The Elegant Hillbilly

JD Vance and his unlikely rise in Republican politics.

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May 2022 - Publication Date.

I want to write a little on a subject and person that maybe you won’t be too interested in. We’ll see how this goes I suppose. The guy I want to chat about today is a fella by the name of JD Vance.

JD Vance is a figure not familiar to many people in Ireland. I first came across his name in a bookstore in 2016. He self penned a memoir called Hillybilly Elegy. I must admit I was hooked on the title as much as anything else. I picked up the hardback for a closer inspection and saw the sub-heading read: Hillybilly Elegy - A memoir of a family and culture in crisis. So, in this case, I did judge a book by its cover and determined to purchase it. With the benefit, now, of hindsight, it has turned out to be one of my better impulse purchases.

While still in the bookstore, I turned over the cover-leaf and read the first couple of paragraphs, and before I knew it 10 pages were consumed and I kept reading. The writing was beautiful with a simple, honest elegance. The author had a clear voice and immediately I was drawn into his story. The family characters in his life were raw, real and recognizable. He spoke of violence, decay, addiction and love, sometimes in the same breath. In short, his was the type of voice that I’d never clapped eyes on before on the written page. So, I happily finalized my buy.

“But yeah, like everyone else in our family, they could go from zero to murderous in a fucking heartbeat.”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

About one week earlier Donald J. Trump had been elected President of the United States of America.

This book and the election of Donald Trump were linked of course although I hadn’t made the connection at that point. A few days later, I popped on my TV to catch up with the news, and in late 2016 the only news, was Trump’s election. It is forgotten now, but there was, in fact, the briefest of post-mortems after that election, a period when media people attempted to try to comprehend why Donald Trump won the presidential contest. Hillybilly Elegy by accident of publication timing became part of the analysis. It barely lasted a week though. Hillybilly Elegy hit top spot on the New York Times bestseller list twice. One week after Trump was elected in November 2016 and the week after he was inaugurated in January 2017. I wonder, even during that short period of time, did the type of person reading the book change drastically.

The week after the 2016 election I caught a panel discussion on CNN discussing “ What went wrong” - and to my surprise, Hillbilly Elegy, the book I’d just bought, was listed as a possible place to look. However, I can only surmise that the book, the story and the people it spoke about wasn’t sexy enough for the CNN scriptwriters. As the following week the Russian Collusion theory of Trump’s election was unleashed and took control of the media narrative. And the rest, as they say, was media history.

There are many threads to JD Vance’s memoir but the one I related to most was the changing face of middle America as experienced by three different generations of JD’s family. From the original move by his grandparents from rural Kentucky to Middletown, Ohio, for the promise of a better life in one of America’s great manufacturing plants, to the subsequent and gradual shuttering down of that plant and the devastation it wreaked on the town and his own family. The malaise of the town and plant’s fortunes seemed almost to seep into the blood of his grandmother, mother and friends and every other working class family in the town. The factory was ultimately replaced not with another plant or enterprise but essentially transplanted with access to cheaper and cheaper drugs. Both legal and illegal. Prescription medication and crystal meth. Hopelessness and hope both managed pharmacologically.

“People like Brian and me don’t lose contact with our parents because we don’t care; we lose contact with them to survive. We never stop loving, and we never lose hope that our loved ones will change. Rather, we are forced, either by wisdom or by the law, to take the path of self-preservation ”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

I won’t go into any more of the story other than to say JD Vance escaped. And got out via the military. The fact he subsequently went on to graduate from major Ivy League schools is a testament to the US GI Bill and his own intelligence and steady perseverance. Incidentally, the GI bill was first enacted by Franklin Roosevelt at the end of World War 2 to help transition US servicemen back into civilian life by providing them access to free college education. There have been a few upgrades and modifications to it down through the years however the principle of the original still remains. This idea is a testament and example that government programs can work and benefit an average citizen if politicians really focus on the people they represent and not the interests of the money-men that funded their election.

JD Vance may never have skipped out of Middletown without the educational opportunity afforded by his military service. And it is access to opportunity, at a young age, that more often than not determines a boy or girl’s long term prospects. Education plays a huge role in the creation of those opportunities. Although today one could argue it also comes draped with indoctrination by many universities.

“Today people look at me, at my job and my Ivy League credentials, and assume that I’m some sort of genius, that only a truly extraordinary person could have made it to where I am today. With all due respect to those people, I think that theory is a load of bullshit. Whatever”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Reading his memoir helped me appreciate the opportunities I was fortunate enough to benefit from in my own life. 10 years previous to JD Vance’s coming of age, I was from the first generation of Irish person that didn’t instinctively shuffle onto a boat for London or an Aer Lingus flight bound for New York or Boston. A beneficiary of globalism and the jobs that left hundreds and thousands of towns like Middletown Ohio. Absorbing his words shifted my thinking about Ireland’s place in the world. We are, after all, home to more direct foreign investment from the United States than almost any other nation on earth. I paused to ponder, at what family’s expense, did my place in the world derive from and whether any of them got out unscathed by the wealth transfer. We like to fool ourselves sometimes that Ireland’s position and privilege at the feasting table of globalism comes at no cost to anyone else. Often, it just ain’t so.

Over the intervening years since that first walk through of his memoir, I’ve kept an eye on JD Vance, with the odd Google and Youtube search. His message has remained consistent about the plight of the many in middle America and also on the requirements needed to lift them out of poverty. It is simple enough. Many, merely want easy access to jobs as opposed to government handouts and drugs. He has, of course, been rinse-washed through the different cycles of fame over the last 6 years. At first, he was a darling in the mainstream media then after a short spell he was upgraded to pariah. Unfortunately, he remains stubborn in his refusal to alter his opinion so as to match the prevailing wind of political opinion or a changing media narrative. In recent months, even the conservative wing of the Republican party, don’t truck with JD Vance or his populist agenda.

JD Vance and his wife Usha

Post-Trump, the struggle for the hearts, minds and control of the US Republican party continues unabated if somewhat hidden from the public eye. The populist nationalists and their brand of America First principles are increasingly stripped out by most right wing media cycles nowadays. Globalism is back baby, even if that globalism takes the form of war in Ukraine and the ever present background music of coronavirus variants and globally coordinated counter measures.

In 2022, the state of Ohio will be electing a new US Senator, to take a seat at the political table, to join the 99 others at the US Senate. The Republican primary to select their candidate has just concluded. It was the most hotly contested primary in the history of the United States. Advertisement spending alone ran at over $60 million as four main Republican candidates vied for the nomination to contest the November election. $60 million spent on a race where only 1 million Republicans cast a vote. That takes into account none of the other spending associated with a political campaign either. Campaigning is itself big business which no doubt JD Vance has discovered to his chagrin over the last 6 months.

Establishment Republican money donors fire-hosed the vast majority of their cash into candidates whose names were not JD Vance. Yes, JD Vance has decided to stop writing about the problems of Ohio and middle America but instead is gonna try to do something about them. The cynic in me wishes him well but doubts his overall chances of success. Not just in terms of winning the election but also in the den of iniquity that is Washington DC too - should he find himself there next January. However, he mounted his first serious hurdle this week.

As you can see above, the scrappy kid with the screwed up family history from Middletown, Ohio won an absorbing primary election the other night. I silently clapped when I saw the results come through on the news wires. The cynic in me temporarily tamed.

I suppose come November and US election time, I’ll be again cheering on the fortunes of the elegant hillbilly.

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