“For decades, that divide between the few, with their power and comfort in Washington, and the rest of us only widened.
From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the Great Recession, from open borders to stagnating wages, the people who govern this country have failed and failed again.”
– J. D. Vance
Whenever I hear the latest chatterings of the American ruling class, I can’t help but snicker and snicker again. I know them too well to take their calls for love and respect seriously.
I have nothing against love and respect per se, but I simply do not believe the American ruling class when they use political language to advance their ambitions. To quote George Orwell, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Though each of us may personally rely on poetic lies to help us face the difficult truths of our lives, the ruling class uses political poetry to make the ugly truth of their ambitions appear beautiful — all while being swift to criticize anything beautiful that may challenge their ambitions.
All art is propaganda to the ruling class, and they hate nothing more than some outsider beating them at their own poetic game, especially when that outsider’s poetry leans on timelessly tragic themes.
Indeed, one of the oldest forms of poetry is the elegy, and J. D. Vance’s New York Times bestseller, “Hillbilly Elegy,” is a powerful and nakedly personal lament to the American working class in that tradition.
Of course, that is Vance’s greatest sin in the eyes of the liberal literati — his elegy is too good not to be criticized. Add that director Ron Howard made “Hillbilly Elegy” into a compelling, well-crafted film available on Netflix, and the need for criticism becomes all the more urgent. For the wrong person to write a good book is bad enough, but to deliver that same story in an accessible way on the silver screen — in the midst of a heated election cycle — is a worst-case scenario for the ruling elite. So now they must do their worst reputational “wetwork.” Literal political assassinations may still be verboten in America, but character assassination is the bread-and-butter of these elites.
The most common criticism of Vance’s elegy is to attack it as a grossly oversimplified and callous “bootstraps” tale. Apparently, to the modern liberal mind, stories of individual character, personal responsibility, and family struggle are anathema to their therapeutic project to save man from himself. Just search the term “bootstraps” along with “J. D. Vance,” and you will find thousands upon thousands of words attempting to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
“[P]oor rural whites who grew up as I did and left are recognizing the dysfunction and struggle of Vance’s story but refusing in good conscience to draw the same cruel, bootstrapping conclusions that he does,” writes Tracy Moore for Vanity Fair. “It’s a patently noxious idea that the white poor must rise up on their own steam—and that if they don’t succeed, it’s because they’re lazy or unwilling.”
“But the problem with Vance’s conception of the American Dream is that it is just a dream,” writes Caleb Miller for the Daily Beast. “A fiction. A convincing lie that successful people tell themselves in order to claim all the credit for their accomplishments.”
Miller continues:
I believed this lie for a while. It helped me to deal with survivor’s guilt, or whatever one should call the feelings that come with moving away from Coal City. But it’s important to recognize that taking all the credit discounts the influence that our communities, the government, and sheer dumb luck have on our outcomes.
…
This is the core of why Vance fills me with rage. He wants you to believe that he pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and he wants you to look away as he pulls up the ladder behind him.
These are just two examples of the deluge of criticism spat at Vance’s supposed “bootstraps” beliefs.
Anyone who listens to Vance in good faith can see this is a reductive caricature of his experiences and beliefs – as well as a strawman of what it means to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”
To say Vance doesn’t understand the role of luck or community in life’s outcomes is hilariously absurd. To suggest an emphasis on personal responsibility is tantamount to a policy of cruelty is to deny reality. But worst of all, to use appeals to “community” and “luck” as a means to deny men the possibility of pride in their own accomplishments is a disgustingly demoralizing display. No man is an island; this much is true, but to conscript compassion, community and Fortuna herself as a cudgel against individual agency is more selfish and cruel than anything a liberal could ever imagine Ayn Rand uttering.
Furthermore, seeing the same low-resolution criticism leveled in the same banal way again and again against Vance, all at once, suggests ulterior motives on the part of an entire class of people.
The content of the criticism against Vance and his elegy is beside the point. It’s just wind. The point is to make something beautiful seem ugly.
“Hillbilly Elegy” humanizes Vance, so he must be made into a monster. There’s no way the ruling class could ever allow Donald Trump’s running mate to be regarded as a man with a beautiful, though thoroughly tragic, story to tell.
Unfortunately, the ruling class has their dirty work cut out for them. Netflix views for “Hillbilly Elegy” recently shot up 1,179% while the memoir reached No. 1 on Amazon’s books list.
Joey Clark is a native Alabamian and is currently the host of the radio program News and Views on News Talk 93.1 FM WACV out of Montgomery, AL M-F 12 p.m. - 3 p.m. His column appears every Tuesday in 1819 News. To contact Joey for media or speaking appearances as well as any feedback, please email joeyclarklive@gmail.com. Follow him on X @TheJoeyClark or watch the radio show livestream.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819news.com.
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