Anyone at all interested in the sinister trajectory of MAGA influence during the last five years need only examine the disturbing metamorphosis of JD Vance. Once, not long ago, Vance was a thoughtful intellect and author, whose debut autobiographical story. Hillbilly Elegy, was lauded far and wide – even attracting Hollywood to make it into a movie – as a cogent explanation for the alienation felt throughout the Rust Belt. In recounting his own personal climb from a dysfunctional upbringing saturated in welfare-dependent, self-medicating Appalachian hopelessness to Ivy League triumph, Vance persuasively argued for more empathy toward those who facilitated Trump’s rise and comprised some of MAGA’s most enthusiastic membership.
However, although Vance’s tale seeks to explain self-destructive cycles that inform MAGA sensibilities in dying mid-Atlantic factory towns and Kentucky hillsides, it doesn’t excuse the behavior. In fact, throughout the book, Vance cites one example after another of the exact “learned helplessness” Trump rally attendees and MAGA lawmakers endlessly crow epitomizes immigrants and African-Americans gaming of the social safety net. Alcoholism, drug-addiction, physical abuse and child neglect, or simply a general aversion to work, Vance catalogues it all, while making clear that personal accountability was near completely absent within his family and immediate community.
When Hillbilly Elegy was published in June of 2016, Vance quickly became a crossover darling, charming the full range of America’s political spectrum, the epitome of a thoughtful yet common sense conservative. Everyone from Hewitt to Hannity, Scarborough to Todd, sung his praises. He was the total package. A self-made Yale man with the intellectual credibility to infuse GOP tough love sensibilities with the humanity his up-from-bootstraps experience conveyed. Whatever “the left” wanted to scream about Trump and his MAGA troglodytes, here was a genuine rejoinder who thought first and spoke in complete sentences free of insults and vitriol. He even credited one of his Yale professors for inspiring him to write the book.
To provide context for where Vance and his right wing admirers were back in the fall of 2016 it’s constructive to recall the praise American Conservative contributor and blogger Rod Dreher showered upon the bestseller’s author, gushing he “draws conclusions…that may be hard for some people to take. But Vance has earned the right to make those judgments. This was his life. He speaks with authority that has been extremely hard won.” Indeed, as Trump blathered to his growing faithful that their host of grievances were everybody else’s fault, here existed a conservative counterpoint that held ALL to the same standards of personal responsibility for their decisions.
Of course much can happen over five years, particularly when you elect a psychotic nihilist POTUS and he succeeds in consuming the Republican Party. What was a coming storm is now the devastation it left behind. What was a country on the edge of a catastrophic civic misstep is now a nation in crisis, maybe irretrievably too far gone down the road to ruin. And JD Vance? He no longer exists… at least not in any incarnation that someone who embraced his past refreshing novelty would recognize. Instead there is now an amoral opportunist recasting himself as just another MAGA cultist, and any semblance of thoughtful reflection on any matter is long gone.
Why? What is to blame for this ugly transformation? Turns out Vance wants to replace retiring Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman, who decided the price of avoiding a MAGA primary opponent – joining the Donald’s eunuch stable – was too high. Apparently, Vance has no problem morphing from hillbilly prophet to unhinged Rust Belt reactionary if that’s what is required. He’s grown an angry beard, which old friends say is weird and ominous, and taken to ranting. He’s Steve Bannon with a pristine complexion, a couch potato’s Dan Bongino. As with most all of the wretched core, social media now tells the sorry tale. Indeed, Vance’s Twitter feed goes lower by the day.
Nuanced ideas of economic dislocation have given way to Trumpism’s rabid populist tropes. What’s wrong with America? That’s now an easy question for Vance to scream about… “The biggest threat to democracy is the fact that speech (social media and “journalism”), knowledge formation (universities), and money (Wall Street) are all controlled by the same group of neurotic lunatics. Those who say anything else are lying.” It’s a one-size-fits-all approach.
Six years ago Vance was on Face The Nation having a cerebral discussion about the gulf between Trump promises and reality for the “forgotten people” who made his presidency possible. Moreover, he was touting a partnership with AOL founder Steve Case to bridge the divide between the disaffected and capital that could provide economic opportunity throughout Appalachia and beyond.
Now Steve Bannon’s podcast is Vance’s rage trough, and fostering cooperation is the last thing on his mind. Vaccine tyranny to 1/6 conspiracies, immigrant bashing to competing for the candidate who hates Black Lives Matter the most, Vance is now all in, and of course facts are the casualty. Nobody is happier with the change than the MAGA “intellectuals” who can now confidently call Vance one of their own. Dreher claims he was “appropriately radicalized” by “the left’s” treatment of Trump. Yea, sure.
“The fraudulent J6 Select Committee is the real assault on Democracy. Dems are using it to bully & torture their political opponents. The weak Republicans who can’t see this are part of the problem. A GOP Majority MUST fight fire with fire & investigate BLM’s Summer of riots.“ Marjorie Taylor Greene? Paul Gosar? Jesse Watters? No, just another grifter selling rancid snake oil to those he understands better than most. BC