Colourful is a word that well describes many aspects of Vice-President J. D. Vance’s Appalachian Kentucky background and his later upbringing in Middletown Ohio. Particularly his forceful grandmother, “Mamaw”, Bonnie, who cursed incessantly and unapologetically:
“She was not your typical grandmother. She had a foul mouth. Because of this, my little sister and I once tried to make Mamaw adhere to a curse jar. Twenty-five cents for every bad word. It sat on the windowsill in our kitchen. One afternoon while she was babysitting the two of us, she pulled out her checkbook and wrote a blank check”. Mamaw then looked at her grandchildren and said, “Now I can say whatever the (expletive) I want. I’ll fill out the amount later.”
On July 17, Sen. Vance spoke about his grandmother during a speech at the Republican National Convention, noting that at the time of her death, the 72-year-old had an ample supply of firearms.
“My Mamaw died shortly before I left for Iraq in 2005,” he said per PBS News. “And when we went through her things, we found 19 loaded handguns. Now, the thing is, they were stashed all over her house. Under her bed, in her closet, in the silverware drawer. We wondered what was going on, and it occurred to us that, towards the end of her life, Mamaw couldn’t get around so well. And so, this frail old woman made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm’s length of whatever she needed to protect her family.”
J.D. Vance wrote a book about those times, Hillbilly Elegy, which has become a movie.
As far as J. D. Vance is concerned the American Civil War is still ongoing and he is on the side of the South. "American history is a constant war between Northern Yankees and Southern Bourbons, where whichever side the hillbillies are on, wins," Vance said."
J. R. R. Tolkien has also had a huge impact upon Vance’s personal Weltanschauung:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/19/lord-of-the-rings-jd-vance-00169372
“Vance himself has pointed to Tolkien’s high fantasy epics as a window into understanding his worldview. In an archived episode of the defunct “Grounded” podcast from 2021 that no longer shows up in podcast feeds, Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, who sat next to Vance in Trump’s friends and family box at the convention Tuesday evening, asked Vance to name his favorite author.
“I would have to say Tolkien,” Vance said. “I’m a big Lord of the Rings guy, and I think, not realizing it at the time, but a lot of my conservative worldview was influenced by Tolkien growing up.” He added of Tolkien’s colleague: “Big fan of C.S. Lewis — really sort of like that era of English writers. I think they were really interesting. They were grappling, in part because of World War II, with just very big problems”.”
Recently Pope Francis has been highly critical of J.D. Vance’s localised view of charity, especially in relation to the US’s mass deportations.
https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-0news/pope-decries-major-crisis-trumps-mass-deportation-plans-rejects-vances?utm_source=NCR+List&utm_campaign=26f53cf579-
Pope Francis has written a sweeping letter to the U.S. bishops decrying the "major crisis" triggered by President Donald Trump's mass deportation plans and explicitly rejecting Vice President JD Vance's attempts to use Catholic theology to justify the administration's immigration crackdown.
"The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness," reads the pope's Feb. 11 letter.
Since taking office on Jan. 20, the Republican president has taken more than 20 executive actions aimed at overhauling the U.S. immigration system, including plans to ratchet up the deportations of undocumented migrants and halt the processing of asylum seekers.
The pope's letter, published by the Vatican in both English and Spanish, offered his solidarity with U.S. bishops who are engaged in migration advocacy and draws a parallel between Jesus' own experience as a migrant and the current geopolitical situation.
"Jesus Christ … did not live apart from the difficult experience of being expelled from his own land because of an imminent risk to his life, and from the experience of having to take refuge in a society and a culture foreign to his own," writes Francis.
While the letter acknowledges the right of every country to enact necessary policies to defend itself and promote public safety, the pope said that all laws must be enacted "in the light of the dignity of the person and his or her fundamental rights, not vice versa."
The pontiff also goes on to clearly reject efforts to characterize the migrants as criminals, a frequent rhetorical device used by Trump administration officials.
"The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality," the pope writes.
Soon after Trump took office, Vice President JD Vance — a recent convert to Roman Catholicism — attempted to defend the administration's migration crackdown by appealing to St. Thomas Aquinas' concept of ordo amoris.
"Just google 'ordo amoris,' " Vance posted on social media on Jan. 30 in response to criticism he received following a Fox News interview.
During that interview, Vance said: "You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world."
"The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality."
— Pope Francis
Lettera del Santo Padre ai Vescovi degli Stati Uniti d’America.pdf
While not mentioning Vance directly by name, Francis used his Feb. 11 letter to directly reject that interpretation of Catholic theology.
"The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the 'Good Samaritan,' that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception," wrote the pope.
Since his election in 2013, Francis has become one of the world's most vocal champions of migrants. His latest letter, however, marks a rare moment when the pontiff has directly waded into a country's policy debates.
In the letter, however, he states that this is a "decisive moment in history" that requires reaffirming "not only our faith in a God who is always close, incarnate, migrant and refugee, but also the infinite and transcendent dignity of every human person."
"What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly," the pope warned.
In a brief post on social media, the U.S. bishops' conference shared the pope's letter with its online followers.
"We are grateful for the support, moral encouragement, and prayers of the Holy Father, to the Bishops in affirmation of their work upholding the God-given dignity of the human person," read the statement.
No comments:
Post a Comment