Category Archives: Critique

UPDATED (4/25): LETTER: Quite A Few Conservatives Agree That J.D. Vance Is Vile

America, Celebrity, Conservatism, Critique, Intelligence, Literature

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I love my readers. They get it. Writes Mr. K, a longtime reader and a lawyer, about the column, “On The Backs Of Poor Whites? How J.D. Vance Elites Become Elites“:

Thank God. You are the FIRST person I have seen with the courage to call J.D. Vance out for what I also saw when reading his book years ago: His unbelievable willingness to throw anyone, including his family, etc., under the bus also to serve his, ultimately by definition, desire for self-promotion.
And in general, I have NEVER gotten what people saw in that book that elevated it so high. [Indeed. He’s nothing great.] As you kind of say, he found a niche in demand, I guess, that also was not too particular about the quality of what it would celebrate.

As for conservative TV hosts who’ve dubbed J.D. Vance “one of the smartest people around.” That’s hilarious. This says all you need to know about conservatism’s intelligentsia.

James Burnham, Hans Hoppe, Samuel Huntington (A Democrat, actually) of the brilliant, unequaled Clash of Civilizations fame, and Samuel Johnson, Russell Kirk, Clyde Wilson, von Mises, Rothbard, Chris Matthew Sciabarra (what a writer he is!): They all live happily on the shelves of my library, pictured above. It would be sacrilegious—and an affront—to place Vance in their literary vicinity. Stupid, too.

READ: “On The Backs Of Poor Whites? How J.D. Vance Elites Become Elites“:

…Vance is a sellout. Not that they were asked for their take, but the archetypical folks depicted in Hillbilly Elegy contend, justifiably, that “Vance [is] not an authentic hillbilly or an example of the working class.”

Cassie Chambers Armstrong’s Aunt Ruth, for example.

Aunt Ruth didn’t think much of Vance’s endeavor. Her niece is an Appalachian and author of a redeeming tale, Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains.

“Hillbilly Elegy’s portrayal of Appalachia,” explains Chambers, “is designed to elevate Vance above the community from which he came … it seeks to tell his story in a way that aligns with a simplistic rags-to-riches narrative. Think critically about how that narrative influences the way we are taught to think about poverty, progress, and identity.” …

UPDATE (4/25): Jeff Deist: “Agreed. For a more thoughtful defense of Appalachia and poor whites this is a great read– by former US Senator Jim Webb.”

UPDATED (5/7/021): NEW COLUMN: On The Backs Of Poor Whites? How J.D. Vance Elites Become Elites

Celebrity, Conservatism, Critique, IMMIGRATION, Morality, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Political Correctness, Race, Racism, Relatives, Republicans

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NEW COLUMN IS “On The Backs Of Poor Whites? How J.D.-Vance Elites Become Elites“. It’s currently on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

“On The Backs Of Poor Whites?” was briefly featured on the American Greatness, to approving reader commentary—then it vanished. Pulled? As the column indicated, Soy Boy Vance has some powerful friends. Nothing else would muscle my brave publishers. Con Ick. (Conservatism Inc.) likely wants to run Vance as a political candidate. This likely means Con Ick. has no time for Appalachian Aunt Ruth’s bitter feelings about his kind of elites.

An excerpt:

The country is fast descending into a Dantean hell.

The Circles of Hell into which we’ve been signed, sealed and delivered are mass migration, diversity, multiculturalism, and zealous, institutionalized anti-whiteness, with its attendant de-civilization and inversion of long-held societal morals and mores.

The guiding ghost of Virgil is nowhere to be found. To ostensibly shepherd us out of hell, however, assorted serpents have slithered forth.

Beware! All the more so when they speak to you from bastions of the establishment—Newsweek is one—as J. D. Vance does in, “True ‘Compassion’ Requires Secure Borders and Stopping Illegal Immigration.”

His is the typically conciliatory, “conservative” argument we’ve come to expect from the gilded elite, regarding America’s promiscuous immigration policy, under Republicans and Democrats alike.

Vance is the best-selling author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, which is a culturally compliant—namely unflattering—account of poor, white America.

Provided your thesis allows for a cozy convergence of agreeable storylines—you are well-positioned to peddle a national bestseller to the approving the left, libertarian, neoconservative and pseudo-conservative smart-set.

