Go to any storytelling festival in Appalachia, sit on just the right porch in the evening as the sun lowers itself over the distant blue mountains, and you might could get just lucky enough to hear some stories about Jack.
Jack is the stuff of mountain legends, a quick-witted boy who rises from humble beginnings to become a hero, defending his family and his community, even to the point of slaying giants.
And he does it without any help from Peter Thiel.
Far from being the cultural wasteland that J.D. Vance sees when he looks at it, Appalachia is, pound for pound, at least as rich as any part of this country, not just in Jack Tales, but also in novels, poetry, plays, art, and music. Its quilts, pottery, and woven baskets can hold their own anywhere.
But that’s not what Vance sees when he looks at the region he claims as home. It’s as if he went to a major city, saw the unhoused people sleeping on grates, and decided that was what that place’s people did for a living.
To the extent that some of the people of Appalachia at least partly fit Vance’s demeaning stereotypes, it’s not due to personal deficiencies but to corporate greed. One hundred years ago, the Peter Thiels of that era—the same kind of capitalists that today picked Vance up and made him a millionaire and a vice presidential candidate—did their best to destroy the self-sufficiency of the mountaineers: stealing the coal that lay under people’s hardscrabble farms and homes, stripping the timber from the land, damming the great rivers to generate electricity for factories, offices, and homes far away.
It wasn’t just the mineral resources that were removed. Beginning in the 1830s, white greed for gold and land led to the Trail of Tears, in which the Cherokee of Southern Appalachia were driven from their homes and force-marched 1,200 miles to reservations in Oklahoma. An estimated 6,000 men, women, and children died on the Trail of Tears.
Here’s another example of this dynamic: Appalachians aren’t any more prone to drug abuse than any other group of people. The same kinds of corporations that stole the region’s mineral wealth dumped literally millions of opioids in small, isolated mountain towns and villages—and of course, just as in upper-class enclaves far from the mountains, there were people willing to make sure they got sold. The Eastern Kentucky town of Whitesburg, with a population of 1,711 at last count, has six pharmacies. Tells you something, doesn’t it?
Appalachia’s influence on the United States extends far beyond the region’s borders. It’s not just Vermont that has contributed legendary progressive political leaders to the nation. West Virginian Robert Byrd’s claim to fame isn’t only his 1978 album of traditional tunes titled Mountain Fiddler. He also holds the all-time record as the longest serving United States Senator, with fifty-one years of service, a dozen of them as Democratic Senate Majority Leader and Democratic Majority Whip.
Like the history of Appalachia, Byrd’s is a complicated story. In his early twenties, his entry into politics consisted of organizing and leading a Ku Klux Klan chapter in his hometown. But with the growing courage of his convictions, he left and denounced the Klan, calling it “the worst mistake of my life.” He said, “I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times . . . and I don’t mind apologizing over and over again. I can’t erase what happened.”
Unlike his running mate, a man who keeps being convicted and even more often asserts utter innocence Vance has not been afraid to reverse course and admit he was wrong; possibly in the spirit of Byrd. In 2016, Vance publicly called Trump an “idiot” and said he was “reprehensible,” while privately comparing him to Hitler, a fact not denied by his campaign. He has notably reversed himself on that one, at least publicly.
If Vance had taken time off from making money to really check out Appalachia, he might have been more than a little surprised. In 1870, Yale, Vance’s alma mater, admitted its first (and only at the time) African American student. When Berea College in Kentucky reopened after the Civil War in 1866, the first class had ninety-six African American students and ninety-one white ones.
Historical and cultural illiteracy runs rampant through the Trump-Vance marriage of convenience. It’s no surprise that Vance is the errand boy for a former President of the United States who somehow managed to decide that the first word of Yosemite National Park was pronounced “Yo, Semite?”
It’s not that Vance doesn’t see the forest for the trees. He doesn’t see the trees for the forest. Like Great Aunt Lizzie, who was born and raised in the mountains of Luray, Virginia, and is a relative of my partner and spouse, public philosopher Elizabeth Minnich, so many of Appalachia’s women are figuratively as well as literally “tall as timber”: tough, funny, resilient, caring, bright as hell, and demanding to know, as in the classic anthem written by Florence Reece from the East Tennessee mountains, “Which Side Are You On?”
It’s a crying shame Vance has no real sense of the region he claims to know so well. If he had ever experienced the kind of caring community that Appalachia at its best can offer; if he had known what it means to be a neighbor and friend; if he had taken the time and trouble to really get to know some of the proud people of this much maligned land; if he had bothered to learn the histories of the Cherokee, the Melungeons, the African Americans, the Latinas and Latinos who are so much a part of Appalachia, maybe he wouldn’t be so quick to judge others as harshly as he does, to see them as less than he is. If he had educated himself about how people in these mountains have organized themselves, cared for one another in hard times, fought back against the corporations that have exploited them time and again, he might be a kinder, friendlier, warmer, more useful human being.
Vance has fallen into the bear trap he dug for himself. Like Bobby McFerrin becoming his own Walkman, Vance is increasingly becoming the stereotype he created and marketed about the people of Appalachia. He’s truly impoverished—spiritually, morally, humanly. He’s quick to anger and to judge, to pick fights and feuds. He’s mean, cruel, even vicious in how he talks about others. He is careerism incarnate, willing to do and say almost anything to promote himself above others.
I find this beyond sad. There’s no point in romanticizing Appalachia. Its problems are many and real—though all too often the result of outside forces. It can be a hard place to find a decent job, to make a reasonably good life for yourself and your family, even if it’s a childless one.
Vance didn’t have to follow the path he chose. Like so many before him, he could have worked to help build Appalachia up, rather than tearing it down. OK, so maybe he didn’t pick up the fiddle like Byrd, but he could have found ways to bring joy and hope to the region he claims as home. Instead of enriching himself, he could have recognized and lifted up the cultural, historical, and political richness of one of this country’s most magical regions. Instead of being an angry polemicist, he could have built on his skill with words and his Yale education to become a justice-seeking lawyer working for the people he claims as his. He could have become a much-loved storyteller, affirming old and young. He might have held forth in courtrooms, even in the Senate Cloakroom, with a Jack Tale or two.
But when it comes to Appalachia, J.D. Vance doesn’t know Jack.