J.D. Vance and the Myth of the Good Conservative
Conservatives like to accuse people on the left of living in an online echo chamber that protects them from important critical voices and ensures that all they ever hear are the opinions of people just like them.
There may be an element of truth to that. But we on the left are also defined in no small part by guilt. We feel guilt about seemingly everything, deserved or not, including the fundamental dignity of people who think our leaders eat and rape babies while lustily feasting on their sweet, sweet death juices.
Because we care deeply about the lives and feelings of people who hate us, we are forever on the lookout for the fabled “Good Conservative.”
The Good Conservative may be a died-in-the-wool Republican (that’s where the “Conservative” part comes from) but in the mind of the guilt-addled Liberal at least he has much to teach the world—AND LEFTISTS—all the same.
This mythic creature, the political equivalent of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster, votes for people like Donald Trump not out of racism, greed or dreadful judgment but rather deep-seated economic insecurity.
They theoretically ALWAYS vote for the wrong people but for what are ostensibly the right reasons, because they are poor and proud and want something better for their children and not because they’re convinced Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers.
When Hillbilly Elegy was making waves a few years back its author J.D. Vance was heralded as a quintessential “Good Conservative.” His memoir was posited as something that Progressives should read if they wanted to understand and empathize with people on the right who consistently vote against their own economic interests.
Having grown up white, poor and bitterly resentful myself, I had absolutely no desire to read Hillbilly Elegy. When famous Liberal Ron Howard turned it into a famously reviled motion picture I had no interest in seeing his adaptation.
Vance was supposed to be a man of integrity. Then he decided to run for office in the post-Donald Trump era and instantly revealed himself to be every bit as desperate, corrupt and cynical as every other Conservative.
When it was not considered political suicide to do so, Vance criticized Trump in 2016 but today lines up happily alongside his fellow candidates to lovingly smooch the posterior of the twice-impeached, one-term ex-president.
If there’s anything at all separating Vance from the rest of the flock at this point I’m not sure what it is, beyond having written a dumb book that was then turned into a shitty movie by someone I’d like to think desperately regrets having gotten into the JD Vance business.
Vance proves yet again that there’s no such thing as a Good Conservative, only Conservatives who are less terrible than the others. If anything, Vance has revealed himself to be worse than his colleagues because he pretended to believe in something when he clearly only ever believed in money and power.
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