Yes, Vance is a sellout. Not that they were asked for their take, but the archetypal folks depicted in Hillbilly Elegy contend, justifiably, that “Vance [is] not an authentic hillbilly or an example of the working class.”

Cassie Chambers Armstrong’s Aunt Ruth, for example.

Aunt Ruth didn’t think much of Vance’s endeavor. Her niece is an Appalachian and author of a redeeming tale, Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains.

“Hillbilly Elegy’s portrayal of Appalachia,” explains Chambers, “is designed to elevate Vance above the community from which he came … it seeks to tell his story in a way that aligns with a simplistic rags-to-riches narrative. Think critically about how that narrative influences the way we are taught to think about poverty, progress, and identity.”

Chambers is perceptively correct. It’s cringe worthy—Uriah Heep slimy—but Vance all but advertises that the Indian-American Brahmin he wed has helped “rid him of his hillbilly ways.” To that end, he tells of a mild exchange with his wife: “Don’t make excuses for weakness. I didn’t get here by making excuses for failure,” he “hollers” at her.

These unremarkable, muted words Vance had with wife Usha Chilukuri he frames, self-servingly, as “the baggage of his tumultuous upbringing.” Wow!

Self-deprecation over nothing much at all amounts to very clever self-aggrandizement. Vance’s casuistry resembles a kind of Argument From Fake Modesty.

Indeed, in smug self-aggrandizement, Vance slimes his hillbilly relatives, even naming names. Credits and kudos go to the Chilukuris, wife Usha’s relatives, for “[teaching] him what a functional family looked like.”

From family unit to family unification policy: When discussing immigration, J. D. Vance is just as nimble …

…Read the rest. NEW COLUMN IS “On The Backs Of Poor Whites? How J.D.-Vance Elites Become Elites“. It appeared on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

Columns are always published eventually on IlanaMercer.com  Sign-up.

*Image via CapX

UPDATE (5/7/021):

 

Go From ‘Bitch Mode’ To ‘Beast Mode’: Quit Toxic Conservatism And Become Dangerously Good!

Conservatism, Constitution, Critique, GUNS, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Morality, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republicans

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IMPORTANT READING comes from Jack Kerwick on American Greatness.

If you have settled back into those asinine, conservative talking points—“the Left this; the Left that; socialism this; socialism that; we are not racists; they are racists; ‘systemic anti-whiteness’ is the Democrats’ fault”—you need an intervention, S.O.S; you need to pull yourself together, and stop it!

Right away!

Read the antidote: “Good People Must Be Dangerous People: Fear is the only language the violent comprehend” by Jack Kerwick.

Quickly.

An excerpt:

“…Conservatism, Inc.’s leaders are looking out for themselves. Their standard operating procedure is the stuff of wusses and whiners—but certainly not winners. Decent people, and decent men specifically, know that in the last analysis, it is they and they alone—and not, as those in Big Conservatism would have us think, state agents—who are the last line of defense protecting innocents from predators. This being the case, the decent know that they must become ruthless.

… If they were alive today, the founders would insist that decent folks who want to live good lives and protect themselves, their loved ones, and other law-abiding citizens in their communities from danger most definitely not follow the example of “conservative leaders,” whether in government or anywhere else, who are only interested in adjusting their bowties, wagging their fingers, and shrieking and crying over the Left’s ‘double standards’ while conning their constituents into thinking that they are ‘fighting the Left.’””

… A must read:

“Good People Must Be Dangerous People: Fear is the only language the violent comprehend” by Jack Kerwick.

*Image courtesy of American Greatness

Revolving Door Between Cable Media And DC Duopoly

America, Critique, Democrats, Ethics, Iran, Media, Morality, Republicans

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The revolving door between cable media, neoliberal (CNN) or neocon (Fox), and the D.C. duopoly is sickening. Whether practiced by the Left or the Right; this revolving door between politics and the media is indisputably a moral, if not a legal, conflict of interest.

Fox News has hired warmonger Mike Pompeo. The skirts from the Trump administration, ideologically insignificant all, are on the Fox payroll. Corrupt—neither is the content smart: all day long it’s “the poor Uyghurs, invade Iran.”

Naturally, examples abound on the other side.