Look, I know the title isn't going to come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows me, but I've heard that he's the "sane one". I'd heard the same thing about Nikki Haley, though. It didn't take at lot of research to belie that hypothesis. Here's a very little bit of research on Vivek, based on the 20-minute interview below. <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAgskd2iwdc" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/eAgskd2iwdc" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Jimmy Dore" caption="Israel Can Defend Itself However They Want – Vivek Ramaswamy"> Dore let him talk. A lot. He didn't even disagree with him, even though he said some pretty outrageous and clearly incorrect---at best, <i>misguided</i>---things. <img attachment="ignorance_is_strength.jpg" align="right" caption="ignorance is strength">Vivek is an idiot. He's not a serious person. It's a condemnation of our society and economic system that someone like this is considered to be highly educated and is just about a billionaire. It is a national tragedy that he thinks he should be President---or in any way involved with anything but the local politics of the HOA of the gated community where he lives. He's utterly convinced of his own cleverness, but he knows even less than Jimmy Dore about how the presidency works. He says that he wouldn't get involved in Israeli politics because he wouldn't be the president of that country. He probably even knows that that's a shallow, stupid thing to say, but he's so clearly <i>delighted</i> with himself for having thought of it that he can't help saying it. When Jimmy says that, as president, he'd be de-facto involved because he'd be funding Israel to the tune of $4B per year and he'd be in charge of nominating the UN representative, Ramaswamy ignores the funding part and just says that he doesn't care about the UN. <iq>I don't think that the UN should be stopping Israel from doing what it's doing.</iq> That's not the only callous, wildly misinformed thing he says. This next one takes the cake. At <b>13:25</b>, he says, <bq>What does genocide refer to? The elimination of a race. Well, you know what? About 20% of the Israeli population is Palestinian. That's more than the black or hispanic population of the United States. And you know, probably, arguably, the best place on planet Earth where Palestinians live the highest quality of life, with actual civic respect, is in Israel. So I do take issue with flatly using the word genocide---which refers to the elimination of a race---when the people of that race live the best possible life in the country that you're calling the perpetrator of that genocide, and 20% of that population, more than the minority populations of this country, of Israel's population, are Palestinians, who are living with rights within that country. [Jimmy: mutters "wow" very quietly a few times under his breath.] I think that there's a lot of responsibility to go around for other Arab countries, for failed leadership, both of the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas all the way to Hamas's failed leadership in Gaza, so I think that that's something that, yes, involves a long history. That is not the role that I'm running for, of history professor at Harvard. I'm running for President of the United States, which I have my moral clarity, why I'm focused on running this country, without intervening there.</bq> I painstakingly transcribed his highly redundant waterfall of bullshit, just so you can get the sense of how he just keeps talking and repeating himself, in the hopes that no-one can get a word in edgewise to call him on his bullshit. I did take the liberty of adding paragraphs, so it's hopefully easier to read than to hear. He says that Israel actually protects Palestinians better than anyone and literally everyone else in the world is more responsible for the Palestinian plight than Israel, which is literally doing everything it can to help them. I suppose that's one way of looking at it. Netanyahu and co. are grinning from ear to ear. <img attachment="bill-hicks.jpg" align="right" caption="Bill Hicks">That line of reasoning reminds me of Bill Hicks's joke <a href="https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-officer-nigger-hater-annotated">Officer Nigger Hater</a> about the trial of the cops who beat the ever-loving shit out of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King">Rodney King</a>, the act that sparked the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots">LA riots</a>. Below, I cite part of the joke from the link above <bq>Officer Coon looks in the camera and actually says, ‘Oh, that Rodney King beating tape? It’s all in how you look at it.’ [...] ‘All in how you look at it, Officer... Coon?’ ‘That’s right. It’s how you look at the tape.’ ‘Well, would you care to tell the court [incredulously] how... you’re lookin’ at that?’ ‘Yeah OK, sure. It’s how you look at it... the tape. For instance, well, if you play it backwards you see us help King up and send him on his way.’ ‘Hmmmm. Not guilty!’ [gavel bangs]</bq> Vivek didn't stop there. He started repeating every wild myth about Chinese Uighur concentration camps, talking about how that's what we should concentrate on instead of Israel. That those are far worse than Palestine. Ramaswamy is like all the rest. He's an asshat, an assclown who knows nothing, has no empathy, and has no principles. He doesn't care about stopping crimes before they happen, especially when it's his friends--- or countries that he knows he has to be friends with in order to get elected as president---that are doing them---or where he thinks he can gain personal economic or political advantage.