Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy

Since JD Vance is now Trump’s VP candidate, I decided to get my book review posted.

The book was rather celebrated by some quarters on the left as a way for people on the left to understand the shock of Trump's 2016 election. The book's subtitle is "A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis." I’m guessing it is due to be heavily torn apart by the media now that Vance is Trump’s VP candidate.

It is often a strange world, a professor who significantly helped Vance at Yale was Amy Chua, who wrote the recent Political Tribes and the Fall of Nations, which I find to be a more important book for understanding our peril than Vance's. Both are useful, however, and now this one is now much more likely to get attention.

Vance tells his own story of a childhood full of chaos and a "crazy hillbilly Mammaw (grandma)" that kept him from becoming the standard "statistic." Rather, he became an "outlier" who joins the Marines, graduates from Yale Law, has a great wife, job, etc. Along the way he tells about other "hillbillies" that moved north from Tennessee, Kentucky, "Appalachia," for "better lives" in Ohio and other Rust Belt states, only to discover that when removed from the tight extended families and communities in which they were born, they turned to rank consumerism, generally poor life choices in food, finance, health, and love (out of wedlock births, serial relationships, abuse), and often addiction and early death.

The "Hillbillies" are dying ... thus the "elegy," kind of like eulogy, is a lament of the dead or dying.

He talks about the perils of life on the dole -- and how the working-class poor can't figure out how the government-funded poor have smartphones, steak for dinner, better housing, etc., and actually "look down" on those working serial and sometimes parallel low-wage, long-hour jobs. As he says on page 140:

"Political scientists have spent millions of lines of words trying to explain how Appalachia and the South went from staunchly Democrat to staunchly Republican in less than a generation. Some blame race relations and the Democrat party's embrace of the civil rights movement. Others cite religious faith and the hold of evangelical churches in that region. A big part of the explanation lies in the fact that a big percentage of the white middle class saw just what I did working at Dillman's (grocery store). As far back as the 70s, the white working class began to turn Republican because of the perception that as one man put it; government was payin people on welfare for doin nothin! They're laughing at our society! And we hard working people are getting laughed at for working every day!"

At times I wonder if people on the left actually read the supposedly "in" books of the left. The idea that the shift of the South and Appalachia from D to R was CAUSED by Nixon's "Southern Strategy" is dogma on NPR and in general for the left. It is sort of like the Virgin Birth for Christians... if you are left, you HAVE to believe that most of what has caused the rise of Republicans is racism ... coupled, of course, with stupidity. Republicans are ALWAYS really, really stupid! To be part of a tribe is to believe its dogma (and of course believe that it is a "fact," not dogma).

Another point he makes that would seem obvious to anyone having remotely looked at the history of Western civilization and the decline thereof since, say, 1900, is the following on page 92:

Religious folks are much happier. Regular church attendees commit fewer crimes, are in better health, live longer, make more money, drop out of high school less frequently, and finish college more frequently than those who don't attend church at all. MIT economist Jonathan Gruber even found that the relationship was causal: It's not just that people who happen to live successful lives go to church, it's that church seems to promote good habits.

I'm always suspicious of "statistical proofs," ESPECIALLY when they agree with my biases! My PERSONAL belief is that, especially in today's world, people who PRACTICE their religion must be people of sturdy individual character and a strong relationship with Christ, because the general culture is so much against them. The other observation is that people under common duress (like soldiers being attacked) tend to bond pretty well. Since the practice of religion is generally attacked in the West, the faithful tend to bond better than ever, thus making vital human connections that serve to improve their lives.

In any case, even though it can be damned depressing at times, it is a good little story that has a happy ending. Often one can't really ask for much else in a book.

If you want to go deeper into what is behind what has happened to America, and what it is going to take for Trump and Vance to Make America Great Again, I suggest "Suicide of the West."