My Final Thoughts (I Hope) About Hillbilly Elegy

 This is my third post about J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, after which I hope never to discuss it again. Unless he does something that forces my hand, which I admit is not unlikely.

The first two posts discussed how the book’s good points are diminished by Vance’s subsequent actions and how his conflation of terms casts misleading impressions of demographic groups. Both impugn Vance’s honesty, but what could we have expected? Even the title is cynically misleading.

Merriam-Webster defines elegy as “a song or poem expressing sorrow or lamentation especially for one who is dead.” (Leave aside the “song or poem” part. It’s not germane.) The book’s subtitle is A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Yet by the end of the book Vance is talking about how hillbillies leaving the hollers for better opportunities are spreading the hillbilly outlook of distrust for outsiders, holding grudges, and citing the Bible more than observing it across the country. (If you take issue with that description of hillbillies, read the book. Vance makes it clear.)

I understand leaving decaying areas in search of opportunity. I left Western Pennsylvania in 1980 to join the Army and have lived in or near Atlanta, Boston, Washington DC, Chicago, then back to the DC metro area. I’ve done all right for myself. I own my home and was able to retire at 65. I also picked up knowledge and customs from each place I lived and incorporated them into my own life. I’m a better person for it.

That does not seem to be the case with the Great Hillbilly Migration, as Vance himself implies. Based on changing voting patterns as regional demographics evolve, it appears folks from the hills bring their virtues and vices with them as an inseparable package and it’s up to everyone else to either adjust or ignore them. No effort is made to assimilate.

Well, hell, people. Isn’t that something MAGites can be heard bitching about every day? Pissing and moaning about Spanish signs in stores and how immigrants don’t observe our customs?

The Orange Menace rants endlessly about how immigrants are taking over this country and dragging it down to their level when the sad truth is we can’t have nice things because too many native-born voters are mired in an attitude distrustful of outsiders, hold grudges, actively resist change, and spend more time reading the Bible than they do observing it.

I wonder where that came from?

Hillbilly culture isn’t dying. It’s spreading. And we’d better get a handle on its worst elements before it takes us all down with it.

More on Hillbilly Elegy

 Yesterday’s post talked about J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. That post dealt with what the book got right and how subsequent displays of Vance’s character – or lack thereof – make everything in it dubious. Today I’ll talk about things in the book that indicated to me he was talking though his hat even then.

Early in the book Vance notes that people use the terms hillbilly, redneck, and white trash interchangeably. I grew up at the northern tip of the Appalachian coal country Vance is from and can reasonably say he’s full of shit.

Hillbilly is self-descriptive, and Vance did a serviceable, if less than flattering, job of describing them as people from the hollers who hold firm to family, are distrustful of outsiders, hold grudges, actively resist change, and spend more time reading the Bible than observing its lessons.

A redneck is someone who typically is a manual laborer, as is indicated by the term redneck; their necks are sunburned from working outdoors, often in construction, landscaping, or some other physical task. Rednecks have their own undesirable qualities – quick to anger, too often ready to fight, drink too much beer, and a casual racism they do not themselves see – but they work, and are willing to find different work if the situation requires it. I grew up among rednecks and have a few of the qualities myself. I’m not saying that’s good or bad. That’s just how it is.

White trash are well described in Vance’s book. These are people who don’t work and expect someone else to take care of them. Calling someone “white trash” is the ultimate insult among rednecks.

Conflating the three archetypes does no one any favors. While there are similarities among hillbillies and redneck, the differences are profound. White trash are something completely different from both.

Vance wasn’t finished. Later in the book, after he’s talked about his formative years and gets into examining the problem hillbillies face, he starts to use the term interchangeable with working class whites.

I grew up working class white in a working class white neighborhood. I moved away 45 years ago, but I still proudly identify as such. Someone tries to conflate working class white with redneck, I’ll shake my head a little and give a tight smile, but I have no good argument against it. Given how Vance has described the hillbilly life in the first two hundred pages of the book, I take his making synonyms of hillbilly and working class white to be an insult.

