What JD Vance Once Knew

TEN YEARS AGO TODAY, in the middle of the presidential campaign, an essay in The Atlantic attempted to explain the appeal of Donald Trump. Its author attributed this appeal to the social decline and cultural trauma he himself experienced during a poor childhood.

The author, JD Vance, had published Hillbilly Elegy a few days earlier, which sold around 3 million copies and made him, almost overnight, the designated interpreter of the demands of the working class in the country. And he was pretty good at it.

In the July 4, 2016, essay, Vance describes the places where the suffering came from: the factories that downsized or ceased to exist, as well as the jobs they created; the aesthetic decline of once beautiful and vibrant cities; families that broke up or never formed; and anger and frustration at a government that had broken the trust of the people it was supposed to serve. “During this election season,” Vance wrote, “it seems that many Americans have been looking for a new painkiller.” His name was Donald Trump.

In the midst of a social crisis, Vance observed, Trump offered “an easy escape from pain. For every complex problem, he promises a simple solution.” But, he argued, such promises were inexpensive. “He never gives details on how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.”

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“Trump is a cultural hero,” Vance wrote. “It makes some people feel better for a while. But it can’t fix what ails them, and one day they will realize that.”

“Someday” is today.

TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY, while still quite dangerous, is also crumbling, cracking under the weight of his own choices. The main driver is the economy, which he presented as his strong point. We are seeing tariff-induced price increases, gas prices that rose from less than $3 to more than $4 per gallon during a 100-day war with Iran that America lost, wages that fail to keep up with the cost of living, and inflation that is rising again. Manufacturing jobs that Trump promised to restore continue to disappear. Health care became much more expensive under his leadership and millions lost coverage.

At the top of the nation’s health agencies is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who in a single year moved to cut the list of recommended childhood vaccines by nearly half, fired government vaccine advisers and replaced them with skeptics, and presided over the worst measles outbreak in 30 years. The National Institutes of Health, the crown jewel of American biomedical science, has seen billions of dollars cut in research, clinical trials canceled and laboratories closed, leading to a “brain drain” that rival nations are rushing to exploit. And the dismantling of USAID, along with the gutting of PEPFAR – the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the bipartisan AIDS relief program credited with saving more than 25 million lives – have, by credible estimates, already cost hundreds of thousands of lives, most of them children, with projections of as many as 14 million more by 2030 if Budget cuts continue.

Americans are deeply divided and intensely polarized, with pessimism at or near a multi-decade high. Faith in almost every major institution—the government, the press, the universities, religious leaders—is at or near the bottom of modern history.

So it’s no surprise that Trump’s approval rating is anemic. (In a recent poll, that figure fell to 30 percent.) His remaining support is low, while dissatisfaction with him is intense. Republican members of Congress are beginning to break with him. His MAGA base is fracturing. Former loyal supporters, like Tucker Carlson, openly mock the president. (“Shut up, bitch! I don’t take you seriously,” Carlson said 10 days ago.) Trump looks weak and lost, a sketch of a man still performing the same routine in front of a crowd drifting toward the exits. The country finally wakes up to the decline Vance predicted.

THIS IS THE CONTEXT in which Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of their nation. It’s not just that things are bad; it’s that their vision of the United States is getting darker. American pride has reached a new low. Nearly 80 percent of Americans think the founders would be disappointed with how the country has evolved.

Part of this sentiment reflects the fact that the president and his entourage are subverting the rule of law, decency and democratic constraints. Many Americans believe that the country, in its current form, is betraying its ideals. They feel at odds with the nation they love.

And this is also true: among more and more Americans, there is a sickening recognition of what the United States has become in the age of Trump. They see it as a pitiful farce, a verdict difficult to dispute when a nation has twice elected a carnival barker as leader. For a historically proud people, this is an indignity and humiliation. We are in the bread and circuses phase of American history, the moment when a great republic, having lost its sense of purpose, is content with spectacle.

Which brings me back to JD Vance. Ten summers ago, he understood better than anyone the threat Trump posed to America. Vance, who described himself as a “never Trump guy,” thought Trump was an “idiot.” He admitted to a friend at the time that he “wavers between thinking that Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be so bad (and might even prove useful) or that he is America’s Hitler.” But then ambition did its bidding, and Vance, who had seen the danger so clearly, found he could get around it. The first stop was the Senate; the next was the vice presidency.

Along the way, the Vance of Hillbilly Elegy – a teller of hard truths, a morally serious person committed to honesty even when it costs him, beholden to no one – has become a cynic, a partner in a cruel enterprise, a peddler of lies that he is surely intelligent enough to recognize as such, a man whose only firm commitment is his own rise to power.

In his memoir, Vance wrote: “Nothing compares to the fear of becoming the monster in your closet. » It’s a poignant phrase, referring to a man raised with the dependence and volatility he feared he would inherit. The monster Vance feared was a private monster; the monster he has become is public. His legacy turns out to be far more destructive than the one he feared he would inherit.

AMERICA WILL SURVIVE Trump and Vance; the question is whether they will be seen as a parenthesis that the country closes or as the opening of another dark chapter.

Abraham Lincoln, in his 1838 address to the Young Men’s Lyceum regarding the perpetuation of our political institutions, warned: “As a nation of free men, we must live through all times, or die by suicide.” » What Lincoln meant was that the threat America faced was not external conquest; it was an internal decadence. If destruction is to be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher.

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Lincoln was responding to a wave of mob violence in the 1830s, including lynchings such as the murder of abolitionist newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy. The “supports” that once supported a “political edifice of freedom and equal rights” were “rotten and collapsed.” From such decadence could arise a demagogue, a future tyrant, feeding on what Lincoln scholar Diana Schaub called “politically degenerative passions.”

The remedy, according to Lincoln, was a “political religion” based on respect for the law and fidelity to the American constitutional process. Lincoln in turn relied on the wisdom of George Washington, and in particular on his farewell speech. America’s two greatest presidents shared a profound belief: that a republic depends on a certain measure of virtue in its citizens and a certain measure of integrity in its leaders. Without them, the temple of freedom will collapse.

The last decade in the United States has been a lost decade. Far too many Americans applauded the temple-ripping men. But the Americans can now see, later than they should have, the cost of the damage. It is in our power to fix it. All that remains is to find the will. There is a name for those who do it: renovators of ruined cities, repairers of breaches, restorers of streets to live in.

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