JD Vance, the California "Yale-billy"

The Ohio Senate candidate is manifestly unfit for public office

Photo credit: New York Times

Every Sunday leading up to the mid-terms, I will focus on one individual member of the fascist menagerie of weirdos, criminals, wife abusers, liars, insurrectionists and conspiracy loons who have put themselves forward for high office and the life and death responsibilities that come with it.

JD Vance is a peculiar man. He is the GOP nominee for the United States Senate in the state of Ohio. He is losing the race to Tim Ryan, the exceptional public servant from Youngstown, and husband of a school teacher.

JD Vance said “America is a joke” and that he is “uncomfortable in the state of Ohio.” The job of the US Senator from Ohio involves standing up for the state, and all of the people in it. This counts as a major difference between Ryan, who likes Ohio, and JD Vance, who has contempt for it.

Vance shot to fame as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy.” He is running as a California “Yale-billy” and benefactor of $10 million in funding from Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Thiel is also funding Vance’s fellow extremist Blake Masters from Arizona.

This arrangement is absolutely unprecedented in modern American politics. Unethical and rotten doesn’t begin to describe it. The entire JD Vance campaign is a corrupt act and his service in the US Senate would desecrate the notion of public service. Vance’s sponsorship by Thiel is different from NASCAR only by virtue of the fact that nobody has painted him yet. Thiel would be the color. The relationship is master-pet and absurd on its face. What in the world does Peter Thiel get for $10 million? What is the deal?

JD Vance launched a new television ad a few days ago featuring his spouse testifying about the “Yale-billy’s” virtues. I thought this was nice because it reminded me of Ted Cruz and this story from a movie that I get to share with you. 

The movie is about an avalanche. It is called “Force Majeure,” written and directed by Ruben Östlund. Here’s the story in a nutshell. A family is vacationing in the Alps, having lunch, as a controlled avalanche explodes down the mountain. The husband is filming the avalanche on his phone, but he panics and runs away, abandoning his wife and children to fate. They all survive the avalanche, but the husband is called out for his cowardice by his angry wife, who is validated when the fleeing husband is revealed in the video he recorded.

It’s an excellent movie, but real life is always better. The extremist movement in America, of which JD Vance dreams of becoming a field marshal, is filled with a spectacular menagerie of human vice. It is like a Galápagos Islands where evolutionary cowardice and weirdness can be jointly studied.

Though it seems an age ago that Ted Cruz let Donald Trump attack his wife without defense and slur his father as part of the Kennedy assassination, it was just a proverbial blink of an eye ago. When he abandoned his constituents and fled to Cancun, or went bananas at a gate agent in the airport, Cruz proved the virtue of abandonment to the MAGA loons he loathes, while conning with an oily lubricant of nonsense that repulses most sentient people. Cruz’s cowardice and slithering qualities would appear to be unchallengeable at first glance, but the MAGA movement has a deep bench.

The video of young Josh Hawley running for his life, away from the insurrection his raised fist and angry lies helped propel, makes “Cancun Cruz” look like Teddy Roosevelt Jr. on Utah Beach.

JD Vance’s spouse has much more loyalty and toughness than Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley.  It’s nice that they like each other. Truly. Many people don’t have that, including women who are beaten, tortured, abused, burned, branded, shot, stabbed or punched. JD Vance believes those women should stay married. JD Vance has a sick and twisted vision of society. He believes the beaten woman escaping the abusive husband weakens society. Tim Ryan believes a woman who escapes her abuser is brave and her leaving is redemptive. JD Vance will try to impose that view on women with political power.

Recently, there were news accounts of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped and impregnated. JD Vance supported mandating that little girl give birth to her rapist’s child, even though it could kill and destroy her. It is a cruel position and an extreme one. JD Vance has a retrograde view of women as unequal, less than and subservient. His promise to use the power of government to impose his political agenda should frighten everyone.

What is that political agenda? Congressman Tim Ryan was at the Ohio State Fair on Friday. JD Vance was in Dallas for a speech about “racial purity” by the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban. Orban is a fascist who came to Dallas to declare war on American democracy and institutions as part of a global movement that he hopes to lead. He was invited by Matt Schlapp, the extremist leader of CPAC, after a senior Orban aide quit after Orban gave a speech she said was “pure Hitler.” It was.

This is what JD Vance believes. He thinks things are so broken that America needs to scrap democracy and find a Caesar. He wants a dictator. This is both a terrible and an astounding idea. Imagine for a second that a Caesar was the answer. Vance thinks Trump should be the guy. The original Caesar was many things – an imbecile was not one of them.

JD Vance wants to scrap Social Security, and since he ran a fake charity and took money from the law firm that gorged itself on Sackler blood money, he should be taken literally and seriously.

JD Vance is manifestly unfit for the US Senate. He is a fraud and a dishonest extremist who has openly expressed contempt for the state he is running from.

No Ohio father should allow this man to have a vote over his daughter’s future.

No Ohio husband should give JD Vance dominion over his wife’s body with a US Senate vote.

No Ohio voter should give JD Vance power over people he feels have inferior blood.

No Ohio voter should trust someone who lies to them constantly.

JD Vance is unfit. He is dishonest. He is an extremist. He ran a fake charity. JD Vance is a bad guy. That’s the truth. No matter what his wife says about him.

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