QOTD -- Vance's Whiteness Über Alles Message

 

"... I have noted often that when they searched for a leader for their party in 2016, Republicans decided that they would rally behind literally the worst human being in America, the walking collection of character flaws known as Donald Trump. Dishonest, ignorant, cruel, petty, narcissistic, bigoted, a tax cheat and a con man and a sexual abuser — how could they have done worse? But in some ways, JD Vance is worse, for one reason. Trump was born this way; Vance decided to become a monster. After going through a series of personal reinventions and name changes, he settled on the most repulsive version of himself, believing that it would bring him the power he has long sought.

"There are some problems, however. The first is that his ethnonationalist, exclusionary vision of America runs against everything we’ve been telling ourselves America is about for all our lives. That doesn’t mean it contradicts what America has often been in many ways, but the ideal of America as a place of inclusion holds extraordinary power. And what Vance is offering is therefore deeply un-American. It says that everything that has made our country dynamic and successful ought to be rejected, and it’s just hard to imagine a majority of American voters going for that..." -- Paul Waldman, The Cross Section on Substack, on "Why JD Vance Can't Ride Whiteness to the White House."  Vance's other main problem, as Waldman points out, is that Vance is "a black hole of charisma," and "a personally unappealing figure." He's not only delivering a fundamentally un-American message, but his inauthenticity in transitioning to the monster that he chose to become makes him doubly repellent.