The Appalachian Paean: A Mountain Born Hatred of JD Vance
Those of us with some degree of experience when it comes to writing about American politics are rarely surprised; often saddened, sometimes amused, but rarely ever surprised. Thus, I must tip my hat to former president and current walking specter of democracy’s grim death, Donald J. Trump, for seemingly doing the impossible. He has, with the selection of J.D. Vance as his vice presidential pick, now moved to the top of my prayer list! Long live Donald J. Trump, I say, and may he never grow so infirm that he can no longer hold the office of the presidency in the immediate (hellish) future.
I know, as a liberal, it is difficult to sing the praises (or wish anything but the most inglorious of ends) of a man whose most redeeming quality is his near indistinguishability from an orange Halloween-themed garbage bag filled with raw chicken and weasels. Since the news broke, I’ve struggled with it myself.
The very underpinnings of my goddamn reality have been torn asunder like so many pages of Hillbilly Elegy used to line the cages of guinea pigs plagued by IBS, messy parrots, and Steve Bannon’s prison cell! Up is down, black is white, and the gates of Hell itself have opened, through which has stepped a man that even ChatGPT won’t plagiarize:
J.D. -fucking- Vance.
You know, Coyote Fam, there was a time when if you told me that Donald J. Trump could possibly find anyone more racist, homophobic, and genuinely unfuckable than Mike Pence, I would have laughed at you. Not a giggle. Not a smirking chuckle. A full-blown, knee-slapping, horse laugh followed by a cry of ‘Bullshit!’ before weeping over the fact that Trump hadn’t been abducted by aliens to serve in some manner of extraterrestrial zoo.
Trumpus Shitgibbonus.
Catchy, isn’t it?
Yet, here we are, with J.D. -fucking- Vance now serving as the running mate for Donald J. Trump in his bid to oust Joe Biden and plunge America into what can politely be described as “a fucked-to-death wasteland of narcissism, greed, hate, and stupidity.” J.D. -fucking- Vance, who rose to political prominence after writing an exploitative book about the people of Appalachia and then promptly turned around and voted every chance he got to stick it to America’s poorest people.
Well, Bubba, I’m afraid that dog just won’t hunt.
This is the Dispatches From Appalachia. I’m Coyote Wallace, and today we shall examine J.D. -fucking- Vance in all his Junior Red Skull Henchman glory. Buckle up, strap in, pour a glass from your “the kids are gone” stash of red wine, and smoke ’em if you got ‘em.
There will be profanity.
James David Vance, formerly James Hamel, and whose real name is James Donald Bowman (however, the name “Vance” is synonymous with Appalachian folk heroes and rebels like Jim Vance of Hatfield and McCoy fame — what a coincidence), was born on August 2, 1984, in Middletown, Ohio. He graduated from Middletown High School in 2004. After graduating, Vance went on to join the Marines and bravely served his country as a Public Affairs man in the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, valiantly defending his fellow soldiers from reporters, cameramen, and other undesirable elements.
After his time in the service, Vance attended Ohio State University, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science, and studied at the knee of Republican Senator Bob Schuler. Schuler was an old hand at regional politics and had steadily won reelections throughout 1994, 1996, and 1998 until finally being forced out by imposed term limits. Vance proved a receptive and quick study to Schuler’s “old style” politics, and he writes fondly of Schuler in his memoirs (Hillbilly Elegy), calling him “a kind and good man whose politics I liked.”
After graduating, Vance went on to attend the prestigious Yale Law School. Here, during his very first year, a professor encouraged him to write his memoirs. That professor, just in case anyone needs to know who to blame, was Amy Chua of “Tiger Mom” fame. The book that Vance went on to write was Hillbilly Elegy, and it served to catapult him upwards towards his future political ambitions.
Right here.
This is the spot.
This is where J.D. Vance became repugnant to me.
First, as a simple matter of clarity for our readers, I would like to point out that Middletown, Ohio, is not part of Appalachia. I would also like to point out that the term “hillbilly” is a derogatory name used to reference those who live in rural Appalachia, and it carries very strong negative connotations. A hillbilly is simple, often barefoot, always poor, lazy, and myopic in his worldview. J.D. Vance wrote a memoir about a place he is not from, about a people he does not know, and then, when he rose to power in the Senate, having profited from his tale, he decided to vote against every measure to improve the lives of the poor in this country.
I will not go into the specifics of Senator Vance’s book; to do so would require quoting the damned thing, and if I quote it, there is the distinct possibility that my hands will go into open rebellion. Once they’ve seceded from the United Coyote Anatomy, they’ll surely pluck out my own goddamn eyes. Honestly, that book should come with some manner of warning label.
I’m still hopeful we can use it to bring down AI by feeding it to the machine, causing it to fall into an endless loop of trying to bash its own brains in with a thesaurus and an optimistic little twinkle in its eye.
No, I will simply summarize the message inside: the people of Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, lower Pennsylvania, East Tennessee, and all other regions of Appalachian ‘coal country’ are not to be held in high regard. Our values, our work ethic, our very way of life are depicted as lending themselves towards drugs, despair, and doom. The text itself, offensively titled as it is, has been criticized by many Appalachians, including famed economist and West Virginia native William Easterly, who may have sharper words for Vance than even I do.
Thank you, Mr. Easterly, that is a very eloquent way of saying that a man is a lying sack of shit.
I loathe a stereotype. I loathe it when people use them against POC. I loathe a stereotype when people use it against my LGBTQ brothers and sisters. I loathe it most, though, when some snot-nosed Ohio punk uses the stereotype to line his pockets and prop up his shitty political career. This man’s false persona was created to appeal to the working-class poor, yet he was never one of us. His name, his story, his very Axe Body Spray-scented douchebaggery is all a carefully constructed facade.
Is the poverty rate high in Appalachia? You’re damned skippy it is.
Does that mean we are lazy or uneducated? Not at all.
I grew up poor, just like Vance says he did, raised by a single mother and a grandmother who were two of the hardest working women that God ever put on this earth. Both of them were college educated. No one paid their way in either; they did it themselves with hard work and grit. The woman who taught me to read and love books could have put J.D. Vance down the road with his tail tucked between his legs like a yellow dog, and my grandmother…
Bless your heart, J.D. Vance.
Someone, perhaps a well-meaning citizen or alumni of Yale, should let them know that they’re doing a piss-poor job of teaching their students how to do proper research. Maybe, just maybe, even The Tiger Mom couldn’t teach J.D. Vance not to be so pig-fucking stupid as to write a book (and make a shitty movie) that disparages a people and their culture, while we have access to this glorious thing called the internet.
Appalachia is home to famed poets like James Still, Jim Wayne Miller, Crystal Wilkinson, and Gurney Norman. These mountains, whose people you mock, are also the home of Charles Frazier, Frank X Walker, Hunter S. Thompson, Wilma Dykeman, and Sharyn McCrumb.
And those are just the ones who are better at the craft of literature, you miserable dumb bastard!
Shall I go on?
I think I shall!
What about famed phylogeneticist Vicki Funk? Maybe you’d prefer Jeremy Bradford Cook Jackson and his accolades as a paleobiologist?
Class, give Senator Vance a moment to look up what “phylogeneticist” and “paleobiologist” mean. I know it’s wrong to make assumptions about people whom we’ve never met, especially about their intelligence and work ethic, but since the good senator has been so obliging on that account already, I see no harm.
Now that Senator Vance has had a chance to catch up with the rest of us, we can move on — and that is a bit, by the way. We all know that J.D. Vance isn’t going to read this because we all read his book.
Jesus Christ, he must give the best blowjobs in modern literature; I have no other explanation for how he got published. None. Zero. He must have a technique that would shame Nancy Reagan; ball fondling technique is always important when publishing absolute bullshit as non-fiction.
So I hear, anyway.
I have, on more than one occasion, used these Dispatches to lament the sorry state that King Coal left our region in. Broken men, their backs bent from years of underground labor, and their lungs full of black dust, seem to be our most produced product. Our schools are underfunded, our people made sick by runoff and tainted drinking water, and both the past of the Appalachian people and their future are slowly being erased.
You see, I could forgive J.D. Vance for using our people to make money. Appalachians have long been exploited and used by those who would make caricatures of the people who call these mountains home. Many of us have long since learned to turn the other cheek, take the jokes with a grain of salt, and some of us will even play up to a tourist if it suits our needs. This makes Hillbilly Elegy an offensive but ultimately inconsequential waste of a good tree.
What I cannot forgive, what I shall not forgive, is that Senator Vance never lifted a finger to help those whom he wrote so unfairly about. His Senate career could best be described as that of a greedy piglet, squirming just as hard as it can to get to the teat of the Republican Party and fill his little piggy tummy up with hog’s milk — which, by “hog’s milk,” I mean lucrative donations and political support. Senator Vance, for all his talking about work ethic, seems to have done almost next to nothing to improve the lives of anyone.
We Hillbillies watch out for our own people, Mr. Vance; we shovel the snow out of the driveways of our elderly, we watch out when we see someone snooping around our neighbors’ houses, and if one of us has a nice big pool or a basketball hoop, we let the damned community use it.
You’d know things like that if you actually spent any time in the places you talked down about, sir.
