On US turning point At a conference at the University of Mississippi in October, an audience member asked Vice President J.D. Vance about the tensions between his interracial and interfaith marriage to Usha, the daughter of Indian immigrants, and his beliefs that the United States should reduce the number of immigrants. He started with his thoughts on immigration policy and then moved on to personal issues. speaking he hopes that Usha will convert to Catholicism. “Do I hope that she will end up being touched in some way by the same thing that I was touched in the church? I truly wish that because I believe in the Christian gospel, and I hope that my wife will eventually see it the same way,” he said.
It wasn't Vance's most grotesque statement—there are many contenders—but it exposed his warped priorities. Here is the Vice President defending the administration's abhorrent immigration policies in a way that fundamentally degrades the experiences and traditions of his own family, the people he is bound by oaths – oaths that should be sacred to a Christian – to love and protect. It sums up Vance's journey into public life and politics: there is no one he won't betray, and no principle he won't abandon in his quest to gain even more fame and power.
This has become clear since he became famous. Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a suburb between Cincinnati and Dayton. In his memoirs Hillbilly ElegyVance describes the difficulties of his childhood—his mother's addictions, his absent father, his feuding grandparents—which he left behind by joining the army and then going to college. His grandparents were originally from the Appalachian Mountains in Eastern Kentucky and moved there for factory work, like many other migrants looking for work in the middle of the last century. Because of this history, Vance laid claim to a rustic mantel of sorts. “We named our hometown Middletown Middletucky because a lot of the people actually came from Kentucky,” he said in an interview. Fresh air in 2016. “So it was a massive transplantation of one culture and one group of people into a completely different area. And often, of course, they retained the culture and many of their habits when they moved.”
Of course he wasn't from Kentucky. He visited it in the summer and briefly describes the visit for the book, but does not depict it as a real place where people still live. If he thinks of himself as a country man, it may be partly because Ohioans thought of him and his family that way, but he and his mother were both raised in Ohio. Writers from Kentucky rejected his characteristics and portrayed him more as a carpetbagger who did not understand mountain culture.
At the time of writing, Vance had already graduated from Yale Law School, dabbled in corporate law, and worked at Peter Thiel's venture capital firm. Hillbilly Elegywhich has now made him something of a public intellectual—or at least a sought-after village whisperer. Many young people go through similar odysseys of development, but in the end they become something; their worldview crystallizes. But Vance's opinion seems to keep changing. After his memoir became a bestseller and was made into a film, he explored the sense of need and identity that helped elect President Donald Trump. But he wasn't a fan at the time. Instead he was aligned himself with the Ivy League elite and big tech conservatives who disliked him. In 2016, he called Trump: “American Hitlerand said Trump was like a needle in a vein for people who needed hope to get through their hard lives.
Within three years, however, Vance ran for an Ohio Senate seat as a conservative Catholic, MAGA supporter and flirt with the far right. Perhaps he saw an opportunity for power and abandoned all his principles to get a chance at it. It seems more likely to me that Vance had no principles, and when he realized he could get more adulation by embracing Trumpism rather than opposing it, he jumped on board. It worked: Vance secured Trump's support and defeated several Republicans with extensive political experience en route to a comfortable general election victory.
It was from this perspective that Trump chose him as his running mate, and Vance's latest version was completed. As vice president, Vance not only supported the xenophobia that Trump espouses, he developed and intensified it. As in his “Turning Point in the USA” speech, he called for a reduction in immigration – legal and illegal – to the US, saying that this would lead to a reduction in immigration – legal and illegal – into the US. bankrupt the country and blame housing affordability crisis about immigrants. He also accused anti-Semitism in the USA about young immigrants. On X, he said the US has “imported a lot of people with ethnic grievances” and that to stop anti-Semitism, the country needs to “reduce immigration and encourage assimilation.”
As Trump's brutal border and deportation policies have intensified, Vance, a Catholic, pushed back opposed criticism of these policies by Catholic leaders and questioned their motives. “I think the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to take a little look in the mirror and admit that when they get over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about the humanitarian issues? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?” he said on CBS Facing the nation.
When news of a racist and pro-Nazi flooded the Young Republicans group chat floated to the surface in October Vance went to The Charlie Kirk Show To protect participants. “The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially boys,” he said. “They tell harsh, offensive jokes. That's what kids do. And I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a child telling a stupid joke – telling a very offensive, stupid joke – causes the destruction of their life.” But he didn't think the same about anyone who criticized Kirk after his murder in September. pushing for them to face the consequences.
Vance also advocated a sharp turn to the right on many other fronts. promoting pronatalism while dismantling the social safety net that protects children and families and attempting to spread lies about the administration's actions. catastrophic processing economy. He does all this as an ally of those who helped his rise, from Christian nationalists to tech billionaires. But Americans don't like Vance: About half the country doesn't approve his. Perhaps it's because they see him as a cynical werewolf, changing his personality depending on what he thinks will resonate the most – so he can gain even more power. That's how he beat Trump, and it paid off handsomely. But if Vance decides to run for president—and he almost certainly will, given that he's already landed loud approval— there will be no more coattails to ride on. Who will he pretend to be then?
