How to normalize fascism
It's easier than you think
I finished J.D. Vance’s best-selling 2016 book, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” and then threw the book across the room. JFC, if I have to read yet another recipient of good luck tell people not so blessed to pull themselves up by their boot straps, I’ll throw another book.
And then Vance parlayed his book success into a seat in the U.S. Senate.
I know! I thought that was crap, too. But we press on.
This weekend, conservative blogger/columnist Ross Douthat interviewed Vance, who may or may not get picked as The Convicted Felon’s vice presidential candidate, and the whole thing had a Pick me! Pick me! vibe to it.
This article was…disappointing, to say the least.
Douthat is conservative, and he’s deserving of a platform, but he when he speaks or writes, he tends to rely on Republican tropes without really exploring them. And that’s precisely what he did here.
From the interview, from Vance:
The people on the left, I would say, whose politics I’m open to — it’s the Bernie Bros. But generally, center-left liberals who are doing very well, and center-right conservatives who are doing very well, have an incredible blind spot about how much their success is built on a system that is not serving people who they should be serving.
The Columbus Dispatch called bullshit on this with several articles, including one that asked:
Does J.D. Vance remember what it is like to struggle?
On his conversion from calling Trump “cultural heroin” to licking his…boots, Vance leaned heavily into victimhood in his obfuscation. And he has a hard time figuring out when his feelings for Trump changed.
This is why I say it’s hard to reconstruct this stuff, it’s so gradual. My wife worked for Kavanaugh, loved the guy — kind of a dork. Never believed these stories. You start looking around and say, “If they can do this to him, can they just do this to any of us?” An incredible campaign of character assassination. I think that [pause; sigh] — I’m trying to make this somewhat appealing to Times readers because probably a lot of them assume Kavanaugh is guilty.
Fortunately, we have the afore-mentioned New York Times to reconstruct this stuff, and it started with a bromance with DJT Jr.
There’s a lot more, and it’s all easy to pick apart but life is short and we’ll just close with this quote from Douthat’s piece, from Vance:
But just personally, I like him [Trump].
Well, that settles it, then. J.D. Vance, son of Donald and Bev, venture capitalist, election denier, and gutless wonder, loves Donald Trump. Let’s all vote accordingly.
Vance is an exploiter of the first order. He exploited the people he grew up with when he wrote his book. He exploited the anti-MAGAs, calling himself a “whisperer” to sell his book. Now he’s back to exploiting the MAGAs for his personal, political ambition. I think he’s even exploiting Trump as opposed to the more parasitic “yes father, may I have another” types. He’s clearly smarter and more consciously clever than Trump and consequently even more evil. My guess is if he was vice president, alone with Trump and Trump dropped to the floor with a heart attack, Vance would be slow to call for help.
And his comments about Kavanaugh being a “dork” and not believing the accusations against him. What does that mean? Kavanaugh wasn’t cool enough to rape? Isn’t that like Trump saying he didn’t rape because the woman in question wasn’t “his type”. The depth of the MAGA sickness has no bottom.
Watching the MAGA cultists fawn over Orange Adolph, the same guy they excoriated over the 1/6 coup attempt is blood boiling. Then to see the likes of Hillbilly, Scott, Donalds et al shower love on the leader of the coup is beyond the pale.....