Hillbilly Hypocrite

Donald Trump and his 2024 running mate J.D. Vance (Image from Al Jazeera video)

By James Moore

Humiliation has long been a strong deterrent to failure in America. Our culture’s tendency is to blame the person, not the country or its capitalism. If you are in the ditch, you got there because you did not work sufficiently hard or smart, and you should not expect too much help climbing back up on the road to prosperity. The government was not designed to provide you a safety net. Capitalism and America did not fail; you did, and you alone are responsible for redemption. Especially in the post World War II economy, Americans were convinced X amount of effort always produced a Y total of abundant results.

And they were wrong.

In the Midwestern factory town where I was born and raised, no shortage of muscled backs and arms ever occurred when labor was required to build cars and trucks. Millions of hard-working souls came up from the South, Blacks and Whites, looking for a brighter tomorrow than what was possible while chopping cotton and praying that rain would follow the plow. Mostly, though, they exchanged one form of sweat for a different endeavor that did not immediately prove as profitable as envisioned. They worked, however, long and hard hours because there seemed an endless demand for the Fords and Chevys and Dodges that rolled off the 24-hour assembly lines.

Most of the hourly wage employees at the factories were labelled as “hillbillies,” which was a pejorative assigned to under-educated migrants from south of the Mason-Dixon Line, a historic pre-Civil War demarcation that separated free and slave states. Technically, hillbillies were supposed to be from impoverished Appalachia and the Ozarks of Missouri but in the industrial Midwest the term came to encompass former residents of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and, ultimately, all the Southern states, or Dixie, east of the Mississippi River. It was the hillbillies, in fact, whose bent backs and long arms set the American economy on fire and filled the pockets of investors and tax collectors and all the manufacturers of parts and materials for cars and trucks. Rain never did follow the plow but the economic boom did chase the hillbillies.

No people worked harder than my mother and father. Ma waiting tables at a burger joint up on the Dixie Highway for .65 cents an hour and nickel and dime tips while Daddy earned a little over $1.50 hourly. If there had been more hours to a day, they would have taken the additional work. There was never enough money to feed and clothe their children and the mortgage payment, less than $100 monthly, created a household crisis every thirty days. The strains caused emotional and psychological breakdowns in my father and our mother struggled mightily to hold together her family. She was an immigrant, and had nowhere to turn.

Ma finally found some assistance from county government, which was disbursing United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) food to needy families. There was embarrassment for her, though, in having to seek help because it became a kind of public proclamation to your neighbors that you had failed. Even though her education had not gone beyond eighth grade on her home island, she was clever enough to figure out a way to avoid the judgment of others when it came to earning a living and caring for her children.

The popular local grocery store used to bag groceries in our town with thick paper sacks that bore the store’s name and bright red logo on the side. Families kept these bags for various uses like storage and containing garbage to be taken curbside. They were referred to, and might still be, as “Hamady sacks,” branded with the surname of the store owners. Eventually, those brown bags became painful memories for me because they symbolized my mother’s shame. I think I was nine years old when she asked me to travel with her to the county welfare office and bring a Hamady sack.

“Get me a Hamady sack from behind the ‘fridge, son, and put on your coat,” she said, one gray Michigan winter day.

“What do you need it for, Ma?”

“Never mind. Fold it up so I can put it in my purse and go put on your jacket.”

“Where are we going, Ma?”

“To get groceries.”

“We have to bring our own bags?”

“Never mind, I said, son.”

 

One Sack to Serve Us All

 

When we arrived at the county assistance offices, my Ma put on a pair of sunglasses, which I did not know she owned, and we walked inside a brown brick structure not far from the Buick plant where my father worked. There was a line and we waited a half hour as I watched my Ma peeking over the tops of her sunglasses like she was looking for someone she might know. Eventually, we got to the counter and she filled out some papers and was handed tickets before being directed to another window.

