Vance is Dangerous; so is his book. Politico 2022 interview re Hillbilly Elegy

'Silas House: It’s a dangerous book because it’s a treatise in disguise. Lots of times when I would voice my opposition to the book, well-intentioned people, often liberal people, would say, “But it’s a memoir, it’s his family story — how can you negate his own story?” My response to that is I don’t negate the family story, and I think that if it had just been a memoir, it would be a powerful piece of writing and it would be his own proof. But the problem is it is woven through with dog whistles about class and race, gender. And if your ears are attuned to those dog whistles, you know exactly what he’s saying. If you’re not, then it can read like a heartwarming rags-to-riches story. And everything that we’ve learned since the book came out sort of proves that it was just laying the groundwork for this political career.'

Read the 2022 interview with Silas House, chair of Appalachian Studies at Berea College, Kentucky at Politico Magazine here

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/06/jd-vance-book-dangerous-00030374

As I wrote earlier, his book appealed to people who already were full of hate, in fact it was targeted at them. Like Fox News... another quote from House: 

'he talks about his uncles, who are these drunks who fight everybody and they beat their wives, and then he calls them the embodiment of the Appalachian man. Well, as an Appalachian man, that’s deeply troubling to me, because that doesn’t embody Appalachian masculinity as I know it. It does embody the stereotypes of Appalachian masculinity over the last 150 years of media. And that’s sort of what I mean. It just sort of presses the buttons that are already there and made people feel really satisfied, in that it’s sort of like, “Oh, well, I knew this all along, and now somebody is solidifying it for me.” '

"It just sort of presses the buttons"

Information warfare. One more quote:

House: It’s dangerous because there’s such a lack of complexity in the book in a time when the national conversation lacks more and more nuance. There’s no nuance in the book. There’s a lot that’s false and intentionally misleading, and I always think that’s really dangerous when there’s intentional misinformation being shared. And I think he’s dangerous because he embodies all of that. And it seems to me that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to rise. And I can think of nothing more dangerous in a politician than that.