JD Vance began his rise from poverty by a common strategy - dependent on government. Like many, Vance joined the military (where he served in a PR unit) and then used his federally funded GI Bill benefits to attend a state funded university. Which he parlayed into a scholarship to Yale. Vance's best selling book (appropriating and misrepresenting the experience of people in Appalachia) grew out of a Yale paper. His other work, from Silicon Valley to Trump Veep pick, was enabled by his Yale bestie Peter Thiel. JD Vance, like Clarence Thomas, has exploited his background and down played government support for his efforts, while rising also through the self interest and influence of friends with money. As Thomas is an hypocritical GHW Bush Affirmative Action appointment, Vance is a perverted Thiel/Trump DEI appointment (for poor Whites.) Both Thomas and Vance are intent on kicking down the ladder for those who actually have to work their way up *with the help of government protections and programs* instead of with the additional significant aid of personal patrons with political clout.
Thomas and Vance (and Thiel) are smart and hardworking. They, like Charles Koch front man Leonard Leo, are also hypocrites who have benefitted from the liberalization of American society and are now using the United States government to undo that progress. They are bent on overturning civil rights protections and hollowing out foundational rights of equality before the law and equal representation. On repurposing a democratic republic as a corporate clerical fascist state. In which their privileged positions will protect them and theirs. (Presumably in underground bunkers or in outer space when their policies make our planet uninhabitable.)
So accurate: "...exploited his background and down played government support for his efforts, while rising also through the self interest and influence of friends with money...";
"...smart and hardworking. They, like Charles Koch front man Leonard Leo, are also hypocrites who have benefitted from the liberalization of American society and are now using the United States government to undo that progress...".
So, I see a danger. How will the Harris team campaign? You provide useful and needful, useful perspective. Ahead stretches opportunities for campaigning for the Constitution, for "...civil rights protections [and constitutional democratic] foundational rights of equality before the law and equal representation...'' which if successful will block the current actions directed at "repurposing a democratic republic as a corporate clerical fascist state".
It will sound so commonplace if Harris and her VP candidate present a list of needs along side a list of proposed legislation and programs. We do need factually built and functional, doable legislation and programs, but working people (like me) want to hear that candidates respect voluntary commitment to productive work, to work that benefits others generally and inclusively, and to a way of work that affirms being honest and being mutually respectful of others and of our civil society institutions. And, we need to contribute to change when change is needed to strengthen and give novel forms and relationships to durable civil governance and or to the ways we work, the ways we reciprocate with our living environment and planet to keep them fit and robust, and so on and so forth. We know what changes American workers and families have experienced since the 1840s.
I'm not trying to get an answer so much as, because of your insightful observations, learn from you if you, too, see the dangerous possibility of doing a positive campaign and supporting American foundational rights, responsibilities and protections and, yet, seeming remote from most American's frustrations with making full use of civil society resources and opportunities.
It is precisely that much of the anger that the American right expresses and that much of the faith that American conservatives claim to accord to older traditions are said to arise from being hampered by American government in pursuit of these resources and opportunities.
We have a danger here.
The Constitution and its form of federalism and governance may not at all be at the root of many of their frustrations. I can think, right off, of a dozen other real obstacles to remove before the Constitution and so on can even be chosen and used as a proper political tool of the people. The Constitution is an exceptional tool, an exceptional affirmation of democratic potential of people in society.
Great summary. It would not surprise me if Trump dumped Vance. Then two interesting questions come to mind: Who would replace him and the money his backers committed? And what would the Republicans who are screaming, lying, and threatening law suits about Biden withdrawing come up with to 'splain their change of heart? Yep, I'm staying tuned. Don't even need to hear, "But Wait! There's more!"
Reading this from France as I do (I live there), and reviewing Vance's awful words concerning women's rights to abortion, I suppose he's never heard of Simone Veil, the magistrate who in 1974, as Minister of Health, pushed through the bill recognizing women's choice as the decisive element in giving birth and sustaining a pregnancy. Veil, born in a Jewish family, was deported to Auschwitz at age 16 and lost her father, her mother and a brother in the Nazi camps, so I think she knows a thing or two more about living, dying and most of the heart-wrenching choices involved in life-death decisions than J.D. Vance will ever even imagine. And thank you for another good thought-provoking post.
