“You just have to read it” a progressive friend implored. “It’ll make you understand the appeal of Donald Trump to all those uneducated rednecks in America”. The ‘it’ in question is Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance.
It’s what I like to call a telescopic study of the great unwashed for people who have spent a lifetime deliberately avoiding any contact whatsoever with the great unwashed. A way for them to empathise from afar without actually having to consort with people that they may be down with in theory when they are pitted against conservative politicians or multi-national corporations, but secretly loathe in practice when reading a 277 page opus about what makes them tick instead of actually visiting their towns and suburbs far afield of gentrified left leaning suburbs to chat to them and better understand their hopes, dreams, and fears.
I haven’t actually read Hillbilly Elegy yet, and probably won’t, unlike your average progressive who will feel obliged to read it just as Jerry Seinfeld felt obliged to go and see Schindler’s List. The story of redneck persecution was already covered with a fine toothed comb in Jim Goad’s The Redneck Manifesto. It’s the only book you’ll ever need to read on the subject, and it made many on the left feel uncomfortable. The truly fascinating thing about Hillbilly Elegy for me is the complete lack of self-awareness exhibited by my progressive friend, and everyone else who is hailing this as the most important political book of 2016.
They are reading Hillbilly Elegy with their Marxist hat on, conspicuously judging the political leanings of people living in destitute, Meth-afflicted communities giving the finger to polite society by voting Trump, based upon their own progressive sensibilities. These are the same smug leftists who tell us that we have no right to comment on the virtue of blacks burning down their own neighbourhoods to make a point.
The double standard and complete lack of self awareness from progressives gushing about Hillbilly Ellegy beggars belief. They totally understand African Americans literally burning things down out of frustration after seeing a few simplistic hashtags and a few seconds of selectively edited news footage, but need to literally plough through 277 pages by J.D. Vance to get their head around why blue collar and unemployed white Americans might want to figuratively burn things down by supporting Donald Trump.
I have troubling news for progressives who are picking up the ‘must read political work of 2016’ in droves. If you need to read 277 pages to understand the appeal of Donald Trump to the good people of ‘flyover country’, you’re well and truly afflicted by white privilege.
Photo by Fredrik Enestad 