A man behind the counter took the tickets and returned with long blocks of cheese, boxes of cereal, powdered eggs and milk, and cans of soup. They were all packaged in brownish-green cardboard and had large lettering that said USDA on the sides. Ma took the Hamady sack out of her purse, unfolded the heavy, brown paper, and placed the food inside and led me out the door. I did not grasp until I was much older that the sack was more about deception than convenience. The government packaging was very noticeable, and Ma did not want anyone she knew to see her carrying the food. When I was a boy, I cannot recall that there was anything to be said about a family that was more demeaning than, “They’re on Welfare,” and that described our circumstances.

I cannot stop thinking about how hard labor wore down my parents to where they had no energy, will, nor money to enjoy the latter years of their time. My father had nervous breakdowns, multiple electroshock therapies, and incidents of violence where he lost himself and hurt his wife and children. Ma was afraid and lived too much of her time without hope or money, but she never abandoned her children. When I read disaffected souls like Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance write of his childhood and suggest that too many Americans “lack agency” for their own lives, and have a “feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself,” I feel a need to scream issuing from my throat. Instead of blaming bad industrial planning and management for factory failures and loss of jobs, Vance puts the collapse on the shoulders of the wage earners.

 

Is this the Future of America?

 

In his book, Hillbilly Elegy, Vance contradicts his own theories. When his parents’ marriage failed and his mother fell into drug addiction, his grandparents stepped in to raise him and protect him from the streets. No one passed him off to Child Protective Services, his family gave him safe harbor in his youth. Vance indulges in more than a bit of self-aggrandizement with his personal narrative of success while ignoring the fact that not everyone has the resources or the courage to leave their hometown. What “agency” does a family of four have over their lives when the steel factories shut down and both parents are suddenly without income and the mortgage banker is eyeing a foreclosure? People living paycheck to paycheck, as probably is the case with the majority of Americans, cannot simply jump in their clunky old car and take off for a western horizon convinced there is a new job and better life over the hill. They cannot even pay for gasoline.

Vance seems convinced, too, that there is such a creature as the “Welfare Queen,” an unmarried women who does not work, gets government checks, and rides around inner city Detroit or Cincinnati in designer clothes with a dozen children living off taxpayers. The notion is apocryphal and even if there were millions of such women, their waste would never begin to approach what the U.S. military has allowed to disappear into the Mideast and defense contractor boondoggles like the Osprey or the Joint Strike Fighter jet, which both crash frequently and never appear to serve the nation’s defense without multi-billion dollar failures. These catastrophes are ignored by political pseudo-intellectuals with Vance’s credentials because they have a rigid belief that the government has no real role beyond defense and low taxation to sustain businesses. You are always on your own in America and no government program needs to catch you when you fall or offer you a hand up.

Vance’s immaturity is unveiled with his conspiratorial thinking on matters of geopolitics and policy. His tortured visions show him a President Biden scheming with his Democratic consorts to open the U.S. Mexico border as part of a vast national plan to kill MAGA voters with drugs. “If you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better than to target them and their kids with this deadly fentanyl?” he said during an Ohio speech. “It does look intentional. It’s like Joe Biden wants to punish the people who didn’t vote for him and opening up the floodgates to the border is one way to do it.”

The absurdity of this claim is counterintuitive to Vance’s argument that people ought to take agency over their lives and their fortunes, regardless of their economic circumstances. He is suggesting that MAGA voters, whom he trusts, will, instead, simply use fentanyl because it ends up in their communities, thereby reducing the number of people able to support Trump. In J.D.’s world, are not MAGAts the strongest, most independent, and able thinkers who do not need the government and would exercise intelligent judgment to “just say no” to Biden’s drug cartels?

Further, though, his facile argument ignores the fact that conservative American politics from his party have caused the rush on the American border. Our geopolitics in Central America, coups we have facilitated, and fruit and oil companies we have given provenance in place of indigenous governments, have caused a social and economic collapse in the Northern Triangle countries of Central America that will not soon stop sending people to our doorstep. As for the fentanyl, it does not cross the frontier in immigrant backpacks; it is smuggled across in motor vehicles at legal ports of entry. J.D. could ask U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, if he wanted real data like information that fentanyl seizures have dramatically increased during the Biden presidency.

