0:00

Michael, Peter, what do you know about

0:02

Elegy?

0:03

I know that the book made the argument

0:05

that we have to understand rural

0:08

whites. So that they can run for Senate and

0:10

take our rights away.

0:25

So this is sort of a weird episode for

0:27

us an unusual episode because this

0:29

is a memoir -- Mhmm. -- the subtitle

0:31

of Hillbilly Elegy is a memoir

0:33

of a family and culture in

0:36

crisis. Okay. And it is, of course,

0:38

written by senator J.

0:41

D. Vance. Todd, it is jeez.

0:44

Sorry, but I'll be saying senator a lot just

0:46

for emphasis throughout the

0:48

episode.

0:48

We're already in the could kill part of the episode.

0:51

Yeah. What makes this

0:53

book pernicious. What makes it a good

0:56

book for a podcast is that when

0:58

it came out in twenty sixteen, it

1:00

was a sensation among

1:03

mainstream Liberals. Right. You have to

1:05

sort of situate yourself in twenty sixteen

1:07

to understand it. Were in the midst

1:09

of the ascendance of Trump. His

1:12

success, I suppose, just leaves

1:14

a lot of Liberals kind of stumped And

1:17

the dominant media narrative

1:19

that emerges

1:20

is that Trump was kind of

1:23

hoisted to victory by the white

1:25

working class. The

1:26

economically anxious among us. That's

1:28

right. The coverage

1:30

of this demographic was

1:33

just breathless. Yeah. Like they had discovered

1:35

a a new species of white

1:38

people. And every piece

1:40

of mainstream political reporting for, like,

1:42

six months was just a reporter wandering

1:45

into a waffle house. Right. And

1:47

being

1:47

like, today, we're speaking to the complete

1:49

buffoons, period, Donald Trump.

1:52

Just like physically shoving aside all

1:54

the minorities who live in the south. He's like,

1:56

no, I need the downtrodden

1:57

whites. So it's this moment that

1:59

catapults j d Vance to some fame

2:02

because Hillbelly LNG

2:04

came out in twenty sixteen before

2:06

the election and it allowed

2:08

him to position himself as like the

2:10

white working class whisperer. Right.

2:12

The guy who understood these people

2:14

and was here to explain them

2:17

to the New Yorker set. Right. The

2:19

blurbs in the book speak

2:21

volumes because you have, like, the basic

2:23

conservative David Brooks liked

2:25

it. Rod Dreyer. Oh. But then

2:28

also, Mother Jones,

2:30

Vox SLAIT, The

2:32

Daily Beast, The Atlantic, and

2:34

Bill Gates -- Oh, yeah. -- all

2:37

with kind words to say

2:39

Hillbilly Elegy. That's

2:41

worth noting because this is

2:43

a book that maligns poor

2:45

people. Mhmm. It's a book with very weird

2:47

racial politics. So

2:49

I wanna pull some of these themes out,

2:52

but also just talk about how and why

2:54

this stuff gets laundered for mainstream

2:56

consumption.

2:57

Right. And why this was such a

2:59

hit with liberals. It's the weird, like, self

3:01

flagellation industrial complex.

3:03

Mhmm. You know the old quote that a liberal

3:06

is someone who's too fair minded to take

3:08

his own side in an argument. Yeah.

3:10

It's like something about this sort of, I guess,

3:12

over analytical centric,

3:15

relatively well off, liberals,

3:17

that it's like we have to understand this.

3:19

Mhmm. And like basically keep digging until

3:21

you find something sympathetic. As

3:24

a philosophical principle, I think is really

3:26

good. Right? Being generous, being fair, but

3:28

also when that is not matched

3:31

by any similar impulse

3:33

on the other side. What you basically

3:35

have is an entire media where

3:37

it's like the conservatives are bashing

3:39

liberals and liberals are bashing

3:41

liberals. Yeah. I think that's right. And I also

3:43

think that another component of that is

3:45

that when someone like

3:47

Vance comes along, and

3:50

offers a criticism of, like, his own

3:52

people. Liberals eat that up

3:54

because to them

3:55

it seems like very thoughtful. Like, right? Almost

3:57

like self critical. And they're like, This is fascinating.

4:00

This is a man who is reflecting on

4:02

his own culture. This is like

4:04

when there's a, like, black conservative

4:07

who's, like, The left is making too big

4:09

of a deal about race these

4:10

days, and conservatives immediately elevate

4:12

them to, like, every talk show. They

4:13

should have put Candace Owens on the cover of this. To

4:16

give you the Elegy. Nemo

4:18

and my bootstraps. So I will do my best to

4:20

give you the the basic narrative here and,

4:22

you know, we're not gonna spend too much

4:24

time talking about the narrative itself, but I I wanna

4:26

go through it. So his

4:28

grandparents migrate from Appalachia into

4:31

the Russ bell town of Middletown,

4:33

Ohio. Mhmm. He's raised by

4:35

a combination of his mother, grandparents,

4:38

sister, and whatever man happens

4:41

to be in his mother's life at the time. Mhmm.

4:43

There are times when the book is

4:45

compelling, at least in the micro.

4:48

There are these stories about drug use,

4:50

about alcoholism, casual violence,

4:53

all in and around his family, all throughout

4:55

his life. His mother suffers from

4:57

addiction. She is constantly cycling

4:59

through relationships. She frequently

5:01

spirals into abusive behavior. She

5:04

attempts suicide at one point. And

5:07

because of all this, it's sort of his grandparents and

5:09

sister who really do the work of raising him.

5:12

His grandmother is the family, matriarch.

5:15

She's a firecracker, very profane,

5:17

very protective of the family, always

5:19

giving him life lessons, He

5:21

says that she has a sort of Hillbilly morality

5:24

and -- Oh. -- that means that she

5:26

is kind hearted, but also if someone, like,

5:28

insults the family or threatens the family in

5:30

some ways, she will immediately

5:33

go to

5:33

violence. She already sounds like Oscar

5:35

Bate for some ambitious

5:37

actress. Wants to play this for also. At

5:39

one point, his mother has a particularly bad

5:41

downward spiral where she begs

5:43

like eleven year old JD.

5:46

To give her a clean

5:48

urine sample. Mhmm. After which

5:50

he moves in with his

5:53

grandmother He's much happier,

5:55

gets much better grades, and he

5:57

sort of credits that period of stability

5:59

for him being able to get out of

6:01

there, basically. Mhmm. He goes straight to the

6:04

military who joins the Marines out of

6:06

high school. This is where the book gets

6:09

incredibly dull and derivative because

6:11

you're no longer hearing fun anecdotes about

6:13

growing up in Appalachia. And the rust

6:15

belt, instead, it's just like, boot camp

6:17

turned me into a man. It's like a Yeah. The

6:19

book just becomes the training montage from

6:21

GI Jane. Yeah. Yeah. Doing one arm push

6:23

ups in tank top. He gets sent to a

6:24

rock, and he says that he escaped any

6:27

real fighting. It turns out he was a

6:29

public affairs marine.