Brilliant essay. Vance’s RNC speech was replete with fascistic elements- the appeal to homeland (and the soil of the old Kentucky grave), that noble ideas have no basis in making government, the appeal to guns and redneck culture etc etc. And he adopted that strange unstructured speaking style of Trump (and other dictators) of digression after digression.
I sincerely hope he will turn out to be a bad pick for Trump, the tech bros and as you said, himself.
Agree. For those who oppose the would be fascist dictator, the chameleon is an excellent VP pick. With the new Dem presidential candidate, it will now be easier to defeat the two spinless individuals.
If some graphic artist would get busy and come up with Kamala rising out of a lotus flower maybe words would become unnecessary. It may even be a conversation starter.
On January 6th members of Mike Pence's Secret Service detail literally called family members to say goodbye. That's how optimistic they were about the prospects of survival. Whatever fate awaits JD Vance, he cannot say that he did not know.
I took note of Vance’s body language when he stood next to Trump at the convention, and it was one of contempt for Trump, in unspoken words it said “I’ve got to go through this guy to get what I want.” And I said to myself “how fast before these two hate each other?” But that was before Biden dropped out.
Ah, Snyder knows noir drama, history is full of them.
Clearly, he does not appear to think this is America's morality play. Are we still in The American Abyss by Timothy Snyder?
'When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. 6 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version.'
'Even when he won, in 2016, he insisted that the election was fraudulent — that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. In 2020, in the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R. Biden in the polls, he spent months claiming that the presidential election would be rigged and signaling that he would not accept the results if they did not favor him. He wrongly claimed on Election Day that he had won and then steadily hardened his rhetoric: With time, his victory became a historic landslide and the various conspiracies that denied it ever more sophisticated and implausible.'
'People believed him, which is not at all surprising. It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense of their own previous choices. Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace.'
(NY Times) See link below. Sorry that it could not be gifted.
Excellent column Dr. Snyder. You always help us fill in the blanks. As to Musk and his new lie that he never promised Trump $45M a month - Tesla was already losing market share. Profits are down 45%. 10% of the workforce has been laid off. So, I ask, how many Tesla orders were cancelled the day Musk pledged $45M/month to Trump? How many more in the days after? How many angry phone calls from recently bullied into giving him $50B Tesla Board members? Whatever it was, Musk seems to understand that he had to backpedal to save his company. Sucks to be him.
Well the current GOP has swallowed a hundred dead rats in supporting Trump, so there’s little Vance can do that would repel them.
But I though JV’s observation above that Vance (and likely his tech olig-bro mates) despises Trump will be the end of Vance once Trump gets wind of it and sees no further use for Vance.
This is going to be one strange three-and-a-half months. What does Trump do? He picked the most malleable, uncouth, raw, pushed-on-him by both Eric and Junior, a year-and-a-half Senator who, a week in, makes Sarah Palin look better 16 years later. He's Peter Thiel's pet monkey, reliant on Other People's Money. Without that, he's nothing. Trump is stuck, just like after the USFL trial, after the bankrupt casinos, after the $500 million he blew through in less than five years after Fred died, after NBC canceled his show and after his failed coup attempt. If he jettisons Vance, he'll look 'weak' and that's the last thing he wants to be seen as. So, he's stuck.
Trump wont have any trouble making Vance’s life miserable orin blaming him for something “very bad”, then it wont be his responsibility for getting rid of him and taking on someone else.
best analysis of the vast right-wing conspiracy’s plotting and today’s Axis of Evil : Putin, Trump, Supreme Court majority, and broligarchs.
You forgot Orban.
I’ll fix it.
JD Vance began his rise from poverty by a common strategy - dependent on government. Like many, Vance joined the military (where he served in a PR unit) and then used his federally funded GI Bill benefits to attend a state funded university. Which he parlayed into a scholarship to Yale. Vance's best selling book (appropriating and misrepresenting the experience of people in Appalachia) grew out of a Yale paper. His other work, from Silicon Valley to Trump Veep pick, was enabled by his Yale bestie Peter Thiel. JD Vance, like Clarence Thomas, has exploited his background and down played government support for his efforts, while rising also through the self interest and influence of friends with money. As Thomas is an hypocritical GHW Bush Affirmative Action appointment, Vance is a perverted Thiel/Trump DEI appointment (for poor Whites.) Both Thomas and Vance are intent on kicking down the ladder for those who actually have to work their way up *with the help of government protections and programs* instead of with the additional significant aid of personal patrons with political clout.
