Observing the rise of JD Vance to MAGA prominence has made me recognize one of my own biases. I realize I had assumed that trajectory of his life-–a backwater kid from modest means to ivy-league graduate degree and the cosmopolitan tech/finance world, married to a smart and accomplished woman of color––meant that, underneath it all, he had to be savvy and decent person. Sure, his ambitions in the GOP demands that he talk the talk of a Trumpian racist and bully. But I think I assumed that at some level had had to be doing it under duress, and that the most grotesque stuff would make him inwardly wince at himself and cause him to pull his punches.
What a dumb assumption to make about someone, more or less just because he was able to make friends with a diverse circle of smart Yalies. Whatever his core convictions, he is clearly relishing his chance to endorse and amplify the most obvious, egregious, and racist tropes, even when they are patently dredged up from the same swamp that spawned the KKK and David Duke.
I've been calling him a "grifter-whore," but have stopped because I have genuine affection and respect for competent sex workers. he's certainly not very bright and has not the slightest hint of the sort of filter necessary for someone to be a successful politician.
his wretched book is the result of his relationship with Amy Chua, who's always struck me as a particularly nasty piece of work.
where are all those lawyer jokes that got so much play back in the '90s?
His selection to the vice presidency marks the coming out of an ideology that took form in Gamergate a decade ago and now has become the conscience of the Republican Party.
For odd moments regarding cats, see Victor Klemperer's I Will Bear Witness, in which he is obliged to kill his cat because of Nazi regulations against the Jewish ownership of pets, with accompanying Nazi hysteria.
One is flipping Trump voters. Should be obvious that success there is highly limited.
But the other thing is to get out the vote. Our voter turnout is bad, arguably disgraceful—even in 2020. Part of the reason is that candidates tend to be shi— well, unexciting, often the lesser of two evils. Kamala OTOH—maybe—can actually excite non-voters to get off their asses and vote. And yeah, part of that is that she’s not white nor a man.
last night before the debate, in a labor studies class I'm taking, an employee from CWA spoke to the class and said there's been a lot more excitement for Harris than there was for Biden. Granted, this is NY, but, it seems like a good indicator. IDK though, I feel like I'm in such a bubble and can't get into anyone else's headspace.
The point about Clinton continuing the policy has to be emphasized. The Vances of the world can rise to and keep prominence because there are a lot of people who abide by his bigotry, though they’re in ostensible opposition. People get very upset when you point out the right wouldn’t be able to be as overtly racist as they’ve become if they weren’t at the very best indulged by liberals every step of the way, but it’s the truth.
".A recent poll showed that Trump was winning among almost everyone except those most likely to vote. He’s the candidate of alienation and anger, of people who may express their political will with a protest vote or may just sulk at home."
I think you hit on something I am struggling to articulate but here we go: a big part of Trump's appeal to that demographic is as much as the idea that they will never have to deal with politics again. It'll all be taken care of for them by the hyper competent and strong leader. I don't know how to build on this but it's a common refrain in other contexts -- Russia and Hungary are classic examples. Part of Trump's problem is exactly that he is hard to construe as strong or competent anymore. He could get a lot out of that in 2016 but not anymore. I think you'll be able to get a lot more out of this thought than I can.
I grew up in South Florida in the mid/late 2000s. In middle school, kids (not just white kids, all kinds) used "Haitian" as an insult. Like, you may call someone "stupid" (or other words we said in 2005 but we don't say now) but you could also say "what are you, Haitian?"
It seemed rather racist to me even at the time. Then after the earthquake in 2011, I distinctly remember riding in the car of a rich classmate I had. His mother was complaining that Haitian refugees were going to come to FL now and cause issues. I remember thinking she was a, well, a bunch of not nice words and also "rich" were the words I thought of.
It's frustrating to see this kind of prejudice now being used as campaign tactics. Hopefully it backfires on them.
Unrelated - but you were mentioned in a recent New Yorker piece about Jewish Currents magazine. They named you as an example of a prominent leftist.
You must have missed the first 30 seconds of the debate. She took his head off when she walked over to him, shook his hand and said her name.
