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J.D. Vance: Trump’s heir apparent
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The 39-year-old Republican candidate for U.S. Vice President, hailing from a working class family in America’s Rust Belt, has emerged as an ideologue and champion of Donald Trump’s right-wing nationalist movement
Millions have lived the life of precarity that J.D. Vance was born into in 1984 but rarely has the story of hillbillies — a pejorative reference to unsophisticated rural white population — been told like he did in his memoir published when he was all of 31, in 2016.
Mr. Vance, now theRepublican candidate for U.S. Vice President, “grew up poor, in the ‘Rust Belt’, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope,” he recounts in Hillbilly Elegy, a book that Barack Obama would recommend to understand the social upheaval in the U.S. by 2016, which was partly the result of his own ascent to the highest office in the country. Hillbillies were earlier labourers, sharecroppers, coalminers, and factory workers in later decades. “Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family,” Mr. Vance writes.
They were once the backbone of U.S. manufacturing and largely supported the Democratic Party. As finance and technology sectors in New York and California, respectively, became the two poles of the U.S. strategy and economy, the factories in the Midwest, comprising States such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, shuttered and rusted; and the people there fell into despair and addiction.
Their link to the national life of America was increasingly limited to enlisting as soldiers for global wars that they grew to detest. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, their plight found a voice in national politics as Donald J. Trump and Bernie Sanders questioned the shared orthodoxy in the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, on trade and war. Mr. Trump could turn the white working class grievance into anger and win the Presidency, but he barely knew the life of the dispossessed Americans that he was claiming to represent.
Mr. Vance lived all parts of that life, and managed to climb the pinnacle of elite education in the U.S., graduating from the Yale Law School in 2013. From 2003 to 2007, he served in the U.S. Marines, of which six months were in Iraq, in a war which he considers needless. Earlier in his life, Mr. Vance barely managed to avoid the fall into the abyss of addiction that surrounded him. Even today, on and off, he gets a call announcing the death due to overdosing of someone he knew.
Mr. Vance credits his survival to his tough grandmother — ‘mamaw’ as he called her — and his growth to a strong Christian inspiration. He could not “squander God-given talent,” and hence “had to work hard”. “I had to take care of my family because Christian duty demanded it. I needed to forgive, not just for my mother’s sake but for my own. I should never despair, for God had a plan,” he writes. His life is about what he escaped, as much as what he made of it — a remarkable one that fits into the stereotype of American Dream. He is white America’s answer to Barack Obama. He resented Mr. Obama and was inspired by him. He “gave me hope that a boy who grew up like me could still achieve the most important of my dreams,” Mr. Vance wrote in 2016. Mr. Vance’s portrayal of his life as member of the rural hill people and the working class has been questioned by various scholars and from different perspectives — which in progressive lexicon could be termed gaslighting. His book sold three million copies and was turned into a film. In the book and interviews, Mr. Vance comes across as a deeply reflective person, who honestly confronts the decadence, anger, frustration, and alienation, in his community and even himself, without judgement or bitterness. He notes the violent masculinity, and the fear of people unlike them that influence hillbilly life.
Grandmother’s influence
Mr. Vance’s single mother had many love interests, and her addiction led him going into the care of his grandmother — a tough woman who read her Bible and feared her God, generally despised the church, liberally used the F word, and loved her guns. The grandmother was born in Jackson, Kentucky, and the family moved to Ohio for work. Young Vance would accompany mamaw during her visits to Kentucky. He still owns a cemetery plot in Kentucky where five generations of his ancestors were laid to rest, and that hillside is what Mr. Vance calls home. “I and Usha (his wife who is of Indian-origin) will be laid to rest by our children in that same place,” he said, accepting the Republican nomination.
“America is not merely an idea, though it is founded on strong ideas. It is home for us. Nobody fights for an abstract idea. But everyone fights for their home,” Mr. Vance, now a strong champion of American nationalism, told the Republican convention in Milwaukee in Wisconsin. Wisconsin, Ohio, Detroit and Pennsylvania, where Mr. Trump was nearly killed by an assassin on July 13, are key swing States that determined the outcomes of the 2016 and 2020 presidential contests by narrow margins. With Mr. Vance on his side, Mr. Trump hopes to turn it all his side this time around. “You are going to enjoy this ride,” Mr. Trump addressed Mr. Vance in his closing speech at the Convention.
Mr. Vance’s current political positions might be rooted in the life that he remembers. His grandmother had 19 loaded guns in her home when she died in 2005, one within reach wherever she stood. “That’s the American spirit,” Mr. Vance said in his acceptance speech. In her youth, the grandmother shot and nearly killed a thief who tried to steal a cow — a prized possession of the family. “There is nothing lower than the poor stealing from the poor,” she would tell Mr. Vance later.
Against illegal immigration
Mr. Vance argues that illegal immigrants are threatening the lives and livelihoods of the poorest Americans. He argues that new entrants into the community should be admitted on the terms of the current members — like the parents of Usha who immigrated from India. Mr. Vance is an opponent of abortion, and he will be questioned on this issue by the Democrats who hope to make it a key campaign issue. The VP candidate is a critic of U.S. aid to Ukraine, and aid in general though he strongly supports aid to Israel. He thinks the U.S. strategy should focus on Asia and China, and bother less about Europe and Russia.
Thewhite world of Vance was very distant from the world of ‘white privilege’ that is often skewered in diversity discourses. Mr. Vance’s initiation into high society routed through Yale and was aided by Usha.
As the story goes, elite law firms would test the social skills of candidates before making an offer, often at a dinner setting. Mr. Vance, for the first time in life, had to make choices about wines, and figure out what to do with multiple spoons, knives and forks on the table. In panic, he ran to the restroom and called Usha — his “spirit guide.”
Mr. Vance landed the job, and now, he connects the world of wealth and privilege with that of the countryside. He counts Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt among this backers. Mr. Vance believes communities cannot be rejuvenated by financial support alone, but they need leadership and organisation. Regardless of the election outcome, J.D. Vance is set to be a central figure in U.S. politics in the coming decade.
Vance’s single mother’s addiction problem led him into the care of his grandmother — a tough woman who read her Bible and feared her God
Vance lived all parts of a tough life, and managed to climb the pinnacle of elite education in the U.S., graduating from the Yale Law School in 2013
He is a critic of U.S. aid to Ukraine, and aid in general though he strongly supports aid to Israel; he thinks the U.S. strategy should focus on Asia and China, and bother less about Europe and Russia
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