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Esme Fae's avatar

I read "Hillbilly Elegy" when it came out back in 2016, and I didn't feel that Vance was dripping with contempt for his fellow hillbillies. To me, it came across as "these people have many admirable qualities, and also have a lot of problems - some these are from external causes, and some are from their own behavior, and some are from a combination of both."

For the record, I'm of hillbilly descent; my father was from Magoffin County, KY (which borders Breathitt County) and spent his teens and young adulthood moving back and forth between Magoffin County and southern Ohio. As my Kentucky relatives would say, thar ain't but one gineration between me and the coal mines. So, I'm inclined to be charitable towards my people, while simultaneously acknowledging that there is a lot of dysfunction in hillbilly society.

I get the vibe that Kamala is much more at home in the elite milieu than Vance is, even though he's a graduate of Yale and learned to blend in with the upper class to an extent. While Kamala likes to emphasize that she grew up "middle class", her mother was a scientist and her father was a professor of economics at Stanford so while they may have been middle-class by income, they were really more of the upper-class in terms of education and culture. So she has grown up absorbing the knowledge of the correct things to say and what not to say, while I think Vance has to always kind of think about it first (and often ends up saying quite the wrong thing anyway!) Trump likewise is an outsider to elite culture, despite growing up very wealthy. It's not uncommon in people who are blue-collar rich; I know many owners of large, successful contracting companies or real estate developers who are like that. But unlike Vance, Trump has never had an iota of self-consciousness, and he's always enjoyed ruffling people's feathers. Vance seems more conflicted; part of him wants to be accepted by the Ivy League elite types, but part of him also wants to give them the middle finger. That inner conflict, plus the fact that he's not a very seasoned politician, keeps resulting in his various mis-steps and unfortunate statements and the overall weird/awkward vibe.

Regarding Vance's accent, some people are more adept at code-switching than others. My dad lived in the NYC suburbs from the age of thirty until his death, but he never lost his Kentucky accent - nor would he have wanted to, despite having a professional career. He always described himself as a "Kentuckian" and had a fervent devotion to his home state which never dimmed.

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Ghatanathoah's avatar

This makes me think that there is some kind of "intellectual coherence uncanny valley." Having a strong need for intellectual coherence helps you live a more disciplined and organized life. However, having a moderate need for it that can be overriden by other drives creates the hazard that you will twist all your beliefs in service of those drives. That has a risk of creating a monstrous ideology that is far worse than mere intellectual inconsistency.

Another way of looking at it might be that Vance wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wants to think of himself as a man who behaves according to principles, but also wants to cozy up to powerful people who manifestly do not. If he was really courageous and truly dedicated to coherence he would admit to himself that he was working with an unprincipled man for purely instrumental reasons and take the hit to his ego that that admission would cause. Instead, rather than taking the hit, he has chosen to wimp out and distort his beliefs to help him pretend that Trump isn't that unprincipled. What a wuss.

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