Video: J.D. Vance| America’s Forgotten Working Class
J.D. Vance grew up in a small, poor city in the Rust Belt of southern Ohio, where he had a front-row seat to many of the social ills plaguing America: a heroin epidemic, failing schools, families torn apart by divorce and sometimes violence. In a searching talk that will echo throughout the country’s working-class towns, the author details what the loss of the American Dream feels like and raises an important question that everyone from community leaders to policy makers needs to ask: How can we help kids from America’s forgotten places break free from hopelessness and live better lives?
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J.D. Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio, and the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. He enlisted in the Marine Corps after high school and served in Iraq. A graduate of the Ohio State University and Yale Law School, he has contributed to the National Review and is a principal at a leading Silicon Valley investment firm. Vance lives in San Francisco with his wife and two dogs. He is the author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.
Running time: 14 minutes
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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/moral-collapse-jd-vance/619428/
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Thanks for posting this. I’m one of those lucky kids, and Vance is dead-on. George
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You gotta be kidding me. This guy is a three dollar bill if I ever saw one. His Hillbilly Elegy is misrepresentation with a blunt instrument. But that book turns out to have been the perfect first act of a farce that now includes his Trump-blessed political career.
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Thanks, Richard. I actually liked Hillbilly Elegy, but since I came from a background like his, I’m a sucker for this kind of story. I wasn’t aware until I read your comment that Vance was running for the Senate as a Republican and, like every other Republican, seeking Trump’s endorsement. I’m disappointed, but not surprised.
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I come from a rustbelt city, Allentown, PA, which imploded when Mack trucks and Bethlehem Steel pulled out. I found Vance’s whole up by your bootstraps and too bad if you can’t you benighted loser shtick offensive in the extreme. As you say, it’s no shock: that each for himself bullshit is right out of Ayn Rand and is straight up the dogma of movement conservative. Vance? Nope. Nope. Nopity nope.
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