible.

It can be said that the internal debate of MAGA represents the real "hillybilly elegy": MAGA people thought that voting for Trump, Vance and Musk would allow them to regain control of their own country, but they did not expect that before Trump took office, the capital elites who switched to the Republican Party would once again abandon the donkey after it has served its purpose and burn the bridge after crossing the river.