Vance’s Ivy League law degree must also be curling at the edges from his beliefs on legal issues. He described Trump’s hush money trial for business and political corruption in New York City as “a threat to democracy,” which is, to understate the matter, profoundly ignorant in a manner that does not suggest deception or disingenuousness. Evidence was collected through legal investigation, testimony was acquired through deposition, and charges were filed based on the preponderance of what that material indicated. A trial was held on the 34 felony charges, and Trump was convicted. This was American jurisprudence working the way it was designed, a critical element of our democratic foundations. The only threats were the less than veiled violent ones made against the judge and prosecuting attorney.

Vance also does not care about the Constitution, which he would be sworn to uphold should Trump and he win. (I will, should that happen, seek to become an Australian emigre’.) Our outdated Electoral College, proscribed in the Constitution, calls for “electors” in each state to represent before congress the candidate who won the most presidential votes in that state. They then gather in Washington to cast their votes and the Vice President is required to certify the results. Vance said he would not have certified the 2020 results were he the VP, and would have encouraged states to send additional slates of electors, you know, maybe people who loved Trump even though he did not win and they would not be qualified to vote as electors. Vance would happily defy the constitutional laws he was sworn to uphold.

“If I had been vice president,” he said, “I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there.” That’s not how it works, J.D. Freshen up on your constitutional law. Maybe take a remedial course or two.

It is impossible to understand, Senator Vance, how you became who you are and what you took away from the childhood you described so eloquently in your book. My suspicion is your transformation to Trump acolyte after ridiculing him for a few years might make you the most craven pol of your generation. You are looking at that chronically obese low intellect, tottering around with arteriosclerosis and coronary heart disease and sniffing adderall, who believes exercise is stupid because it uses up your limited number of heartbeats, and you are thinking, “I may very well end up the youngest president in American history when this guy tops off.” Let’s hope not.

But either way, there are millions of hard-working Americans like my parents, if they were still around, who would like to have a word.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

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James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.

He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).

His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.

Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”

 

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19 Comments

  1. Thank you, James. Another absorbing read.

    Vance scares the bejeezuz out of me.

    A couple of weeks ago a prominent lawyer (whose name escapes me) suggested that if Trump were ever to declare that he’s turning full fascist he’d do so be picking Vance as his running mate.

    Well, here we are.

  2. Interesting how these RW (former corporate) elites develop a ‘legend’ or bio, that belies reality e.g. claiming to be one of the people vs elites; but allegedly Vance looks down on the white working class?

    Further, it’s an old tactic used by white Christian nationalists to avoid accusations of racism, ‘performative’ play the victim and claim e.g. to have lived in a multicultural community, married to an ‘other’ (like Vance) or claiming a parent as an ‘immigrant’ e.g. Lachlan Murdoch on his Baltic mother.

    Not just Orwellian, manipulative and creating narratives to get at low info &/or agieng voters, it’s the symmetry apparent in RW media and broader ecosystem e.g. never publish anything positive about ‘immigrants’, keep it negative…..rinse, repeat, often….

    Another parallel is how we saw two election campaigns ago, the NewsCorp led ‘Kill Bill’ (Shorten) campaign where Morrison prevailed via platforming, showers of BS and dog whistling by a consolidated RW info system; guess learnt from the job done on Hilary ‘Killary’ Clinton in the US 2016.

    Fast forward, and all corporate, often RW, media in the US is doing the same via anonymous, whispering campaigns etc. on Biden-Dems, but fairly mute on Trump, Vance, Project 2025 and e.g. blanket abortion bans? Trying to soften the GOP and Trump’s image?

    Meanwhile, many polls have not moved the dial since Biden’s debate and Trump rally shooting, while JD Vance has apparently in past days put the frighteners on women in swing states, and GOP losing support, leading them to rely on MAGA votes, but there are not enough?

  3. “I will, should that happen, seek to become an Australian emigre’.”

    I’m sure you’d be very welcome James.

    Make sure that you fly in. Don’t come by boat.

  4. James, while Australia isn’t remotely like America, or your Texan niche for that matter, we do have oodles of space and opportunities for relocation, and you wouldn’t be the first of your kind to seek refuge in this relatively welcoming land. Come to Sydney… I can offer you a room until you find your feet and work out where you want to be.

    In the meantime, if forward scouting is your thing, you can get some idea of what’s on offer here.

  5. Talking of the Mason-Dixon line, this little ballad from Mark Knopfler and James Taylor tells the story of the two English surveyors who travelled to America to draw this arbitrary line back in 1763 : enjoy –

  6. With JD Vance aka the hillbilly hypocrite currently garnering attention after he became Trump’s pick for VP, it’s an illuminating exercise to try to get one’s head around why it is that the New York realtor continues to exercise such a fascination for the American electorate given his highly publicised track record of failure at many levels.

    To that end, a recently released documentary titled Bad Faith explores the nexus between America’s militant Christian nationalists, the Council for National Policy, and their decision to use Trump as a useful fool for their agenda, viz., the ‘recreation’ of America as a fundamentalist Christian country and specific haven for white people who are willing to support the fundamentalist creed that they are promulgating.

    It has been, so far, a successful endeavour.

    Australians should be very wary of this type of insidious & creepy backwards slide towards the dark ages of ignorance and prejudicial isolation.

    The documentary can be accessed here. Highly recommended.

  7. Hopefully Harris will take on Trumpwit with fresh vigor and kick his and Vance’s arses into some roaming black hole.

  8. Vance strikes me as being the absolute acme of a political parasite and grifter. He makes Ashby look like a kindergartener by comparison.

  9. While it may be an opinion hard to digest, the coming election is run on democratic lines.
    Maybe a crazy system, but its a numbers game.
    If we stack up the critical thinking Yanks on one side.
    Then on the other side we have the gun toting, hill billy, god bothering , red necked ones on the other side.
    This is America, and if the decision is not in their favour, heres a bullet, bro.
    Personally I think its Trump, or civil war in 2024.

  10. Trust tRump to pick a running mate who lies as easily as he does and has already proved how untrustworthy and treacherous he is by being a turncoat. What must have conspired between those two, or been offered to him, for him to change his opinion so drastically from orange clown hater to absolute crawly bum-licker. Typically American behaviour. Fuck principles and your pride, take the money and fame.

    I have this image in my head of Vance feeding endless numbers of big macs to tRump hoping to bring on that massive coronary, that we all expect to happen any day, so he can get the big job without all the effort. America, you will get the government that you deserve…

  11. The self-serving, totally corrupt, devious pathological liar, Donald Trump, really doesn’t need a bandage over his ear, he NEVER listens to ANYONE anyway! Trump has a criminal record and has been allegedly accused of raping a young 13 year old girl (whilst in the company of his friend, the late, notorious paedophile: Jeffrey Epstein) and a long, disgraceful history as a life-long, dangerous misogynistic predator. Trump has no conscience, zero moral compass, not one iota of remorse, no compassion for ANYONE or ANYTHING but himself and no filter!

    Trump has PROVEN himself to be an unconscionable, manipulative sociopath who will tell any lie, commit any crime and/or stoop to ANYTHING – even bending as low as he can go to manipulatively garnish the “sympathy vote” (by wearing an over-sized band aid to cover the tiny graze he received at the hands of a disgruntled, now deceased, patriot) – in order to attain and maintain his megalomaniacal grip on undemocratic, tyrannical and autocratic power!
    Trump’s open contempt and complete disregard for women – objectifying women and believing that women have no place outside the kitchen and bedroom, PROVES that Trump is a life-long, rusted-on misogynist who is totally incapable of fairly representing women who comprise more than 50% of the American population! The depraved pathological liar, Donald Trump, poses a REAL risk with his complete disregard towards the health and welfare of anyone but himself. Trump’s ongoing cruel persecution of ANYONE who doesn’t agree with his racist, misogynistic and narrow view of the world is intolerable as is his contempt towards the poorest, most vulnerable people in America.

