JD Vance is if nothing else an astute and very agile politician. He doesn’t seem to put a foot wrong. He has very solid backing from the top. He’s gone from a never-Trumper to Trump’s VP pick.
Note: Links in this article are well worth a look. You don’t see a map of US conservatism like this often.
Vance’s background is well-traveled in ways that are exactly what you’d expect from a conservative machine part. The background is full of changes of position, jobs, and sudden moves into different areas. His rise from poverty to a high-flyer isn’t what most people do in 39 years of life. You can either be an idiot or you can have a career track like that. You can’t do both.
That’s also where the resemblance to a cookie-cutter conservative stops. Unlike his colleagues, he’s notably more articulate than most. He has a New York Times best seller under his belt. He can put a sentence together without heavy machinery. That’s almost unheard of on his side of politics.
He has the blessing of Peter Thiel, a billionaire and conservative insider. Thiel was instrumental to Vance’s rapprochement with Trump and his conversion to Catholicism. This is now the story of a tree that picks and chooses where to put its roots. That kind of support also goes places in conservative circles, and it has done just that.
From the look of his bio and other rather patchy bits of information, (see Politico’s heroic attempt to make sense of it) he looks like “our boy” for any conservative. He’s being groomed for success, you would understandably think.
I don’t get that impression or anything like it. This looks like a guy who knows how to ride the skateboard and turn it into a limo. He has all the attributes of a guy who knows how to get on the right train at the right time. Just as Trump has suddenly become a very unlikely and very lucky hero, Vance is suddenly VP candidate.
Coincidence? How?
Let’s also be clear about one thing in particular. This guy is no passing fool. He’s made very good and almost incredibly effective political moves. He’s atypical. What he says and what he does change focus. He’s not the pushover type.
If you’re on the other side of the political divide, he also comes with quite a bit of baggage. His statements are politically orthodox and ultra-conservative. He’s a neo-reactionary, a hardliner personal friend of Curtis Yarvin, the prime mover in the “anti-Enlightenment” or Dark Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment is when most modern ideas and societies originated. The Dark Enlightenment doesn’t like that. It supports a monarchy/autocracy. It believes that “freedom and democracy are incompatible” and similar self-contradictory hogwash. It’s an actual movement.
“So what?”, you may well ask. So, many of these movements are grafted on to political parties, is what.
This hyper-conservative thing is a regular feature of American politics. Most of them disappear without achieving anything. America First was started in the 1940s. It and many other old nationalist dirges were dredged up by Trump and MAGA as part of a unifying effort for the many different shades of conservatism.
Credible or otherwise, this selective affiliation is the career path of many politicians on both sides. The better you look, the further you get. You can ignore the contradictions on that very cosmetic basis. To get to the top, you need to know how to climb. The fact that someone like Vance would never have been allowed to learn to read or write in a Dark Enlightenment environment is neither here nor there. It doesn’t seem to bother him.
Vance is an unlikely devotee of many of these “niche” fanaticisms. It’s far more likely that they naively think he’s a young guy come to save their stagnant, obsolescent and utterly useless iconography.
…All of which may well, perhaps inevitably, lead to President Vance.
Here’s a hypothetical:
Dateline 2025 or 2026 – Trump is suddenly out of the picture. It doesn’t matter how. Bankruptcy legal issues, pressures of office, ill-health, “external pressures”, whatever, he’s out either in a box or not. There has rarely been anyone in US political history as vulnerable to his friends and associates as Trump. This is where the fan hits back.
Who’s VP?
Vance can blame Trump for anything and everything. He’s pretty much outside Trump’s black hole of disasters, not directly connected. In that situation, he’s the blue-eyed boy nobody on the right can afford to oppose. He’s a bit too good to be true in the murky backstabbing gloom of conservative politics. In come Vance’s contacts and appointees. Game over.
The New York Times has an opinion piece about Vance selling his soul with plenty of buyers. Methinks it’s the other way round.
Don’t underestimate Vance. He’s the guy with a future likely to last more than a couple of years.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