Like Mike Tyson said, "Everyone's got a plan til they get punched in the face."
She didn't really have to say a word - she won on the split screen with her real-time reactions to his bullshittery. I know, because I had to turn off the sound since I cannot stand to listen to him.
He was red-faced and sweaty and "playing the accordion" (his tell for lying) with his hands like he was in a rock band. The stupid motherfucking moron took the bait on every provocation, starting with the one about people leaving his rallies because they're boring. She took up permanent residence under his thin skin.
When he went to the spin room and claimed it was his best debate, a reporter replied "If that's true, why are you here in the spin room instead of letting your performance speak for itself?"
He's now dangling from a lamp post, the corpse twisting slowly in the wind. Where he fucking BELONGS!!
I'm wondering why John didn't mention the handshake, after which he was too flustered to "strategize" (allowing for a moment that he actually might possess the ability to do so).
> The fact is they are really speaking to two different electorates
I would summarize Harris's message of the debate as "I care about you and we will make things better", while Trump's as "Things are very bad in this country and the reason is immigrants". Healing vs scapegoating, and I think people got affirmations from both candidates according to their predispositions to one or another. Since we are running on vibes in this post-truth world, Trump delivered his signature vibe fine.
For J.D. Vance and the MAGAs, there's no longer any dog whistle: it's now just the dog! But seriously, this is one of the oldest racist tropes imaginable, and yet there are some new social-scientific twists on the MAGA obsession with gross-out politics. I also talk here about a clear repulsion/attraction complex and continuities with the r/w manosphere: https://trysterotapes.substack.com/p/the-politics-of-disgustand-longing
I love John's Jock/Nerd distinction, so here's my own simplifying spectrum for MAGA repulsion/longing. JD Vance represents the squeamish or milquetoast side of the repulsion/attraction complex (he seems dispositionally sensitive to stimuli he interprets as "unpleasant"), while RFK is the guilty/gross-out object of masculine longing. He's like the Liver King for #MAGAs.
That debate interesting in that it was an additional confirmation that there is nothing Donald can do or say that some media folks won't eye-roll into "that's just how he has always been, and anyway, Dems could always have done better..."
Meaning that nothing Donald does or says is perceived as really being his ultimate fault. He usually isn't seen as an independent agent who can be held to account for the moral consequences of his actions or words, where in comparison Democrats are.
Some treat Donald and his following as not much more than landmines. Capable of mass harm, yes, but are also inanimate objects incapable of intent. Put another way they are seen as dangerous troglodytes that are so dumbly amoral that to hold them to any meaningful moral standard feels a bit silly. So, not their fault.
Some effectively treat dear Donald as The Protagonist of American politics. A very flawed main character, but many main characters are and he is just trying to be himself. Some who hate him and his policies at the same time have a hard time treating him primarily as an evil politician and seem to take him as some shitty insult comedian who happened into politics. And who would want to stop an artist trying to be secure in their own artistic vision of themselves?
After all if Rs cause harm merely because Ds couldn't stop them or chose not to, is it ultimately the Rs fault? Yes they are dangerous, but that's "just how they are". I think that framing implicitly gives Rs a blank check to do or say whatever the hell they feel like at a given point in time. These rationalizations can go down different paths, but the end point will be "it's not really Donald's fault".
Being in Europe I had to rely on 2nd hand accounts of the debate in my inbox. At first all looked super rosy. Only positive posts of how well Kamala did & how thump was defeated. Then in the afternoon I spoke with a couple of family members (Dems all) who knocked me out of my bubble. In their opinion K didn’t do what they needed her to do (although they will reluctantly still vote for her.) Not having seen the debate, nor having a clever enough mind to remember & rebut, I was immediately depressed. Supposedly she didn’t “know anything about foreign policy” & “Biden must have not let her participate in foreign policy decisions”. Supposedly she didn’t “show how she would make people’s lives better” & “was short on policy”
Again, these people (& I) are voting for K, but will the “new to the candidates” voter be convinced? I’m biting my nails.