6:31

Which is a a marine who is

6:33

essentially like embedded PR.

6:35

Tom Cruise in the first ten minutes of edge of

6:37

tomorrow. Yes.

6:39

Yes. I am -- Everyone knows. -- so glad that

6:41

we can talk about Edge of Tomorrow. The

6:44

Weasily Short Kids. OF HOLLYWOOD.

6:48

HE GOES TO OHIO STATE AFTER THAT

6:51

AND FROM THERE HE GOES TO YEAH LAW

6:53

SCHOOL. And they're just countless

6:55

tedious anecdotes about all the

6:57

ways in which he's not accustomed to fancy

6:59

things. He's gawking, at

7:02

how clean the wine glasses are

7:04

at cocktail reception. Oh. How much silverware

7:06

there is at nice restaurants? He

7:09

he spits out sparkling water because

7:11

he didn't realize what it was and had and had never

7:13

heard of it.

7:13

Some of this feels fake. Yes. We all saw

7:15

Titanic. There's a whole fucking thing about

7:18

the silverware in there. That's like the

7:20

the poor kid who doesn't understand

7:22

upper crust society like starter

7:24

pack. So by the end of the book, he's

7:26

lost any remnants of his folksy

7:28

charm because, like, he is

7:30

an elite at the end of the book by every material

7:33

metric. Right? Yeah. But he's still trying to do the

7:35

same trick. So it's like, I'm just

7:37

simple country boy from Ohio. How would I

7:39

know which senator to work for? And it's

7:42

like, I don't Yeah. I suppose to relate to

7:44

this

7:44

somehow. These kinds of political memoirs always

7:46

have to kind of lie about their own

7:48

level of ambition. Right? Because if you end

7:50

up going to Yale, like, you really wanted

7:53

to go, which if there's nothing wrong with

7:55

that, But it's like in these books, I feel

7:57

like they usually have to present these

7:59

entrance to elite institutions as

8:01

like something that just happens to

8:03

you. Right. It's interesting because in

8:05

the book, he's writing himself as

8:07

if he literally stumbles into Yale Law. Right. And

8:09

it's sort of like, I don't know, as someone who went through

8:11

the law school application process,

8:14

you didn't stumble your way into your law. You

8:16

worked insanely hard in college. You

8:18

tried very hard on the lsat. Right. He sort

8:21

of will mention as he's getting older,

8:23

like, oh, I took a job for this state

8:25

senator. Yeah. He's sort of, like, acting

8:27

as if he was just, like, you know, taking a job so

8:29

we can get by. But No. He's climbing

8:32

up the political ladder so that he could

8:34

build his way to this very moment

8:36

when he's publishing this book trying to get

8:38

popular --

8:39

Right. -- so that he can eventually run for office.

8:41

Oh my god. It's like a Julia and Julia

8:44

where the end of the movie Is

8:46

Amy Adams getting a call from Nora Efren

8:48

wanting to turn her book into a movie?

8:51

So, like, what you've just watched

8:54

is the final chapter of her arc.

8:56

Yeah. Yeah. He's written a bestselling

8:58

political memoir about

9:00

becoming the kind of person who could

9:03

write a selling political memoir.

9:05

That's right. So he

9:07

meets his future wife at Yale, Usha.

9:10

She would go on to clear for chief justice

9:12

John Roberts. Oh. Impressive that he manages

9:14

to meet a conservative young lady

9:16

at an institution like Yale Long that is dominated

9:18

by Marxist.

9:19

Yes. That he was able to embark on a

9:21

heterosexual relationship on a college campus

9:23

without widespread protests.

9:25

One of the best cameos in the book

9:27

Is his mentorship by Professor Amy

9:29

Chua? The Tiger Mom. Oh,

9:30

the Tiger Mom. Yeah. Who

9:32

has since gotten into trouble at Yale

9:34

for some inappropriate remarks

9:36

while partying with students -- Yeah. --

9:38

and whose husband was suspended after

9:41

various students made allegations of sexual

9:43

harassment.

9:44

So the real cameo year is cancel

9:46

culture. From a young

9:48

boy roaming the hills of Appalachia to a

9:50

young man befriending our nation's most powerful

9:53

sex

9:53

perverts, American

9:55

dream, Mike. Yeah. It's a real Cinderella story

9:57

of a prestigious law school producing

9:59

a social conservative. Incredible.

10:02

I just wanna read you a quote before

10:04

we get to the socioeconomic

10:07

analysis within the

10:08

book. He says, I'm

10:10

the kind of patriot whom people on the

10:12

Accella Corridor laugh

10:13

at. Oh my fucking God. I choke up

10:15

when I hear Lee Greenwood's cheesy anthem,

10:17

proud to be an American. When I was sixteen,

10:20

I vowed that every time I met a veteran, I

10:22

would go out of my way to shake his or her hand

10:24

even if I had to awkwardly interject to

10:27

do

10:27

so. Okay. I'll say this. He's right about one

10:29

thing. As in a teleporter guy, I do laugh

10:31

at people like this.

10:33

When

10:34

I was sixteen, I vowed to always

10:36

immediately saw, any veteran that I saw.

10:38

I keep a stack of small American flags

10:40

with me at all times so I can burn them

10:42

on the acsella corridor. In case I see anybody

10:45

in uniform,

10:46

So the biggest issue with this

10:48

book is the way that Vance talks

10:51

about poverty. One of the first

10:53

things that he does is lay out

10:55

his thesis about the people of Appalachia.

10:58

He says that many people believe that the problems

11:00

in the region stem from the lack of

11:02

economic opportunity. He

11:05

says that's part of it, but it actually gets the

11:07

real problem backwards. The real

11:09

problem is a decaying culture

11:11

which in turn creates or

11:13

worsens poverty. He

11:15

tells the story of working

11:17

in a warehouse where there is a worker

11:19

who was chronically late and would take

11:21

multiple very long breaks every day.

11:24

When the guy is fired, he lashes

11:26

out at the boss saying, like, how could he

11:28

do this to me? Vance says that this

11:30

experience taught him that the problems with

11:32

the region, quote, run far deeper

11:34

than macroeconomic trends and policies

11:37

and that there

11:38

are, quote, too many young men

11:40

immune to hard work. I thought there were

11:42

all kinds of statistics about social mobility

11:44

in the United States, but it turns out

11:46

that a lazy guy got fired and was mad

11:48

about

11:48

it. So who's

11:51

say what's right. The prevailing theme of the book is that

11:53

working class whites would be

11:55

able to lift themselves out of poverty if

11:57

only they believed it were possible. And

11:59

it's their negativity, their

12:01

learned helplessness that keeps them

12:04

down.

12:04

Einstein taught us that the universe evolved

12:06

from thought that time is an

12:09

illusion. This is the overlap between

12:11

the secret and Hillbilly. Elegy true.

12:13

To believe this about America, you have to

12:15

believe that compared to other developed

12:17

nations, we just have higher rates

12:19

of bad

12:20

attitudes. I'm like, that's why there's

12:22

more poor people in America than there

12:24

are in Denmark. Right. You're looking at unemployment

12:27

chart. And in your mind, it's just

12:29

measuring laziness over time. Right. Exactly.

12:31

That's why he's always relying on anecdotes.

12:34

he's not a data guy. Right. There are

12:36

twenty one citations in the book total

12:38

-- Yes. -- which is low

12:41

in and of itself, but also especially

12:43

weird because he often makes factual

12:46

claims without citation. Mhmm. At one

12:48

point, he says that you can't rely on

12:50

surveys about how much people are working

12:52

because working class people lie about how

12:54

much they work. Huge problem.

12:57

Huge problem. And

13:00

then later, he refers to a groundbreaking

13:02

study about upward mobility in America,

13:04

but he doesn't cite either one.

13:07

And I don't think he's lying about them.

13:09

I just think he's immune to

13:11

the hard work of citing them. I had to guess.

13:14

So let's a little bit big picture here. I don't

13:16

wanna harp on his inability to cite

13:18

things properly. He talks about data

13:20

that shows that people without degrees

13:23

without college degrees are working less

13:25

than people with college degrees. There's

13:27

competing data on this, but I think that the best

13:29

data shows that that's basically true. They work

13:31

fewer hours overall. But

13:33

the primary reason that people without college

13:36

degrees work fewer hours is that there

13:38

is less work available to them. Right?

13:40

There's tons of data about this. I used a lot

13:42

of data from the Georgetown Center on Education and

13:44

the workforce. Vance is publishing this in

13:46

twenty sixteen. In the two thousand eight recession,

13:49

Workers with a high school education or

13:51

less lost five point six

13:54

million jobs. Mhmm. In the recovery,

13:56

They recovered eighty thousand

13:59

of those jobs. Oh, wow. They left

14:01

the recession with five

14:03

point five million fewer

14:06

jobs in twenty sixteen. Right? Then there

14:08

were in two thousand seven. Right. If you look at workers

14:10

with bachelor's degrees, they left that

14:12

same period with a net gain of

14:14

eight point five million jobs.

14:17

Right. This is like the fundamental problem

14:19

with Vance's thesis. Right? He's claiming

14:21

that the real issue in Appalachia and the Russ

14:23

Belt is this cultural unwillingness

14:26

to

14:26

work. But there is quite

14:28

literally less work to do than there was

14:30

before. You

14:31

could snap your fingers and give everyone in his town

14:33

a great work ethic. Unemployment would still be

14:35

relatively high because you still run into the

14:37

wall of fewer available

14:38

jobs. Right. Right? You're not gonna reopen the factories

14:40

with good work ethic. The funny thing is this has also

14:43

ended up screwing over people with bachelor's

14:45

degrees because a lot of those people graduated from college

14:47

during their recession and ended up taking, like,

14:49

entry level jobs for which they don't even

14:52

really need a bachelor's degree. Mhmm. The

14:54

people without bachelor's

14:55

degrees, like, they just can't claw their way into any

14:57

entry level position because all those positions are

14:59

taken up by people with college degrees. Right.

15:01

And, you know, the data bears all of this

15:03

out. Like, fifty years ago, a

15:07

considerable majority of jobs were available

15:09

to anyone without a college degree.

15:11

And now it's a small minority. I

15:13

think it's something like thirty percent. It's

15:15

super bizarre to individualize

15:17

this like obviously structural problem.

15:20

It's also very funny because conservatives never

15:22

apply the same logic to the wealthy. Right.

15:24

Oh, Americans make less money than

15:26

people in other developed countries. Maybe we

15:28

just have shittier rich people here.

15:30

JT. Maybe our rich are just

15:32

the fucking worst. Right. Right? Like,

15:35

that guy who was a bad worker

15:37

and got fired and was mad about it. Like,

15:39

okay, fine. I see you and raise

15:41

you Donald's sterling. Yeah.

15:43

Yeah. Yeah. If if --

15:45

Right. -- we're building US policy around,

15:48

like, the cultural malignancy of

15:51

certain societal groups, I

15:53

would like to start at,

15:55

like, the country clubs and work our

15:57

way

15:57

down. Alright. I'm going to send you

16:00

little excerpt This is a story

16:02

from when JD Vance was a young man

16:04

working in a local grocery

16:06

store. That

16:06

was my first job too. Why bet you didn't work

16:08

as hard as JD Vance?

16:12

That is fucking true. That is absolutely accurate.

16:16

I also learned how people gained

16:18

the welfare system. They'd ring up their

16:20

orders separately, buying food with food stamps

16:23

and beer, wine, and cigarettes with cash.

16:25

They'd regularly go through the checkout line speaking

16:27

on their cell phones. I could never understand

16:30

why our lives felt like a struggle while those

16:32

living off of government largess enjoyed

16:34

trinkets that I only dreamed

16:36

about. Mhmm. Why American

16:39

social welfare famously too generous.

16:41

Yep. This is why we have such a low rates of poverty

16:44

and such high rates of hammock naps. So

16:47

First of all, like, yeah, food stamp fraud

16:50

happens and is real. Fraud rates

16:52

are very low though. Something like one

16:54

percent of benefits. Yeah. Also, some of this

16:57

is not even fraud. Right. Like buying

16:59

food with food stamps and then beer with

17:01

cash. That's not illegal. That's just

17:03

how buying things

17:04

works. They all do that with, like, they probably buy food

17:06

with food stamps and then they buy, like, diapers with cash

17:08

because diapers aren't right covered by food

17:10

stamps. Just because

17:11

you're on food stamps doesn't mean you're not allowed to buy other

17:13

things with cash. I

17:16

love how he starts out by saying, I saw

17:18

poor people gaming the system, and then it's

17:20

just a description of people on the verge

17:22

of having a nice time.

17:23

Also, He says that their life feels

17:25

like a struggle while those living off

17:27

of government largess enjoyed

17:30

trinkets that I had only dreamed about, But

17:32

later in the book, he admits that his family

17:34

did receive government benefits. And in

17:36

fact, it's a big part of how his grandmother

17:38

put food on the table. It's just this,

17:40

like, deserving and undeserving poor

17:43

thing that he does. That's right. Like, of course,

17:45

my family should be receiving

17:47

welfare. We're some of the good

17:48

ones. We put to good use. It's like the

17:50

debate online about like ghosting,

17:53

like whether it's okay to just stop calling somebody

17:55

that you met on like a dating app on the Internet

17:57

and it's like ghosting is conclusively something

17:59

that is done to you, not

18:02

something that you do to other people. Like by

18:04

definition, I've never ghosted on anyone,

18:06

but it's like this behavior that it's like

18:08

the the government benefits that I

18:09

get, like, that's not government largest. That's just like helping

18:11

us out in a difficult time.

18:13

Right. But these people are on their cell phones,

18:15

Peter. They're playing angry birds when

18:17

they should be going to church and joining an

18:19

NLM. Yeah. That's

18:21

right. Yeah. So I've

18:23

sent you something else okay.

18:26

Okay.

18:27

I just read the whole day. Okay. I

18:29

I like where he's going with us. Alright. He

18:32

says to many analysts, terms

18:34

like welfare queen conjure unfair

18:37

images of the lazy black mom living

18:39

on the dole. Readers of this book will realize

18:41

quickly that there is little relationship between

18:43

that vector and my argument, I've known

18:46

many welfare queens. Some of them

18:48

were my neighbors and all were white.

18:51

Love it. So it's like Don't

18:53

use the welfare queen stereotype on black

18:55

moms. Use it on

18:57

everybody. You might think that I'm racist,

18:59

wrong. I hate all poor people.

19:02

He he basically says in so many words,

19:05

racism is real. I'm not saying it's not real,

19:07

but I wanna talk about

19:09

a kind of poverty that

19:11

is experienced by white people. Right?

19:14

And if you look at

19:16

just the book, there's not much more than that.

19:18

But if you look at some of his other work,

19:21

there are times when he trots out

19:24

white poverty as sort

19:26

of like a defense against

19:29

claims of discrimination. Right? Right.

19:31

There are poor white people too,

19:33

so the relative poverty of black

19:35

people

19:36

isn't proof of anything. That's like my

19:38

favorite response to police brutality

19:41

accusations that it's like, look, they

19:43

shot this white guy. Right.

19:49

Like, I'm not owned by this at all.

19:51

Vance does hedge quite a bit

19:53

he will say like, look, we can't discount

19:56

systemic issues that cause

19:58

poverty. Right? I think that he's

20:00

basically doing that to maintain appropriate

20:03

level of deniability -- Right. -- because he

20:05

never dives into that

20:07

meaningfully. It's always just sort

20:09

of a disclaimer Right. But of course,

20:12

the primary thesis of the

20:14

book. I mean, it it's called a

20:16

memoir of a family and culture

20:18

in crisis. Right? Right. It's not

20:20

called, you know, memoir of

20:23

a region that has been systematically

20:25

separated from the wealth of the

20:27

rest of the country. It's also very funny if you were

20:29

looking at a foreign country and you

20:32

saw like there's a really poor region of

20:34

like Peru or something -- Mhmm. -- and

20:36

someone told you that like there used to be all these

20:38

mines where they employed a bunch of people,

20:40

and then all of those employers have like

20:42

shut down and there's far fewer jobs. You'd be

20:44

like, well, yeah, that's probably why there's so much unemployment

20:46

there. But he's like, no, no, no, no. Right.

20:49

Attitudes of the people

20:50

change. I mean, I think he has sort of like a combination

20:53

of explanations. Yeah. One of them is

20:55

a very bizarre ethnic explanation

20:58

where he says it, like, the region is primarily

21:00

Scott's Irish -- Oh,

21:02

my garbage. -- really he's going

21:04

back like, eighteen hundreds

21:06

races of words like, oh, there's too many swore

21:08

the Italians.

21:11

The other the more sensible sort of

21:13

explanation that he occasionally hints at

21:15

is that you have systemic poverty

21:18

causing these cultural issues.

21:20

To some degree -- Mhmm. -- but then the cultural

21:22

issues perpetuate, which I think is like

21:25

sort of true in a vacuum, but

21:27

it's also like the whole story. Like,

21:32

the systemic poverty needs

21:34

to come first. It must come first.

21:36

Right. And the output is these

21:38

cultural artifacts that

21:40

are associated with poverty. Right?

21:42

So he's sort of like skipping over

21:44

the fact that he's getting it exactly

21:46

backwards. Right. And also even

21:48

if you wanna argue that it's like culture

21:50

is the most important factor or whatever,

21:53

what can we do about it? Right. What would

21:56

fixing a culture even mean? I mean, that's

21:58

just like lecturing people until they have different

22:00

attitudes. Well, I I think what he's actually

22:02

advocating for, although he doesn't

22:05

say it super explicitly, is

22:08

fewer interventions by

22:10

the government.

22:11

Right.

22:11

Well, that's always where it comes back to. Yeah. Right.

22:13

To punish them for their laziness. Rather,

22:16

right, then reward quote unquote.

22:18

They're lazy. That's right. That's

22:20

what he sort of hints at. You can see

22:22

it in his other writings at the time like he

22:24

wrote for national review at the time that

22:27

he's publishing this book. Mhmm. And he's got

22:29

pieces about how he thinks welfare and Appalachia

22:31

has failed and -- Right. -- is not productive.

22:34

So That is the end game here. Right.

22:36

The irony is that, like, the decline of Appalachia

22:39

economically actually lines

22:41

up really well with cuts to welfare.

22:44

Right. Right. So, yes, if cutting

22:46

welfare worked, you

22:48

would think you would have seen some improvement in

22:51

Appalachian poverty rates rather than

22:53

what we've actually

22:54

seen, which is a severe

22:56

decline in the standards of living

22:58

across the region.

22:59

Unfortunately, we have no choice but to keep cutting

23:01

until I never see anyone at a grocery store

23:03

with a cell phone.

23:05

Alright. I'm gonna send you another quote.

23:07

Okay. He says, this was my

23:09

world. A world of truly irrational

23:12

behavior. We spend our way into

23:14

the poor house. We buy giant TVs

23:16

and iPads. Our children wear nice

23:18

clothes, thanks to high interest credit cards

23:20

and payday loans. We purchase homes

23:22

we don't need, refinance them for more

23:24

spending money and declare bankruptcy. Often

23:26

leaving them full of garbage in our wake.

23:28

Thrift is inimical to our being.

23:30

We spend to pretend that we're upper class.

23:33

And when dust clears, when bankruptcy hits

23:35

or a family member bails us out of our stupidity,

23:37

there's nothing left over. Nothing for the

23:39

kids college tuition. No investment to

23:41

grow our wealth. No rainy day fund if someone

23:43

loses her job. We know we shouldn't spend

23:45

like

23:46

this. Sometimes we beat ourselves up over

23:48

it, but we do it anyway. Who loves the

23:50

we in here? I was gonna talk about

23:52

the we because he's trying to create

23:54

this impression that he's like talking about

23:56

himself too. Right. I'm empathetic. But

23:59

the book is literally full of tales

24:01

of him making wise financial decisions

24:03

and, like, generally being responsible directly

24:07

contrasted with those around him. It's like

24:09

here I was working hard at the grocery

24:11

store while the poor people, you

24:13

know, strolled by me with cellphones and beer.

24:15

Right. It's gross. And again, just

24:17

like another demand that poor people

24:20

lead, like, punishingly frugal

24:22

lives -- Right. -- or else we can

24:25

write them off as moral failures. Right?

24:27

Like, oh, you say you're poor, but

24:29

you have a TV. Right. I

24:31

feel like a service always reach for TVs

24:33

when they're

24:34

like,

24:34

look how nice the lives the poor, but, like, TVs

24:36

are unbelievably cheap now.

24:38

Right. I mean, there's the famous Fox

24:40

News clip being like,

24:42

did you know that ninety nine point

24:44

something percent of people below the poverty

24:47

line have

24:47

refrigerator. Right. Right.

24:50

It's very well established. That lower

24:52

income people spend a higher

24:54

share of their income on core needs

24:56

than higher income people. There were a

24:58

couple of economists from Duke and

25:00

University of Texas Austin that

25:02

analyzed consumer expenditure data

25:05

and found that lower income families

25:07

and that's families with income under

25:09

two times the property owner. Spend

25:11

about seventy five percent of

25:14

their total income on food,

25:16

transportation, rent, utilities, and

25:18

cell phone service.

25:19

Mhmm. The idea that there's this like big

25:21

problem with frivolous spending

25:23

in poor communities It's just -- Right. --

25:25

fiction. It's just bootstrapped bullshit.

25:28

They want you to write

25:30

off their suffering by

25:32

imagining that it's the product of

25:35

a series of terrible decisions that

25:37

you don't have to have any empathy

25:38

for. This whole thing is so weird to maybe always blaming

25:40

the people with the least amount of power. Like,

25:42

I think that some people probably did buy, like,

25:45

way too much house in the run up to

25:47

the two thousand eight crash. Sure. But also, like,

25:49

that's because those people were being told systematically

25:51

that that was a good investment and the housing market

25:54

couldn't crash. Right? Who's the villain in that

25:56

scenario? The person who should

25:58

have known better who was fucking lying to

26:00

them? Or the people who, like, believed someone

26:02

who they thought had more expertise. Right. And

26:04

also, frankly, you shouldn't have to make

26:06

a flawless series of

26:08

financial decisions to get through

26:09

life.

26:10

I will also say On the cell phone's

26:12

thing, if you're a poor person,

26:14

getting a smartphone is probably one of the

26:16

best investments you could possibly make how

26:18

would you get a job without one? Right.

26:21

You either need email or phone. Like,

26:23

you need a phone. You need a phone to, like, function

26:25

in our society these days. The idea that it's

26:27

a luxury is just false. It's not it's objectively

26:30

not correct. So also, note that he says,

26:32

our children wear a nice clothes, thanks to

26:34

high interest credit cards and payday loans.

26:37

Particularly notable because later

26:39

in the book, there's a weird digression where he defends

26:41

payday lending. Nice. Which

26:44

is great because it's like he's sort of ideing

26:46

the fact that, like, at the time of writing this book, he's

26:49

a creepy venture capital guy now. Yeah.

26:51

And then, like, payday loans are good and you're

26:53

like, oh, right. I forgot that he's still looking really

26:55

asshole. Yeah. He's just defending whoever's in power.

26:57

I mean, this is just like the classic conservative thing.

26:59

Like, whatever hierarchy exists in the world

27:01

must be

27:02

just. And so, of course, you defend the

27:04

payday lender and criticize the people who take

27:06

out payday loans. Right. So Vance

27:09

tells a story about how a payday loan once helped

27:11

him avoid an overdraft fee.

27:13

And then he says that government officials

27:15

who want to ban the practice are ignoring

27:18

stories like his. What?

27:23

When I moved to Sydney, when I was nineteen, I

27:25

was all of sudden like drinking age, which

27:27

I hadn't been before, and I started going

27:29

to gay bars and didn't know how to hit on dudes.

27:31

So I would walk up to them. This is when you could smoke

27:33

in bars and restaurants. I would walk up to people and

27:35

bump a cigarette. Because I, like, didn't know how

27:38

else to start conversations. And

27:41

so I basically ended up making out with

27:43

a bunch of, like, chimney mouse dudes because I didn't

27:45

know what else. And I could just imagine myself

27:47

testifying at like a congressional hearing

27:49

and being like, when you regulate cigarettes,

27:52

you're taking that experience away.

27:55

You're preventing nineteen ninety nine from having

27:57

repeatable sex. This is disgusting.

28:00

Oh, man. When this book first came

28:02

out, it it was very interesting to see

28:04

the spate of great reviews.

28:07

And then a handful of people being like,

28:09

this is gross, and yes,

28:12

gawking and pointing at poor

28:15

people. Right. A lot of those reviewers

28:17

were from Appalachia. Right? And they

28:19

could immediately clock this --

28:21

Right. -- whereas I think a lot of mainstream

28:24

sources that review this book We're

28:26

relatively well off journalists, etcetera,

28:29

who are happy to believe this stuff

28:31

if someone kind of gives them the right

28:33

framing and the right sort of

28:35

skis.

28:35

But then did we skip over the part

28:38

where, like, he's not even really from Appalachia.

28:40

So Not only is he

28:43

not really from Appalachia, but

28:46

even his grandmother left when

28:48

she was sort of young -- Right. -- the the

28:50

book sort of bounces between the rust belt

28:52

and Appalachia because he's

28:54

growing up in Middletown, Ohio, and

28:57

he's often in Jackson

28:59

Kentucky. Right. A big part of

29:01

his narrative is that

29:04

people moved from the mountains into

29:06

the rust belt and so a lot of the culture

29:09

carries over. Hi. Yes. You

29:11

could say that about anywhere in America though.

29:13

I mean Yeah.

29:14

It it felt a little bit squishy,

29:16

and I will

29:16

-- Yeah. --

29:17

note that there have been people who basically

29:19

said he's not from there.

29:21

My my dad is from Ohio. I wouldn't describe

29:23

myself as like from the Midwest. didn't

29:25

know I was talking to a real Hillbilly, Michael.

