I began by reading Ross Douthat’s interview with Vance a week or so ago (it’s excerpted from an old interview, not recent), then listened to Vance’s interview with David Axelrod for his podcast The Axe Files which is seven years old. Both gave me the impression of an intelligent, well-spoken, and fairly reasonable man. Then I listened to his RNC speech from this week, which is basically just pep rally stuff with not much policy. The one take away is that Vance, like Bannon, is obsessed with the loss of American manufacturing and basically attributes most ills to that. He made the false claim that wages soared under Trump, which is simply untrue by any measure I can find and certainly untrue in constant dollars ( https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/).
He has also adopted cultural conservatism that may not be sincere. There are numerous inconsistencies in his rhetoric. One, he decries Wall St. elites as villains even though he owes his own financial security and political backing to Wall St, notably Peter Thiel. His ongoing connection to Thiel, who is a gay, also makes his anti-gay marriage position curious. Even more curious is his anti-immigrant discourse given that his wife is Indian American from a Hindu family, while Vance, a Catholic convert, emphasizes Christian traditional (read reactionary) values.
Intelligent as he is, all this opportunistic shuffling of positions to fit the moment makes him very untrustworthly.
J. D. Vance, aka James Donald Bowman, is that “hillbilly” from Yale Law. Yeah, riiiight. By the way, if the Ivies are supposed to be so damn liberal, how come so many right wing congressmen went to these venerable institutions? Seems to me the only things they’re teaching there is how to grift and undermine the very country that gave your sorry ass a chance to do better things with your life and maybe make things a bit better for others.
I think you overestimate the extent to which “Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party and its imperfect but real coalition of free market conservative fusionism” existed in the first place since Reagan massively increased the federal debt & deficit, deregulated less than Carter, didn’t meaningfully reform welfare, expanded Medicare, reneged on reinstating the gold standard, barely cut net taxes (raising them several times after his famous cut) & doubled the percentage of imports facing tariffs; grassroots conservatives were livid with him until his current persona was manufactured by the GOP in the early ‘90s as anti-Clinton propaganda (Huebert 2010; Eland 2014, 2017).
Vance supported Egg McMuffin because Egg McMuffin was an apologist for the neo-con warfare state. Like the neo-cons that came before them, both Trump and Vance love Israel.
Love of Israel has been of Trump's few consistent positions.
J.D. Vance certainly looks like a surly insurrectionist thug from Hillbilly Hollow these days. Downright dangerous.
I began by reading Ross Douthat’s interview with Vance a week or so ago (it’s excerpted from an old interview, not recent), then listened to Vance’s interview with David Axelrod for his podcast The Axe Files which is seven years old. Both gave me the impression of an intelligent, well-spoken, and fairly reasonable man. Then I listened to his RNC speech from this week, which is basically just pep rally stuff with not much policy. The one take away is that Vance, like Bannon, is obsessed with the loss of American manufacturing and basically attributes most ills to that. He made the false claim that wages soared under Trump, which is simply untrue by any measure I can find and certainly untrue in constant dollars ( https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/).
He has also adopted cultural conservatism that may not be sincere. There are numerous inconsistencies in his rhetoric. One, he decries Wall St. elites as villains even though he owes his own financial security and political backing to Wall St, notably Peter Thiel. His ongoing connection to Thiel, who is a gay, also makes his anti-gay marriage position curious. Even more curious is his anti-immigrant discourse given that his wife is Indian American from a Hindu family, while Vance, a Catholic convert, emphasizes Christian traditional (read reactionary) values.
Intelligent as he is, all this opportunistic shuffling of positions to fit the moment makes him very untrustworthly.
J. D. Vance, aka James Donald Bowman, is that “hillbilly” from Yale Law. Yeah, riiiight. By the way, if the Ivies are supposed to be so damn liberal, how come so many right wing congressmen went to these venerable institutions? Seems to me the only things they’re teaching there is how to grift and undermine the very country that gave your sorry ass a chance to do better things with your life and maybe make things a bit better for others.
Right-wing collectivism and populism is against democracy and freedom
I think you overestimate the extent to which “Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party and its imperfect but real coalition of free market conservative fusionism” existed in the first place since Reagan massively increased the federal debt & deficit, deregulated less than Carter, didn’t meaningfully reform welfare, expanded Medicare, reneged on reinstating the gold standard, barely cut net taxes (raising them several times after his famous cut) & doubled the percentage of imports facing tariffs; grassroots conservatives were livid with him until his current persona was manufactured by the GOP in the early ‘90s as anti-Clinton propaganda (Huebert 2010; Eland 2014, 2017).
If JD Vance becomes president, we may descend into Pinochet level monstrosity.
Vance supported Egg McMuffin because Egg McMuffin was an apologist for the neo-con warfare state. Like the neo-cons that came before them, both Trump and Vance love Israel.
Love of Israel has been of Trump's few consistent positions.
"There is no good, no bad, only power" (c) Voldemort
Great article, just subscribed for more!
We must seize the means of (meme) production! Let's buy Twitter!