Friends encouraged me to write a bestselling book that explained hillbillies to PBS-watching, cappuccino-drinking Democrats and sell it to Netflix for $10 million.
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(As recalled by J.B. Miller)
Hi, my name is JD Vance and I had a hardscrabble upbringing in rural Ohio, with a ma who had a substance abuse problem and a pa who’d glued the radio dial to Rush Limbaugh’s station.
Watching my ma pick up boyfriends in between marrying five times, and my pa heading out the door to bet on the nearest frog fight, I wondered how soon I could write a book about it or sell my story for a network series.
When my glue-sniffing parents couldn’t look after me, I was brought up by my Mamaw, who showed affection to my Papaw by serving him artfully arranged plates of garbage and dousing him with gasoline. Those were wonderful days, and we’d always have a party before the coming of the country fair. Ever since, that’s been my credo: party before country.
But gradually I became tired of living in a community plagued by guns and conformity, a pigsty of redneck omerta and blind love of country. So I joined the Marine Corps.
They taught me all I needed to know about life: that a world of guns and conformity, fierce loyalty, and blind love of country was my ticket out of the hellhole that was my misunderstood hillbilly background.
But first I’d smite the elites by going to Ohio State and Yale Law School, where I first saw Luca Faloni shirts and Gucci loafers, and decided that that was the lifestyle for me. It was at Yale that I realized I’d had a hillbilly allergy all along, and even now, the sight of a pickaxe or plaid shirt is enough to make me sneeze.
Friends encouraged me to write a bestselling book that explained hillbillies to PBS-watching, cappuccino-drinking Democrats and sell it to Netflix for $10 million.
This I did. The book described how a typical Appalachian was misunderstood as a shiftless redneck who’d rather pick up a welfare check than work as a cashier in a supermarket, whereas in actual fact he was a lazy bumpkin who’d prefer to take a socialist handout than man-up the till at a lumberyard. Okay, I guess it’s the same thing! But I put it in book form that — coming from a card-carrying rural Buckeye — had dirt-road cred for those stuck-up lefties in smoothie-drinking Volvoland.
It’s all about freedom. The freedom to earn $7.25 an hour working at a lunch counter, the freedom to stay in a violent marriage to a person of the opposite sex, the freedom to be followed and arrested if you try to get an abortion out of state. These are fundamental rights.
At Yale Law School I learned an honest profession, working at the foot of Lady Justice, holding the glorious scales of impartiality — which I ditched after two years to strike it rich in San Francisco’s tech valley. It was there I met the right-wing loony billionaire Peter Thiel, who staked me as a venture capitalist, and I became a right-wing loony millionaire with a manscaped beard.
Straight-talking conservatives like Thiel taught me that women were best served by having abortion taken away from them, even in instances of rape and incest. Otherwise we’d become a godless nation of irresponsible sexual deviants addicted to NPR and yoga.
The way to help an unemployed rural rube is not to give him money; it’s to stick him in a coal mine, free from the shackles of worker safety, collective bargaining, and government regulation.
It’s all about freedom. The freedom to earn $7.25 an hour working at a lunch counter, the freedom to stay in a violent marriage to a person of the opposite sex, the freedom to be followed and arrested if you try to get an abortion out of state. These are fundamental rights.
Having banked my coin, I thought seriously about how I could help my fellow man (women were still a bit of a puzzle to me), and decided it was by running for the US Senate, where I could fight unions, abortion, and worker protections.
It was around this time I recognized a new menace: Donald J. Trump. He was cultural heroin, a cynical asshole, a moral disaster, and America’s Hitler. He struck me as a total fruitcake who wouldn’t know a porn-ban bill if it fell into his tiny fingers.
But when I noticed that he’d gotten elected president I threw my heartfelt support behind his weird hand gestures and astute political musings about whether it was better to be electrocuted in a boat or eaten by a shark. I shared his fear of an onslaught of Hannibal Lecters pouring over the 1,950-mile US-Mexico border, despite the 48 miles of wall he’d built that illegal immigrants were forced to cut through or walk around.
When Trump realized I was a good friend of the right-wing loony billionaire Peter Thiel, he very generously forgave the terrible things I’d said about him and backed me in my Senate bid. In addition I got $10 million from Thiel himself, so that I could protect his tech interests from the government and free him from the onerous constraints of high taxes and regulation. This was my pledge to my fellow man (women were still a complete mystery to me): I would work for the rights of the business overlords who had the common people’s best interests at heart.
Like Thiel and Trump, I knew what the people wanted. They wanted more guns, fewer libraries, and no access to IVF or abortion pills. They wanted to go to bed at night knowing their corporate bosses were operating free from the yoke of government regulations and clean water and air protections. Folks didn’t want to worry about a safety net; they had enough on their minds with all the gun violence, angry political rhetoric, and rising temperatures and sea levels due to natural weather patterns.
President Trump reminded me about America’s core values, such as admiring a girl’s rack, getting ethnic names wrong, and making fun of people with disabilities.
When President Trump asked me to be his running mate, even without shaving off my beard, I said you betcha and shook his tiny hand. After only two years in government I knew how the levers of power worked: You had to cozy up to Orange Face.
He told me about his assassination attempt, how he caught the bullet in his teeth and ate it. And in homage to this superhuman Orange Jesus, we’ve all been eating bullets ever since.
President Trump reminded me about America’s core values, such as admiring a girl’s rack, getting ethnic names wrong, and making fun of people with disabilities. Together we can make America 1956 again, when a doddering old president got re-elected by ignoring the pressing problems of the day. Eisenhower may have been a war hero, but he never ate a bullet or won a tournament at his own golf course.
These are perilous times, and our country faces an uncertain future. So we need an administration not afraid to be fixated on the grievances of the past.
President Trump, the oldest candidate in American history, will return us to the days of Howdy Doody and separate but equal water coolers.
Appalachians aren’t dirt poor and drug-addled because the world’s energy needs have moved on from coal and abandoned them. It’s because these Rust Belt bozos don’t have the moral courage to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, go to an Ivy League institution, earn millions in venture capitalism, and become a vice presidential candidate. If I can do it, so can they.
J.B. Miller is an American writer living in England. His novel, Duch, is being published in January by Lori Perkins Books.
