Dear Editor,
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump’s made his nomination four days later as the Republican candidate for the US November election a formality but also practically assures him of a second term as President; notwithstanding who the Democrats select to oppose him. Most foreign observers see Trump as a blowhard and a buffoon, completely at odds with the typical “American leader”. However, what we are witnessing is not just a new type of American leader but a signal of a complete remake of the paradigm of what “America” is all about. Some of the intellectuals calling for this transformation explicitly calls it “regime change”. They use the word in its original meaning from political science: “a form of government or the set of rules, cultural or social norms, etc., that regulate the operation of a government or institution and its interactions with society.”
The man Trump selected as his VP candidate – Ohio Senator JD Vance, explained Trump’s appeal back in 2016, after the success of his NY Times bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy”, when he was actually anti-Trump. “This is where, to me, there’s a lot of ignorance around “Teflon Don.” No one seems to understand why conventional blunders do nothing to Trump. But in a lot of ways, what elites see as blunders people back home see as someone who–finally–conducts themselves in a relatable way. He shoots from the hip; he’s not constantly afraid of offending someone; he’ll get angry about politics; he’ll call someone a liar or a fraud. This is how a lot of people in the white working class actually talk about politics, and even many elites recognize how refreshing and entertaining it can be! So it’s not really a blunder as much as it is a rich, privileged Wharton grad connecting to people back home through style and tone. Viewed like this, all the talk about “political correctness” isn’t about any specific substantive point, as much as it is a way of expanding the scope of acceptable behavior.”
JD Vance is descended from “po’ white” Hillbillies who moved to Middletown, a small town in Ohio. This became part of the “Rust Belt” when, following the pro-business Republican conservative Nixon’s rapprochement with China , businesses moved their manufacturing to that country in their drive for profits, leaving social and economic devastation in its wake. Fighting the liberal paradigm introduced by Roosevelt to escape the Great Depression, the conservatives had become their mirror image. By the 1980’s and Reagan, the Republicans were “neo-liberals”.
In the 2016 words of Vance, “The two political parties have offered essentially nothing to these people for a few decades. From the Left, they get some smug condescension, an exasperation that the white working class votes against their economic interests because of social issues. To me, this condescension is a big part of Trump’s appeal. He’s the one politician who actively fights elite sensibilities, whether they’re good or bad.
“From the Right, they’ve gotten the basic Republican policy platform of tax cuts, free trade, deregulation, and paeans to the noble businessman and economic growth. Trump’s candidacy is music to their ears. He criticizes the factories shipping jobs overseas. His apocalyptic tone matches their lived experiences on the ground. He seems to love to annoy the elites, which is something a lot of people wish they could do but can’t because they lack a platform.” Businessmen shipping jobs abroad are not heroes.
Vance is heavily influenced by political Theorist Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame, who sees liberalism itself as the problem. He argued in his 2018 book, Why Liberalism Failed, that “liberal regimes promised their citizens equality, self-government and material prosperity, but in practice, they gave rise to staggering inequality, crushing dependence on corporations and government bureaucracies and the wholesale degradation of the natural environment. At the same time, liberalism’s incessant drive to expand individual freedom had eroded the non-liberal institutions — the nuclear family, local communities, and religious organizations — that kept liberalism’s impulse toward atomization in check.”
Vance is regarded as Trump’s successor who will not only “drain the swamp” but repopulate it with like-minded individuals who espouse their New left values dubbed “common-good conservatism”. Their vision is encapsulated in the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025”, which proposes a wholesale firing of bureaucrats and replacing them with like minded New Left adherents. Economically, they reject free market fundamentalism, combat corporate monopolies, limit immigration and foreign policy wise, rejects America as the global policeman.
Sincerely,
Ravi Dev
