Hillbilly Elegy: On Its Political Science Struggle
For a Memoir becomes Deeply Political.
American society, as a nation, lacks a sense of belonging; many do not know where they come from or why they are going. Some try to tell a story that we are all descendants of Adam and Lilith or pure-blooded Adam and his progeny, Eve, and that we will all be united again in Heaven after our mortal coil, or for some unfortunate few, after a trip to hell. The book vaguely answered that. The larger question in our age has always been how to survive in a liberal country where everyone is free. When everyone is free, isn't there an organized force to be the stout defender of your values, faith, and way of life from others? It is even worse under the all-encompassing power of the only legitimate violent organization, the big G. The story of one hillbilly boy finding his church is more concerning than most can imagine. The only sanctuary or refuge for Americans in this country is a pre-modernity institution, well criticized and despised by more than half of the enlightened 20th-century Europeans: the church. They provide the only home for the homeless, the last sense of belonging in an atomized society, when everyone is against everyone for profit, and the right to happiness is drowning in a “dog-eat-dog” world — either you are on the table or on the menu.
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is a 2016 memoir by J. D. Vance about the Appalachian values of his Kentucky family and the social and socioeconomic problems of his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, where his mother's parents moved when they were young.
A Yale Law student drawn back to his Appalachian hometown reflects on his family's history and his own future.
(Quote Drafted)By Vance’s marketing team
The official answer from their church is the only acceptable answer, the only answer that does not lead to more questions or problems down the road based on pre-enlightenment historical records. The key challenge to the liberal assumption that everyone makes their bilateral intercourse with the government as the medium, either within the family between husband and wife, between patriarch and beneficiary, parents and their grandchildren, or some strangers making transactions in Montana’s no man’s land. Only then, everyone is truly free, the association is truly free, and there is no reliance among the people. When the time comes, the middleman can use their only legal armament to erect or break the barriers. When freedom is an end by itself, why do we need happiness or relationships, life or prosperity?
The church is the last remaining chunk of a pre-institutionalized commune. Within that commune, there used to be families, friendships, trust, and reliance. However, once institutionalization began, there was no going back or unilateral disarmament without bloodshed. If the commune does not evolve into communism, it will quickly break down. There will be fatherless children, nuclear families, and youth without moral and material support. They will be at the mercy of power. In most Hillbilly boys' view, it can be the state or powerful super-states like multinational NGOs or corporations. Other not-so-legally allowed organizations, like agrarian communists once wrestled with giants like FDR or Huey Long of the Midwest, or Black Panther communal mutual aid advancing communism, are no longer legal or physically present. The radical fundamentalism path for the Midwest evangelicals was prescribed in stone once those communists failed, their last familial ties solely reliant on their church. The only place trying to answer the question of how to survive in this harsh world, nothing about upward mobility, but simply survival under extreme tyrannical pressure from forces trying to suck them dry.
When all paths fail, the only remaining path dictates the terms of how we interact with the world. The duality in America of church and state is always a point of contention. In the age of parental rights, science and reason are not sufficient to be quoted as the authority to defend parental rights; only the church, in the name of freedom of faith, can help. It is ultimately ironic for the enlightened state to not follow science or to be the chief abuser of science, leading to the ultimate reactionary defense to the church. Either under ideological oppression and material constraint, for moral support or philosophical answers for a fatherless nation, the last remaining hope in this purgatory for the Hillbilly can only be the church or any organized religion with significant power. The traditional commune, destroyed and phased out by the wheel of time after traditional farming or agrarian life, cannot provide a satisfactory life expectancy. The communist and the communal mutual aids are forever persecuted, from Black Panther, MLK, to the African People's Socialist Party under the witch hunt of Mainstreet barons. Science, reason, college intelligentsia, or public intellectuals being burned alive by “public discourses” in a secular scientific liberal state, given how life-saving science is being censored, suppressed, and smeared in the past decades. The consolidation of the international corporatist states and the association of cross-border investors made them ever stronger after each crisis and calamity. The only solace for hope and change remains the church. Historical records have shown that in countries where public intellectuals and grass-root mutual aids are suppressed, only the church can relieve the pain, despite being a pre-modernity, reactionary force in most popular media. When salvation is afar, the opium of the people gives good “hope and dream.”
It's only natural for a Hillbilly boy to reach the conclusion: traditionalists (agrarianism, the French and the Mencius), communists, and the intelligentsia (science) cannot save America; only through the church can he unite the people and provide terminal care to a decaying world. Though given someone without a science background, it is hard to see that instability in academia means the pride of America, industrialists and scientists, are no longer among us. Does it matter that I show proof only the Church and the Faithful can save the Hillbilly’s America? Or is it more important to take a leap of faith to unite under one roof for one common cause? It can rarely be said that the church can advance us to the next stage of anthropological development, but why look forward when people are hardly living?
