J. D. VANCE AND HIS BETRAYAL OF THE HILLBILLIES
FROM SELF-RELIANCE TO AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENT’S DEPENDENCE
VOLTE-FACE
Having read Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance and then watching him delivering his acceptance speech as the Republican candidate for the Vice-Presidency (as well as several other previous speeches), or learning that he had said that Donald Trump was “America’s Hitler” and seen him sharing the Party’s ticket with him, one cannot but asking could the real J. D. Vance please raise his hand?
The contradiction between the ideas he presented in the book and those he supported in his acceptance speech is as sharp as asserting that Trump is America’s Hitler and then embracing him as his running mate.
His book's publication and utterances about Trump are from about 2016, just eight years ago. In between, he reaffirmed that he opposed Trump several times. Then, by 2022, he had already changed sides. He was elected to the Senate with Trump’s support. By then, he had already reversed the ideas he had supported in his book.
What happened? Who is the real J. D. Vance? Did he change, or was his fundamental identity the same eight years ago and today, and the changes we see just different manifestations of the same?
THE SELF-RELIANT HILLBILLY
The Hillbilly Elegy narrates his early life as a child raised in Appalachia, one of the poorest regions in the United States, now desolated by the migration to other countries of the industrial enterprises that employed the population. In addition to these economic problems, shared by the population as a whole, J. D. faced severe personal problems caused by the dysfunctionality of his family. Rejected by his mother, to the point of chasing him with a firearm while under the influence of drugs, he was raised by his grandparents, especially his grandmother. Throughout his childhood and teens, Vance lived under the fear of being found and killed by his mother. Drugs and alcohol were common all around him in those years.
From the very beginning of the book, Vance broadens its subject to include not just the naked events of his life but also his insights regarding the environment in which he grew up. Throughout the book, he links the dismal behavior of family and neighbors to the culture prevailing in the region. When describing the subject matter of the book, he writes,
<“But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it…”>[1]
He compares the behavior induced by the culture he has defined as characteristic of the region with what he calls the elite and finds the first wanting. He does not mention the government, the system, or enterprises as the culprits of the misery in their community. He insists it is a cultural problem.
<“However you want to define these two groups and their approach to giving—rich and poor; educated and uneducated; upper-class and working-class—their numbers increasingly occupy separate worlds. As a cultural emigrant from one group to the other, I am acutely aware of the differences. Sometimes I view members of the elite with an almost primal scorn—recently, an acquaintance used the word “confabulate” in a sentence, and I just wanted to scream. But I have to give it to them: Their children are happier, their divorce rates lower, their church attendance higher, their lives longer. These people are beating us at our own damned game.” >[2]
In that environment, Vance felt condemned to the mediocre life he saw most people around him living. In his book, he describes how he was falling into the same attitude trap that had captured those people—self-neglect, negativism, irresponsibility, dependence, etc.
When graduating from high school, Vance considered going to college, but he felt grossly unprepared. He thought he lacked the structure to face an independent life. A cousin, Rachel, a Marine veteran, suggested he join the Marines. Vance did so and served in Iraq. This decision changed his life. Returning from Iraq, he took Political Science at Ohio State University and then enrolled in Yale Law School. When graduating from Yale, he was a new man. He realized that he owed his improbable success to the confluence of his decision to succeed and do everything needed to do it with the spontaneous help of many people he found through the years. As we noted, he didn’t mention the system, the government, or any enterprise when discussing why the people in his community abandoned themselves to a life of decay. Symmetrically, he didn’t mention those actors as sources of help on his way up.
<“I was able to escape the worst of my culture’s inheritance. And uneasy though I am about my new life, I cannot whine about it: The life I lead now was the stuff of fantasy during my childhood. So many people helped to create that fantasy. At every level of my life and every environment, I have found family and mentors and lifelong friends who supported and enabled me.”>[3]
Vance emphasizes the importance of self-reliance and informal communal support of family and friends in another case he discusses in the book, that of Brian, a young man who reminded him of himself when he was fifteen.