Words matter, especially when used to communicate broad ideas. Vance has taken the warnings of Orwell and Huxley as instruction manuals to say whatever he wants in whatever manner he chooses to and decide for himself what those words mean. It’s a dangerous tactic, and we place ourselves in peril for letting him get away with it.

Hillbilly Elegy

 

A family member I respect a great deal asked me to read J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, before the election. My family member said he thought Vance made some good points and asked me to take a critical look.

Vance does make several good points. The most salient is that hillbillies have good reason to harbor resentment toward much of the rest of the country. Aside from the jokes, they always seem to get left out when economic advances are made. Doesn’t matter what happens elsewhere, things never seem to get better in Harlan County, for instance.

I grew up in Western Pennsylvania during the 70s, so I get this. Even though Pittsburgh rebounded years ago, the towns up and down the rivers have yet to make similar recoveries. Advances are at the margins and much local business consists of, in the words of my late father, people helping each other go under slower.

So I’m with Vance on that. What I’m not down with is how he has used those conditions in a remarkably cynical manner for political gain. Nowhere in his campaigning have I noticed him coming up with anything to help these folks. It’s all been demagoguery to play on the emotions generated by whipping them up to ever higher levels of resentment.

It was Vance who came up with the story that Haitians were eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. This was the baldest of lies, and Vance copped to it only after the damage had been done. His reasoning excuse? “Sometimes you have to make up a story to make a point.”

Well, yeah. It’s called fiction. I’m well aware of it. It’s an old saying that fiction writers use lies to tell the truth. Dennis Lehane covered much of the same ground – working class people feeling put upon for too long and reacting badly – in his brilliant novel Small Mercies. The difference is Lehane made no bones that the book was fiction, even though it was set in the context of actual events that took place during the Boston busing riots. Vance passed off the Haitian story as a fact to be considered when deciding how to vote and only pulled it back after the damage had been done. That’s reprehensible.

Vance also whined about being fact checked during the vice presidential debate. The only kind of person who complains about getting fact checked is someone who intends to lie.

These examples of Vance’s character flaws cast doubt on everything in the book. A couple of other things led me to think even less of him. I’ll talk more about that next time.

How Did We Get Here?

 I see three primary reasons LibDems lose elections they should win.

1.    Pacifism

Too many LibDems are pacifists. Don’t get me wrong; pacifism is a noble philosophy. It also too often contains the seeds of its own defeat. I believe in turning the other cheek, but there needs to be a Plan B if you are then struck with the other fist.

2.    Liberal pussies

Not the same as pacifism, which is a legitimate ethos. Being a pussy means not standing up for what you allegedly believe. Running your mouth on social media and not backing it up by doing something as simple and safe as voting is the literal definition of being a pussy. A wise friends once told me “What people say is important is what they’d like to tell themselves is important. What they do tells you what’s really important to them.”

3.    LibDems are too concerned with how things get done instead of actually getting them done.

This was discussed the other day in “Outrage Appropriation.” If the desired result is the same, any means should be acceptable, or at least considered, so long as it isn’t counterproductive. I’m pretty sure some LibDems prefer protesting to winning

Everyone would like life to be more linear, with simple, elegant solutions that are so obvious everybody can agree on them. Life isn’t like that, so we live a series of compromises.

Until we find something about which our conscience forbids compromise. Human rights. The rule of law. Hungry children. Then it has to be about winning. Has to be.

When you have to win, something my father said to me when teaching me to golf always comes to mind.

I hit a particularly nasty shot that ricochetted off a tree and came to rest three feet from the hole.

Dad said, “Nice shot.”

I thought he was breaking my balls. “Damn, Dad. It would’ve gone out of bounds if it didn’t hit that tree.”

