I had a long article about the whole Elon Musk H-1b fiasco planned for today, but I’m tired, so I’m writing a much shittier version instead. I’ll write the better version later this week. Maybe. No promises.
The thesis statement is that the relationship with big tech and American right-wing politics is not really viable, and in fact while some of the pro-business and government mismanagement ideas overlap, as well as I’m sure some of the superficial “culture war” bullshit (which literally does not matter), tech billionaires don’t care about Americans, or even believe in nation-states at all, while caring about Americans is the core premise of American right-wing politics. The H-1B debate is just this fundamental conflict boiling up for the first time.
America is either a geographic area with a series of vague “ideas” that define a “proposition,” or it’s a group of people, defined by a shared history and genetic identity, who live on this land. It can’t be both. People cannot be ideas. And if people were ideas, you would be able to rigidly define those ideas, because people are physical entities that cannot be morphed into abstractions. The ideas would have to be highly particular. But it doesn’t matter, because people are not ideas and this doesn’t make sense.