<”Like Mom, his mother caught a taste for narcotics, and like me, he has a complicated relationship with his father…He has spent nearly his entire life in Appalachian Kentucky; we went to lunch at a local fast-food restaurant…
“Just a few months after we saw each other last, Brian’s mom died unexpectedly. He hadn’t lived with her in years, so outsiders might imagine that her death was easier to bear. Those folks are wrong. 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. “>[4]
When Vance discusses Brian's future, the idea that these are human problems that should be solved individually becomes more marked.
<“What happens to Brian?...Any chance he has lies with the people around him—his family, me, my kin, the people like us, and the broad community of hillbillies. And if that chance is to materialize, we hillbillies must wake the hell up. Brian’s mom’s death was another shitty card in an already abysmal hand, but there are many cards left to deal: whether his community empowers him with a sense that he can control his own destiny or encourages him to take refuge in resentment at forces beyond his control; whether he can access a church that teaches him lessons of Christian love, family, and purpose; whether those people who do step to positively influence Brian find emotional and spiritual support from their neighbors.”>[5]
These ideas become more apparent in the following paragraph:
<“I believe we hillbillies are the toughest goddammed people on this earth. We take an electric saw to the hide of those who insult our mother. We make young men consume cotton undergarments to protect a sister´s honor. But are we tough enough to do what needs to be done to help a kid like Brian? Are we tough enough to build a church that forces kids like me to engage with the world rather than withdraw from it?... Public policy can help, but there is no government that can fix these problems for us…These problems were not created by governments or corporations or anyone else. We created them, and only we can fix them….I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.>”[6]
What emerges from Vance in this book is an apparent belief in self-reliance and spontaneous community action to solve many of the social problems now affecting the depleted industrial areas and other sectors in the United States.
Now, along with Trump, he is advocating the creation of a country that is dependent on the government for everything. And, in a classic populist style, he is doing it while pretending to be doing the opposite.
GOING BACK TO A LONG-DEAD PAST
Both Trump and Vance have said things that point toward a regression toward a past that has only been lived in other countries, never in the United States—that of the tyrannical governments that preceded democracy or lived along it in other countries. They are opening two paths toward this destiny.
Dictatorship Via Protectionism
While Vance has also advocated for heavy protectionism, Trump has been quite specific regarding numbers. He has repeatedly said that he wants to impose a universal 10% tariff on imports from all countries and 60% on imports from China. Tariffs of such magnitude would distort the incentives for investment and production in the United States and open a new path to improving enterprises' profits. Today, improving productivity is the main path to attaining this objective in the United States. Starting a new domestic market with high protection will open a new path: obtaining higher protection from the government. Of course, the government can say we will never increase protection beyond the initial level, precisely as the central banks say they would never print excessive money. Once the government declares legitimate the use of tariffs (and equivalent instruments) to allow unprofitable enterprises to survive and make money, the pressure to relax costs and productivity and use political power to force the government to increase protection will surely increase.
Gradually, but very fast, the government would concentrate economic and political power. The presidents could decide which sectors or enterprises would be more profitable than others. Today, people in the opposition can lose elections, yet they can do whatever they like economically. In a regime where the government can increase or reduce protection at will because it would be a legitimate instrument of policy, presidents could send those who supported the opposition to bankruptcy. This would turn elections into winner-take-all events. The president would have all the levers of power. Controlling everything, the temptation to eliminate elections and install a tyranny would be irresistible. Installing a government with absolute power is not that far away.
