J. D. Vance: Impostor or Whore?

Vance fell into the age-old Faustian trap of forfeiting his soul for power and fame. He, too, won't end well.

J. D. Vance holds a particular fascination for me, as does Elise Stefanik (see my essay, “Elise Stefanik’s Glass Eyes”). Readers of this newsletter and my blog are aware of my essays exploring what motivates really smart people, with platinum educations at elite universities to sell their souls for power and fame. I would bet a hundred shekels most of these Ivy Leaguers are familiar with a passage from the Gospel of Mark: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” This goes particularly so for Vance, whose family roots are anchored in the Bible Belt.

Vance’s journey from Never Trumper to MAGA evangelist has been both brief and breathtaking.

He made the following statements in 2016:

“I quickly realized that Trump’s actual policy proposals, such as they are, range from immoral to absurd,” he wrote in USA Today.

“Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it,” he wrote in The Atlantic.

“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office,” Vance wrote in the New York Times.

“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” he messaged a friend on Facebook in 2016.

Fast forward to now:

“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” Vance said in an interview with ABC News this year.

“When they say, ‘He’s threatening the foundation of American society,’ I can’t help but roll my eyes,” he said of Trump’s critics to the New York Times.

“And what an honor it is to help achieve the extraordinary vision you have for our country,” Vance proclaimed in his speech accepting the nomination to be candidate for Vice President.

So, clearly, the author of Hillbilly Elegy underwent a sudden change of heart, right? Wrong.

Ed Simon, author of Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain, holds that Vance conforms neatly with the age-old parable of a power-mad man who sells his soul to the Devil. In a NYT guest essay this week titled, “J.D. Vance Keeps Selling His Soul. He’s Got Plenty of Buyers,” he elaborates:

Certainly, all politicians are ambitious — and many of them are cynical. But there is something particularly noxious about Mr. Vance’s posturing, which exceeds the run-of-the-mill Machiavellian self-interestedness that characterizes politics. The Faustian contract seems to have already been drawn up and signed.

Before anything else, the senator’s first betrayal was of his own region [Appalachia], the first portion of his soul to be sold.

Beyond mere self-interest, what the legend warns against is the embrace of irrational forces and powers, especially when there is the delusion that the person trading their soul can wrangle the Devil.

That is perhaps what’s most Faustian about Mr. Vance — and by proxy Mr. Trump. Their belief that a movement built on aggrievement and rage can be easily controlled, that there is some way in which you can trick the Devil while holding onto what he’s given you. Mephistopheles certainly understood that the house always wins, however, since the Faustian contract always appeals to the worst in the person signing on the dotted line.

I can accept as genuine true believers in “Trumpism” serious dolts like Marjorie Traitor Greene, Lauren Boebert, James Comer and Jim Jordan — those whose flamboyant mendacity is exceeded only by their bottomless stupidity. It’s the Ivy Leaguers and equivalents like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Elise Stefanik and J. D. Vance — those who are utterly unashamed to spout any manner of outrageous lie, hate-filled doggerel and baseless praise for Donald Trump for power that get my goat. The timing of their transformation coincides neatly with when the Devil cashed in the pawn ticket for their soul.

They have even transformed their physical demeanor. Stefanik’s pre-MAGA milkmaid’s face has hardened into that of a soulless jezebel. Vance’s boyishly hillbilly visage is now that of a bearded pirate out for plunder. Their steely gaze evinces the rapacious predatoriness of a monitor lizard.

But their actions have consequences — existential for our democracy.

Washington Post columnist Matt Bai lays it all out in a recent op-ed piece:

Vance represents the new breed of Republican charlatan — willing to see the democracy riven and its institutions reduced to rubble if it means he can be TikTok-famous for a while and ride around in armored limousines. For Trump-era evangelists, the only true sin is anonymity.

History tells us that repressive movements enabled by cowards and hucksters are just as bad, if not worse, than those perpetrated by the legitimately hateful. You can wreck a country with cosplaying careerists just as easily as you can with bloodthirsty revolutionaries.

But there’s inevitably a price to pay. History is replete with smart, hyper-ambitious men and women who whored themselves to power. Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Speer and Goering, Kirov and Molotov, Wolsey and Cromwell. Many don’t end well, winding up imprisoned or executed, or at the very least, their reputations forever blackened.

The question therefore arises: Is J. D. Vance a cosplaying impostor or just another political whore? The answer is easy: He’s both.