"An unbearably sensitive barometer of American dread"
The liberal impulse to "get" conservative America put J.D. Vance where he is now, but Vance has nothing to teach us. But famed horror writer (and notorious racist) H.P. Lovecraft just might.
This article is part of a series on the ideas and philosophy of Alan Moore. For the rest of the articles, click here.
Upon Donald Trump’s election to the Presidency 8 years ago, millions of well-meaning-but-panicking liberals flocked to J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy to try and “get” poor white America’s grudges, frustrations, and prejudices. Unsurprisingly, Vance’s diagnoses of the problems of white working class Americans are the usual right-wing hogwash: according to Vance, things are hard for the poor in the Rust Belt1 not because of capitalist exploitation, outsourcing, or the decades-long assault on the American working class by neoliberals and neoconservatives alike, but because they are lazy, an impulse that is enabled and encouraged by America’s anemic welfare state.
Things would get better for his working-class compatriots, he suggested, if they did what he did: worked hard, pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, and released pent up sexual energy by fucking their home furniture2.
This is the type of political program America’s billionaire oligarch’s can get behind, and coincidentally, Vance’s book started getting a lot of attention in newspapers that all happened to be owned by billionaire oligarchs. Credulous liberals ran to their local bookstores, chose his book for their book clubs, and Vance has been on an upward trajectory ever since. His book became a bestseller, it was adapted into a movie by Ron Howard, and far-right anti-democracy activists like the ghoulish tech billionaire Peter Thiel effectively bought Vance the Ohio Senate seat. Now, he’s Trump’s pick for VP. There’s a pretty high bar for bad outcomes caused by well-meaning liberals, but this one might take the cake, as it could spell the end of both democracy and the historic Bellangé furniture set in the White House’s Blue Room.
The reason Vance’s rise has been so meteoric is that his rhetoric provides a neat smokescreen behind which billionaire oligarchs can pursue their brutal, world-ending political and economic program while the “unthinking demos,” as Thiel has contemptuously called common people, are distracted by the spectacle of race and culture wars. Vance’s rhetoric is not particularly useful at illuminating us as to what’s happening in the current moment. In a recent article at LitHub, Rebecca Solnit pointed out that Vance’s political position seems to be fully in line with the infamous racist political party of the mid-1800s, the “Know-Nothings,” who were best known for their anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic pogroms. There really is nothing new about Vance.
For my part, I find echoes of Vance’s rhetoric in the work of the acclaimed and infamous horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft’s work has been monumentally influential, and with good reason — he understood the fears of white middle America more than anyone else. And his racism was open, it was not hidden behind dog-whistles and smokescreens, so in a strange way, reading his racist bullshit is almost refreshing in its honesty. Best of all, Lovecraft’s been dead for close to a century, and all of his work is in the public domain. Reading his work isn’t going to empower some alt-right chode to win the Vice Presidency. Better still, reading his work isn’t going to result in any politically problematic furniture stains3.
But more importantly, Lovecraft’s body of work gives us a glimpse into just what all the MAGA chuds, Christian fundamentalists, and alt-right Punisher wannabes are so scared of.
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