Very different lessons from Appalachian roots

I read “Hillbilly Elegy,” written by Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, but it didn’t stick with me in the slightest.

As someone who was born and raised in Appalachia, Vance’s story wasn’t unfamiliar to me. It’s also a story I’ve either read, heard or seen on TV too many times to count.

Some kids being raised by their mamaw and papaw, a parent with a drinking problem that was sure to break them before they broke it, teenage pregnancies, a people in decline due to forces outside of their control.

Yeah, I’ve seen this, and I know people who had the same takeaway Vance did: Well, you just gotta pull yourself up from your bootstraps and work harder. Meanwhile the boots ain’t got their soles and some folks are missing toes.

I want to be clear, my intent is not to disparage Vance for the challenging life he had. That said, I take issue with the lessons he chose to extract from his upbringing.

Vance isn’t wholly wrong in describing some of the issues that plague Appalachia (lack of jobs and opportunity, education, drugs, etc.) but he diagnoses these problems as not structural but cultural.

The reason people don’t want to work anymore, like his mamaw and papaw did, is, as Vance argues, because of a culture of laziness. It’s not because Walmart came to town causing local businesses to close or because the mines shuttered years ago leaving behind only black lung and empty promises.

Had “Hillbilly Elegy” been published any other year than 2016 it would’ve probably just blipped in and out of existence. However, liberals were dumbfounded by Trump’s electoral win and they needed to figure it out. Enter Vance, who was positioned to be this white working class whisperer, and the rest is history.

But determining what Vance truly, actually believes is difficult to parse. One day he’s comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler and then he’s kissing the ring so he can win his 2022 Senate election. Then there’s him singing a different tune on abortion.

He’s rightfully fighting on behalf of the people of East Palestine, Ohio, after the horrible fallout from last year’s train derailment, and then at the request of lobbyists, he’s weakening the bill that would help solve the exact issue that caused this.

What about the opioid crisis? That’s a big problem in Appalachia and a focal point of Vance’s book. Well in 2016, he started a nonprofit to tackle that problem in Ohio and then a couple years later it closed down and did nothing aside from promoting an addiction specialist who worked at Purdue Pharma — you know, the manufacturer of OxyContin.

People online are praising him for the one time he joined United Auto Workers on a picket line and just taking that to mean, uncritically, that Vance is super duper pro-union. This despite the fact he has declined to support the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would end union-busting “right to work” laws.

Also, why am I supposed to believe that Vance, a guy who worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley and is close friends with Peter Thiel (another weirdo venture capitalist guy), who basically bought Vance his Senate seat and the vice presidential nomination, is gonna be on the side of workers? Really?

What upset me most when I read “Hillbilly Elegy” is that I saw too much of myself in Vance at that time in my life. I was like him in some ways: a kid who made it outside of Appalachia and presumed he had gone on to bigger and better things; all the while thinking I was better than the home I left behind.

I was wrong, I wasn’t a big deal then and I’m still not now. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to stick to your roots, and there’s nothing wrong either with wanting to spread your wings. The problem arises when you think you’re better than other people.

Vance may not be a coal baron, but he’s the exact mold of a man who is going to exploit the same people he claims to care for, and in my book that just ain’t right.

Andrew Henderson is a columnist for the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader.