CASH MICHAELS
THE SERPENTINE MIND OF J.D. VANCE
by Cash Michaels
There’s nothing I’d love more than to move on from last week’s idiotic and desperate Republican midterm election convention in Dallas, Texas, but try as I might, too much happened for me to ignore. Too much that if we don’t at least make note, may come back to bite us all on the behinds.
Bad enough the scientific experts are telling us that’s exactly what will happen soon if we keep messing with artificial intelligence at the rate that we are. Last thing we need now is to have a missed and obvious political warning do exactly the same thing. After all, I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of allowing anybody who is Trump-like to rise to power again if I can help it, so paying attention now is one of the best favors I can do for myself.
I hope you feel the same way.
Oh, and for the record, I’m not here shilling for the Democratic Party, but since we’re lamenting the demented utterances of the Republicans here, it only makes sense to be straightforward and honest about what was said and done at the GOP convention. Now if the Dems decide to also have a midterm convention (they won’t), we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Even though I only saw highlight clips from the two-day “Trumpapalooza,” I saw enough, read enough and heard enough to know that that those idiots are desperate because they know they’re getting their clocks cleaned come November 3rd. Republicans have no legislative accomplishments they can point to to convince the American people that they deserve to stay in power in Congress, so all they could do is throw rocks at Democrats, and they really couldn’t do that well enough.
I mean things are so bad in this country they’re supposed to be in charge of right now, Trump actually told voters to make believe that he was on the ballot, and as an extra added incentive, offered a $5,000 bribe to every adult American citizen after the midterms, if Republicans retained control of the U.S. House and Senate.
Needless to say, I know of no one who got out their bank deposit slips in anxious expectation of yet another Trump empty monetary promise coming their way. Only foolish Americans, folks we affectionately call “MAGA” who believe any damn thing the liar-in-chief tells them, would do such a thing.
On top of that, the terminally brainwashed MAGA minions at the Dallas convention actually, when instructed to, happily raised their right hands and repeated, “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends. I’ll do it anyway. I don’t care if I am registered or not, I am going to cheat like hell like they do. There have never been bigger cheaters,” Trump chortled, falsely accusing Democrats.
“I’m going to go out and get my friends, my family and we are going to vote on Nov. 3, or we are going to vote before that,” Trump continued, “So we swear that on November 3rd we are going to go out and vote. And you know what? If you want, you can vote Democrat, but I don’t think there’s one person in this room that’s going to vote [for them].”
“You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell, you know that? Okay? You go to hell, and I don’t want that to happen to you, so please go and vote.”
This kind of Romper Room garbage is beneath all dignity, and the MAGA folks in Texas last week were eating it up like the desperate fools they are.
Then, if that wasn’t enough, you had GOP candidates taking to the stage and religiously calling Democrats “communists” and “the party of hate,” saying some of the most outlandish, slanderous, and desperate things possible in order to convince people that as bad as Republicans are, Democrats were somehow worse.
Mind you, our country is in the middle of another forever war, gas prices are through the roof, illegal tariffs have blown up the cost of living, inflation is steadily going up, our relationship with other foreign countries is in the crapper, and the president is relentlessly rushing to spend hundreds of millions of our tax dollars building monuments to himself all over Washington, D.C. before his fat, corrupt butt meets his maker.
And yet, as clowns like Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) took the stage and ran their mouths, all you could do is shake your head and feel sorry for them.
“We lovvvvvvvve our God! AAAAAAAmen!” bellowed a seemingly on crack Sen. Scott. Poor man even mimed pulling his heart from his own chest. The man’s performance was so unhinged, the folks on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” actually joins hands and prayed for him, led by Rev. Al Sharpton.
But while Republican after Republican took to the podium to say a lot of cringeworthy stuff, it was hard to take any of them seriously… until, on the second night, Vice President J. D. Vance took his turn.
Like a venomous snake, Vance slithered onto that stage, and with a clear intent to make his mark for a presidential run in 2028 to succeed his boss, Donald Trump, Vance uttered some of the most deliberate, unmistakably racist crap a sitting vice president has ever said in public.
“We were tired of being called racists for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poorer, and less safe and less prosperous,” hissed John David Vance to an applauding Republican crowd in Dallas.
What makes those words all the more sinister is that Vance is married to a woman of color. Usha Bala Vance is his wife, and an American daughter born to Hindu immigrant Indian parents. Usha is a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School, and is the mother of Vance’s four children.
Gee, Usha must feel real special knowing that her husband wasn’t referring to her or her parents as being responsible for “…our country… becoming dirtier and poorer, and less safe and less prosperous.”
And if the 50th vice president of the United States was being selective in his condemnation of certain people of color, exactly who was he referring too? Haitians, who he joined with his boss in also accusing of “eating the cats and the dogs”? Maybe John David also has a thing about Mexicans, who Trump once called being rapists and murderers trying to enter the country illegally.
Of course, it would be no surprise to find out that J. D. Vance has no particular love for African-Americans, given his staunch opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and going along as his boss does his best to wipe every vestige of Black history from the face of America.
Which is interesting, given Vance’s background of growing up in a dirt poor, predominately white Appalachian community in Ohio with an extraordinarily dysfunctional family, all of which served as the basis of his national bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy: Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.”
This from an extraordinary analysis of John David Vance in a January 10, 2023 story in New Lines Magazine:
While Vance writes about Appalachia as a monolithic white region, he depends upon narratives that have been applied to both Appalachia and to non-whites — specifically Black Americans. The narrative of Appalachia as backward is tied to the narrative of Appalachia as expendable. The narrative of Black families as dysfunctional is tied to the narrative of Black labor as expendable. Both have long histories, tied to capitalism and extractive industries. The success of these systems depends upon narratives of backward cultures deserving of erasure. These are the narratives that Vance co-opts in “Hillbilly Elegy,” where he first cast himself as the exceptional white victim.
That story was written when Vance had been elected to the U.S. Senate, and there was no public thought of him ever becoming vice president of the United States, but the writer, Meredith McCarroll, was way ahead of everyone, especially when you consider this portion from her excellent piece:
Narratives matter. The shifting narrative of Vance requires an understanding of shifting constructions of whiteness, the historical tendency to blame victims for their circumstances and a justification for plundering cultures that are depicted as backward. Trace the position of race, the position of progressives and the position of government responsibility, and you’ll see just how serpentine his path toward power is. Tell a story enough times, though, and it seems true.
As Vance enters the halls of the U.S. Senate with a narrative of oppression — blaming not Purdue Pharma but his addicted mother; blaming not the tax breaks that moved jobs out of the country but the immigrants who seek a new home; blaming not the systems of poverty that were perpetuated in his family but rather the laziness of his own family — the stories he chooses to tell matter. Pay attention to his narratives. They have taken him this far and can continue to shift to carry him even further.
I take J.D. Vance seriously. He is more politically cunning than Trump. He’s not as sloppy. Vance is expert at speaking out of both sides of his mouth, and he’s young enough to be a force in American politics for a very long time.
The man is truly a snake, and an opportunist. If he ever does become president, Vance is extremely capable of taking our country to deeper, darker depths of Hell than even Trump has done.
That’s why you and yours need to be serious about voting slippery characters like J. D. Vance out of power, by voting to take power from him. Your vote can carry so much weight, and help unravel so much of the mess we’re in now.
That idiotic GOP midterm convention in Texas was good for some laughs, but also valuable for some chills, chills coming from the serpentine mind of J.D. Vance.
Make sure you vote America, or else your very next president could easily be a snake we’re all taking for granted now. Keep your eye on J. D. Vance.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment