The Enemy of the People
The phrase in the title has a long history. In ancient Rome, the term was used to describe the tension between those in power and those in opposition to that power. Much later, in the Soviet era, the expression was used to describe anyone or anything that opposed Stalin. More recently, Donald Trump has used it to describe the press, in particular any reporter or news medium that critiques or fact-checks him. In that articulation, Trump equates himself with “the people.” That sounds like something a monarch would do.
Here, though, I am repurposing the expression to refer to Donald Trump and J. D. Vance.
A few days ago, Trump announced his running mate for the 2024 campaign — no, it was not Mike Pence.
In a bit of a surprise to me and to other commentators, Trump chose a middle-class white man. Well, to be fair, he chose a LOT of those during his first term as president. We’ve all seen the photos of his White House staff, of his Cabinet, etc. A pretty solidly white affair.
Even so, one might have thought that he would have tried to bring in other constituencies for this campaign. The numbers suggest that he cannot win solely with the white, male vote. (Though this morning I heard an interview with the authors of Do Running Mates Matter? [Christopher J. Devine and Kyle C. Kopko] whose research suggest that the identity of the running mate has very little impact on voters.)
No, instead, he chose J. D. Vance.
Of course, Vance rose to public attention after the publication of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy (2016), in which he offers both biography and cultural analysis. He sees his family’s fortunes tied to larger social changes, in particular within the hillbilly community. In short, hillbillies got lazy and no longer wanted to work. Whereas his grandparents pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, according to Vance, these days no one is willing to do the work. But, of course, Vance did do the work, and he himself pulled himself up with his work ethic.
Except, of course, he also acknowledges that he had a good bit of help along the way. He’d never have made it had it not been for Mamaw (his grandmother). He never would have made if had not been for the US military training. He never would have made it had it not been for caring professors. And, he would not have made it were it not for his wife (the daughter of immigrants).
Appalachian Studies professor Silas House lambastes Vance’s book. Just as an example: “One of the most troubling things to me about the book is that it talks a lot about unemployment and poverty, domestic violence, the opioid crisis, but it never gives you context for why those things exist the way they do in Appalachia. For anybody who really knows the region, it’s a deeply troubling book because it’s so misleading, and it lacks so much context, and he knew exactly what he was doing.”
Ivy Brashear writes a less academic take-down of Vance in Appalachian Reckoning. Brashear writes: “However, I do take great issue with the ways in which his narrative of the region erases and erodes any Appalachian experience outside his own non-Appalachian experience by reinforcing repeatedly that Appalachian ‘hillbilly’ culture is somehow deficient and morally decrepit, and that it is something to be overcome and escaped from without looking back.”
All of that by way of introduction paints a partial picture of Vance: an opportunist who spouts cultural stereotypes in order to build himself up, and to simultaneously appeal to a particular demographic — namely, Trump Republicans.
And all of that is bad enough. But it gets worse. Much worse.
After Vance’s media success — the book was a best seller, it became a movie with an A-list cast, he was on a speaking tour — he turned to venture capitalism. He was spouting many of the Republican talking points, and he drew attention. He worked for the founder of AOL, and then, with the backing of Peter Theil, he founded a venture capital group in Cincinnati. He also invested in an online gaming platform popular on the political right.
And the Peter Theil connection is important. In 2009, Thiel penned an essay called “The Education of a Libertarian.” Thiel sets out his thesis early:
“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Read that a couple of times.
While Vance claimed that hillbillies were too dumb and too lazy to make it in society, Thiel makes a similar argument regarding freedom. Most of us are just too dumb to vote for the right things. We end up voting for things that restrict our own freedoms. Therefore, we should have our rights curtailed.
Indeed, Thiel writes: “In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called ‘social democracy.’”
Notice the “demos.” That’s the “demos” of “democracy.” That’s you. That’s US. That’s the PEOPLE.
Another important individual in Vance’s worldview and political stance is Curtis Yarvin. Yarvin was a computer guy, and now he’s an internet guy. Now, I would agree with Yarvin when he says that our current governmental system has become corrupt. He even says that it is run by elites who serve themselves and not the greater good. I’m still with him. His response, however, loses me. The answer to the “corrupt oligarchy”? A monarchy. A “national CEO,” or a “dictator.” His words.
In other words, no more liberal democracy. No more citizens. No more rights. Nope, the monarch/dictator gets to decide where we’ve gone wrong and gets to re-arrange things so they all work out right!
Quaint. Except we had a Revolution in 1776 to get away from that model.
Yarvin also argues that the monarch/dictator gets to fire all of the middle-level and career civil servants. They would be replaced by the monarch/dictator with “his own people.”
Yarvin writes (along the lines of Thiel):
“The only way for democracy to defeat oligarchy is to elect a monarchy.”
The funny thing is, Project 2025 says almost the exact same thing! Project 2025 is a product of the Heritage Foundation, a long-established conservative think tank. The Heritage Foundation also wrote the Mandate for Leadership in 1981, which was a founding document for the emergence of the New Right, the Moral Majority, and the Contract with America. The director of the Heritage recently posted that we are in the midst of a new American Revolution, and that the revolution will be “bloodless, if the Left allows.” Ominous.
As I have written before (here), people like Trump, and Vance, and (Speaker Mike) Johnson, and others speak of “democracy” and “freedom.” And, yet, they are utterly opposed to democracy. They want a return to a monarchy. In fact, they want a theocracy. And they want to be the ones in charge of the rest of us. They want to decide what we can and cannot do. They want to decide who gets to remain and who does not.
Vance is certainly hanging around with people who think this way. He is almost certainly thinking it. Vance does not currently say these things aloud. Thiel does. Yarvin does. The Heritage Foundation does. Democracy does not work (for them). Democracy is messy. We the people make bad decisions. And THEY are the ones to correct our mistakes.
For them, Trump is a tool. He is the mechanism by which they will take power. Trump has said on the campaign trail that he has nothing to do with Project 2025. A) That’s false. He has quite clearly said that he supports it. B) Once Trump is in and Project 2025 becomes the operating principle of our government, then democracy is done.
I do not employ hyperbole. Read Project 2025. (And I will be doing a series of analyses of individual points in Project 2025 in the coming weeks.) The plan could not be more explicit. Thiel and Yarvin are not ambivalent. Democracy is done.
J. D. Vance, like his cronies, simply does not trust you with democracy. As Thiel has written, we are an “unthinking demos.” We cannot be trusted.
To which I would counter, we cannot trust Trump and Vance. They will end our democracy (as flawed as it is) in favor of their own narrow vision of the world.
They are the true enemies of the people.
Ritch Calvin is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of Queering SF: Readings, Feminist Epistemology and Feminist Science Fiction (Palgrave McMillan) and edited a collection of essays on Gilmore Girls (McFarland). His most recent book is Queering SF Comics: Readings, (Aqueduct Press).