29:31

But which fork do I use, Peter? Which fork do I use? Which fork do Peter? Which fork

29:33

do I use in front of man? Like, there's just this

29:35

weird sort of, like, stolen valor thing that's

29:38

over all of

29:38

this. Yeah. I mean, I think he

29:40

would claim that he

29:43

spent a lot of time there, etcetera. And

29:46

that he's, you know, basically familiar enough with

29:48

the culture. But I think

29:51

it's safe to say that based

29:53

on what we know about JD Vance's opportunism

29:57

and his relationship to the

29:59

truth, Yeah. It's more

30:02

accurate to look at him as

30:04

just sort of part of

30:07

the let's all go

30:09

into a rural diner -- Yeah. -- and do some

30:11

interviews -- Yeah. -- style of

30:13

journalism than it is to

30:15

view him as someone who

30:18

is really from there telling you the story.

30:20

Right? Right. There are people from

30:22

Appalachian who study

30:24

Appalachia who have all

30:27

sorts of interesting and

30:30

nuanced things to say about the region.

30:32

There was like there was more than one

30:34

book that was written in response

30:36

to this book. There was one called Appalachian

30:38

reckoning, which is like a collection of essays.

30:41

And It's a good reminder that,

30:43

like, there are academics who study

30:45

this stuff. Right? I think

30:47

what J. D. Vance is is

30:50

a guy who is really

30:52

in his soul a cosmopolitan

30:54

type. Right? Right. He this is someone

30:56

who wanted to be

30:58

to be in politics who wanted to go

31:00

to a snazzy law

31:02

school, who wanted to do

31:04

venture capital. Perhaps

31:06

he exaggerated his association with

31:09

Appalachian

31:09

-- Yeah.

31:10

-- to allow himself to

31:12

write this book. The funny thing is if you really

31:14

wanna understand Trump voters,

31:16

it's not even clear to me that you would be looking

31:19

to, like, poor people in Appalachia. Like, you would

31:21

be looking to well off

31:23

use car dealers in the

31:26

Philadelphia excerpts.

31:27

Yeah. That's probably a good segue

31:30

into this book's relationship with

31:32

race. Oh, which is very weird and

31:34

it's certainly not the book's focus.

31:37

Mhmm. But again, you know, he starts off

31:39

talking about how much of Appalachian ancestry

31:42

is Scott Irish. He

31:44

is describing the distinct ethnography

31:46

of the region. And he's also

31:49

consistently talking about the white working

31:51

class. So there's like this implied

31:53

racial discussion happening throughout the

31:55

book. But whenever the

31:57

question of race comes up directly, he

32:00

is always downplaying it. As

32:02

soon as page eight of the book, he says

32:05

that he hopes people avoid, quote,

32:07

filtering their views through a racial

32:09

prism when they talk about poverty.

32:12

Okay? I'm gonna send you page

32:14

of the book He is talking here

32:16

about negative perceptions of

32:19

Barack Obama --

32:20

k. -- in the rust belt. He says, Many

32:22

of my new friends blame racism for this

32:24

perception of the president. But the president

32:26

feels like an alien to many middletonians for

32:29

reasons that have nothing to do with skin color. Recall

32:31

that not a single one of my high school classmates

32:33

attended an Ivy league school. Barack Obama

32:36

attended two of them and excelled at both.

32:38

He is brilliant, wealthy, and speaks like a

32:40

constitutional law professor, which of course

32:42

he is. Nothing about him bears any resemblance

32:45

to the people I admire growing up. He made

32:47

his life in Chicago, a dense metropolis, and

32:49

he conducts himself with a confidence that comes

32:51

from knowing that the modern American meritocracy

32:53

was built for him. Of course, Obama

32:56

overcame adversity in his own right, adversity

32:58

familiar to many of us, but that was long

33:00

before any of us knew him. Barack Obama

33:02

strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities.

33:05

He is a good father while many of us aren't.

33:07

He wears suits to his job while we wear

33:09

overalls if we're lucky enough to have a

33:11

job at all. His wife tells us we shouldn't

33:13

be feeding our children certain foods and

33:16

we hate her for it. Not because we think

33:18

she's wrong, but because we know she's right.

33:21

What is

33:22

this? This one black

33:24

dude did find so racism doesn't

33:26

exist or something? I mean, he's trying to

33:28

say that Obama is

33:30

just sort of like an elite. Right.

33:32

And that's why people

33:34

in the Russ belt don't really like him.

33:36

And it's like, okay. That's almost

33:39

certainly part of it. Sure.

33:41

But he's like, look, he wears

33:43

a suit to work. And

33:45

it's like, yeah, he's the president.

33:47

Right. When when's the last time

33:50

you saw president who didn't consistently wear

33:52

a suit. Yeah. It's just like this

33:54

weird excuse making to

33:57

avoid the idea that race is

33:59

a part of why people did

34:01

not like

34:02

Obama. It's also weird because his description

34:04

of Obama here sounds like a description of

34:06

him. Yes. And the fact that these, like,

34:08

rural whites don't hate J. D. Vance

34:10

to the same extent -- Yeah. -- does actually

34:12

indicate that race might have something to do with

34:14

it. Right.

34:15

Although they also kinda hate J. D. Vance. So Well,

34:18

that's different because he deserves that. It's fine. There's a couple

34:21

other areas where he just, like, downplays race

34:23

in weird ways. He describes

34:26

the racial makeup of his hometown

34:28

as, quote, lots of white

34:30

and black people but few others. It's

34:33

actually eighty five percent white. Okay.

34:35

I don't get why he would imply that it

34:37

wasn't overwhelmingly white except

34:39

to, like, avoid a conversation about race.

34:42

Right. Early in the book, Vance

34:44

lists a handful of academics who

34:47

he thinks have done valuable work on social

34:49

mobility. And one of them is Charles

34:52

Murray, author of

34:54

the bell curve.

34:54

Unfortunately,

34:55

the IQs are just too low. The IQs

34:57

just aren't there for people to have jobs.

35:00

And it goes a little beyond that in

35:02

November of twenty sixteen at the American

35:04

Enterprise Institute, a big conservative

35:06

libertarian think tank that employs Marie.

35:10

Hosted an event where Murray

35:12

interviewed JD Vance about the book.

35:14

At one point, they joked about Vance

35:17

having pretty clean Scott's

35:19

Irish blood. If

35:23

there's one thing I love about this J. D. Vance guy. It's

35:25

his skull shape. His brain pain.

35:27

Now there's almost no discussion of sexuality

35:30

in this book at all. Okay. There's

35:32

one anecdote about

35:34

homosexuality. JD is

35:36

eight or nine years old. Okay.

35:39

And he thinks that he might be gay.

