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AAt the heart of this remarkable book, perhaps the most fascinating, is the biblical question: “What must I do to be saved?” Not in the vain sense of how to find a place in heaven, but as a quick counter to a whole series of destructive ideas and habits accepted by the majority of society. Vance’s first well-known book, Hillbilly Elegyit explained, among other things, how drug use affects generations of the rural poor. It is not too far-fetched to see the book as a vision of the modern West through the lens of addiction and its consequences. Except, this time, it’s the familiarity and expectations of modern technology that are dangerous for young professionals who are looking for something like fentanyl and those with limited opportunities.
Vance offers a diagnosis that is not original, but gains strength from the power of the questions he asks to reach it. The US vice president is clearly describing the pervasive, educational and political processes that make us want what others want – not what we value. Most of us naturally want to have mental security, meaningful work and, perhaps most of all, hope and happiness in raising the next generation, introducing them into a world of value and promise. One of the book’s most poignant moments is the painful bewilderment of the surprisingly successful young Vance when faced with the challenge of becoming a parent: “I knew exactly how to get my son into a good college but I was woefully unprepared to make him a good man.”
Wanting what others want makes us enslaved to work that destroys family life and disrupts family life. It also destroys our intellectual life, causing us to be more attached to moral thoughts. Vance talks about his experiences at Yale law school, where, he says, progressive traditions used iron; to express doubt about the absolute moral transparency of pro-choice was to call for removal from the inner circle of the pro-choice. And this kind of discrimination was done by the left and the right alike: for both, the main goal was to be absorbed as much as possible in the bureaucracy that gives you more freedom – which is thought of as more money and your position.
Vance’s return to the Christian faith was shaped by two primary insights. The first describes it in a critical way in the words, “I got acquittal in the case”. To be honest and compassionate we need the language (and discipline) of repentance and reformation. What draws Vance to a Catholic identity is the need to see grace as a process of repeated absorption in a long history of learning and growth – unlike the rapid spiritual development he saw in the evangelical world of his youth. The beginning of Christian wisdom is possible only by being frank about your own failures and the resulting ability to respond to the shortcomings of others, not with false tolerance, but with compassion and hope.
Catholicism is compelling because of its history of social analysis that transcends current political differences. The social vision expressed at the end of the 1800s by Pope Leo XIII emphasizes that economic life should support rather than undermine the dignity of individuals and families, the sense of personal ownership of one’s work and its conditions – and this provides a strong basis for promoting solidarity and the need for fair wages. Vance presents a frightening story in an interview with a critic of the US government’s immigration laws, who says that the large number of migrant workers prevents employers from paying higher wages to American citizens and guarantees better profits. We are brought back to the futility and toxicity of the profit-driven and history-driven revolutions that Vance had previously shown.
Although the book is very loose, this seems to be the thread of the argument. It delves into some of the aspects of the current state of affairs – particularly the US state of affairs – that have been vividly described in the works of several American diaspora scholars. Robert Bellah to David Brooks. This is a perspective that focuses on the anxiety and isolation created by the hopes and desires of the individual, it shows a new concern for “character”, and encourages the rediscovery of things that help us raise the next generation to a better life. It’s not too far from that”Blue Labor” and “Red Toryism” originated on this side of the Atlantic. The importance of the Christian vision here is not so much a system of real absolutes – although there is no doubt that they exist – as an attitude that allows us to accept failure without despair, to approach each other with generosity, and finally to know that our deepest desires point to being at home with what is real: the unconditional love that made us.
So to the next question the book leaves us with: What on earth does this movement have to do with it? JD Vance is it a leading member? And perhaps the lesser question of who is its target audience: this is not a book intended to appeal to Maga hardcore; nor will it win the praise of the technophile billionaires who control the digital world, which Vance has hard things to say (although he respects Elon Musk as the creator of American jobs), or free-spirited capitalists. At the same time, it is impossible to win any friends on the left. Although his support for abortion is more simplistic and more difficult than writing carefully on the subject, this alone would make him less pale than many progressives.
What he doesn’t tell us (even if he makes a few points along the way) is why he was willing to hitch his wagon to Trump’s cause. He criticizes many of the early criticisms of Trump such as the gradual haste about the “appearance” of the president, and he insists on the “success” of the Trump administration in the first place, without doing much to agree with what is described in these pages. But how can we take seriously a book that ignores the growing corruption of the Trumpian administration, the scandalous torture that has become a regular feature of the president’s online and offline shows, the foreign policy that is inconsistent with other countries (Vance carefully explained that military financing in Ukraine could be used more aggressively to kill Iran’s weapons). Inherent authorities?
This book is already written for its author and not its content. The content of this book is not as frivolous or cruel as some think – although there are persistent arguments about the roles of men and women, or how the “increasing racial strife and division of the sexes” is a real result of the removal of Christianity (a claim that is difficult to live up to with the history of Christian nationalism in the past and present in America). But none of that solves the problem of what makes a vice president a problem. At one point, he quoted a pastor as saying to a man in prison, “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your destiny”. Well, yes: back to the first question of what you must do to be saved. “Look at the company you keep” can be a start.
