“Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors”

Did you know the city has had three socialist mayors?

Hi, darlings! Don’t know where to start, other than to say that if you’d told me nearly ten years ago when this Missive began that an attempted assassination of the GOP candidate for president would cause a personally unsettling numbness and avoidance of media, as opposed to, say, a hyper fixation on every detail and consumption of every piece of content on that breaking news event, I would have questioned why I was embarking on a regular politics/policy/tech newsletter in the first place.

But that’s where I sit — tired and burned out and in the full throes of avoidance when it comes to the current state of our political reality. After weeks of Dem-on-Dem infighting re: Biden’s status as the nominee (you can read what my reaction was to that debate we shall never speak of again), this pinnacle of unprecedented times news didn’t hit me the way I would have assumed it would. Instead, a creeping foggy dread remains, hovering just above everything I’m reading online, and causing me to retreat into that which I turn to in times of political unease: dystopic fiction.

So while we all sit here and process news that comes at us lightning fast whilst ephemerally affecting, I’m just going to share a few links on the other news that came out before the RNC: the selection of JD Vance as running mate, a man two months younger than I am. I’ve worked in and around tech for nearly my entire career, so I’ve seen the rise of individuals like him. And I’ll leave it to pundits and the media to more eloquently than I describe how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking, especially as Silicon Valley billionaires line up behind Trump at a worrying clip:

• “Mr. Vance spent less than five years in Silicon Valley’s tech industry, but the connections he made with Peter Thiel and others became crucial to his political ascent.” — ‘How a Network of Tech Billionaires Helped J.D. Vance Leap Into Power’ (NYT)
• “Vance urged that Trump radically remake the executive branch even if the Supreme Court said doing so was illegal.”- ‘J.D. Vance’s radical plan to build a government of Trump loyalists’ (Vox)
• “’As he told former Fox host, the now unwatchable Tucker Carlson, in 2021: “We are effectively run in this country…by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”” — ’The He-Man, Woman-Hater’s GOP Presidential Ticket’’ (The Nation) (also, did you know that “divorced men are a lot more likely to vote for Trump than divorced women. According to the Survey Center on American Life, 56 percent of men who are divorced said they are voting for Trump, compared to 42 percent of divorced women.”? Checks out.)
• “In a campaign ad, Vance appeared to embrace elements of the “Great Replacement Theory,” a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory that Black and brown people are replacing white Americans.” — ‘‘Vile, crass white nationalist’: Critics call out VP nominee J.D. Vance’s flip-flop on Trump’s racism’ (The Grio)
• “The former venture capitalist criticised multinational corporations and described a growing wealth gap between “the few with power and comfort” and “the rest of us”… Then Mr Vance moved on to a topic that keeps the Trump brand of politics distinct from the populist left.” — ‘Analysis: JD Vance recounts ‘hillbilly’ roots but shows hard political edge’ (BBC)

Of course, leave it to Rachel Maddow to so perfectly sum up hist political ascent:

And not to be petty, but did I ever end up reading ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ after it was foisted on me over and over after 2016? Nope — I couldn’t get past the first few pages.

Anyhoo… sigh. Drink water, get outside, be kind to each other.

xoxo Amy