35:41

Because he doesn't really like girls and his

35:43

friends or boys. Right? He hears about

35:45

gay people and he's

35:46

like, that might be me. That's what gay is. And

35:48

this is the anecdote that ensues. He

35:50

says, I broached this issue with mama

35:52

confessing that I was gay and worried that I

35:54

would burn in hell. She said, don't be

35:56

a fucking idiot. How could you know you're gay?

35:59

I explained my thought process. Mamma

36:01

chuckled and seemed to consider how she might explain

36:03

to avoid my age. Finally, she

36:06

asked, JD, do you wanna suck dicks?

36:08

I was flabbergasted. Why would someone

36:10

wanna do that? She repeated herself

36:12

and I said, of course not. Then she

36:14

said, you're not gay. And even if you

36:16

did want a septics, that would be okay.

36:19

God would still love you. Alright.

36:21

I'm into this book

36:22

now. It's fine. It is

36:24

interesting that presumably the implication

36:27

here is that eight year old

36:28

J. D. Vance did wanna eat pussy.

36:32

That's

36:32

not my memory of being a eight year old, but, you know,

36:34

get into each his or her own. Although

36:36

according to the Sopranos, that's also gay. That's

36:38

Right? That's right. So either

36:41

way, this is a good example of just like

36:43

fairly open deception. Right? This

36:45

is like a little aside thrown

36:48

in to reassure liberal readers

36:50

that he's on the level. Right? Like, even

36:53

his firecracker, grandmother, didn't

36:55

really care if you're gay or

36:57

not. But spoiler alert, J.

36:59

D. Vance is a senator now, so

37:01

we might have some insight into his

37:03

views about LG BT people that we

37:05

threatened in twenty sixteen. God,

37:07

over the last fifteen, twenty

37:09

years, I've become so frustrated

37:11

with the way that, like, being cool

37:14

with gay people has become a cover

37:16

for just like a huge iceberg

37:19

of evil reactionary beliefs of, like,

37:21

people like Peter Teal who are just like

37:23

straightforward, far right, But then

37:25

he's like, oh, but he's gay. Okay. Well, it's complicated.

37:28

And it's like this sort of stuff too, it's like just

37:30

because you're okay with gay people doesn't

37:32

invalidate the other like ninety

37:34

nine beliefs that you're laying

37:36

out. And also now there's like an extra

37:38

asterisk where it's like well, other

37:41

than the groomers. Yeah.

37:42

Like Yeah. So

37:47

Let's talk a bit about the liberal response

37:49

to this book. Again, Liberals

37:53

and moderate mainstream media

37:55

sources just loved it. The

37:57

New York Times called it a compassionate discerning

38:01

sociological analysis of the

38:03

White Underclass. Oh my God. He spoke

38:05

at the Brookeings Institute. Vox

38:07

gave him extensive coverage. There

38:10

were only a handful of negative reviews

38:12

of the book. Right. Sarah Jones, who I

38:14

spoke with, to prepare for this, she was

38:16

writing for the New Republic at the time, and she wrote a

38:18

critical piece. Jacqueline published

38:20

a critical review also

38:22

by someone who's from Appalachia. And

38:25

so I was sort of like, why?

38:28

Like, what what is causing all

38:30

of these lips to embrace

38:34

such an obviously reactionary

38:36

message. And when I asked people

38:38

from Appalachian about this, their response,

38:41

first and foremost, was like, well, this is just

38:43

how mainstream Americans, liberal or

38:45

not, have always talked about us. Yeah.

38:47

Poor people within Appalachia have

38:49

always served as a bit of a punchline in

38:51

American culture. And I do think

38:54

that that helps explain why so many

38:56

people are comfortable with

38:57

it. Mhmm. But I'm not sure that it explains,

39:00

like, the media phenomenon of the book.

39:02

Right? It

39:03

doesn't explain it getting so much

39:05

tension and JD Vance being elevated

39:07

to the degree he was. Mhmm. My best

39:09

educated guess, what happened here was

39:11

that At a time when

39:14

Liberals were so frustrated with

39:16

the ascendance of Trump, it

39:18

was cathartic for them

39:20

in that political moment to hear these

39:22

people who they associated with Trump

39:25

disparaged and blamed for

39:27

their own predicament. There's this sort

39:29

of pre disposition and American culture

39:32

to disparaging the poor. Right? It's just part of

39:34

our culture that it's sort of near fault.

39:36

But The political moment

39:39

allowed Liberals to sort of grab that with

39:41

both hands. Mhmm. Because in

39:44

their minds, this book was

39:46

insulting to Trump voters, and

39:48

it was telling them that what was

39:51

really happening with Trump voters was

39:53

that they were like society's

39:54

losers, and they're lashing out at you,

39:57

society's winners. I think what's so weird

39:59

is because, you know, I didn't read the book. But

40:01

at the time, I always saw it framed

40:03

as like sympathy -- Mhmm. -- for

40:05

poor rural whites and almost like a distraction

40:08

from The very obvious racism

40:10

that drove Trump's victory in the

40:12

election. Mhmm. There was this weird explosion

40:15

after the election of looking for any explanation

40:18

other than, like, the most obvious one.

40:20

Yeah. Someone appealed to their racism

40:22

of white people. Yeah. And so it's weird

40:24

that the actual book is like blaming

40:27

rural whites, but the framing of

40:29

the book by people who didn't read it or people like me

40:31

who just read reviews was exonerating

40:33

rural white.

40:34

Yeah. I mean, I think that a lot of

40:36

that is the output of him doing

40:38

that like faux empathy where he's, you

40:40

know, we spend too much

40:42

on TVs. Right? I think

40:44

that that gave people just enough

40:46

deniability. Right? I mean, The New York

40:48

Times is calling it compassionate. It's

40:51

not a compassionate view of

40:53

these people. It's a sharply

40:55

critical view. Right. One interesting thing

40:57

about this is that as much as

41:00

Liberals read this

41:02

and heard what they wanted to hear, conservatives

41:05

did too. And when

41:07

you read, like, national reviews review

41:10

of the book Mhmm. -- it is

41:12

embracing these, like,

41:14

really reactionary aspects. Right.

41:17

They summarize the book by saying that

41:19

it chronicles how white

41:21

Apple Ashers have, quote, followed

41:24

the black underclass and native

41:26

Americans not just into family

41:28

disintegration, addiction, and other

41:30

pathologies, but also perhaps into the

41:32

most important self sabotage of

41:34

all. The crippling delusion that they

41:36

cannot improve their lot by their

41:38

own effort.

41:39

Jesus Christ. That's

41:41

dark. It's fucking nasty. Yeah.

41:43

A lot of what sort of slips

41:45

under the radar to Liberals,

41:48

is immediately clocked by conservatives and

41:51

sort of held up as the crux of

41:53

the book. Right? Right. National review as

41:55

disgusting as that quote is is correctly

41:58

identifying the precise theme of the book.