Observing the rise of JD Vance to MAGA prominence has made me recognize one of my own biases. I realize I had assumed that trajectory of his life-–a backwater kid from modest means to ivy-league graduate degree and the cosmopolitan tech/finance world, married to a smart and accomplished woman of color––meant that, underneath it all, he had to be savvy and decent person. Sure, his ambitions in the GOP demands that he talk the talk of a Trumpian racist and bully. But I think I assumed that at some level had had to be doing it under duress, and that the most grotesque stuff would make him inwardly wince at himself and cause him to pull his punches.
What a dumb assumption to make about someone, more or less just because he was able to make friends with a diverse circle of smart Yalies. Whatever his core convictions, he is clearly relishing his chance to endorse and amplify the most obvious, egregious, and racist tropes, even when they are patently dredged up from the same swamp that spawned the KKK and David Duke.
yes...Vance is NOT complicated.
I've been calling him a "grifter-whore," but have stopped because I have genuine affection and respect for competent sex workers. he's certainly not very bright and has not the slightest hint of the sort of filter necessary for someone to be a successful politician.
his wretched book is the result of his relationship with Amy Chua, who's always struck me as a particularly nasty piece of work.
where are all those lawyer jokes that got so much play back in the '90s?
JD Vance is the debutante of the alt-right.
His selection to the vice presidency marks the coming out of an ideology that took form in Gamergate a decade ago and now has become the conscience of the Republican Party.
For odd moments regarding cats, see Victor Klemperer's I Will Bear Witness, in which he is obliged to kill his cat because of Nazi regulations against the Jewish ownership of pets, with accompanying Nazi hysteria.
Kamala has two major goals.
One is flipping Trump voters. Should be obvious that success there is highly limited.
But the other thing is to get out the vote. Our voter turnout is bad, arguably disgraceful—even in 2020. Part of the reason is that candidates tend to be shi— well, unexciting, often the lesser of two evils. Kamala OTOH—maybe—can actually excite non-voters to get off their asses and vote. And yeah, part of that is that she’s not white nor a man.
Obviously, time will tell.
last night before the debate, in a labor studies class I'm taking, an employee from CWA spoke to the class and said there's been a lot more excitement for Harris than there was for Biden. Granted, this is NY, but, it seems like a good indicator. IDK though, I feel like I'm in such a bubble and can't get into anyone else's headspace.
The point about Clinton continuing the policy has to be emphasized. The Vances of the world can rise to and keep prominence because there are a lot of people who abide by his bigotry, though they’re in ostensible opposition. People get very upset when you point out the right wouldn’t be able to be as overtly racist as they’ve become if they weren’t at the very best indulged by liberals every step of the way, but it’s the truth.
".A recent poll showed that Trump was winning among almost everyone except those most likely to vote. He’s the candidate of alienation and anger, of people who may express their political will with a protest vote or may just sulk at home."
I think you hit on something I am struggling to articulate but here we go: a big part of Trump's appeal to that demographic is as much as the idea that they will never have to deal with politics again. It'll all be taken care of for them by the hyper competent and strong leader. I don't know how to build on this but it's a common refrain in other contexts -- Russia and Hungary are classic examples. Part of Trump's problem is exactly that he is hard to construe as strong or competent anymore. He could get a lot out of that in 2016 but not anymore. I think you'll be able to get a lot more out of this thought than I can.
I grew up in South Florida in the mid/late 2000s. In middle school, kids (not just white kids, all kinds) used "Haitian" as an insult. Like, you may call someone "stupid" (or other words we said in 2005 but we don't say now) but you could also say "what are you, Haitian?"
It seemed rather racist to me even at the time. Then after the earthquake in 2011, I distinctly remember riding in the car of a rich classmate I had. His mother was complaining that Haitian refugees were going to come to FL now and cause issues. I remember thinking she was a, well, a bunch of not nice words and also "rich" were the words I thought of.
It's frustrating to see this kind of prejudice now being used as campaign tactics. Hopefully it backfires on them.
Unrelated - but you were mentioned in a recent New Yorker piece about Jewish Currents magazine. They named you as an example of a prominent leftist.
You must have missed the first 30 seconds of the debate. She took his head off when she walked over to him, shook his hand and said her name.
