Sympathy For The White American Conservative
An Indian American Sensitive To Overrepresentation
When Walther Rathenau asked Hamburg banker Max Warburg to serve as finance minister in the Weimar government in early 1922, Warburg refused, saying that “two Jewish ministers would be too much for Germany.” The comment captured an old-world fear that a talented but numerically small minority might trigger backlash if its public profile grew too visible — a fear tragically vindicated months later when Rathenau was assassinated.
A century on, a similar demographic asymmetry shapes life in the United States. Jews and Indian-Americans are each less than 3 % of the population yet sit at the top of most socioeconomic charts. While both Indian-Americans and Jews have ties to ethnostates in conflict with Muslim neighbors, there's a major difference: Israel has a relatively tiny population, while India has the largest population in the world. In a recent threat on X, Indian-American engineer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist Balaji Srinivasan kept those billion+ Indians in mind when he expressed a sensitivity about overrepresentation reminiscent of Rathenau's. He suggested Indians ought to be "air gapped" from Americans on social media:
If X wants to retain both its American and Indian users, it might try to recommend American posts to Americans and Indian posts to Indians, rather than fomenting conflict where there was none before...
[Y]ou assume incorrectly that airgapping is bad for getting your voice out there as an American. But recall that there are only 77M MAGA but 1.4B from India. In the absence of airgapping, you will eventually be overwhelmed on every thread by English-speaking Indians, who will soon represent the majority of English speakers online (if they aren't already). That will be extremely painful, for you.
Srinivasan expressed a similar sensitivity toward MAGA Americans in another post yesterday, which I have shared in full below. Before we get to it, a brief market note.
ZeroHedge Nails The Timing On Rare Earths
Last night, I was reading this article on ZeroHedge ("The Coming Rare Earth Revolution And How To Profit"), and I was thinking I needed to add more exposure to Materials Products (MP). We had bought calls on it last month in the Portfolio Armor Substack:
Calls on MP Materials (MP 5.70%↑). Bought for $1.05 on 6/13/2025; sold (half) for $3.70 on 6/18/2025. Profit: 252%.
Then I woke up to news today that MP had soared >45% after a DoD investment in the company. I figured I'd take profits on the other half of my calls. Checked my accounts and realized that I had sold all of my calls in it last month instead of half. Damn. Nothing wrong with last month's ~250% profit, but if I still had half of those calls, I could have had a ~900% profit on them today. Maybe we'll get another bite at that apple on a pullback.
In the meantime, I'll looking into some picks & shovels plays rare earths that may still be worth buying here. If you'd like a heads up when my subscribers and I place a trade on one of them, you can sign up for the Portfolio Armor Substack below.
Update: Just sent out a trade alert on three picks & shovels plays on rare earths. Check your inboxes.
And if you want to hedge, you can use our website or iPhone app.
Now on to Srinivasan's insightful post.
Authored by Balaji Srinivasan on X
Sympathy For The White American Conservative
I’m actually pretty sympathetic to the white American conservative. They were subject to countless slings and arrows over the last several decades, from constant insults to racial quotas, with an extraordinary escalation once wokeness really got underway in 2013.
Over the course of decades they tried all manner of parley with the left, sending many good guys like Mitt Romney, only to find their outstretched hands repeatedly thrown back in their face. So, eventually they just elected Trump. And then even Trump was constantly impeached and undermined during his first term.
After that, and the political prosecutions, and the assassination attempts, and the Biden inflation, and the open borders…any residual feeling of charity is gone. Trump voters feel forced to become meaner than they ever wanted to be.
This extends down from the political realm to the personal, where young American men now quickly learn that nice guys finish last in their post-apocalyptic social landscape.
With inflation hitting them economically, Tinderification hitting them socially, open borders hitting them demographically, and China hitting them economically, the MAGA man is understandably radicalized politically.
So: even if I disagree with specific policy moves, even if I think much of what’s happening is actually accelerating the decline rather than reversing it, I do understand why they’re doing it.
The American right believes that the hour is late, and that a Hail Mary effort in the form of mass deportation and reindustrialization can restore the country of 1945, or maybe 1991, or something like that.
Personally, I don’t believe this Hail Mary can succeed. But neither do I wish to stand in the way. This is their big thing, and they are going to give it the college try, and then we will see what happens on the other side.