I’m sitting here in my new Christmas underpants—cotton, not silk—anxiously waiting for the new year and the new era in American politics promised to us come January 20.

And I sit here astounded that a petulant punk like Vivek Ramaswamy has already screwed things up with his Twitter/X rantings about immigrants and American culture.

He wrote: “The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit… it comes down to the c-word: culture…

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

Since the ’90s you say! 

Taking a dump on the emotional carpet won’t make it any easier for DOGE No. 2 to convince Americans to embrace cheaper foreign labor, especially when it comes with a pay cut.

What’s more, Ramaswamy’s moralizing shows how little he understands about the basic underpinnings of American ingenuity and innovation.

My childhood buddies and I attended Livonia Churchill High School here in southeast Michigan. Public school. Some of us lived in modest houses and others in unremarkable townhomes. Our parents worked in the auto plants, the machine shops, and the warehouses. All long gone.

As young men, we played football, smoked grass, drank beer, and drove too fast. I even ran for homecoming queen (long story).

This didn’t make us wastes of cultural space. It made us adjusted and well-rounded. Sports taught us teamwork, camaraderie, and how to play by the rules. It prepared us for life. And yes, we studied.

One buddy (the son of immigrants) made his money in the new cellular technology. Much of that industry has since been outsourced to Asia. Another was an engineer for an automobile company. That work, too, has since been outsourced to Asia. Another became an architect. He now competes with young foreign nationals educated at American universities. Another was a salesman whose job was phased out. I became a reporter (obviously some of us chose more honorable professions than others).

We all did reasonably well, raised families, and bought houses. We bought houses mind you, we didn’t flip houses, nor did we invest in the devious financial instruments that cratered the world economy. None of us cheated his way to the middle. None was ever indicted for securities fraud or was accused of bilking investors.

We did things the right way. Yet we now find ourselves caught in a swirl of an imbalanced world competition not of our making or wanting.

Then there are guys like Ramaswamy: a silk-suited, smooth-talking snake charmer. The son of Indian immigrants, he was afforded the American Dream: private schools, big house, a billion dollars. But he did not make money by inventing or building anything. His fortunes came via curious stock speculation.

It should be pointed out that Ramaswamy’s father came to the America decades ago on a work visa, but still is not a U.S. citizen. Ramaswamy’s mother became a citizen, but only after his birth in 1985.

While attending Yale Law School (his tuition partially funded through a George Soros fellowship), Ramaswamy moonlighted as a hedge-fund employee. He took large positions in three biotech companies, which Wall Street insiders considered to be failing bets.

The timing of Ramaswamy’s highly speculative, multiple-million-dollar gambles was either spectacular or cynical. The bets on the three foundering drug companies came just as they had entered into what was supposed to be secret and confidential merger talks with larger pharmaceutical companies.

When the mergers eventually went through, Ramaswamy’s investments achieved fantastical returns—close to 5,000%, making our boy wonder his first millions.

Dumb luck? Or something more sinister?

Then came the really big pay out. After law school, Ramaswamy bought up a failed Alzheimer drug called intepirdine, which had been abandoned as a three-time loser by other pharmaceutical companies.

Not to worry. Ramaswamy commissioned yet another study on the drug, this one led by his mother. Not surprisingly, Mommy’s study showed encouraging results. Ramaswamy then took to the airwaves to hype the drug. And then he floated a public stock offering.

The stock skyrocketed, and then ultimately crashed when further trials showed the drug to be worthless. Ramaswamy and his family had already cashed in, however, earning themselves more millions. Other investors were out on their asses.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder of Yale’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute and a powerful critic of Ramaswamy, pulled no punches when he described the first-generation American as an “entrepreneurial huckster” with a “shady business track record of brazen pump-and-dump schemes.”

And this is the man who moralizes to a nation?

Immigration is a good thing for a country when the newcomers respect the rules and the frauds are rooted out. Everybody knows that, whether he’s a writer from Michigan or a waiter from Michoacan, Mexico. Everybody it seems—except Vivek Ramaswamy. 

Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools.