Who is J. D. Vance?<\/b><\/p>\n
J. D. Vance first gained prominence from being the author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. I read it and found it intriguing and well written. But the book stimulated a lively, often angry response from those who thought it painted too dark and negative a picture<\/a> of Appalachia.<\/p>\n Vance started out as a critic of Donald Trump. Then, he made a fateful decision.\u00a0He wanted power<\/b>. And he was willing to do whatever it took to get it. In so doing, Vance abased himself before the Orange God.<\/p>\n Tom Nichols gives us an incisive look<\/a> at\u00a0Vance.<\/p>\n What do we call a man who turns on everything he once claimed to believe? For a practitioner of petty and self-serving duplicity, we use \u201csellout\u201d or \u201cbackstabber.\u201d (Sometimes we impugn the animal kingdom and call him a rat, a skunk, or a weasel.) For grand betrayals of weightier loyalties\u2014country and faith\u2014we invoke the more solemn terms of \u201ctraitor\u201d or \u201capostate.\u201d<\/p>\n But what should we call J. D. Vance, the self-described hillbilly turned Marine turned Ivy League law-school graduate turned venture capitalist turned Senate candidate? Words fail. His perfidy to his own people in Ohio is too big to allow him to escape with the label of \u201copportunist,\u201d and yet the shabbiness and absurdity of his Senate campaign is too small to brand him a defector or a heretic\u2026<\/p>\n …Vance wrote, in\u00a0this very magazine<\/a>, that Donald Trump \u201cis cultural heroin\u201d\u2014a powerful charge from someone who hails from the epicenter of the opioid epidemic\u2014and provided a \u201cquick high\u201d that could not fix what ails the country. All of that vanished once Vance decided he wanted to go to Washington\u2014and after the Trump supporter\u00a0Peter Thiel dropped $10 million<\/a>\u00a0into a political action committee.<\/p>\n Peter Thiel, as you probably know, is a viciously Right-wing fanatic. Thiel is also backing neo-Nazi Blake Masters in Arizona. Thiel is a genuinely frightening person. If I may offer a few choice samples of his \u201cthinking<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n In 2009, he published a piece\u00a0arguing<\/a>\u00a0that he had come to \u201cno longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.\u201d<\/b>\u00a0[My emphasis] Seven years later, he secretly used his considerable resources to\u00a0bankrupt Gawker<\/a> as revenge, after one of its blogs had outed him years earlier.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s this:<\/p>\n [Quote from Thiel]: The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women<\/b>\u00a0[My emphasis]\u2013 two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians \u2013 have rendered the notion of \u201ccapitalist democracy\u201d into an oxymoron.<\/p>\n From the same article, this assessment by Robert Reich:<\/p>\n Thiel is using his fortune to squelch democracy. He donated $15m to the successful Republican Ohio senatorial primary campaign of JD Vance, who alleges that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden\u2019s immigration policy has meant \u201cmore Democrat voters pouring into this country<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Thiel has donated at least $10m to the Arizona Republican primary race of Blake Masters, who also claims Trump won the 2020 election and\u00a0admires<\/a>\u00a0Lee Kuan Yew, the authoritarian founder of modern Singapore.<\/p>\n Another figure that Vance listens to is the genuinely horrifying Curtis Yarvin<\/b><\/a>, who frankly advocates the destruction of our democratic republic and the installation of an authoritarian state.<\/p>\n In September 2021, J.D. Vance, a GOP candidate for Senate in Ohio,\u00a0appeared<\/a>\u00a0on a conservative podcast to discuss what is to be done with the United States, and his proposals were dramatic. He urged Donald Trump, should he win another term, to \u201cseize the institutions of the left,\u201d fire \u201cevery single midlevel bureaucrat\u201d in the US government, \u201creplace them with our people,\u201d and defy the Supreme Court if it tries to stop him.<\/p>\n To the uninitiated, all that might seem stunning. But Vance acknowledged he had an intellectual inspiration. \u201cSo there\u2019s this guy, Curtis Yarvin, who has written about some of these things…\u201d<\/p>\n To Yarvin, incremental reforms and half-measures are necessarily doomed. The only way to achieve what he wants is to assume \u201cabsolute power<\/a>,\u201d and the game is all about getting to a place where you can pull that off. Critics have called his ideas \u201cfascist<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a term\u00a0he disputes<\/a>, arguing that centralizing power under one ruler long predates fascism, and that his ideal monarch should rule for all rather than fomenting a class war as fascists do. \u201cAutocratic\u201d fits as a descriptor, though his preferred term is \u201cmonarchist.\u201d You won\u2019t find many on the right saying they wholly support Yarvin\u2019s program \u2014 especially the \u201cmonarchy<\/a>\u201d thing \u2014 but his critique of the status quo and some of his ideas for changing it have influenced several increasingly prominent figures.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s this delightful tidbit:<\/p>\n Last year, J.D. Vance proposed a \u201cde-Nazification\u201d plan to purge liberals from the government on a podcast hosted by a man who once said \u201cfeminists need rape.\u201d<\/p>\n J.D. Vance appeared with podcaster who once said “feminists need rape”<\/p>\n The GOP Senate candidate proposed a “de-Nazification” plan for purging liberals from government.<\/p>\n Vance is in thrall to Big Pharma. The AP is on top of it<\/a>:<\/p>\n When\u00a0JD Vance<\/a>\u00a0founded \u201cOur Ohio Renewal\u201d a day after the 2016 presidential election, he promoted the charity as a vehicle for helping solve the scourge of opioid addiction that he had lamented in \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d his bestselling memoir.<\/p>\n But Vance shuttered the nonprofit last year and its foundation in May, shortly after\u00a0clinching the state\u2019s Republican nomination for U.S. Senate<\/a>, according to state records reviewed by The Associated Press. An AP review found that the charity\u2019s most notable accomplishment \u2014 sending an addiction specialist to Ohio\u2019s Appalachian region for a yearlong residency \u2014 was tainted by ties among the doctor, the institute that employed her and\u00a0Purdue Pharma<\/a>, the manufacturer of\u00a0OxyContin<\/a>.<\/p>\n The mothballing of Our Ohio Renewal and its dearth of tangible success raise questions about Vance\u2019s management of the organization. His decision to bring on\u00a0Dr. Sally Satel<\/a>\u00a0is drawing particular scrutiny. She\u2019s an American Enterprise Institute resident scholar whose writings questioning the role of prescription painkillers in the national opioid crisis were published in The New York Times and elsewhere before she began the residency in the fall of 2018.<\/p>\n Politifact has weighed in<\/b><\/a> on Democratic candidate Tim Ryan\u2019s charge that Vance\u2019s charity did virtually nothing. Their verdict: MOSTLY TRUE:<\/p>\n Vance, the White Supremacist<\/b><\/p>\n Vance is a supporter of the vile racist idea known as \u201cThe Great Replacement\u201d, the idea that Democrats are deliberately using people of color to undermine white control of America.\u00a0\u00a0America\u2019s Voice<\/a> has this to say:<\/p>\n In an attempt to burnish his radical-right credentials after years of being a public face opposing Trump, J.D. Vance actively courted figures immensely popular with the Republican base. Figures like\u00a0Tucker Carlson<\/a>, Rep.\u00a0Marjorie Taylor Greene<\/a>\u00a0(R-GA), Turning Points USA founder\u00a0Charlie Kirk<\/a>\u00a0and of course, Trump himself, all of whom loudly peddle racist, xenophobic, and election lies. Vance quickly sounded like those he surrounded himself with, making a racist conspiracy theory about a non-existent immigrant \u201cinvasion\u201d a core part of his primary campaign. This is the same racist conspiracy theory, it should be noted, that inspired the mass murders who attacked shoppers at a\u00a0Wal-Mart in El Paso, Texas in 2019<\/a>\u00a0and just across the Ohio state line at a\u00a0Pittsburgh synagogue, Pennsylvania, in 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n The racist fiction holds that there is a literal invasion happening along the U.S. border with Mexico as non-white migrants are coming in a hostile and coordinated effort to replace white people and undermine our democracy and sovereignty. This is an absurd notion completely divorced from reality, but a powerful story to stoke fear and anxiety in the minds of voters. This rhetoric around \u201cinvasion\u201d is inextricably tied into the white nationalist ideas of a \u201cgreat replacement,\u201d which research from the\u00a0University of Chicago<\/a>\u00a0found was the \u201cmost important driver of the insurrectionist movement\u201d that sparked the invasion of the U.S. Capitol by an angry mob in January 2021. Vance ran on these ideas and surrounded himself with others who amplified them.<\/p>\n Greg Sargent observes<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cBiden\u2019s open border is killing Ohioans,\u201d\u00a0says the ad<\/a>, \u201cwith more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.\u201d<\/p>\n The claim that migrants represent \u201cDemocrat voters\u201d is a form of \u201cgreat replacement theory<\/a>\u201d rhetoric. This idea, which posits a nefarious elite scheme to replace native-born Americans with outsiders via migration-enhanced demographic change, comes in various forms.<\/p>\n One version is\u00a0explicitly race based<\/a>, envisioning \u201cwhite genocide,\u201d which Vance isn\u2019t necessarily employing. Another version is more overtly partisan: It posits that immigration is really a plot by liberal and Democratic elites to replace conservative voters with \u201cmore obedient voters from the Third World,\u201d as Fox News\u2019s Tucker Carlson\u00a0heinously puts it<\/a>.<\/p>\n Vance\u2019s formulation is in line with Carlson\u2019s, albeit with a twist: He suggests \u201cDemocrat voters\u201d in the form of migrants are one factor \u201ckilling Ohioans.\u201d That\u2019s partly a reference to drugs crossing the border, but the hint at an apocalyptic\u00a0demographic\u00a0threat is obvious.<\/p>\n Vance, Mortal Enemy of Women\u2019s Rights<\/b><\/p>\n J. D. Vance\u2019s views on women can only be called appalling. From Politifact<\/b><\/a>:<\/p>\n [Reporter Curtis] Jackson asked Vance whether anti-abortion laws should include exceptions for rape or incest.<\/p>\n Vance replied: “Look, I think two wrongs don’t make a right. At the end of day, we are talking about an unborn baby. What kind of society do we want to have?\u00a0A society that looks at unborn babies as inconveniences to be discarded?<\/b>”<\/p>\n Jackson tried to get Vance to comment directly about exceptions, asking “should a woman be forced to carry a child to term after she has been a victim of incest or rape?”<\/p>\n Vance replied: “My view on this has been very clear and I think the question betrays a certain presumption that is wrong. It\u2019s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term,\u00a0it\u2019s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child\u2019s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society<\/b>. The question really, to me, is about the baby. We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but, above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have the right to life. Right now our society doesn\u2019t afford that and I think it’s a tragedy and I think we can do better.”<\/p>\n From Newsweek<\/b><\/a>:<\/b><\/p>\n J.D. VANCE SAYS LINDSEY GRAHAM’S ABORTION BILL IS ‘TOTALLY REASONABLE’<\/b><\/p>\n J.D. Vance<\/a>, Ohio’s Republican candidate for\u00a0U.S. Senate<\/a>, said the national abortion bill\u00a0proposed by South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham<\/a>\u00a0was “totally reasonable” during Monday night’s debate against Democratic hopeful Tim Ryan.<\/p>\n Vance, when asked by debate moderators if he would vote for Graham’s bill that bans abortion after 15 weeks, said he thinks it’s “totally reasonable to say you cannot abort a baby, especially for elective reasons, after 15 weeks of gestation.”<\/p>\n Hey ladies, are you in an abusive relationship? Just hang in there and take the punches<\/b><\/a>\u2014for the kids.<\/p>\n Ohio U.S. Senate candidate\u00a0J.D. Vance<\/b>\u2019s views on women have been\u00a0unambiguous\u00a0for some time now\u2014he\u2019s previously\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0rape \u201cinconvenient\u201d and\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0abortion is as morally reprehensible as slavery\u2014but just in case anyone wasn\u2019t fully aware of his stance, a recently unearthed clip featuring the venture capitalist makes it unequivocal.<\/p>\n Speaking to Pacifica Christian High School last September, with the interview\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0by Vice News on Monday, Vance claimed that divorce inflicts terrible harm on children and that it would be better for people in unhappy marriages to stay together, even if said marriages are \u201cviolent.\u201d Vance told the audience: \u201cMy grandparents had an incredibly chaotic marriage in a lot of ways. But they never got divorced. They were together to the end, till death do us part\u2014that was a really important thing to my grandmother and my grandfather. That was clearly not true by the \u201970s or \u201980s. And I think that probably, I was personally, and a lot the kids in my community who grew up in my generation, personally suffered from the fact that a lot of moms and dads saw marriage as a basic contract, like any other business deal. Once it becomes no longer good for one of the parties or both of the parties, you just dissolve it and go on to a new business relationship. But that recognition that marriage was sacred I think was a really powerful thing that held a lot of families together. And when it disappeared, unfortunately a lot of kids suffered.\u201d Vance opined that \u201cit\u2019s easy but also probably true to blame the sexual revolution of the 1960s\u201d for this.<\/p>\n I mean, he doesn’t “suggest” it. He says it. And it’s important to understand this isn’t some gaff.<\/p>\n The new right, with Vance as it’s figurehead, has a core belief that women should effectively be owned by men and that men should make choices for women.<\/p>\n JD Vance Suggests People in \u2018Violent\u2019 Marriages Shouldn\u2019t Get Divorced<\/p>\n The Ohio Republican Senate nominee claimed people \u201cshift spouses like they change their underwear,\u201d and that it had damaged a generation of children.<\/p>\n J. D. Vance, the Carpetbagger from Silicon Valley who deserted Ohio and now wants to represent it.<\/b><\/p>\n J. D. Vance, who said he really doesn\u2019t care about Ukraine and who has urged a negotiated settlement (i.e., a Ukrainian surrender) to end the war.<\/b><\/p>\n J.D. Vance, who purposely let Donald Trump humiliate him, with Trump saying that Vance \u201ckisses my ass\u201d.<\/b><\/p>\n J. D. Vance who wants to slowly strangle Social Security and Medicare:<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n In a blog titled the \u201cHillbilly Elite,\u201d Vance \u201cargued that Social Security and Medicare were among the biggest drivers of large federal budget deficits<\/b>\u201d and touted a proposed\u00a0budget<\/a>\u00a0which \u201ccalled for trillions of dollars to be cut from entitlement programs over a decade: repeal of the Affordable Care Act [\u2026]; transformation of Medicaid into a program funded through limited lump-sum\u00a0grants<\/a>\u00a0to states, which would then manage it; and conversion of Medicare into a capped voucher program.\u201d<\/p>\n But since winning the Ohio Republican primary in May \u2014 capitalizing on his Hollywood stardom and friendships with Silicon Valley tech billionaires \u2014 Vance has changed his tune.<\/p>\n\n