JD Vance's book "Hillbilly Elegy" is back on top of the best seller lists, and the movie based on the book is among the most-watched programs on Netflix. Now that America has rediscovered Vance's origin story, they may be wondering what the Democrat vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz, was talking about when he bashed Vance's book and his life story.
Millions of Americans shared a collective "Wha?" when they heard Kamala's running mate in his maxime momenti oratio, the biggest speech of his life, recite from his teleprompter:
Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, J.D. studied at Yale [laughs], had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a best-seller trashing that community. Come on! That's not what middle America is!
Here's a look at the rally filled with energized Democrats and, yes, seat fillers listening to Walz intentionally give the impression that Vance's life story is a fraud.
None of Walz's criticism rang true from my memories of the 2016 book, which I purchased a few years back. When did he bash the place that molded him into the man he became, I wondered. He parachuted into Yale like some sort of East Coast swell? I don't remember that. So over the weekend, I settled in and had Vance read me his audiobook again.
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The book, whose full title is "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis," which Walz should take as a clue, is a story of Vance's Appalachia upbringing in Kentucky and Ohio. It explains his family's and the region's crumbling societal and economic underpinnings. But it also explains how the strong and fiercely loyal hillbillies fared living in the holler and their lives in an economically fragile and forgotten rust belt town. These are the towns that globalism left behind.
The people in his community, he explains, worshiped a dual godhead: Jesus and America. They fought the wars, lost jobs, and loved their country. Vance wrote that these people, his people, still pointed to the community's sacrifice during World War II as the heartbeat of the place. But eventually, that love became unrequited.
Vance explains that his "mamaw" and "papaw" saved him from his mother's descent into rage, serial beaus, and drug-fueled chaos. This was a place where haymakers settled arguments, low expectations were too high, learned helplessness was a growing, corrosive condition, and obscenities were used as nouns and adjectives in every setting.
The steady hand and (profane) guidance of his mamaw saved him. Her home, a few doors down, was his sanctuary and refuge. It wasn't until he lived with her full-time that he could see a different though still hazy future for himself.
When the perennial truant showed a talent for math, his pensioner mamaw dug deep to buy him an HP graphing calculator. No one had so selflessly invested in him before. Mamaw made sure the whole family showed up to celebrate JD's high school graduation and graduation from Marine boot camp.
She willed him to succeed, picked his friends, and forced him to get a job to learn responsibility. He would break out, she reckoned. His mamaw instilled in him the importance of education — or else! — and helped him get his head right.
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After 9/11 he joined the Marines and deployed to Iraq as a journalist and covered battles, hot zones, and the usual public affairs blather. Shortly after he got out of the Marines, Mamaw died. She had wanted him to be a doctor or lawyer. Vance went to The Ohio State University and graduated early, at times working three jobs and doubling up on his course load. He applied to top law schools afterward. He was accepted into Yale, which had hardship scholarships that made the Ivy League school cheaper than even state schools.
Walz wanted us to believe that Vance's life was a life of privilege. Where?
The New York Times provides insight into Walz's claim of billionaires making his career. In short, he met Peter Thiel, the former CEO of PayPal, when he gave a speech at Yale Law.
Mr. Vance’s path to the tech industry began when he was a student at Yale Law School. In 2011, he met Mr. Thiel after the investor delivered a speech at Yale, where he derided the professional prospects of law students and argued that their time might be better spent in Silicon Valley.
“Peter’s talk remains the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School,” Mr. Vance wrote in a 2020 essay for a Catholic literary journal.
Mr. Vance, who graduated from Yale Law in 2013, moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and worked as an executive at Circuit Therapeutics, a biotechnology company.
As a student, Vance worked up the courage to talk to Thiel, forging a relationship, and this somehow counts as getting funded by billionaires. Vance would later be hired by a Thiel friend.
I suppose by that measurement, Walz's career was funded by billion-dollar teachers' unions and Uncle Sam.
The biggest problem Walz and other radical leftists have with people like Vance is that he survived and succeeded despite his upbringing and grinding poverty. Vance dabbled in Silicon Valley, became a senator, and now could be teed up for a 2028 presidential run if he and Trump make it to the White House in 2024. Walz doesn't like that. That's a bootstraps story, and we can't have that.
Vance came through the fire and is not embarrassed by his home, his people, and his country. People like Walz don't understand it or, more accurately, don't want to understand it.
Some wonder if the Kamala campaign bothered to do even a scintilla of checking of Walz's background before naming him as her vice presidential running mate. The puffing up — Stolen Valor — of his military service, such as ditching his command so he wouldn't have to deploy to Iraq and lying about carrying "weapons of war" in battle, are stacking up.
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But, "Vance, 39, is the first post-9/11 veteran to find a spot on a major party ticket and, if elected, would likely be the first Marine veteran to serve as the second-in-command," the Military Times reports.
Lying about Vance won't go down well in Ohio. But lying is a feature rather than a bug in this Democrat political marriage.