The Path to Chaos or Dictatorship
In his speech to religious conservatives on Friday July 26, Donald Trump said the following:
<” Christians, get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore, you won’t have to vote anymore, you know what? Four more years, it’ll will be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians. I am a Christian. I love you, you got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you are not going to have to vote.”>[7]
People may say this was a joke, but this is not the kind of jokes a candidate for the presidency should tell. There are many reasons to believe that Trump was not joking. This is consistent with Trump’s previous declarations regarding his intentions to be a dictator for only one day, which he repeated after his aides said he had been misinterpreted.[8] It is also consistent with something Vance has been saying for some time now. In a 2021 interview with Reason magazine, Vance told Jack Murphy:
‘<“A lot of conservatives have said we should basically eliminate the administrative state. And I am sympathetic to that project. But another option is that we should just seize the administrative state for our own purposes. We should fire all of the people. I think Trump…[will] probably win again in 2024…I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him a piece of advice: fire every single mid-level bureaucrat. Every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people, and when the courts—because you will get taken to court—…stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did, and say, “The chief justice has made his ruling…Now let him enforce it.”>[9]
Here, Vance and Trump are assuming that whatever they do in a potential Republican administration in 2025-2029 will remain done forever, ignoring the possibility of losing the presidency or Congress at any time in the future. This can happen in two ways. One, the Republicans win all the elections forever. Two, there are no more elections, meaning they would install a dictatorship to prevent being dislodged from power.
Let’s assume that they are not thinking of installing a dictatorship. If this is the case, first, they wouldn’t be able to capture all the power in the United States even if they control the three branches…unless they use violence; and second, they would be opening the door for the Democratic Party to do the same when they recover the power. This would start a destructive process of doing and undoing every four or eight years, sending the country into chaos. All countries that fall into tyrannies have done so amid chaos—like Tsarist Russia, pre-fascist Italy, pre-Nazi Germany, and pre-communist China. There is nothing people fear more than chaos. When there is chaos, they will accept any tyrants as long as they reimpose order.
WHERE IS VANCE’S SELF-RELIANCE?
J.D. Vance’s current isolationist proposals contradict many of the profound reflections I quoted from his book in previous paragraphs. He blamed negative attitudes, like not being tough enough to engage with the world rather than withdraw from it, for the problems of the area where he grew up. Now he is proposing not just his family or the hillbillies but the entire country to withdraw from the world, to look elsewhere and pretend it does not exist. He and Trump proposed establishing a level of protection that would necessarily concentrate both economic and political power in the government, putting the country on a path that would lead to tyranny.
This is the essential point of our discussion. Regardless of his motivations, his ideas are not good for the country. Moreover, Vance´s ideas evidence a betrayal of his hillbillies. None of the policies he is proposing would address Brian’s problems. On the contrary, they would move them away from the proper solution to their problems. Like the rest of the population, they would become more dependent on the government. They would remain captive to their own negative culture and the politicians in the government.
Regarding the people who will vote for them, they do not realize that if the Republicans can do the things Trump and Vance want to do, then the Democrats can also do them. If they can be oppressors, they can also be oppressed.
Establishing these game rules would undo the nature of the United States's political system. It would destroy democracy to install tyranny, which could come from either side. This is a Pandora’s box that nobody should want to open.
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Manuel Hinds is a Fellow at The Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at Johns Hopkins University. He shared the Manhattan Institute's 2010 Hayek Prize. He is the author of five books, the last one being In Defense of Liberal Democracy. His website is manuelhinds.com
[1] Vance, J. D., Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, Harper, New York, 2016, Kindle Edition, pp. 7.
[2] Ibid, endnote 1, pp. 252.
[3] Ibid, endnote 1, pp. 252.
[4] Ibid, pp. 254.
[5] Ibid. pp.254.
[6] Ibid, pp. 256.
[7] Michael Gold, Trump Tells Christians ‘You Won’t Have to Vote Anymore’ If He’s Elected, The New York Times, July 27, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/27/us/politics/trump-votes-christians.html
[8] Marina Pitofsky, Donald Trump repeats comment he would be a dictator ‘for one day’ if reelected in 2024. USA Today, https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2023/12/11/donald-trump-dictator-one-day-reelected/71880010007/
[9] Quoted by Martin Pengelly, JD Vance once worried Trump was ‘America’s Hitler’. Now his own authoritarian leanings come into view, The Guardian, 16 July 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/16/jd-vance-political-views-trump