Revenge of the Bitter Nerds: Musk and Vivek's Assault on American Culture

Right-wing billionaires like Vivek & Musk are giving the rest of us "nerds" a bad name as they reveal all the money in the world can't cure their intense self-loathing & contempt for America.

Now that Trump has won the election, the war on Christmas is officially over. Evidence of America’s victory over the woke was White Santa Claus bringing me, a practicing Muslim, a bounty of gifts this holiday season.

The brewing civil war within MAGA over H1-B visas and foreign workers was enough to satiate my humble appetite, but Santa’s elves snuck in an extra gift and gave me a whopping 10 minutes on cable news to dunk on Vivek Ramaswamy, Elon Musk, and MAGA rubes on MSNBC.

On Friday night, guest host Jason Johnson asked Tim Miller and me to participate on a panel to dissect this ongoing feud, which was escalated by Vivek Ramaswamy’s unintentionally hilarious post in support of educated foreign workers. Vivek’s tweet revealed that he’s completely out of touch with American workers but also totally off the mark with American pop culture.

While mocking less-privileged Americans for being lazy, ignorant, and stupid, Vivek also decided to take out Cory from Boy Meets World, the characters from Saved by the Bell, and Friends, one of the most popular shows of all time.

This is the way to win over America, people.

Instead, he recommended Americans behave like the protagonist from the Oscar-nominated movie Whiplash, which was meant as a cautionary tale in which a young drummer becomes so obsessed with his craft that he destroys his mental health and alienates all of his loved ones. The director of the movie said he imagined the character would go on to die of a drug overdose.

Vivek, Musk, and other elitist billionaires see the rest of us as peasants who are to work ourselves to death so the money can trickle up to broligarchy. We’re supposed to pull ourselves up from the bootstraps as Musk and Vivek steal our boots and then wear them to stomp on our chest. They mock us for not being educated even as they plan to destroy the Department of Education and remove our social safety net. They hate government spending even as they make money off of government subsidies.

These men give nerds a bad name. Many of us worked hard in school, took AP classes, read books, played video games, enjoyed TGIF, and lusted after pretty women who wouldn’t give us the time of day. However, most of us didn’t grow up to be pathetic, self-loathing, miserly Gollums who wield our bitterness as a weapon against the most marginalized. We matured, became confident, found our voice, got the pretty girl, and decided to be decent human beings, who can easily discuss pop culture alongside world history, religion, and politics.

All the money in the world can’t buy Musk and Vivek self-respect and coolness. They remain bitter dweebs. Also, people like Musk are all in favor of “free speech” and bemoan cancel culture until, of course, they are being criticized. Then they’re fine with silencing and punishing their critics, including former MAGA allies like Laura Loomer, who called out Musk on his X platform. The growing Civil War includes nativists like Steve Bannon, who is joining Loomer in her criticism of Vivek and Musk’s support for H1-B visas. “The nerds don’t take criticism - they’re a little on the spectrum and lack social skills,” Bannon said on his show. “You can’t run a country by algorithm or by nerds whose companies employ a handful of mathematicians. We’re a country, not an economy.”

Meanwhile, Musk referred to MAGA who disagree with him as “contemptible fools” and shared posts in which users referred to them as “retards.” I’m old enough to remember when this country lost its mind when Hillary Clinton referred to Trump’s die-hard supporters as “deplorable,” but all is fair in love and MAGA civil war.

To avoid any subtlety, the richest man on Earth also decided to share this conciliatory post:

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has taken a side and unsurprisingly he, again, is bending the knee to President Musk. He told the New York Post on Saturday that he supports immigration visas for skilled, foreign workers, even though he has criticized them in the past: “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

I’m extremely confident this won’t go over well with his base that was promised a Muslim Ban, a border wall with Mexico, and believes people of color are “replacing” real Americans, who, shockingly, happen to be white Christians.

Like I said on MSNBC, I’m here for the face-eating leopards and the MAGA civil war. I’ll be eating popcorn with butter and paprika.