The Moral Collapse of J. D. Vance

[Guno צְבִי]

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 “sellout” or “backstabber.” (Sometimes we impugn the animal kingdom and call him a rat, a skunk, or a weasel.) For grand betrayals of weightier loyalties—country and faith—we invoke the more solemn terms of “traitor” or “apostate.”

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 “opportunist,” and yet the shabbiness and absurdity of his Senate campaign is too small to brand him a defector or a heretic.

Someone like Vance, perhaps, but as we now know, not Vance himself. Not so long ago, he talked about the self-defeating bias against education among poor whites. He acknowledged the self-destructive habits of some of the people he grew up around. Vance wrote, in this very magazine, that Donald Trump “is cultural heroin”—a powerful charge from someone who hails from the epicenter of the opioid epidemic—and provided a “quick high” that could not fix what ails the country. All of that vanished once Vance decided he wanted to go to Washington—and after the Trump supporter Peter Thiel dropped $10 million into a political action committee.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...-vance/619428/

[Doc Dutch]

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 “sellout” or “backstabber.” (Sometimes we impugn the animal kingdom and call him a rat, a skunk, or a weasel.) For grand betrayals of weightier loyalties—country and faith—we invoke the more solemn terms of “traitor” or “apostate.”

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 “opportunist,” and yet the shabbiness and absurdity of his Senate campaign is too small to brand him a defector or a heretic.

Someone like Vance, perhaps, but as we now know, not Vance himself. Not so long ago, he talked about the self-defeating bias against education among poor whites. He acknowledged the self-destructive habits of some of the people he grew up around. Vance wrote, in this very magazine, that Donald Trump “is cultural heroin”—a powerful charge from someone who hails from the epicenter of the opioid epidemic—and provided a “quick high” that could not fix what ails the country. All of that vanished once Vance decided he wanted to go to Washington—and after the Trump supporter Peter Thiel dropped $10 million into a political action committee.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...-vance/619428/

What's wrong with him? He's done a lot of good for the folks in Ohio and the Trumpians hate him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Vance#Career

He published Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis in 2016. It was on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2016 and 2017. It was a finalist for the 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.[24] The New York Times called it "one of the six best books to help understand Trump's win".[5] The Washington Post called him the "voice of the Rust Belt,"[1] while The New Republic criticized him as "liberal media's favorite white trash–splainer" and the "false prophet of blue America".[25]

In December 2016, Vance indicated that he planned to move to Ohio to start a nonprofit, potentially run for office,[26] and work on combating drug addiction in the Rust Belt.[1]

In 2017, he joined Revolution LLC, an investment firm founded by AOL cofounder Steve Case, as an investment partner, where he was tasked with expanding the "Rise of the Rest" initiative, which focuses on growing investments in under-served regions outside the Silicon Valley and New York City tech bubbles.[27]

In January 2017, Vance became a CNN contributor.[28] In April 2017, Ron Howard signed on to direct a film version of Hillbilly Elegy, which was released by Netflix in 2020, and starred Owen Asztalos and Gabriel Basso as Vance.[29] He has appeared on ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and Fox News, among other media outlets.[19]

In 2019, he co-founded Narya Capital in Cincinnati, Ohio, with financial backing from Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Andreessen.[30] In 2020, Vance raised $93 million for Narya Capital.[31]

[Guno צְבִי]

What's wrong with him? He's done a lot of good for the folks in Ohio and the Trumpians hate him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Vance#Career

He published Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis in 2016. It was on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2016 and 2017. It was a finalist for the 2017 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.[24] The New York Times called it "one of the six best books to help understand Trump's win".[5] The Washington Post called him the "voice of the Rust Belt,"[1] while The New Republic criticized him as "liberal media's favorite white trash–splainer" and the "false prophet of blue America".[25]

In December 2016, Vance indicated that he planned to move to Ohio to start a nonprofit, potentially run for office,[26] and work on combating drug addiction in the Rust Belt.[1]

In 2017, he joined Revolution LLC, an investment firm founded by AOL cofounder Steve Case, as an investment partner, where he was tasked with expanding the "Rise of the Rest" initiative, which focuses on growing investments in under-served regions outside the Silicon Valley and New York City tech bubbles.[27]

In January 2017, Vance became a CNN contributor.[28] In April 2017, Ron Howard signed on to direct a film version of Hillbilly Elegy, which was released by Netflix in 2020, and starred Owen Asztalos and Gabriel Basso as Vance.[29] He has appeared on ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and Fox News, among other media outlets.[19]

In 2019, he co-founded Narya Capital in Cincinnati, Ohio, with financial backing from Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Andreessen.[30] In 2020, Vance raised $93 million for Narya Capital.[31]

he is now licking trumps anus for support

[Doc Dutch]

he is now licking trumps anus for support

I'll wait to see if he goes full Matt Gaetz before deciding.