Hillbilly Excuses
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Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, after only three years in politics, is now the Republican nominee for vice president. I’ve written, and continue to believe, that Vance is a hollow man, an opportunist driven by a strange melding of self-admiration and insecurity, who has risen to great heights in the Republican Party by saying things he does not believe, especially when it comes to his new running mate, Donald Trump. But in his acceptance speech Wednesday night, he attained new depths of cynical emptiness.
When the world first met Vance less than a decade ago, he was a relatively clear-eyed critic of the dysfunction of the people, a painful look at his own past, he did not shy away from the kind of messages about personal responsibility that long characterized conservative politics. But those criticisms were leavened with a certain understanding that good people can become trapped by bad circumstances.
