What stands out most from J.D. Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” are the vivid depictions of the lies told by the working-class rural white Americans he grew up with. Detailing his tumultuous upbringing among people rooted in Appalachia and his unexpected rise to Yale Law School, Vance’s book arrived at a critical moment. Many middle-class Americans, bewildered by Donald Trump’s election, sought insight into why people like Vance’s family and neighbors supported him. Notably, Vance himself didn’t vote for Trump in 2016; he opted for a third-party candidate, as he noted in an afterword to the book in 2018.
As Vance now appears poised to potentially become vice president, the narrative of his escape from poverty, violence, and despair becomes even more compelling. However, it’s unlikely Vance would want to revisit that story today. The attributes that made “Hillbilly Elegy” impactful in 2016—its raw honesty, its critique of the self-destructive aspects of hillbilly culture, and its conflicted view of his partially abandoned identity—have been discarded by Vance in pursuit of his political ambitions. This includes his previous assertion that Trump could become “America’s Hitler” and his description of Trump as a supplier of “cultural heroin”—a significant criticism from someone whose childhood was marred by his mother’s drug problems.
Critics of “Hillbilly Elegy” from the left branded it as “a victim-blaming piece of anti-government libertarianism,” while those from the right saw it as advocating for “a massive expansion of government welfare programs.” Before Vance entered politics, his policy views were less significant than his portrayal of a dysfunctional culture from within.
“Hillbilly Elegy” is primarily a memoir and not a political argument. It mostly tells a family story. Vance doesn’t condemn the social safety net; he acknowledges its role in alleviating suffering and its necessity in aiding society’s less fortunate. He criticizes his able-bodied neighbors and relatives who rely on government benefits without working, yet complain about others abusing the system. He challenges the racial undertones in those complaints, noting that the “welfare queens” he knew were all white, and emphasizes that his story isn’t about why white people deserve more sympathy than others. The book doesn’t express any concerns about immigrants or the deep state.
Though Vance was a conservative when he wrote “Hillbilly Elegy,” appreciating one of the book’s core insights doesn’t require agreement with all his political views: successful public policy can’t overcome a deeply ingrained toxic culture unless those immersed in it are willing to question it. For instance, laws alone can’t solve sexual assault; addressing rape culture is essential too. In Vance’s community, this toxic culture includes bizarre sexism and the idea that academic success is “feminine,” along with an honor code that endorses violence for minor slights.
Despite this, Vance’s political supporters frequently seek his autograph on copies of “Hillbilly Elegy,” but one wonders if they’ve read it recently. Like the broader Republican Party, Vance has spent the last eight years abandoning and repudiating the values he once held, embracing Trump’s politics of grievance, paranoia, and self-pity. He has relinquished his disdain for elites, instead aligning himself with a wealthy reality TV star from New York City. The complexity and ambivalence once present in his rhetoric have been replaced by a confident assertion that he and Trump hold the solutions to America’s problems. Much like his old neighbors who complained about welfare recipients, Vance has become comfortable with his own hypocrisy, a trait he seems to have perfected.