Dad looked me straight in the eye. “When you’re keeping score, it doesn’t matter how. All that matters is how many.”

LibDems worry too much about how. All that matters now is how many

Schadenfreude

 schadenfreude /shäd′n-froi″də

Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others

I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.

--Commonly misattributed to Mark Twain. (Clarence Darrow once said something similar, but his was more refined. I’m sticking with Twain.)

While schadenfreude is not the loftiest form of human emotion, it has its place. The world is full of people who deserve some form of retribution that is beyond man’s ability to deliver. We have to settle for fate to handle it for us, if it cares to.

While I am genuinely disturbed at the prospect of many good people suffering under much of what The Orange Menace proposes to do – woman’s health restrictions, economy-damaging tariffs, citizens swept up in deportation raids, whatever else he comes up with – I take the edge off these concerns by anticipating how MAGA voters will react when some of this hits home and

·       Grocery prices – especially produce – skyrocket because there’s no one left to work the fields;

·       Other prices go up dramatically because companies aren’t going to eat those tariffs all by themselves;

·       They or a loved one is swept up in a broadly-based deportation raid. (Remember, significant numbers of Hispanics voted for him);

·       The veterans’ benefits they depended on are cut;

·       Things I haven’t thought of yet.

I’ll do what someone in my position can to help, but my “official” policy will be to ask anyone who complains about such things who they voted for.

If they say anything other than “Harris,” my only response will be to say, “Suffer.”

But I’ll be smiling when I say it.

Outrage Appropriation

 Earlier I wrote about Democrats not voting in sufficient numbers to get their way in elections, even when that way is what a majority of people want. I also mentioned another Democratic/Progressive problem was how they tend to turn on each other when the going gets tough. I’ll get to that today.

The Beloved Spouse™ belongs to a Facebook group of women committed to Progressive values. Everybody got along swimmingly until Harris lost. Now people who were all for wearing Chucks and pearls and blue bracelets are calling others out for continuing to do so after the election.

From what I can tell, this appears to be partly a racial issue. At least one Black woman called out white women for “letting us down again.” When it was noted that white woman do not vote as a monolith, then original complainant disagreed. Vigorously.

That was stupid enough on its face. What followed was worse. The accusation was made that white women who continue to wear their Chucks and pearls and blue bracelets are endangering marginalized groups by doing so. It’s allegedly virtue signaling to do these things now, and that white women shouldn’t point out how they may have stood up for a gay friend for fear of further endangering them.

That’s not just disappointing. It’s bullshit.

Wearing something to identify oneself as protesting endangers no one except the person so attired. Once a common theme for this appears – as did with the Chucks etc. – I’ll be all in on it. As it is, I wear a pair of rainbow sweatbands when I leave the house to show my support for the queer community. If people are willing to put themselves out there, who is anyone to complain?

Then  there are the white women who attack other white women for disagreeing, saying they can’t possibly know what it’s like to live as Black/brown/queer in this country. I have a news flash for them: neither do you. I love the term TBS has coined for this: outrage appropriation. Expect to see it in future posts.

It is not “performative” to show sincere support for others, however it’s done. Not everyone can afford to make donations, just as not everyone has the time to protest, and not everyone has the personality – or health – to organize or too actively take part in a group. They’re doing what they can. Shutting this down altogether can allow the MAG-ites to believe what they’re doing is all right with us. It’s not, and any way we can show this in greater numbers should be accepted in context.

This is not a new phenomenon. A while back a transgender acquaintance of mine posted to Facebook about a low passed in Tennessee(?) that required commercial establishments to display a sign if they allowed people to use the rest room of the gender they identified with. Clearly this was an attempt by the state to shame these establishments in the belief “good Christians” would neither shop nor shit there.

Why not, I suggested, use these signs to identify trans-friendly business and direct commerce their way, thus creating exactly the outcome the lawmakers didn’t want. Let’s see how quickly antagonistic business become more accommodating if being “good Christians” affected their wallets.

