Tag: J.D. Vance

J.D. Vance Discourse Is The Dumbest Discourse


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, this Saturday’s evening Twitter has seen the Usual Suspects of Blue Check Liberalism atwitter over this dumb, obvious troll by newly minted Trump sycophant J..D. Vance.

Vance is not stupid. In fact, as I understand it, he’s quite smart and quite well educated. But he’s on the MAGA grift gravy train now, so he feels obligated to troll liberals at every opportunity.

If you give the above tweet any thought, you obviously see the ” ” around it — it’s mean to convey the vibe of that one cool Assistant Youth Pastor who turns his chair around and sits facing you to tell you how Jesus would have been MAGA if he lived today.

But the dynamic of the over wrought, over heated Twitter environment is such that a tweet like Vance’s can easily — EASILY — be misconstrued. And, of course, Vance knows that. The whole thing is a trap to “own” the “humorless” libs. It also doubles as an in-kind contribution to his Ohio Senate campaign because a lot of high profile Blue Check liberals quote tweet it in an effort to dunk on him.

He (and the entire MAGA bullshit echo chamber) knows this, and so they lay traps for liberals like this all the time. And liberals fall for these traps every single fucking time. In fact, it’s so bad, someone needs to teach “How not to fall for a MAGA troll” master class for such individuals to spare us a lot of grief.

Anyway. Do better Blue Check Liberals.

Let’s Unpack J.D. Vance’s Fears of ‘Cancel Culture’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Oh boy. There’s a lot to unpack with this Axios profile of J.D. Vance’s Senate campaign in Ohio. Here’s the part that sticks out for me:

Vance told me in a phone interview from Cincinnati that so-called cancel culture was a big part of conservatives’ conversations as he worked Fourth of July parades over the holiday weekend.

“People are terrified that if they speak their minds about what’s going on in the country, they’re going to lose their job,” he said. “‘If I say that I voted for Trump on Facebook, somebody’s going to try to get me fired.”

This abstract fear is something I hear a lot from my conservative relatives. Because MAGA has no policies that are popular outside their own bullshit echo chamber, they latch on to the vague unease that a lot of people feel about “cancel culture” (whatever the fuck that is.)

To me, the crazy thing about all of this everyone benefits by having a liberal democracy that has an ebb and flow to it. But that’s now how MAGA cocksuckers see things — they want to take power and never let go because they fear the browning of America, or women with economic and sexual agency, the list goes on.

So that abstract conservative fear that their life will be ruined for just being conservative is what MAGA has hung its entire political future on. MAGA talking points have now completely consumed the conservative to the point that my conservative-but-not-MAGA relatives pretty much echo all the major MAGA complaints without even realizing it.

One thing that I struggle with is — how real is, in practical terms, “cancel culture.” I have one conservative relative who can tick off half a dozen concrete examples of conservatives being canceled, and, yet, I also think his abstract fears of cancel culture are extremely recursive. In my center-Left experience, there are very few examples of honest-to-God average conservatives who have had their lives ruined “just for being conservative.”

The problem, of course, the divide between MAGA and everyone else has grown so enormous that we can’t even agree on what is acceptable public behavior. I mean, is it ok for a police official to donate $20 to the defense fund of a 17-year-old serial murder because they supported his political agenda? (The crybaby defense that it was “leaked” doesn’t hold much water since Republicans seem to get off on using leaked e-mails for political gain.)

The real problem is a massive difference in perception. Or, put another way, the media narrative of Trumplandia is so dramatically different from the media narrative of everyone else that it’s like talking to someone from a political Upside Down. Or, even more specifically, negative polarization is now so absolute that MAGA’s political foundations are now 100% recursive and abstract.