J.D. Vance has been touting his knowledge of Appalachia through his book Hillbilly Elegy, even though he grew up in northern Ohio and knows very little about Appalachia, except for a collection of negative cliches that point to Appalachians as a bunch of genetically degenerate losers.
I actually grew up in a small town of about 3,000 in Appalachia — in the beautiful hills of southern Ohio — from age 7 to age 20.
Now that I’ve traveled the world, I have a global perspective on a lot of things. One thing that stands out to me is the frustration I feel with the computerized technology of everything. Even with all my online experience, I cringe at having to fill out an application for a bank account online, with passwords, proofs that I am not a robot, and instructions that I find incomprehensible. If I put myself in the shoes of some of my former Appalachian schoolmates who do not have my education or experience, I can see how they feel completely left out by society. No wonder they are angry, when they have just been rejected for a bank loan without being able to actually talk to anyone in person.
They HATE the educated elite, epitomized by Hillary Clinton, and they absolutely HATE being called ‘deplorables’ by East Coast snobs, but they adore uneducated people like themselves, who cannot figure out how to apply for a bank loan online. Enter Donald J. Trump. When he says that back in 1776 the Revolutionary Army took out the British Air Force, they can say, “Even WE know better than that.” In Trump they can actually look down on someone whom they can laugh at.
They probably like the fake image of J.D. Vance, especially that photo of him sitting with a shotgun in front of a pile of chopped wood. Makes him look like a real hillbilly. But if they read his book, they might see how he is looking down on them as a bunch of misfits.
He seems to treat Appalachians’ drug problems as genetic, as though there was a specific gene that makes them take drugs and then act stupidly. Back when I lived there, there was hardly a drug scene. Marijuana was just catching on, and that was more of a plaything for the upper class.
Vance’s condemnation of druggies turns a cause-effect relationship upside down. He points to drugs as the evil cause of all sorts of negative outcomes. I would argue that drugs are an effect, or result, of joblessness, of that feeling of despair, of being abandoned. In those circumstances, people turn to drugs as an escape hatch.
The magic of billionnaire Trump is that all his policies are designed to benefit the rich and screw the hillbillies, but since he is so anti-intellectual, they can identify with him. They share his victimhood. The feel that the whole establishment is out to get him…and them. They cheer when he says, “I am your vindication!”
West Virginia will vote solidly for Trump, even though all his policies are designed to screw them…take from the poor and give to the rich. They believe that he will ‘drain the swamp’ of all those ‘deep state’ educated East Coast liberals, and replace them with uneducated hillbillies like themselves.
I think that people are beginning to see through Vance as a phony and an opportunist. A second reading of Hillbilly Elegy might reveal that he is only writing a self-serving memoir, and that he doesn’t understand Appalachians at all.