Like Mike Tyson said, "Everyone's got a plan til they get punched in the face."
She didn't really have to say a word - she won on the split screen with her real-time reactions to his bullshittery. I know, because I had to turn off the sound since I cannot stand to listen to him.
He was red-faced and sweaty and "playing the accordion" (his tell for lying) with his hands like he was in a rock band. The stupid motherfucking moron took the bait on every provocation, starting with the one about people leaving his rallies because they're boring. She took up permanent residence under his thin skin.
When he went to the spin room and claimed it was his best debate, a reporter replied "If that's true, why are you here in the spin room instead of letting your performance speak for itself?"
He's now dangling from a lamp post, the corpse twisting slowly in the wind. Where he fucking BELONGS!!
as you know, Tom, I agree completely.
I'm wondering why John didn't mention the handshake, after which he was too flustered to "strategize" (allowing for a moment that he actually might possess the ability to do so).
> The fact is they are really speaking to two different electorates
I would summarize Harris's message of the debate as "I care about you and we will make things better", while Trump's as "Things are very bad in this country and the reason is immigrants". Healing vs scapegoating, and I think people got affirmations from both candidates according to their predispositions to one or another. Since we are running on vibes in this post-truth world, Trump delivered his signature vibe fine.
For J.D. Vance and the MAGAs, there's no longer any dog whistle: it's now just the dog! But seriously, this is one of the oldest racist tropes imaginable, and yet there are some new social-scientific twists on the MAGA obsession with gross-out politics. I also talk here about a clear repulsion/attraction complex and continuities with the r/w manosphere: https://trysterotapes.substack.com/p/the-politics-of-disgustand-longing
I love John's Jock/Nerd distinction, so here's my own simplifying spectrum for MAGA repulsion/longing. JD Vance represents the squeamish or milquetoast side of the repulsion/attraction complex (he seems dispositionally sensitive to stimuli he interprets as "unpleasant"), while RFK is the guilty/gross-out object of masculine longing. He's like the Liver King for #MAGAs.
Sorry, it's jock/creep not jock/nerd
That debate interesting in that it was an additional confirmation that there is nothing Donald can do or say that some media folks won't eye-roll into "that's just how he has always been, and anyway, Dems could always have done better..."
meaning WHAT, precisely?
Meaning that nothing Donald does or says is perceived as really being his ultimate fault. He usually isn't seen as an independent agent who can be held to account for the moral consequences of his actions or words, where in comparison Democrats are.
Some treat Donald and his following as not much more than landmines. Capable of mass harm, yes, but are also inanimate objects incapable of intent. Put another way they are seen as dangerous troglodytes that are so dumbly amoral that to hold them to any meaningful moral standard feels a bit silly. So, not their fault.
Some effectively treat dear Donald as The Protagonist of American politics. A very flawed main character, but many main characters are and he is just trying to be himself. Some who hate him and his policies at the same time have a hard time treating him primarily as an evil politician and seem to take him as some shitty insult comedian who happened into politics. And who would want to stop an artist trying to be secure in their own artistic vision of themselves?
After all if Rs cause harm merely because Ds couldn't stop them or chose not to, is it ultimately the Rs fault? Yes they are dangerous, but that's "just how they are". I think that framing implicitly gives Rs a blank check to do or say whatever the hell they feel like at a given point in time. These rationalizations can go down different paths, but the end point will be "it's not really Donald's fault".
Being in Europe I had to rely on 2nd hand accounts of the debate in my inbox. At first all looked super rosy. Only positive posts of how well Kamala did & how thump was defeated. Then in the afternoon I spoke with a couple of family members (Dems all) who knocked me out of my bubble. In their opinion K didn’t do what they needed her to do (although they will reluctantly still vote for her.) Not having seen the debate, nor having a clever enough mind to remember & rebut, I was immediately depressed. Supposedly she didn’t “know anything about foreign policy” & “Biden must have not let her participate in foreign policy decisions”. Supposedly she didn’t “show how she would make people’s lives better” & “was short on policy”
Again, these people (& I) are voting for K, but will the “new to the candidates” voter be convinced? I’m biting my nails.