Thomas and Vance (and Thiel) are smart and hardworking. They, like Charles Koch front man Leonard Leo, are also hypocrites who have benefitted from the liberalization of American society and are now using the United States government to undo that progress. They are bent on overturning civil rights protections and hollowing out foundational rights of equality before the law and equal representation. On repurposing a democratic republic as a corporate clerical fascist state. In which their privileged positions will protect them and theirs. (Presumably in underground bunkers or in outer space when their policies make our planet uninhabitable.)
Thank you, lin, for these observations.
So accurate: "...exploited his background and down played government support for his efforts, while rising also through the self interest and influence of friends with money...";
"...smart and hardworking. They, like Charles Koch front man Leonard Leo, are also hypocrites who have benefitted from the liberalization of American society and are now using the United States government to undo that progress...".
So, I see a danger. How will the Harris team campaign? You provide useful and needful, useful perspective. Ahead stretches opportunities for campaigning for the Constitution, for "...civil rights protections [and constitutional democratic] foundational rights of equality before the law and equal representation...'' which if successful will block the current actions directed at "repurposing a democratic republic as a corporate clerical fascist state".
It will sound so commonplace if Harris and her VP candidate present a list of needs along side a list of proposed legislation and programs. We do need factually built and functional, doable legislation and programs, but working people (like me) want to hear that candidates respect voluntary commitment to productive work, to work that benefits others generally and inclusively, and to a way of work that affirms being honest and being mutually respectful of others and of our civil society institutions. And, we need to contribute to change when change is needed to strengthen and give novel forms and relationships to durable civil governance and or to the ways we work, the ways we reciprocate with our living environment and planet to keep them fit and robust, and so on and so forth. We know what changes American workers and families have experienced since the 1840s.
I'm not trying to get an answer so much as, because of your insightful observations, learn from you if you, too, see the dangerous possibility of doing a positive campaign and supporting American foundational rights, responsibilities and protections and, yet, seeming remote from most American's frustrations with making full use of civil society resources and opportunities.
It is precisely that much of the anger that the American right expresses and that much of the faith that American conservatives claim to accord to older traditions are said to arise from being hampered by American government in pursuit of these resources and opportunities.
We have a danger here.
The Constitution and its form of federalism and governance may not at all be at the root of many of their frustrations. I can think, right off, of a dozen other real obstacles to remove before the Constitution and so on can even be chosen and used as a proper political tool of the people. The Constitution is an exceptional tool, an exceptional affirmation of democratic potential of people in society.
Thanks again for you comment. I am grateful.
Great summary. It would not surprise me if Trump dumped Vance. Then two interesting questions come to mind: Who would replace him and the money his backers committed? And what would the Republicans who are screaming, lying, and threatening law suits about Biden withdrawing come up with to 'splain their change of heart? Yep, I'm staying tuned. Don't even need to hear, "But Wait! There's more!"
Reading this from France as I do (I live there), and reviewing Vance's awful words concerning women's rights to abortion, I suppose he's never heard of Simone Veil, the magistrate who in 1974, as Minister of Health, pushed through the bill recognizing women's choice as the decisive element in giving birth and sustaining a pregnancy. Veil, born in a Jewish family, was deported to Auschwitz at age 16 and lost her father, her mother and a brother in the Nazi camps, so I think she knows a thing or two more about living, dying and most of the heart-wrenching choices involved in life-death decisions than J.D. Vance will ever even imagine. And thank you for another good thought-provoking post.
Brilliant essay. Vance’s RNC speech was replete with fascistic elements- the appeal to homeland (and the soil of the old Kentucky grave), that noble ideas have no basis in making government, the appeal to guns and redneck culture etc etc. And he adopted that strange unstructured speaking style of Trump (and other dictators) of digression after digression.
I sincerely hope he will turn out to be a bad pick for Trump, the tech bros and as you said, himself.
Agree. For those who oppose the would be fascist dictator, the chameleon is an excellent VP pick. With the new Dem presidential candidate, it will now be easier to defeat the two spinless individuals.
