Putting politics aside, everyone should learn a little more about J.D. Vance, just selected as President Trump’s running mate for the vice-presidency in November. The American Dream
In addition to only being 39 years old, he is the first former Marine to ever nominated for the nation’s second highest honor and served in Iraq. He’s also a Catholic, so praying in public should not be a concern if he is elected.
But most important, it would seem, is looking into the life he has led from birth to becoming a Senator last November for the state of Ohio.
He certainly did not grow up in the same circumstances as the GOP Presidential candidate, not even close.
His own story, Hillbilly Elegy, was a New York Times bestseller when published a few years back and gives a background of what life was like for his grandparents after World War II, dirt poor in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky before moving to Ohio.
The story isn’t a pretty one, with Vance openly talking about the poverty, family struggles, abuse, alcoholism, and sad times that occurred in his family. But it’s also a story showing this kid from a broken home graduated from high school, went into the Marine Corps for four years, got out and went to college, finishing with a couple of degrees from Ohio State and a cum laude diploma before going on to Yale to earn a degree in law.
In writing the book, Vance readily admitted it was more ordinary than extraordinary and went on to say he couldn’t understand why people would even read it. But he said, he wrote it because “I want people to know what it feels like to nearly give up on yourself and why you might do it. I want people to understand what happens in the lives of the poor and the psychological impact that spiritual and material poverty has on their children. I want people to understand the American dream as my family and I encountered it…. What an upward mobility really feels like…. and that for those lucky enough to live the American Dream, “the demons of the life we left behind continue to chase us.”
Vance was 30 years old when he wrote the book, not knowing then he would even be in politics, let alone a vice-presidential candidate. And he said he identifies not as a WASP of the Northeast, but more with the working-class white American of Scots Irish descent with no college degree. With them, he said, “poverty is a family tradition” with ancestors who were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, sharecroppers, coal miners, later machinists and millworkers. They’ve been called “hillbillies, rednecks or white trash,” he says in his book but to him, “I call them neighbors, friends and family.”
However he is received as a candidate there is one thing for certain. J.D. Vance has a far different background from any candidate from either party in several generations. And his life story is truly the American Dream.