In 2016, J.D. Vance opened “Our Ohio Renewal,” with the organization’s stated intention being to address the social ills that plagued Ohio. These ills, of course, included poverty, crime, and addiction. Despite generous donations, Our Ohio Renewal shuttered within two years without accomplishing a single stated goal. What he did manage to do, as brought to light by his 2022 Democratic rival, Tim Ryan, was use the organization to further his political ambitions.
J.D. Vance, a classy man of fine literary distinction, had been using addiction recovery services to poll prospective voters. This, by itself, is merely disgusting, but when you factor in that the lone accomplishment Vance stated his organization had (sending Dr. Sally Satel to the Appalachian region for a year-long residency) was tainted by involvement with the American Enterprise Institute and Purdue Pharma, where Dr. Satel provided Purdue with information on patients in exchange for payments to AEI.
Classy move, Vance; it takes a real special guy to have the lack of moral fiber needed to sell fiction as non-fiction while still having just enough dingy, piss-yellow soul left to sell out to Big Pharma. Maybe I’m wrong, and he really is Appalachian; we could be looking at Mitch McConnell’s bastard son.
Of course, one should not be surprised at Vance’s lack of any basic human decency, for you only have to look back at the Super PAC that funded his rise to power to gauge his trajectory. The Protect Ohio Values Project, funded to the tune of $10 million by Peter Thiel and spearheaded by fundraising whiz kid Nathaniel Morris, was designed to prop up candidates who held views in line with a “certain breed” of American — mostly the white, straight, male, gun-owner type.
Unfortunately, Protect Ohio Values would soon find itself at the center of a complaint by the Campaign Legal Center for illegal in-kind contributions to J.D. Vance in the form of polling data, voter targeting information, and draft campaign communications that Protect Ohio Values provided, free of charge, to Vance’s campaign via an obscure website hidden from the general public. The complaint further alleges that Vance’s campaign knowingly accepted these in-kind contributions and used the materials to further Vance’s candidacy, including by producing a campaign ad based on the Protect Ohio Values script.
That is some mighty fine company you keep, Senator Vance.
Now, don’t let the company that J.D. Vance keeps give you the impression that he is merely rolling in mud and that the stench can be washed off. Vance isn’t just the product of keeping poor company; he is the goddamn poor company!
J.D. Vance, despite being elected to public office, aligns with the ‘Dark Enlightenment’ movement. This movement, like many right-wing fringe groups, believes that the United States Government is run by liberal elites and is therefore ripe for dismantling. He has described Curtis Yarvin, the creator of “Red Pill” culture, as a major ideological influence. Vance has openly acknowledged this, stating:
“I think Curtis Yarvin’s monarchy ideas are bonkers, but you know what? He’s absolutely onto something real with his concept of The Cathedral” and “The nature of the fight in front of us now is such that we can’t afford to be over-prissy about our allies.”
You know what’s really not Appalachian? Fascism. Especially fascism cooked up in a backroom by the two least popular guys on the “Women Are Ruining Star Wars” subreddit.
J.D. Vance, being as he has no soul and is an (unconfirmed) vaguely human-shaped bag of rats, takes positions you might expect from someone whose moral integrity could be bought for less than a cup of coffee. Abortion, for example, is one of his favorite topics to rail against.
According to J.D. Vance, even in cases of rape or incest, a woman should not be allowed to have an abortion. To allow a woman to have an abortion in cases of rape or incest, Vance argues, would be akin to saying that “Two wrongs make a right,” which he considers more important than women’s health. Vance clearly feels strongly about this, as he has gone on record saying that abortion is a heinous act on par with the keeping of slaves.
I don’t even have a joke for that beyond just screaming ‘FUCK!’ until my throat gives out.
Then again, given the other positions that J.D. Vance holds on matters concerning our country, one might find his stance on abortion downright tame. Not only does J.D. Vance advocate for the dissolution of gay marriage, but he also supports making any form of gender-affirming care for minors a felony crime. Essentially, for LGBTQ+ individuals, Vance’s beliefs imply support for tearing them away from their loved ones. He disregards the proven benefits of gender-affirming care and openly advocates for reverting American marriage laws to “one man” and “one woman.”
On behalf of the LGBTQ+ community, on behalf of all the parents who teach their children to embrace their true selves, and on behalf of every American who stands against bigotry and discrimination:
You have no right to decide who deserves happiness. I know a resilient 22-year-old lesbian who works tirelessly, over 40 hours a week, to care for her beloved fiancée. Who are you to dictate whom they can love and build a life with?
Sir, I no longer question your understanding of Appalachia; I question whether you should seek shelter from the rain, lest you drown gazing open-mouthed at the sky.
