At the height of the Cold War in 1962, The Manchurian Candidate hit theaters telling a story of US Army soldiers returning from war having been brainwashed by Chinese communists to carry out domestic assassinations.
The plot thickens in the fabulous 2004 remake starring Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, and Meryl Streep. Schreiber plays Raymond Shaw, who is returned from war and programmed by the bad guys to assassinate rivals and eventually become President of the United States. Both films were simultaneously terrifying and outlandish. Nothing could ever happen like that in the U.S. Right?
Enter J.D. Vance, the latest entry in the Trump dystopian reality show. Trump has selected Vance to be his vice president. He is an election denier who supports the January 6 insurrectionists. But keep reading; it gets better.
As you would expect, Vance won an Ohio Senate seat 18 months ago on the strength of millions of campaign cash from tech billionaires. He wrote a best-selling book, Hillbilly Elegy, about how we have forgotten the working class and community in the Midwest while we addict ourselves to Eastern establishment wealth, diversity, equity, and political correctness.
At first, Vance did what any thinking Republican would do. He compared Trump to Hitler, called him "cultural Heroin," and declared himself a "Never Trumper."
Less than two years later, Vance bent the knee and licked the boot, joining the rest of a once proud political party that has now unified around a convicted felon, an adjudged rapist out on bail who could not get a job at most American companies or fast-food restaurants.
Vance’s proudest moment came this week, just after the assassination attempt on Trump. Almost every political leader in the country called for calm. President Biden gave a national address, asking everyone to dial down the political hatred. Republicans joined in, promising to ease off on repugnant statements toward their political opponents. Even Trump said he would rewrite his convention speech.
And Vance? He took to Twitter an hour after the shooting and blamed Biden for the attempt on Trump’s life.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
So much for dialing down the rhetoric.
Of course, in the old days (10 years ago), such a comment would have disqualified Vance from higher office. In our new political world, however, it won him the vice presidential nod.
The most important thing to understand about J.D. Vance is the hypocrisy of his personal story.
First - he wants to kick immigrants out of the country while being married to … the daughter of immigrants! His wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, is a corporate lawyer who once worked for Brett Kavanaugh. Yes, that Brett Kavanaugh.
Second, Vance’s politics are powered by donations from a particular type of Silicon Valley tech billionaire. They are self-described libertarians who like to brag about getting government out of people’s lives. They want to be left alone to pursue freedom, they say, but what they really want is to be left alone to make money and change society so they can make more money.
You have read about these people. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Instagram. David Sacks, an original founder of PayPal. And Peter Thiel, the angry investor whose speech at Yale Law School inspired Vance to head for Silicon Valley instead of law firms. And lastly, of course, Elon Musk.
Musk is so excited about Vance that he endorsed Trump and pledged to write a $45 million check per week to the campaign to get the job done.
See how it works now?
For 40 years, Republicans have weakened government regulation by starving regulatory agencies so that those who fund their campaigns—big companies and Silicon Valley—can make billions. Big Tech then funnels profits back into the campaigns of the politicians who do their bidding. And round and round we go.
Unlike the communists who brainwashed Raymond Shaw in the Manchurian Candidate, the brainwashers are the Silicon Valley billionaires. They own Vance, and Vance will do what they want. Give the tech bros this: they see the future, or at least a future they want, and will pay to get it.
In Vance, they see the next Trump. At 78 years old, Trump is one cheeseburger away from the emergency room. And the man waiting in the wings is not yet 40 years old, the new future of the MAGA Republican Party.
Advice to Donald Trump. Your enemy is not Joe Biden. It’s J.D. Vance. Like the communist brainwashers in the Manchurian Candidate who use Raymond Shaw to do their dirty work, Elon Musk and Co. are using J.D. Vance as their stalking horse to their unregulated, Libertarian fever dream that leads to the destruction of the public good, the defunding of the federal government and the idolatry of infantile tech bros at the top of the country’s priority list.
Trump, in his arrogance and ignorance, thinks he can control Vance and the tech cabal. He is wrong. He can’t carry their bag. These guys are really smart and think 25 years down the road. Trump thinks about this week. The first time Trump looks the other way or stumbles, they will strike. Vance will wield the knife. But it will be paid for by Elon Musk, who simultaneously builds rocket ships for NASA while taking down our government. And for people who care about an America animated by the values of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, it will be much worse than it is today.