    The REALITY is that the self-serving, egotistical multi-billionaire Trump is a truly dangerous, thoroughly malignant and absolutely entitled right-wing extremist who poses a REAL THREAT to America’s democracy and to world peace! Trump is a callously inhumane, rusted-on and thoroughly entitled misogynist; a proven racist white-supremacist and an uninhibited psychopath who isn’t a fit and appropriate person to run a chook raffle let alone be allowed to (once again) become the hate-filled, incompetent and dangerously undemocratic and cultist leader of the free world! What is even MORE concerning is the worrying possibility that if Trump achieves his sick, twisted goal in receiving “political IMMUNITY” it will give this unspeakably depraved, criminally corrupt psychopath “permission” to do ANYTHING he wants (even murder) and get away with it! The thought that this lying, corrupt, misogynistic predator may have his shaky, vindictive finger hovering over the Doomsday Button is absolutely terrifying! If this unspeakably depraved psychopath is allowed to rise to become the worst, most corrupt POTUS once again, God help America and God help the world. With political immunity, there can be no doubt that Trump will believe he has “permission” to commit any crime and do ANYTHING he wants which, given just how evil and megalomaniacal the born-to-rule sociopath, Trump really is, is absolutely terrifying!

    FFS, wake up, America!

  12. Excellent story JM,

    Such a pity a huge number of Americans don’t want to elucidate their nightmares, preferring a veneer of showy endeavour, where a Holywood-pumped good is obtained by reactionary badness. And for the MAGAs, oh bless, as well as Trump, they’ve been sent JDVance badass. Oh bless.

    What a house of cards, or should that be cads

    To me, the Dems have had a plan for a while – they’ve been awfully quiet. Step 2 – in place – step aside for Karmala. Step 3 – keep Trump & Vance et al wrong footed and guessing – yeesh, not a woman. Step 4 – have the Dem Convention 19Aug – no contest already backed-in. Step 5 return to Kamala with full backing and a well planned agenda (while Joe (as POTUS) keeps Trump, Vance & GOP jabbering outa every orifice). Step 6 – assist the GOP meltdown through Nov – Jan.

    This time around, Joe will have the power to put all on watch, and put down, not incite insurrections.

  13. Vance is what would happen if a grifter par excellence such as Trump was smarter. No ethics, no morals, no consistency , just an endless hunger for money and power.

    I’m almost starting to feel sorry for USAnia, but they’ve done this to themselves.

  14. The madness of the orange maniac and I think he’s more than a little worried about going up against someone (and a woman to boot) who is almost 20 years younger and anchored to reality:

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-rant-biden-drops-out-2024-election_n_669dd91ee4b0446139df9146

    https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/its-a-coup-donald-trump-other-republicans-react-furiously-to-joe-bidens-withdrawal-from-the-presidential-race/news-story/c809f4c1f2c4ec5c27c3158f3ecd20a8

  15. Come on over James, join a couple of American expat friends who have made Perth their home and are absolutely loving it.

  16. For the record, I love Oz, which has much to do with why I am writing for the Independent. About a decade ago, I flew down to Perth and hired (rented) a motorbike and spent a month riding back across the continent to Sydney, camped out every night in the bush. I went down to Cape Leeuwin, back up and then down along the SW coast to Esperance and then up to Norseman, across the Nullarbor, up and down Cape Ayre, over the Grampians, through Clare Valley, Limestone Coast, over to Lakes Entrance, back up over the Snowys and then the Blue Mountains and back down into Sydney. I’ve taken a lot of motorcycle trips, but that one remains the most memorable. The scenery, people, food, weather, was just incomparable, and I’ve ridden all 48 of the lower US states and have seen much of Alaska, in comparison of our two countries. The world is a beautiful place but Australia is unique. I hope to be back soon and hire another motorbike and take a ride across the “top end.” I think it’s a bit pricey to emigrate these days, from what I can discern, but I hope to figure out a way to spend at least six months a year down there until my visa expires. – JM

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