In 2017, Deusto Publishing House asked me to translate JD Vance’s book about his childhood and youth in a dysfunctional family of hillbillies, working-class whites from the Appalachians in the eastern United States. I was aware of the debates that had sparked in the United States and immediately accepted them. Comparing what Vance said then and what he says today, as a candidate for vice president of the United States, is an unbeatable example of how much the American right, and with it the entire Western right, has changed in these seven years.
Hilbilly’s account of A Country Elegy was both devastating and inspiring. Vance’s grandparents, originally from Kentucky, had been married as teenagers because she became pregnant; they lived in rural shantytowns, where most people carried guns and violence was common. Later in the 1950s, the couple moved to Ohio, where heavy industry was flourishing, and the family became part of the new manufacturing middle class with decent wages and public services. The family had a challenging time adjusting to a life with more urban and modern schedules, work obligations, and codes of conduct, but they did.
Vance’s mother, born in 1961, broke this path of ascent. She soon divorced her husband, had violent partners, became addicted to drugs, and neglected the upbringing of her two children. Vance grew up under the protection of his grandparents, people with good hearts but bad tempers who were prone to emotional outbursts and drinking. As a child and teenager, he witnessed bad life decisions by relatives and neighbors: they did not work, they drank or took drugs, they squandered money, and they ignored their children. Vance narrowly escaped thanks to the love of his grandparents; later, he did what is common among people like him, enlisted in the army, and was deployed to Iraq. Then, thanks to scholarships, he went to college and became a lawyer at an elite university, Yale.
Vance chastised his people for the way they lived. He did so with love and compassion, but also with impatience. Why couldn’t they lead a normal middle-class life? were their marriages chaotic and almost always ended in divorce? Why didn’t he work more? Many progressives fell for the honesty of his worldview. Barack Obama recommended the book, which also sparked a deep debate about deindustrialization, poor whites, and forgotten regions. Many considered it to be the most profound explanation for Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 elections.
In the years since, Vance has grown rich—the book has sold more than two million copies and has been adapted into a film—he has invested in technology companies with funding from the likes of Peter Thiel—one of the founders of PayPal, Facebook’s first outside investor, and one of the ideologues of the new American right—and decided to become a politician. He narrowly won the Senate election in his home state of Ohio. And today, he is Trump’s deputy.
In the process, Vance’s ideas have changed a lot. Whereas in the book he admitted that he was not a believer and was skeptical of religion, he is now a devout Catholic. Whereas in it he showed that no one could expect the state to solve the problems of individuals, he now believes that the state must play an active role in society to protect white parents and subsidize the industrial companies that employ them. He no longer says that his people are suffering because of their bad decisions, but because Mexican immigrants and progressives have stolen their jobs and dignity. Today, Vance speaks of these hillbillies as the spokesmen of some impoverished minorities sometimes do: as if they were a group oppressed by the evil and selfishness of others. He believes that it is acceptable to bend the Constitution itself to protect them from real or imagined threats.
In part, this is a consequence of the difficult transition from being a writer—aa profession in which your goal must be to tell the truth—tto being a politician, which requires courting voters and proving their case. But the mix of victimhood and revenge in today’s world speaks volumes about how the rights have changed in our time.
Today, much of it is far more about cultural warfare and hatred of liberal elites than compassion or a belief that markets are more economically efficient than states. There is much opportunism in Vance’s transformation: the book already conveyed a strong aversion to the country’s elites and, at the same time, a strong desire to be part of them. But his accommodation to Trumpism appears to be not only genuine, but may even be overzealous and radical. Today, even the Republican Party thinks that his recent views on abortion—hhe went so far as to say that the government should not allow women to travel to get abortions in states where it is permitted—oor on childless women—wwhom he called “crazy women who live with cats”—may hurt his candidacy. Reports suggest that Trump has explored the possibility of removing him to attract a potential vice president, aiming to improve his declining poll ratings.
I have a strange affection for Vance; after all, I spent many hours over his words for months, trying to translate them as best I could into our language. His compassionate view of suffering and his love for very imperfect people made me think. However, his transformation, like that of much conservatism, has meant sacrificing its best features. It has ended up becoming a revolutionary force that seeks to purify society by fire and put the state at the service of nationalism and of elites who claim that, unlike the others, they truly represent the people and are part of it.
Hillbillies are known for their skepticism and wicked temper; one would really laugh at such a statement.
In 2017, Deusto Publishing House asked me to translate JD Vance’s book about his childhood and youth in a dysfunctional family of hillbillies, working-class whites from the Appalachians in the eastern United States. I was aware of the debates that had sparked in the United States and immediately accepted them. Comparing what Vance said then and what he says today, as a candidate for vice president of the United States, is an unbeatable example of how much the American right, and with it the entire Western right, has changed in these seven years.
