We live in a political world where the heartfelt feelings of one day give way to the whim (usually MAGA-inspired) of another day. Today’s vociferous anti-Trump voice may be tomorrow’s pro-Trump voice. You will find no better example of this than J.D. Vance. He started out comparing Trump to Hitler, now he’s Trump’s vice president. The lack of a spine comes in very handy when you’re a Republican these days. A short memory is also a handy accoutrement, if not an outright blessing. Daily Beast:
As JD Vance dutifully shared clips on social media of Donald Trump delivering his Fourth of July speech on Saturday, an essay he penned 10 years earlier trashing the president he now serves went viral.
“Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it,” Vance wrote, as he spent 1,300 words comparing Trump to hard drugs and easy highs.
He went on say Trump “exploits” real problems facing voters and makes promises that will never be fulfilled, describing it as a “great tragedy.”
“During this election season, it appears that many Americans have reached for a new pain reliever. It too, promises a quick escape from life’s cares, an easy solution to the mounting social problems of U.S. communities and culture,” Vance wrote of his now-boss’s cultural grip.
“It demands nothing and requires little more than a modest presence and maybe a few enablers. It enters minds, not through lungs or veins, but through eyes and ears, and its name is Donald Trump.”
What is saving Vance’s bacon right now is that Trump doesn’t read. And that means anything, let alone an intelligentsia periodical like The Atlantic, where this article was published and went viral. Vance needs to hope that nobody in Trump’s orbit decides to clue him in that the piece exists. That may involve calling in a lot of favors.
On the other hand, Trump may not care. Vance may have been “one of them” at one point but Vance is clearly in Trump’s circle now, as MAGAfied as anybody can get. So Trump may see the article as a badge of honor, a testament to how he can convert people.
But I wouldn’t count on it. I would count on Trump’s ego seeing a phrase like “cultural heroin” and reaching for the nearest ketchup bottle. Vance probably isn’t getting a lot of sleep these days.
