So, I have a story... to illustrate how I feel. For context, Vivek was born here to immigrant parents from generally the same place my parents are from in India. I immigrated myself, with my parents, during middle school and went through a huge transformation. I rejected the Indian culture enough to have joined the military, and eventually got into politics locally. Me and him are very different. Here we go.
I think I mentioned to you guys I worked in one of the biggest accounting firms in the world, a while back. Eventually I was on an interview panel and interview some smart kids from the best Midwestern colleges. A few Partners were also on the panel.
One kid was social (frat boy), decent but not very high gpa, sports, but didn't come across as sharp as another super smart kid. Lots of academic stuff, top gpa etc.
My comments were along the lines of 'hey look, he was in a frat, and doesn't have as good a gpa as the smart kid." One of the partners fucking filleted me in the conference room. I think he graduated from the same college.
Over a decade of American TV and culture got me to believe that frat kids, and jocks were "not smart" and the nerds were. It played into my belief because I grew up on the nerd side. Despite being in the military, and even having worked with many former frat kids who were successful at the firm, I made a huge mistake.
That whole fiasco is something I always regretted. I think it even played into me getting crappier assignments which eventually led to me leaving the firm.
Since then, I learned about my own bias and never criticized the All American jock or Prom Queen. Because that's America. That interview panel was a huge learning experience and subconsciously I never treated anyone with disrespect that had a more "American" background.
My point is that Vivek made the same exact mistake on X with his post. To be honest, he's right about a lot of the mediocrity but illustrating it with the examples that he used were bad taste and made him seem like a foreigner. He absolutely alienated middle America like I alienated my firm. He needs to come back from this but I'm not sure. What he needs to do is own up to it and just apologize before it's too late. Ideally, he can acknowledge it like I just did but let's see if he has the conviction.