42:00

Right. You know, if you're a conservative, you've been

42:02

blaming the black poor

42:04

and Native American poor for

42:06

their plight for

42:07

decades, and this is Vance

42:09

doing the same exact thing to the whiteboard. It's very

42:11

funny that he was cast at the time as like

42:13

the conservative who is pushing back

42:15

like, he's not, like, the other conservatives. And

42:17

then actual conservatives were, like, no, we like

42:19

this guy. Mhmm. It's Liberals who are missing

42:22

it. Right? It's incredible how many people

42:24

heard what they wanted to hear when they were reading this

42:26

book.

42:26

Does that come through in the movie? I haven't seen it.

42:28

It's hard to say that the movie has a message

42:30

because It's just sort

42:33

of like taking the narrative portion

42:35

of the story, removing everything else

42:37

and holding it up, and throwing Amy Adams

42:39

and and Glenn Close at it, and asking for

42:41

Oscars. Wow. I'm a big Amy Adams

42:43

fan and -- Same. -- a real enemy

42:46

of her

42:46

agent.

42:47

Yeah. Yeah. Hashtag save

42:49

Amy. Something happened after did the arrival.

42:51

Yes.

42:52

She forgot to read her career backwards

42:54

to herself. I think it

42:56

happened. Yeah. The movie I mean, god, it's

42:58

bizarre. It takes like the usual liberties

43:01

with the story. Mhmm. I do need to talk

43:03

about the most inexplicable addition.

43:06

Which is a line about the movie

43:08

Terminator to Judgment Day. What?

43:10

Yeah. In the book, Mamma is a

43:12

fan of the Terminator. But

43:14

in the movie, they add a

43:16

line where she says everyone

43:19

in this world is one of three

43:20

kinds. A good terminator, a

43:23

bad terminator, and neutral.

43:25

What? That doesn't even make sense with

43:27

the the cannon of the Terminator fans.

43:31

What is a neutral Terminator? What's

43:33

unusual? What would its mission be?

43:36

Is that is that Andrew Yang? Is that

43:38

who she's talking

43:39

about? Oh, shit. That's a neutral terminator.

43:41

neutral terminator. We my wife

43:43

and I paused it and we're like, what? What?

43:47

They went out of their way. They're like, we need something

43:49

more here. Ron

43:50

Howard is that, like, table read and he's like, are there

43:52

really just two kinds good and bad? And someone's

43:54

like, well, no. I

43:56

think there might be neutral as well. Well,

44:00

now in JD Vance, is terminating

44:02

welfare benefits for struggling families. So,

44:07

wait a transition that's back. Flawless

44:12

segue. Let's talk about his senate campaign.

44:14

It's so bleak. Vance was like

44:16

comparing Trump and Hitler. Yeah. Like,

44:18

really aggressive criticism. And

44:21

then he sort of, like, begins campaigning

44:24

a couple years later. And

44:27

things change. He grows a beard

44:29

to cover up what can only be described as

44:31

a disturbingly boyish

44:33

face.

44:33

Yeah. Yeah. He pivots hard right.

44:36

He starts buttering up Trump

44:38

to get his endorsement, and it's like the

44:40

usual groveling, or he's like, you know, I said

44:42

some pretty mean things about mister Trump, but

44:44

he's actually The best president ever

44:46

and the coolest guy ever met. Yeah. Turns out he's

44:49

a hero. He gets Trump's endorsement with

44:51

that. He wins a messy primary fight.

44:53

And then he goes on to win a

44:55

tight race for senate in Ohio

44:58

against Democrat Tim Ryan.

45:01

His, like, public facing

45:04

platform, you could see the

45:06

alignment with the book. Right? There's like a heavy

45:08

focus on economic issues,

45:11

but then these little, like, cultural resentments are

45:13

built in. Right. If you remember, sort

45:16

of had that live and let live approach

45:18

to gay rights during the book. Right. During the

45:20

campaign, he says that he opposes

45:22

codifying the right to gay marriage, that he opposes

45:25

anti discrimination protection for LGBT

45:27

people. He used the term groomers

45:30

to describe anyone who wants to teach sexual

45:32

orientation and gender identity in the

45:34

classroom Right. Apparently, that

45:36

does not apply to a grandmother

45:39

who talks about sucking dick's to

45:41

an eight year old

45:41

child. But, you know Yeah.

45:42

That's just me, Mabia, and folksy. There's no folksy

45:44

case. He talks about critical race theory

45:47

and gender Elegy, indoctrinating

45:49

children. Right? He's basically

45:51

leaning in to right wing culture war

45:53

shit. He just becomes a

45:56

Republican. Right. Right. It's actually

45:58

so bleak because the debate about

46:00

people like this is always, like, are they faking

46:03

it? Like, are they doing this clinically? Or

46:05

do they really believe this shit? And, like, I could

46:07

not be less interested. I don't fucking

46:09

care

46:09

-- Yes. -- whether he's faking it or he's become

46:11

this way, it's like, this is what it takes

46:14

to run as a Republican now. Right? If

46:16

people are pretending to have

46:18

authoritarian tendencies to

46:20

win, that's indistinguishable from

46:22

actual authoritarianism. Right. I don't

46:24

think that the purpose of those pieces

46:27

is entirely to actually explore what

46:29

happened to JD Vance. I think a lot of

46:32

it is to just give journalists

46:34

and a ski patch for the fact that they

46:36

swallowed his bullshit in

46:39

twenty sixteen. Yeah. They

46:41

embraced a conservative opportunist

46:44

who is now moving with the winds of Republican

46:46

politics. Right? He wasn't doing weird culture

46:49

war shit about gender Elegy in twenty

46:51

sixteen because the Republican base wasn't

46:53

fixated on it. Right? The liberals

46:55

who are saying like, well, we think he

46:57

changed they're letting themselves off the hook

46:59

a

46:59

bit. Right? Politics have changed.

47:02

Right. But he's been a reactionary the whole

47:04

time. I feel like the sort of

47:06

liberal establishment keeps having this

47:08

happen to them or it's like they just keep stepping on

47:10

the same fucking

47:11

rake.

47:11

Yeah. It's

47:12

like, oh, weird. Another one turns out to be like a

47:14

far right grifter It's because of that

47:16

phenomenon that you identified earlier.

47:18

They love someone who sounds

47:20

self reflective. Yeah. That's something that

47:22

the liberal set embrace is because

47:25

the idea of someone being

47:27

willing to, like, wag their

47:29

finger at their own political

47:32

set is very appealing to

47:34

the liberal establishment

47:36

media. They love that shit. Right. And then you look around

47:38

five years later and you're like, Wait,

47:40

were we instrumental in the country

47:43

electing its first neutral

47:45

terminator?