American idiot
Ricky Gervais isn’t for everyone. I happen to think he’s a genius but, then again, I also loved David Letterman hosting the Oscars, will snort laughing at Seinfeld to this day despite seeing every episode at least a dozen times, and firmly believe Friends is television’s exemplar of obvious, middle-of-the-road, unfunny comedy (if it’s not, it’s absolutely a top three contender). Laughter comes in different ways to different people.
Anyway, Gervais’ 2018 Netflix stand-up special, Humanity, is typically hilarious but one section seems particularly relevant right now. After riffing on the lunacy of the outcome of the Brexit referendum that rendered my British passport basically worthless, he segues into the “ridiculous thing of ‘let’s ask the average person what they think’.”
“Do you know how fucking stupid the average person is?” Gervais says, his voice rising in line with his incredulity that anyone could deny something so obvious. “We still sell bottles of bleach with big labels on that say ‘Do not drink.’ Right? Let’s take those labels off, right? For two years. And then have a referendum.”
For no reason in particular other than it seems entirely appropriate, this reminds me of Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican Party’s candidate du jour as it maybe kinda sorta flirts with potentially if-cows-leap-the-moon avoiding nominating Donald Trump for another crack at the presidency of the United States. Now, Ramaswamy isn’t stupid (we assume). But he knows his core audience is, otherwise there’s no explanation for his insistence on treating them and the greater American public as complete idiots.
“If you watched the first Republican debate last week or if you’ve listened to more than five minutes of Ramaswamy’s commentary,” David French wrote in the New York Times, “you’ll immediately note that he is exceptionally articulate but also woefully ignorant, or feigning ignorance. Despite his confident delivery, a great deal of what he says makes no sense whatsoever.”
Anyone who’s spent more than a nanosecond in a large organization knows the Ramaswamy type (I vote we call these people “Swamys” from this point on). In pretty much any meeting, there’s at least one person who does one or both of two things: pipes up regularly to repeat verbatim and with great confidence whatever someone else has just said; and/or pipes up regularly to declare with great confidence something that, on first listen, sounds impressive but is later revealed as empty words best (a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing) or just complete bullshit.
Ramaswamy is a master of both. With Harvard undergrad and Yale law degrees in his pocket, the 38-year-old became a hedge fund jockey before founding a biotechnology firm, Roivant Sciences, which has (of course) never made a profit despite raising billions of dollars from starry-eyed investors. For those playing at home, the “ROI” part of the name stands for “return on investment,” which at least shows Ramaswamy has a sense of humor. Even more hilariously, he early last year co-founded Strive Asset Management, which bills itself as “anti-woke”—a made-up thing I’m not sure constitutes a viable investment approach.
All of which is to say Ramaswamy has just the kind of resume that leads the Republican base to believe he ticks the “successful businessman” box automatically qualifying someone to lead the free world (paging the ghost of Ross Perot!). Two asides. Again, Roivant has never made money, although we can safely assume its leaders have made out like bandits. And the Republican base long ago decided Trump was a similarly “successful businessman,” despite squandering hundreds of millions daddy gave him, driving multiple businesses into the ground, paying millions in fines for shams like Trump University, incessantly inflating the value of his properties and himself, and facing almost a hundred indictments.
French notes “fantastical thinking is par for the course” for Ramaswamy, who injects his word salads with jargon and buzzwords that seem carefully calibrated to elicit just the reaction he wants. “He’s a very smart man, blessed with superior communication skills, yet he constantly exposes his ignorance, his cynicism or both,” he writes.
The problem for Americans living in the reality-based world is Ramaswamy can’t lose in this situation. The average person he’s relying on for support to win the Republican presidential nomination thinks he’s articulate with fresh ideas, no matter how inane those ideas actually are. And when Ramaswamy’s called out on his stupidity and general bullshittiness, he only becomes more endearing to those same average people.
So, we’re approaching the situation we’ve long feared. Reality-based folk were terrified a smoother talking charlatan would hijack the Trump template, and Ramaswamy appears to fit the bill. The only glimmer of hope right now is his business career suggests we could be saved by a similarly Trumpian lack of competence.
Time will tell. America’s interminable presidential election process will grind on for another 14 months, result in billions being spent by both parties, and we’ll likely end up in a contest between an octogenerian incumbent who’s not getting any credit for what could be judged as one of history’s more substantial first terms and a liar and a crook. For any Republican reading this, Trump is the latter (“but Hunter’s laptop!”).
There is one very faint silver lining. Ramaswamy’s rise has completely derailed the presidential aspirations of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who was a Swamy well before Vivek tired of pocketing his carried interest loot while losing his investors’ money and figured he’d instead try to fail upwards.
DeSantis, you’ll recall, was the OG “smarter Trump” that Democrats were afraid of. He too went to Harvard and Yale (but in the reverse order to Ramaswamy, making him even more of a bizarro version) and now tries to pretend he hated every minute of it. He burnished his resume with stints in the military, a hot minute at a law firm, and then ran for Congress. DeSantis squeaked into the governor’s mansion by around 32,000 votes (out of a total of 8.22 million cast) and acted like he’d won in a landslide. Political types were suitably impressed and saw what they wanted to see, even ignoring when he stomped around looking like a pudgy Oompa Loompa (it’s the boots, people).
But anyone paying attention realized he was wasn’t ready for primetime, and was unlikely to ever be. So, I’ll take small joy from his woeful primary effort which appears dead in the water now that his Never Back Down political action committee is, er, backing down and begging for cash. Yet it’s ultimately cold comfort given all of this probably only helps Trump. Gird your loins, inhabitants of reality. As Gervais notes: “The big enemy is stupidity.”