Only Christ knows him, judges him, and will pronounce him guilty or innocent.On the surface level, the re-embracing of Keynesianism and seizing control of reproduction further leads back to the road of state-capitalism. JD Vance’s belief in traditional Christian family values, thus encouraging the reproduction of the labor force, with the government-directed investments in domestic production capacity, is a return of state intervention in reproduction. Though it reflects more corporatism leaning towards wage negotiation instead of direct distribution of consumption power, it can be said JD Vance is more socialist than most so-called progressive “Squad” focuses primarily on redistribution and free reinvestment and reproduction of international capitals. Given how the most progressive politicians in America only wish to put a Band-Aid on the Neo-Liberal system instead of returning to neo-classical or Keynesian economics, most economists would be pessimistic about the future of global decoupling and the end of this wave of globalization.
Industrialization is painful and pricey, and not profitable. If it were profitable, why would the developed nations deindustrialize themselves and ship production capacities to countries with lower human rights records? Labor, resources, and industry are about blood, sweat, bravery, and determination. Under the current economic system, the most profit comes from the icing on the coffee, the $1 add-on to the $2.49 coffee. While the industrial base, the blood and bone, vein and marrow of all livelihood, is not profitable. A laissez-faire reproduction plan simply will not be sufficient. Industries now are like farming of the past, needing heavy subsidies to be viable, either in the style of agrarian co-ops or direct mixed ownership. If something is more valuable than the market power abusers are willing to pay, only taxation or direct indentured employment will solve the problem. The mass production of industrial goods can saturate the market fast with no technology nor market barrier (yes, there are barriers among markets). It will quickly drive some less profitable plants out of business, thus there needs to be some kind of central planning and command economy, which is not possible under neoliberalism. Skilled labor, tolerance to tedious protocols, and endurance to death and injuries all drive the brightest minds to white-collar industries in tech and programming. The business school-graduated professional managers will die to seize on such monopolistic opportunity to maximize profits by raising the price (fabricating cost) and cutting costs (by using lower-cost alternatives and reducing labor force). All this means it is impossible for a decaying culture. One may prove he is the firm hand guiding this market through the culture of decay and timidness if he really means to be the Stalin who industrialized Russia. As Stalin said, he needed to create a new working-class culture for an industrialized Russia for the liberation and industrialization of the Union. Later heavy industrial powers like Iran also relied on state-owned enterprises and it seems to be the only solution. No economist with a proper political science degree will tell you neoliberalism will aid in any way or form in the bloody and tedious path of re-industrialization, import substitution, or first-time industrialization.
Part 2
The Requiem to Hillbilly
In many cultures, the official dialect, the Mandarin, the court's language for the overlord, or the renowned Lingua Franca, were the brandings of the great conquerors. Former formal words must submit and give place to conquerors' informal, less-used local dialects, making those colloquial languages from remote dialects more authentic and more cultural, more reflective of the cultural history of the land. The living dictionary of yon remembrance, a splendorous past coded in such philology. With it, the lost tongue preserved the history before its re-writing and mass fabrication. They provide a veiled past, maybe forsaken under the burning branding iron or the hardship of working men. A true original story for the people lost accounting of their past, the most demanding answer for all Americans without an ancestry. Which is not the case for the hillbillies in this part. Seclusion without reactionary correction, a bug infestation left unattended. Authority's prevailing progression without counter-balancing reactionary force. Unconquered, untamed, yet untested, lab-grown without ever facing the outside cruelty. Yes, you may be able to know your past better than most Americans, but what use does it have? The Resentiment to the past, self, and everything derives from it.
The “recognized” “truth” among Neoliberal thinkers is that industrial workers are the source of proletarian unrest and revolutions. The remaining few industrial union workers displayed their strength in times of unease and distress. Unions would publicly challenge the incumbent party and endorse the opposition. They are the brooding grounds for communism and syndicalism. The best way to destroy unions is by removing their material conditions, that is, shipping their jobs overseas. Since the beginning of the Hillbilly Elegy, the rise of political special interests and various lobby groups is the “quiet part” loud. Politicians inevitably shift to Neo Liberalism because all the union endorsements are gone. "Lake Middletown" is destined to fail when all industrialists determine to ship their troubles abroad and “state-owned” or “joint partnership of public and private sector” entrepreneurship loses its fashionable appeal. Neo Liberalism relies on government handouts and market power, and they are granted instead of earned. By removing political oppositions, it’s the shortcut to success. Neoliberalism, often called the “socialism for the rich,” is a telling tale of its true origin. Back in the 1950s, industrialists lobbied for government handouts to establish international corporations as a way to curb communism, effectively giving them the same treatment as “state-owned” crown corporations of the Soviet Union. They promised to be the sharpest swords going to plow the virgin soil of newly liberated colonies, as the counter-revolution remedy for Soviet-style economies in the Third World awaiting American liberation. The hillbilly’s redemption arc was similar to Søren Kierkegaard, about which I wrote one article. Unfortunately, it triggered big AI’s bad side, forbidding me from using it to find grammar mistakes. "Leap of Faith" by Søren Kierkegaard answered many problems, but those answers would cause more troubles which manifested in the older hillbilly’s redemption arc.
