From the moment I learned about rednecks as a kid, I was hooked.
A good boy born in a high mountain? Those are my parents. People who move from rural towns to metropolitan areas in search of a better life? Stories from both sides of my family. Working class? My upbringing. Love things that are ridiculed by polite society – food, fashion, music, diction, parties? Yeah! Stubbornly clinging to their ancestral lands and roads? ¡Ayu!
I came to love bourbon, bluegrass, reruns of “Hee Haw” and Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be a Redneck” series. As an adult, I drove through small towns in central and eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, feeling at home in areas that even my white friends warned would not be friendly to “my type.” I may not look like the “Billy” I met on the outside – I am a nerd after all – but we get along because they are my brothers and sisters from another country madre.
That’s why I was interested when J.D. Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” was published in 2016. Morbidly similar. The message of self-reliance he preached in the interview was something my parents always preached and something I still identify with. Vance’s critique of conspicuous consumption by the poor is something everyone should consider.
But that’s where the similarities between the chiseled Vance and me end. He was a Yale graduate and a venture capitalist, and I was a community college student who chose a dying profession. He was so far removed from his roots that I experienced mine almost every other weekend at family gatherings. What’s more, Vance sees himself as an exception among his fellow Appalachians, describing how “the Billies were encased in poisonous amber, rendering them unable to improve their lot and leaving them vulnerable to a nation without It pains their country to move on “.
My Mexican redneck family never had time to complain and mope.
My parents’ generation found blue-collar jobs, bought homes, and are now retired, enjoying the fruits of their blood, sweat, and tears. Most of my cousins found white collar jobs or joined the public sector. Their children will go directly to four-year colleges.
We all made it in a society that never gave us handouts and expected us to fail, even as we held on to our ranching traditions as our own. Even Vance expressed admiration for our trajectory, writing in “Hillbilly Elegy” that white Appalachians were steeped in pessimism, unlike Latino immigrants, “many of whom suffered unimaginable poor”.
I never got around to reading Vance’s entire memoir – it seemed like a bit of poverty porn for the elite class he now belonged to. I did read a series of articles he wrote for liberal publications explaining why the white working class was so obsessed with Donald Trump, a man he later called a “fraud,” a “moral disaster,” “cultural heroin,” “Reprehensible” and a “cynical bastard” who could become “American Hitler”. I appreciate Vance not blaming immigration for America’s supposed decline, as other right-leaning pundits do, or even blaming Trump for his gross racism.
What a difference running for office makes. In 2022, Vance seeks a U.S. Senate seat as a xenophobe who worships Trump. What changed his mind?
Mexican.
Who better to implement Trumpism in every sector of American life and government over the coming decades than a 39-year-old white man from Ohio?
(Jeff Dean/AP)
“Are you a racist?” Vance, now sporting a beard, asks cheerfully in an ad for his campaign. “Do you hate Mexicans?” He said the “media” was using the accusations to smear “us” – by which he meant those who support Trump’s border wall – and went on to claim that uncontrolled immigration under the Biden administration was using “illegal Drugs and Democratic voters are “killing Ohioans” flooding the country. Vance ends the 30-second spot by blaming “poison coming across the border” for nearly killing his mother. .
The ad makes California Gov. Pete Wilson’s infamous 1994 “They Keep Coming” reelection ad looking as pro-Mexican as a taco truck. Many Latinos immediately derided Vance’s campaign strategy as a “woe is me” accusation. But it worked: Trump endorsed him, he won, and he’s continued his anti-Mexican crusade ever since.
Last year, senators introduced a bill seeking to establish English as the official national language. He supports using U.S. troops to go after drug cartels in Mexico, while opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants in the U.S. and federally funded health care for DACA recipients. last week, Vance supporters receive fundraising requests The resolution calls for the expulsion of “everyone who illegally invades our country.”
Now, he has been selected by Trump as vice president.
Trump has long made it clear that in a second administration he only wants to be surrounded by sycophants. He also wants someone young enough to implement Trumpism in every sector of American life and government for decades to come. Who better than a 39-year-old white guy from Ohio? Trump chose Vance to look to the future, but his perspective reflected the gringo past.
Ohio has long been considered a necessary bellwether state for any successful presidential campaign, but it’s also an anomaly. White people make up 58% of the U.S. population, and 77% of Buckeye State residents are white. Ohio has a lower index for African Americans and Asian Americans, especially Latinos — we make up nearly 20% of the country’s population but only 5% of Ohio’s population.
Vance’s job for Trump was to campaign in Rust Belt swing states, advocating in defense of whiteness and against the browning of America. Neither man would explicitly admit what they were doing — how could they be anti-immigration when Trump is married to an immigrant and Vance’s wife was born to an Indian immigrant?
But on Monday, opening night of the Republican convention, the evidence was clear. There wasn’t a single Latino in Trump’s VIP area. The three Latinos who spoke all set themselves up, like Vance, as exemplars of the community and therefore worthy of attention. The most prominent among them was Goya CEO Bob Unanue, who spent five minutes railing against open borders and making fun of Vice President Kamala Harris’ Spanish name, which The joke didn’t get much of a reaction because the audience was small. speak Spanish.
Perhaps Trump advisers believe Vance’s background and life story will appeal to Latinos in swing states like Nevada and Arizona, especially given that recent polls show Latino antipathy toward illegal immigration is higher than it has been in decades .
But part of guiding your mindset is not blaming others for your situation. Vance had a lot to blame. In “Hillbilly Elegy,” he accuses Appalachian culture of holding his people down. He now insists that it was actually his fellow elites who destroyed America. Vance now says Mexico is the reason his mother and too many others became addicted to opioids. There is no concept of personal responsibility in Vance’s or Trump’s worldview, for that matter.
Vance is a typical example convenient —A man who has no principles in his life except that of success, and no allegiance to any community but his own. Rednecks of all backgrounds hate this. assholewhich is why nearly all of my Southern friends laugh at “Hillbilly Elegy” and warn liberals who are obsessed with it that they are supporting a false prophet.
Now, Vance is likely to become the No. 2 man in America — thanks to Trump, the undisputed king of false prophets. Heaven help us all.
