In hindsight, this is part of why the left and Con Inc hate JD Vance so much. To them, he should have been a Hicklib - a poor rural kid from a dysfunctional family who graduated from Harvard on a military scholarship, married a lawyer, worked in Silicon Valley, and wrote a bestselling book about his upbringing. But he’s not. He genuinely loves and cares about the people he grew up around, and he recognizes that liberals and David French-type “conservatives” have nothing to offer them.
I’m a true lower midwestern hick come to California 35 years ago. The Navy brought me here. SF then LA. Then back and forth again. I’m now a lawyer. I’ve mixed with all the high and haughty. For the entirety. And I remain completely rooted in my rural culture. I imagine there are few as fake as those who’ve come from my place and who’ve embraced city culture as their own.
As an outsider looking in, I’m English, I always found the phrase flyover states to be the most contemptuous and dismissive of phrases and more reflective of the arseholes who coined and used it than the people who live in those states.
The pattern you describe hits on something realy important about how certain conservative voices have become completly disconnected from the people they claim to speak for. National Review types built entire careers performing intellectual sophistication for coastal audiences while treatng working class concerns as embarrassing relics. Its no wonder their influence has collpased outside elite circles. The contrast with someone like Bageant who could actually relate to ordinary people shows how hollow the Conservative Inc project became.
You describe how I feel about Matt Walsh and Tucker Carlson when I see their fake podcast sets and plaid shirts. They may not qualify as Hicklibs, but they seek an image for a flyover demographic that sometimes seems fake.
Being a woodchuck raised in the region of the Catskills that Williamson describes, it’s apparent to me that much of Mainstream Con Inc we see is pretty much an act. They offer a brand of collectivism aimed at supplanting values to compel people to build and craft things for their own satisfaction and well being. Big Ag is fine as long as it is American based multinationals, as small farmers and homesteaders are so “inefficient”.
I do not believe they are entirely genuine. If they are they are profoundly stupid. Anyone who examine the aftermath of government subsidization and determines that this is necessary for their own small town is functionally retarded.
> Imagine a Progressive writing in this style on the plight of the working class in a blue state or city. It never happens, even in the most fevered dream would they dare castigate a part of their voting base in such a manner.
Is this meant a parody? We had two decades where "progressives" "castigated part of their voting base" just like that, and laughed at the plight of the working class.
The "deplorables", the "flyover states", the snark at "walmart shoppers" and "white trash", the "learn to code" sneer, the working and middle class whites that were presented as the epitome of privilege that should just die out by brain damaged progressive pundits, academics, and journalists, the list goes on...
Please show me examples of Progressive Op-ed pieces advocating judgment and admonishments on inner-city residents for their economic condition. Or scolding poor residents in a blue state for not being up to par as a group. No, that is a Con Inc. specialty to denigrate the people they consider a part of their voting base.
In hindsight, this is part of why the left and Con Inc hate JD Vance so much. To them, he should have been a Hicklib - a poor rural kid from a dysfunctional family who graduated from Harvard on a military scholarship, married a lawyer, worked in Silicon Valley, and wrote a bestselling book about his upbringing. But he’s not. He genuinely loves and cares about the people he grew up around, and he recognizes that liberals and David French-type “conservatives” have nothing to offer them.
"Genuinely loves and cares about the people he grew up around"
No, he doesn't. He married a non-White and he is Peter Thiel's tool.
I’m a true lower midwestern hick come to California 35 years ago. The Navy brought me here. SF then LA. Then back and forth again. I’m now a lawyer. I’ve mixed with all the high and haughty. For the entirety. And I remain completely rooted in my rural culture. I imagine there are few as fake as those who’ve come from my place and who’ve embraced city culture as their own.
As an outsider looking in, I’m English, I always found the phrase flyover states to be the most contemptuous and dismissive of phrases and more reflective of the arseholes who coined and used it than the people who live in those states.
The pattern you describe hits on something realy important about how certain conservative voices have become completly disconnected from the people they claim to speak for. National Review types built entire careers performing intellectual sophistication for coastal audiences while treatng working class concerns as embarrassing relics. Its no wonder their influence has collpased outside elite circles. The contrast with someone like Bageant who could actually relate to ordinary people shows how hollow the Conservative Inc project became.
I distinctly remember wanting to hang Kevin Williamson over a precipice, after I read that piece from him, after it came out.
Bageant by contrast was a true journalist who could sit in any local bar comfortably and talk to anyone like a peer.
You describe how I feel about Matt Walsh and Tucker Carlson when I see their fake podcast sets and plaid shirts. They may not qualify as Hicklibs, but they seek an image for a flyover demographic that sometimes seems fake.
Being a woodchuck raised in the region of the Catskills that Williamson describes, it’s apparent to me that much of Mainstream Con Inc we see is pretty much an act. They offer a brand of collectivism aimed at supplanting values to compel people to build and craft things for their own satisfaction and well being. Big Ag is fine as long as it is American based multinationals, as small farmers and homesteaders are so “inefficient”.
Big cultural divide.
I do not believe they are entirely genuine. If they are they are profoundly stupid. Anyone who examine the aftermath of government subsidization and determines that this is necessary for their own small town is functionally retarded.
What a great article. Perfect.
> Imagine a Progressive writing in this style on the plight of the working class in a blue state or city. It never happens, even in the most fevered dream would they dare castigate a part of their voting base in such a manner.
Is this meant a parody? We had two decades where "progressives" "castigated part of their voting base" just like that, and laughed at the plight of the working class.
The "deplorables", the "flyover states", the snark at "walmart shoppers" and "white trash", the "learn to code" sneer, the working and middle class whites that were presented as the epitome of privilege that should just die out by brain damaged progressive pundits, academics, and journalists, the list goes on...
Please show me examples of Progressive Op-ed pieces advocating judgment and admonishments on inner-city residents for their economic condition. Or scolding poor residents in a blue state for not being up to par as a group. No, that is a Con Inc. specialty to denigrate the people they consider a part of their voting base.