I took a week off to go out of state. Did anything happen while I was gone?
Wow, what to write about? So much to choose from. I decided to go with JD Vance because he’s current news and also because he so perfectly represents Trumpism, the threat it represents, and why Trump absolutely must be beaten in November. It’s a truism in politics that a VP choice doesn’t matter. That’s really not the case here, because there’s really no space between JD Vance and the fascist threat of Trump. There’s really no space between JD Vance and the duplicitous nature of Trump and Trumpism. Vance doesn’t help Trump in the campaign, because he’s so closely aligned with everything which so offends the American majority about Trump.
- JD Vance wouldn’t have done his Constitutional duty by certifying the 2020 election.
- JD Vance has raised money for legal defense of the Jan 6 insurrectionists.
- JD Vance has advocated for directing the DOJ against political opponents.
- JD Vance has recommended prosecuting members of the press for saying things which displease the Trumpskyite radicals and for criticizing Trump.
- JD Vance has advocated that Trump should ignore the courts and Congress to do whatever he wants.
- JD Vance’s political career is a creation of anti-democracy billionaire Peter Thiel.
- JD Vance is an extreme opponent of reproductive freedom, someone who hasn’t seen a restriction on abortion he finds too radical.
- JD Vance is a Global Warming denier.
- JD Vance supports the Great Replacement theory of white supremacy.
JD Vance brings nothing to the Republican ticket because he so perfectly represents the racist, misogynistic, authoritarian hatred of the average MAGAt. Despite the closeness of the election, despite the trouble the Democratic ticket has found itself in over the past couple of weeks, Trump continues to harm his own electoral politics in a consistent, predictable way: He will always try to reduce his base to a majority. Trump fails math, he fails humanity, and he’ll fail in this election if Democrats turn out to vote.
And it is clear that Vance is deeply ensconced in the GOP’s growing “national conservative” faction, which pairs an inconsistent economic populism with an authoritarian commitment to crushing liberals in the culture war.
Vance has cited Curtis Yarvin, a Silicon Valley monarchist blogger, as the source of his ideas about firing bureaucrats and defying the Supreme Court. His Senate campaign was funded by Vance’s former employer, Peter Thiel, a billionaire who once wrote that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
He’s a big fan of Patrick Deneen, a Notre Dame professor who recently wrote a book calling for “regime change” in America. Vance spoke at an event for Deneen’s book in Washington, describing himself as a member of the “postliberal right” who sees his job in Congress as taking an “explicitly anti-regime” stance.
Vance is also an open admirer of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a right-wing politician who has systematically torn his country’s democracy apart. Vance praised Orbán’s approach to higher education in particular, saying he “made some smart decisions there that we could learn from in the United States.” The policies in question involve using national dollars to impose state controls over universities, turning them into vehicles for disseminating the government line.
In a profile of Vance, Politico reporter Ian Ward quotes multiple leading Republican figures — specifically, the leaders of the faction trying to turn these postliberal ideas into practice — saying that they see Vance as a leading advocate for their cause.
Top Trump advisor (and current federal inmate) Steve Bannon told Ward that Vance is “at the nerve center of this movement.” Kevin Roberts, the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the driving force behind Project 2025, told Ward that “he is absolutely going to be one of the leaders — if not the leader — of our movement.”
Enacting Trump’s dark ambitions
There is little doubt that Vance will continue in this role if elected vice president. He would enable all of Trump’s worst instincts, and put a brake on none — deploying his considerable intellectual and intrapersonal gifts toward bending the government to Trump’s will.
www.vox.com/…