When J.D. Vance tells us who he is, we should believe him. And just now, he told us that he will be a rubber stamp on Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda.
#HarrisForPresident 💃🏻
Lotus for POTUS.
I really like that!
It may be a little too much inside baseball for a bumper sticker but I heard it and loved it.
If some graphic artist would get busy and come up with Kamala rising out of a lotus flower maybe words would become unnecessary. It may even be a conversation starter.
Today I learned a new word, "necropolitics." Thanks.
I wonder if this analysis relates to the idea of Putin's regime having no successorship built in--I think it was in "The Road to Unfreedom."
Excellent piece of commentary. Well written and a joy to read. Keep up the good work!
On January 6th members of Mike Pence's Secret Service detail literally called family members to say goodbye. That's how optimistic they were about the prospects of survival. Whatever fate awaits JD Vance, he cannot say that he did not know.
I took note of Vance’s body language when he stood next to Trump at the convention, and it was one of contempt for Trump, in unspoken words it said “I’ve got to go through this guy to get what I want.” And I said to myself “how fast before these two hate each other?” But that was before Biden dropped out.
'Trump’s candidacy is a mortality play.'
___Timothy Snyder
Ah, Snyder knows noir drama, history is full of them.
Clearly, he does not appear to think this is America's morality play. Are we still in The American Abyss by Timothy Snyder?
'When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. 6 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version.'
'Even when he won, in 2016, he insisted that the election was fraudulent — that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. In 2020, in the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R. Biden in the polls, he spent months claiming that the presidential election would be rigged and signaling that he would not accept the results if they did not favor him. He wrongly claimed on Election Day that he had won and then steadily hardened his rhetoric: With time, his victory became a historic landslide and the various conspiracies that denied it ever more sophisticated and implausible.'
'People believed him, which is not at all surprising. It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense of their own previous choices. Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace.'
(NY Times) See link below. Sorry that it could not be gifted.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html
Excellent column Dr. Snyder. You always help us fill in the blanks. As to Musk and his new lie that he never promised Trump $45M a month - Tesla was already losing market share. Profits are down 45%. 10% of the workforce has been laid off. So, I ask, how many Tesla orders were cancelled the day Musk pledged $45M/month to Trump? How many more in the days after? How many angry phone calls from recently bullied into giving him $50B Tesla Board members? Whatever it was, Musk seems to understand that he had to backpedal to save his company. Sucks to be him.
Wish he’d deport himself back to S. Africa.
They probably won't take him. You know, like Murdoch and Australia...
My partner’s response to Trump naming Vance as running mate: “His career is over.”
Well the current GOP has swallowed a hundred dead rats in supporting Trump, so there’s little Vance can do that would repel them.
But I though JV’s observation above that Vance (and likely his tech olig-bro mates) despises Trump will be the end of Vance once Trump gets wind of it and sees no further use for Vance.
yes, and he will go back to his venture capitalism gig......such a fraud!
Convicted fraudster/rapist is selling: Project 2025 & so much more! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSuCSkg1iSA GOP's sham resolution to impeach Kamala for not solving the immigration problem they've intentionally made worse & for...being VP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je2VM1nHnqc Elect Team Kamala…#VoteBlue!
Refreshing article. These are important theories all baked into the next 900 pages being written for ‘Project 2025’.
This doctrine and all its tech and wealth support behind is the Trojan Horse.
This is going to be one strange three-and-a-half months. What does Trump do? He picked the most malleable, uncouth, raw, pushed-on-him by both Eric and Junior, a year-and-a-half Senator who, a week in, makes Sarah Palin look better 16 years later. He's Peter Thiel's pet monkey, reliant on Other People's Money. Without that, he's nothing. Trump is stuck, just like after the USFL trial, after the bankrupt casinos, after the $500 million he blew through in less than five years after Fred died, after NBC canceled his show and after his failed coup attempt. If he jettisons Vance, he'll look 'weak' and that's the last thing he wants to be seen as. So, he's stuck.
Shakespeare would’ve loved this plot.
So would Milton, Swift, Twain, Serling and Roddenberry.
Trump wont have any trouble making Vance’s life miserable orin blaming him for something “very bad”, then it wont be his responsibility for getting rid of him and taking on someone else.