“Painkillers” and narcotics started as performance enhancers for the working class instituted top-down from management. Infamously during World War 2, the Axis powers would give painkillers to enhance their soldiers, especially during moments of war crime, to dilute receptions to compassion and humanity. Certainly, the Japanese imperial marine zealots can blame Americans for their narcotics abuse, or they can blame their Tenno and be court-martialed. Vance blaming China is the same type of move. When the church is the last organized resistance to the people forcing workers to take painkillers, it certainly is the only place that can cure narcotics abuse. The addiction to productivity, from coffee to heroin, came from the top-down, not abroad or innate moral failures. “Take the painkiller and ignore your back pain, return to your back-breaking job or you have no bacon! “Remember, oxytocin is prescribed, not asked for by the worker, to enhance their productivity to sustain their physical existence. If Vance’s mom could take a family calamity leave and enjoy a free Black Sea Resort in Sochi like how USSR citizens did, why would she need painkillers then? Only the church is the organized resistance in this environment; all the psychological abuse would end with the pastor’s calming voice.
The Dillman Foods (of Vance’s memory) is another horror story of the monopoly I hope one day I will have time to further elaborate on. The generation grocer Dillman’s final days in Middletown in 2013 were accompanied by the closure of McGee’s, Davey’s Carry-Out, and Kelly’s Market. They are/were the fuel of America’s finest. The Church is the political forum undeniable by any. Vance’s political awakening derives from his church attendance. It is also too early and too late. Too early for a young man never truly experienced the world - from the equator to the aurora. Too late for someone born after the Reconstruction of the World and OPEC Oil Embargo, who never witnessed the golden age and first struggle. The external world profoundly changed, and there is no chasing them back for someone reading a self-help book from an unknown memoir. When all the reactionary forces exhausted their prime struggle and those with real industrial skills walked into the sunset, JD Vance started his political awakening. For conservatives, a lesson can be learned from the understanding gap among the White Russians in exile. Those who witnessed the golden age during “Nicholas the Stick”, policeman of Europe’s reign, never embraced reformism. Those born after the bitter defeat of the Russo-Japanese War and the Great War Eastern front Russian collapse were more willing to embrace the workers’ movement and, to an extent, accept Stalin as the Red Russian Tsar of all Russia. JD Vance is like someone who entered the scene long after the Sunday Massacre (Red Sunday) of 1905, never truly understanding why previous attempts failed. The peaceful plea of the Russian peasantry ended in a bloodshed, it meant The February Revolution became the only possible alternative. The dust is settled, but Vance tried to re-open the discussion: you have not tried an internal journey like a true Christian. It is not a serious discussion. The external condition is done. The World Trade Organization already helped Asian industries enter all markets American brands once dominated, the Rust Belt is a lost cause. It must be reclaimed instead of repaired or reconstructed. No matter how hard American workers try, they cannot enjoy the same market power in a fair and open market competition against Koreans or the Japanese. Once fertile land is now a dying wasteland, it cannot be simply repaired to its former glory. It must be reclaimed with fire and axe, then built anew. It is not more difficult than helping a third-world undeveloped nation enter the world market and compete against the current industrial hegemon – China. The culture is in decay, but the same way Vance clings to a fantastic mythic origin. The big flat-screen TV and motorbikes, and credit debts are there because people refuse to believe the golden age is long past, like the same eroded monuments in 12th century’s Byzantium. The glorious past has nothing to do with the current generation, but became a burden to realize our true place in the current era. The generations of highly skilled machinists were forced into retirement under Neoliberal economic policies through shipping factories overseas. Once their word-of-mouth history faded from public consciousness, it is like reinventing the wheel for future generations. The only shortcut is by skilled machinist visa for new immigrants from Asia, and unfortunately, those new billion-dollar mega factories are more likely to be thrown into battleground states for political benefits. For a state to be qualified as a battleground state it should have unions with flexible leadership willing to fight for their members’ interests in general elections. That would be the story for another day.
In a larger context, both Vance and Trump are speakers of the professional managerial class dialect. The decadence cannot be more obvious when people baptized by science, reason, and manufacture, disciplined by strict military and industrial order do not have a large enough electoral base. It was the beacon of an enlightened heart shrouded by dust and spider webs, the greatest failure, and Vance cannot, and will not be able to transcend the true mortal coil of America. Vance discovered the working class sheltered under the custody of the church. They were the first few in past decades trying to address the working Americans’ problems. They are not perfect, but the first brave few are always nice to have. Men of Science do not need hope, and people with fighting spirits do not need saviors. They are imperfect vanguards and harbingers to a deluge of champions and heroes, from pretenders to “those who grow up in such culture die with it.”
Please Stay Tuned for Part 3