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James Flanagan's avatar

I trashed Vance's book on Amazon in 2019 and declared it to be Reader's Digest material. Vance was a self-serving hypocrite then and he's worse now. I recall his nasty reaction to the guy in one of his classes at Ohio State with the scraggly beard he deemed idiotic or ill-informed and by then I knew, from that and other evidence in the book, that he was a bigot, a tribalist and an opportunist who didn't appreciate his good fortune at all.

He's now both a rich Social Darwinist and a religious nut so he straddles the two elements that make up the Republican coalition in an unusual way, and his conversion to Catholicism makes him more of a rare form of sleaze, the evangelicals having farmed out the intellectual heavy lifting at the Supreme Court level to Franco-authoritarian Catholics because they're apparently incapable of producing such people in-house. Vance seems to think he knows better than the people who wrote the Constitution AND the pope so it will be interesting to see how it plays out if Trump drops dead. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in any case, but watching him crush his own soul and become a certified shill for the apocalypse has been a disturbing and disgusting spectacle.

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Jeff Darnell's avatar

Well, that is an excellent account of a young man coming to grips with some deep soul searching (philosophy can run hot and cold) in a crowded room of whip smart ambition.

Social capital ain’t worth a hill of beans if you can’t stand hanging out with them it at the pub.

Plenty of room in the world for well educated decency. Make yourself useful to those that need a leg up from someone who can help. Always a good idea to remember humanity is like being in a band, music sounds better if everyone practices.

You will have far less sleepless night.

Thanks for the essay, I enjoyed reading it.

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