My acquaintance accused me of standing up for an abhorrent law. I thought I hadn’t made myself clear about how this could be a good thing for the trans community and was shot down eve harder. Turned out it wasn’t enough for me to support trans people; I had to support them in the way this woman wanted it done or I was as bad as the transphobes.

This, too, is bullshit. It’s also not the first time I encountered it. When someone who has no vested interest in standing up for you outside of a sense of decency wants to stand up for you, let them. Life is hard, we need all the help we can get. Support is where you find it, and that person may well not have the same ideas on how to accomplish things as you do. That doesn’t make them wrong. The best decisions are made through the most diverse set of inputs. Consider anything that might help until you know it will be counterproductive.

Needless to say, she and I are no longer even acquaintances.

 

Where Did All the Harris Votes Go?

 I’ve been keeping my head down since the election, in part because I don’t need to see or hear the venting I knew would go along with it. The Beloved Spouse™ is made of sterner stuff and kept me relatively current.

A couple of things are becoming clear to me. Neither are surprises. Both are disappointing.

Democrats lose pivotal elections because

1.    Low turnout

2.    A tendency to turn on each in a heartbeat.

From the New York Times:

Counties with the biggest Democratic victories in 2020 delivered 1.9 million fewer votes for Ms. Harris than they had for Mr. Biden. The nation’s most Republican-heavy counties turned out an additional 1.2 million votes for Mr. Trump this year, according to the analysis of the 47 states where the vote count is largely complete.

Apparently not enough people understood the assignment.

Altogether, Harris lost almost eight million former Biden voters. I’d like to give Democrats more credit than they seem to deserve for knowing what was at stake. The only other explanation for the falloff in Democratic votes is that too many stayed home. Total votes cast were down far less than the number of votes Harris lost compared to Biden in 2020.

This lends credence to something I have believed since the riots in Ferguson, Missouri. I was surprised to find a town that was 70% Black had no Black elected officials, and no more than a handful (One? It’s been a while) of Black city employees. The only explanation I could come up with was that Blacks weren’t voting, at least not in sufficient numbers to make a difference.

My understanding is that this has changed since the riots. Enough people got pissed off enough to pull the old “I’m not going to put up with this anymore” and get a government that better reflected their needs and desires.

I use Ferguson as an example not to pick on Black, but because what happened there crystallized my thoughts on why Democrats so often leave elections with unresolved grievances even though registered Democrats have outnumbered registered Republicans for years. I’m reminded of it every time I read of how people are adversely affected by some short-sighted or mean-spirited policy in their state. The power grid in Texas or abortion to name a couple. If the elected officials who put these things into place get re-elected  the only conclusion I can draw is that the people of that state are okay with it and should be left to enjoy the fruits of their decision.

But then we read reports of how a majority of people in the state are actually against that policy, which leads me to modify the above statement to:

“the people of that state who could be bothered to get off their asses and vote are okay with it and should be left to enjoy the fruits of their decision.

“But what about voter suppression?” What about it? If I knew I faced the possibility of deportation – and let’s not kid ourselves, they’re going to deport as many citizens as they can get away with – I’d stand in line in freezing rain all goddamn night if that’s what it took to vote. I’d check on my registration status and do whatever I could to vote early or by mail if those were options.

Focus groups showed that large majorities chose Harris’s policies over The Orange Menace’s when they were presented side-by-side without telling people who proposed what. The only explanation for her dismal showing is that Harris supporters stayed home. They may have had their own reasons for this but the factor that can’t be ignored is that they just. Didn’t. vote.

So at the risk of being even more of a prick than usual, my policy for the next four years, upon hearing someone complain about how the federal government is being run, will be to ask if that person voted.

If they voted for Harris, we can talk. Maybe comfort each other and discuss what we can do better next time.

If they voted for The Orange Menace, we can still talk. We may end up arguing, but there can be a conversation.

