Hillbilly Class-Traitor

Or why I call him JD Cockwomble

Class traitor is a complex idea.

It doesn't mean anyone who is successful or benefits from social mobility. It's really a small number of people who generate wealth, usually a lot of wealth, from selling out other people like themselves.

Vance is a gifted communicator. He was very careful in Hillbilly Elegy to not be TOO reactionary. He IS basically saying that welfare makes the working class idle layabouts. But he sugars the pill for the liberals he thought were going to be his benefactors.

Then JD got a bit famous, and met a bunch of billionaires. Notably one Peter Thiel, who gave JD $15,000,000 to get him elected as a senator.

Then Vice President

Then...

So I would argue that JD Vance is a pretty clear and blatant class traitor. A man who took the $$$ to serve the super-wealthy. His patrons like to say how he "grew up in poverty". Basic research shows he grew up in a fairly standard lower middle class life. What his book shows is how far that class has fallen as the rich have grown richer. And how desperate JD was to social climb up into the billionaire class who made his and many other families life so poor.

Which is why I call him JD Cockwomble.