Why US Presidential Hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy is a bit of a farce

 

Photo by Edmond Dantès: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-person-holding-a-voter-pin-7103165/

38-year-old US presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy aiming to secure a nomination as the Republican party’s presidential candidate is the man of the season. Apparently, he performed very well in the last inter-party debate, where he impressed everyone with his devotion to the most outlandish of Trump’s views of the world and how it should be dealt with. That a man of Indian origin should align with people who border on being neo-Nazis and likely detest people of colour like him is incomprehensible to anyone with a modicum of decency. People in India are bemused by the antics of this brown man who pretends to be more Anglo-Saxon than the whitest of whites and panders to the extreme xenophobia of some of them.

He is happy to be a climate change denier and defends his decision to not get vaccinated against the Covid-19 pandemic. In other words, he ticks every box in the list of necessary prerequisites for a person to be accepted by the extreme right lunatic fringe he caters to. But at what cost to his own self-esteem and heritage? Though he calls himself a practising Hindu, he calls the US a nation founded on Judea-Christian values. What does that imply for his Hindu coreligionists in the U.S.? Does he even care? Already Donald Trump’s pastor has conveyed dismay at a non-Christian entering the White House with his “strange gods.” These are the kind of people he is willing to sell his soul to.

Despite his chicanery, he is not averse to taking a sly dig at his competitor for the position of Republican Party presidential nominee Nikki Hailey alluding to the fact that she goes by the supposedly Western first name Nikki, not realizing that it is an Indian name too, given to her by her parents. Ramaswamy is a rank opportunist whom the white supremacists are happy to endorse if he helps further their nefarious agenda and goals.

Forget the fact that here is a man with a convenient conscience who does not even see how ridiculous and pathetic his attempts at ingratiating himself with people who nearly carried out an insurrection in the U.S., but look instead at how harebrained his solutions to the problems his country faces are. From firing 75% of the federal workforce (including the FBI, the IRS and the Commerce Department) and pardoning all “peaceful” January 6 protestors to stopping U.S. aid to Ukraine and supporting fossil fuels over the long run to raising the minimum voting age to 25 from 18 making an exception for those who serve in the military and  “first response services” or have passed a civics test usually taken by citizens seeking naturalization.

The man is a clear and present danger to the health of not only American democracy but to democracies and the rule of law throughout the world. The world could use one less demagogue. Ramaswami is best returned to his pharmaceutical business and writing a whole series of books on anti-wokism or whatever excites his fancy at a given point in time. The world needs a dose of sanity right now, more than anything else and sanity is not a hallmark of what Ramaswami stands for at all.