If they didn’t vote at all, they can tell their story walking.

The next post talks about the internecine warfare of the Progressives.

We're Gonna Have to Work Together on This

 (This blog originally carried the title “From the Home Office,: where I posted comments from 2005 – 2013. It has been on hiatus since then as I gradually moved toward posting my opinions on Twitter and Facebook. Recent events have prompted me to re-open and re-brand it to reflect the times. Please feel free to poke around in the archives and to hold be accountable for any evolving positions.)

I am a straight cisgendered white man in his late sixties. While my politics are left of center, I value traditional conservative perspectives and agree with more than a few. What I cannot abide is how the internal corruption of the Republican Party has bred the loathsome entity that is MAGA.

There was a time when my political views would have been described as “New England Republican:” socially liberal and fiscally conservative. The social element comes first. Government is uniquely suited to provide things people cannot provide for themselves. Infrastructure. Defense. Public safety. Food that is safe to eat, water that is safe to drink, and air that is safe to breathe. Affordable medical care. There’s more, but you get the picture.

The fiscally conservative part means I dislike spending money I don’t have. I’ll save for something before I’ll go into debt for it. Sometimes it can’t be helped. If the roof or foundation develops a fundamental flaw, I may have to go into debt to repair it. Few people can pay cash for a new car. Mortgages are long-term debts. All of these are parts of life.

The two perspectives are not mutually exclusive. We live in the wealthiest nation in history. There are people living here who are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars – millions, even – for a baseball card. They can afford to pay more for the general welfare. They’ll never miss it.

It has been said that a man who is not liberal when young has no heart, and one who is not conservative when old has no brain. This is bullshit. I was much more conservative as a teen than I am now; then I joined the Army. I saw and did things I had no idea about before, and I never left the country. The more I experienced, the more I learned, the more I looked at things from other points of view.

This led me to become a firm believer in treating people the way I’d like to be treated. This is so self-evident to me I have to assume everyone feels that way, which leads to what I call King’s Corollary to The Golden Rule: If someone interacts with me like an insensitive prick, he must want to be treated that way. It would be impolite not to oblige him. Or her.

Among the reasons I restarted this blog is I no longer identify as liberal; I’m a pragmatist. I’m willing to listen to ideas from either side of the aisle, so long as two conditions are met:

1.    They have to have a realistic chance of working.

2.    They have to benefit more people than the inconvenience.

So don’t tell me building a wall will solve the immigration problem. It won’t.

Don’t tell me cutting taxes for the rich – again – will stimulate the economy and balance the budget. It hasn’t in forty years of practice. Why would it now?

Don’t tell me voter suppression cost Kamala Harris the last election. It didn’t.

Don’t tell me “abortion” and “women’s health” are synonymous. They aren’t.

I’ll do my best to keep these posts relatively brief and on topic, typically the 600 – 800 words of a traditional newspaper column. I have long said the Internet needs editors and do not intend to add to the problem.

I expect I’ll come down harder on the right than the left – those who voted to make president a man not fit to run a whorehouse laundry showed more about their character than his – but I also have little patience with the purity tests too many on the left apply to measure wokeness.

All I want to do here is point out where we may be missing something that could help. Maybe get a passerby to think of something they’d not thought of before. I promise to make every effort not to be the old man railing at clouds or hollering for kids to stay off my lawn.

I need to work some things out for myself. So does this country. If anything I say here can contribute to even one person becoming willing to look at a different perspective – not necessarily change their mind, but maybe see where the other side is coming from – then this blog will be a rousing success.

There will be no regular schedule; I’ll post as things come to mind. I’ll send new post notifications through Facebook and BlueSky. Feel free to share them and to comment either here, or there. Comment moderation will be turned on, but only to weed out spam; all on-topic comments will be allowed to stand.

I hope we can start, and maintain, a cordial place to disagree on the way to finding common ground. And that you’ll come with me.