I suppose that all political campaigns, to one extent or another, require some willful ignorance or selective memory. If they didn't, how could so many voters support so many obviously unsuitable candidates?
I started thinking about this topic recently as I read about the rise of J.D. Vance, who wrote Hillbilly Elegy, a book I very much enjoyed and whose author I respected for both his depiction of his family and culture and his triumph over his humble beginnings through hard work and education.
That respect, I see now, was gravely misplaced.
The winner of the recent Ohio Republican primary, Vance displayed such a depth of moral vacuity and abdication of integrity that even I, a seasoned cynic, found breathtaking. And it was all in the service of getting the nod from disgraced former president Donald Trump, a man Vance once repudiated. even comparing him to Hitler, but now embraces.
Edward Keenan writes:
In 2016, Vance rose to fame on the strength of his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which detailed the troubles of his family and, through them, those of Red State rural America. At the time, he was unequivocal, saying Trump was selling snake oil to people desperate for solutions to real problems.
“Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it,” Vance wrote in The Atlantic shortly after his book’s publication.
Well, if you can’t beat him, join him: in this race, Vance was the most enthusiastic peddler of what appeared to be exactly the same snake oil. He said the nation needed a “de-woke-ification program,” suggested Trump should defy Supreme Court rulings, and tweeted, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.” He accused President Joe Biden of flooding the “heartland” with fentanyl to “kill a bunch of MAGA voters,” and ran ads saying if the media calls you racist and says you hate Mexicans, Vance was your guy. He drew endorsements from the QAnon-leaning wing of Republicans in Congress, and campaigned with Donald Trump Jr. at his side. He talked up the Trump border wall — a concept he once explicitly mocked — as a cure for what ailed Ohio. (If you don’t have a map handy, Ohio lies on the northern U.S. border, more than 2,100 kilometres from where that Trump wall was being built.)
Vance doubled down on his newfound allegiance by surrounding himself with other Trump sycophants, as Lloyd Green writes:
In the run-up to the primary, Vance hung out with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. Pressed on Greene’s recent attendance at a white nationalist conference, Vance offered his full-throated support. She is “my friend and did nothing wrong”, he declared. Being “in” with the Republican party’s extremes helps more than it hurts.
We are judged by the company we keep, and in addition to the aforementioned Gaetz and Taylor Greene, he is bankrolled by Paypal founder and Trump fawner Peter Thiel.
Thiel donated at least $13.5m to a Super Pac that had Vance’s back. Thiel also served as a conduit to Trump world.
In 2009, the German-born Thiel questioned the wisdom of expanding the right to vote to women and minorities. “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women – two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians – have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron,” he wrote.
I started this post by wondering about voter behaviour and their capacity to embrace willful ignorance. It would be simple enough to explain Vance's support by attributing it to the fanaticism that seems to follow Trump like a bad odour. But is that a sufficient explanation for supporting a candidate who displays none of the qualities we would hope for in a high-office aspirant? To endorse someone whose venal grasping for office should be obvious to all, whose ultimate allegiance is only to power and its acquisition, surely requires not only ignorance but massive forgetfulness.
Of course, I could be wrong. The older I get, the more I realize how little I really understand about our species.
