Unexplainable TikToks compilation: Vampires, lucid dreams, and more
(Wisp Stories) Aug. 26, 2025: From vampires to lucid dreaming, strange encounters and more, these TikToks make us have to question reality. 👻⚠️😨
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"White Trash" historian Nancy Isenberg on J.D. Vance, "Hillbilly Elegy," and class in America
(Democracy Now!) July 18, 2024: American historian and the author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg, calls Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance a peddler of the "self-made man myth." Isenberg criticizes Hillbilly Elegy, the memoir that propelled him to fame, as a deceptive way of selling this myth and the conservative politics it comes with.
"Much of what his memoir says tells us nothing about real class conditions," Isenberg says, pointing to her own historical and sociological research on the rural poor in the United States.
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J.D. Vance, Ex-President Trump's new running mate, is a classic example of a convenenciero — someone who goes through life with no principles other than getting ahead and no loyalty to a community other than his own (LM Otero/AP).
From the moment I learned about hillbillies as a child, I was entranced.
Good ol' boys and girls born high up in the mountains?
[The trailer trash of Appalachia?] That’s my parents. People who moved from rural towns to metro areas in search of a better life?
We is downhome folks from them thar hills
Story of both sides of my family. Working class? My upbringing. Lovers of things — food, fashion, music, diction, parties — that polite society ridiculed? Yee-haw! Stubbornly clinging to their ancestral lands and ways? ¡Ajúa!
I learned to love toxic bourbon, bluegrass music, Hee Haw reruns, and Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be a Redneck If..." series.
LGBTQ flags in JD's Virginia neighborhood
As an adult, I drove through the small towns of central and eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, feeling at home in areas even my white friends warned wouldn't take kindly to "my type."
I might not have outwardly resembled the 'billies I met — I'm a cholo [Mexican style gang member] nerd, after all — but we got along just fine, because they were my brothers and sisters from another madre.
From what I heard about it, the familial dysfunction, generational poverty, and inherent fatalism that Vance overcame were similar to the pathologies of my own extended Latino clan.
The up-from-bootstraps message he preached in interviews was what my parents had always preached and what I still subscribe to. Vance's critique of conspicuous consumption among the poor is something everyone should consider.
VIDEO: J.D. Vance: I might vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump (MeidasTouch News)
But the parallels between the clean-cut Vance and me only went so far. He was a Yale graduate and venture capitalist, while I'm a community college kid who chose a dying profession [journalism].
He was far removed from his roots, while I experience mine nearly every other weekend at family parties. More importantly, Vance cast himself as an extraordinary exception to his fellow Appalachians, describing 'billies as encased in a toxic amber that kept them from improving their lot and left them embittered with a country that has moved on without them.
My Mexican hillbilly family never had time to whine and mope.
My parents’ generation found blue-collar jobs, bought homes, and are now retired and enjoying the fruits of their blood, sweat, and tears.
Cleveland.com; Family Guy ("This Cowboy Hat Comes Right Off"); Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2024; Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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