Senator Vance, in Appalachia, we’d label you a snake If you have even a shred of humanity left, acknowledge that the deaths of every young person denied gender affirming care rest squarely on your shoulders. Your willingness to pander to fascists and monsters for political gain is despicable.
Do you possess any decency or integrity at all? Where is it? Weren’t you a Marine? How can you claim Appalachian roots without any honor, sir?
As if that weren’t appalling enough, JD Vance has publicly advocated for women to remain in domestic violence situations. He blames the decline of modern American marriage on the sexual revolution, suggesting that women can discard husbands as easily as changing underwear whenever they feel unhappy.
My mother escaped from not one but two very abusive relationships. She was nearly killed escaping the first one, and when I was sixteen years old, I once held her — ribs broken — as we awaited the police. Almost every child raised in Appalachia has a story about a parent, a sibling, a relative, or a friend who has been the victim of domestic violence.
You would tell anyone to stay where they are beaten?
Let me tell you what my mother, Shelia Johnson, would have told you. She would have stepped up to you, eyes burning green, at 5’4" and 120 lbs of nothing but determination and grit, and told you that your own mother should be ashamed of you. We can argue gun control, we can debate healthcare and border policy, but let’s be very clear, Senator Vance.
Very clear.
If you believe in a just God, you are damned for that position. No one who loves another can raise their hand to that person, and there is no room for party politics on this matter. If you have children of your own, I am woefully sorry for their fortunes, for any father who would tell his daughter to stay with a man who hit her is no father at all.
Shame on you, sir.
J.D. Vance’s positions on various typical conservative issues are largely what you would expect: more guns, less aid for Ukraine, and despite the steadily rising temperature that promises to boil us all to death, climate change remains a fiction concocted by liberals to scare the world. Here, amongst the filth, Vance seems almost commonplace, but that was not always so.
At the beginning of the 2016 election, Trump’s new vice presidential pick was an outspoken critic of everyone’s favorite rotisserie chicken-skinned politician. He even went so far as to call Donald Trump “cultural heroin” and decried his policies as ranging from immoral to downright absurd. He even, in a remarkable display of honesty, called Donald J. Trump the “American Hitler,” which now that I think about it, probably explains why Vance was so eager to join up.
We all thought that Vance was decrying Trump when actually calling Trump the new Hitler, cultural heroin, and absurdly immoral were all actually compliments. Trump loves the idea of being the new Hitler; he is thrilled for his name to be held in the same regard as smack, and absurdly immoral is literally Trump’s campaign promise.
Actually, that’s far too generous a take. What really happened was that J.D. Vance fell to his knees before Trump, groveled, renounced his past statements, and applied the same dedication to winning Trump over that he must have applied to his first publisher. I’m told that Trump was thrilled to finally know what Putin felt like whenever he visited, and that he no longer misses Stormy Daniels quite so badly.
This leads me to my final point about J.D. Vance, the last bit of evidence that disqualifies him from claiming the title of Appalachian. For some of you, this will be easy to understand, and for others, it may seem crazy or far-fetched. However, I have lived here all my life, and I feel that I have a fairly strong sense of the pulse of this region. I know the people, I know the culture, I know the history, and most of all, I know how to make my own goddamn cornbread.
We Appalachians have been many things. We have been bootleggers, outlaws, union freedom fighters, coal miners, homemakers, mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers — strong, weak, brave, cowardly, fools, and scholars. But do you know what we have never been, J.D. Vance? Do you know what the men on Blair Mountain refused to do even when they were told they would be bombed, machine-gunned, and gassed? Have you any conception of the quality or merit of the people whose dignity you walk so carelessly across?
We do not side with gun thugs, coal barons, and wicked men at the expense of our honor. We do not surrender, change sides, and join in the revelry of the destruction of our own. Whatever claim to honor, decency, and goodness your service in the Marines may have bestowed upon you is tarnished by your groveling and your flip-floppery. The moment you turned around, and for the sake of your own pocket and career, joined with that man who you knew to be evil — you became no different than the quislings who once betrayed France to the Nazis or the scabs that would come to our state and steal food from the mouths of hungry miners.
J.D. Vance, you may have been named Trump’s vice president, but I have another name for you, sir. A name that is far more fitting, far more in step with your alignments, allegiances, and past associations.
I name you a craven, sir.
Now get on back across that river, Buckeye, and speak not my people’s names again. You’ve not the tenacity, nor the capacity, to claim this land as your own. You are not of us, and I highly doubt you are of any people. May the money keep you warm in Hell, just make sure you don’t take a seat near me.
Stay Weird, America.
(I am a poor writer, tip appropriately if you can.)
