Recently, we Europeans have been lectured, chastised, by JD Vance the US Vice President no less. This took place in Munich at a conference to, supposedly, end the war in Ukraine and discuss an increase in European defence spending. Instead, Vance adopted a sixth form debating society attack on our lack of rights to free speech. He chucked in misinformation, disinformation, you name it. After this diatribe the BBC spoke to an EU official, who remarked, “It was an experience”, I think she meant like measles.
JD Vance
So who is JD Vance? One could say he fulfils the American dream – he has shiny hair, sensible shoes and he looks like a double entry bookkeeper, but, like it or not, he really has made something of himself. He was born in small town Ohio some 40 years ago. His was a poor background, he suffered abuse as a child, and his mother had major problems with substance addictions.
Vance joined the US Marine Corps and made Yale law school, yet this personal history does not bring to mind Republicanism at least not the George W Bush, Reagan blend. However, he came to prominence in the US when he published Hillbilly Elegy. The book is a family memoir and tells of the economic and cultural demise of his home town, Middleton in Ohio, to where his parents had moved when he was a child.
Commitment
The experiences of childhood and youth form the adult so, I have to admit, I have an inkling of where this man is coming from. I never went to university and my politics were formed by parents and grandparents and by Aunty Iris who, in 1935/36 was hellbent on going to Spain. Her dad locked her in the garden shed. (he was very proud of her though). I myself have been on anti apartheid demos, anti poll tax demos and I support Palestinian statehood. I think I know something of commitment. JD Vance is committed!
Vance’s speech
To go back to that speech, on listening to it, or should I say the edited highlights from the BBC, I was furious, and it upset the evening! The following day on a long walk I was musing on Vance’s selection of words. Now I understand that he has a curious relationship with Christianity, converting to Catholicism in 2019. His stated motive was that it is within Christian practice to have forgiveness and the loving correction of those who have gone wrong.
So let’s say, under the auspices of the so called special relationship, Vance looked on us Europeans as friends and, if indeed he has perceived European moral collapse, he wanted to put us gently back on the right path. Does this make sense?
No! No! No! The speech was mechanical and sounded manufactured you could almost see the speechwriter, quill in hand, burning the midnight oil. Is Vance another wannabe who wants to get his head on Mount Rushmore? If so, that is no reason to ignore him or shunt him aside. In his case I do not think the Vice Presidency is, as so many Americans call it a nothing job. His aforementioned Hillbilly Elegy is a best seller and a movie has been adapted from it. This is, partly, what brought the American working class on board. It put Trump in the White House.
Here for the long haul?
We look on Vance as a nonentity at our peril. British government and opposition MPs and officials would be well advised to be in close touch with him in the next four years, perhaps they may even help moderate his more extreme views and stop the collapse of the transatlantic alliance. Who knows?
I am no political analyst but I have a gut feeling that JD Vance is here for the long haul and I am sure that when the next election comes we will be hearing from him again. Should he make the White House in this time of uncertainty for the future of American democracy, he must understand that democracy has a habit of surviving some real leadership horrors. He must also accept that there will come the day when he will have to give it back. If he and his boss accept this, and I do wonder, then I fear we may yet see America’s working class singing their way to the polls, “In the jingle, jangle morning I’ll come following you”. JD Vance may indeed be America’s Mr Tambourine Man.
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