Ronny Chieng: Love to Hate It (2024)

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MAGA. Make America Great Again. They have a point. America's not doing so great right now. Right? Our kids' math scores are down. Our children's science scores are down. When judged according to international metrics, uh, healthcare systems not doing so great. Wealth gap disparities increasing exponentially. There was an implied promise to a generation of Americans that if you do certain things, work hard, go to college, be a good person, you would have certain outcomes. And those outcomes didn't materialize for the majority of people because baby boomers entrenched in decision-making positions lowered the capital gains tax…

…so that their net worth essentially compounds year after year. In post-World War II, US leadership traded the domestic manufacturing industry for National Security by making the US dollar the default international trade currency, which gave America the ability to impose economic sanctions on foreign countries to a US financial banking system, but consequently increased the value of the US dollar astronomically, which made it impossible for anyone to manufacture anything in America. [inhales deeply] Although the logic at the time…

…was that Americans were supposed to upskill en masse, away from the menial manufacturing jobs, but everyone here's too much of a dumbass to stay school, so we just traded domestic manufacturing to Asia and the rest of the world at the expense of working-class families. But if you don't read enough…  …it comes out as, “Let's go, Brandon!”

And it's like, you have a point, but you don't have the vocabulary to describe your reality because you didn't read enough. You gotta keep reading beyond the hashtag. There's a book behind the word. You gotta keep going. You can go at your own pace, but you gotta finish the required reading. Otherwise, we can't have a conversation. We're all catching up to each other. I'm friends with MAGA. I'm friends with the MAGAs.

Some of them are my good friends.