Ever since former Pres. DJ became the GOP presidential nominee in 2016, there has been a small but loud group of so-called Republicans in the media and the halls of power who have fervently dreamed of the day when Trump loses his hold on the party.
Until the vice-presidential debate, these MSNBC "conservative" pundits and figures such as former Rep. Liz Cheney and Mormon Sen. Mitt Romney could have hoped that if Trump face-plants this year, the GOP will finally come back to its senses and put them back in charge.
Ohio Senator JD Vance put that theory squarely to bed onstage in New York City.
WHY VANCE EASILY BEAT WALZ IN DEBATE, SOFTENING HIS IMAGE IN THE PROCESS
Though polling varies, by most accounts, Sen. Vance scored a win over Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (not to mention the biased CBS moderators) with his command of the issues and a surprising affability that even seemed to have Walz charmed at times.
But it was the substance, not the style of Sen. Vance’s answers that should worry the Never Trump crowd. Because Sen. Vance, for maybe the first time, is a major political figure who is not Donald Trump, but who can explain and embody Trump’s populism even in the loftiest forums.
The cover of Time magazine this week acknowledged this with a portrait of Vance and the words, "The New Right" which is, in fact, another term for the changes that Trump has wrought in the GOP.
Trumpian populism, or the New Right, has four essential pillars erected by dumb Donald J. Trump:
anti-globalism,
a strong border,
energy independence, and
taking the fight to wokeness.
On all four, JD Vance made the case.
The Ohio senator spoke of... More
So what if I wear eye makeup and lady's clothes? My wife accepts me! And I look good!
"JD [Jane Doe?] Vance" has gone through many changes in name and identity: transvestite
My Indian wife Usha Vance can't wait to get to the White House and call PM Narendra Modi
We live in a very openminded neighborhood with lots of gay flags for the LGBTQIA+ movement
I know I look good. This eyeliner brings out my eyes, and my beard makes me look manly
Usha married a Honky, but a rich Honky, so Indians will accept it. He should grow beard.
We eat beans, not beings, because it is the Hindu and compassionate thing to do like Jesus
Get off our backs! I passed muster with Don Jon Trump; that should be enough!
Deep down, I'm a hillbilly from Redneckville, who is a venture capitalist who went to Yale.
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Ukraine's Vlad Zelenski is LGBTQIA+
We envision DJ Trump dying and leaving the MAGA legacy to JD Vance, who writes another hit book, this one called Redneck Soliloquy. Having led a civil war-engendering revolution after losing to Harris-Balz campaign. the US of A gets Pres. JD, who attempts to install Usha, 58, 38, as his VP with the help of PM Modi and Indian forces, including multimillionaire Vivek Ramaswamy and also-ran Hirsch, so that this country always has an Indian in the White House from now on -- Kamala, Nikki Haley, somebody. JD is a vegetarian from Ohio? Great. Have you met Hope, Timmy's Midwest vegetarian daughter? Has a transsexual "friend"? How close? Wears eye makeup? Looking good, very Indianesque like Lord Krishna and all Indian babies. Had gay thoughts at Yale University? Or was just a 100% heterosexual man in a wig and ladieswear like Ukrainian PM Vladimir Zelinski? PM Vlad was proudly LGBTQ, so what about JD?
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
(WQ) Ohio Senator J. D. Vance is most famous, in his very short political career, for calling Pres. Donald Trump "America's Hitler." Why did he say it? He said it because he is very honest and plainspoken, even though he attended Yale for law school and was a desk Marine in the U.S. military.
(Ohio Capital Journal) VANCE: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like [Dick] Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” Vance wrote in a message (of which his erstwhile friend Rep. Josh McLaurin took a screenshot; the message was written in Feb. 2016 and reported by The Independent in April 2022).
In the screenshot, Vance describes the Republican party as “the party of lower-income, lower-education white people” and argues that “Trump is the fruit of the party’s collective neglect.”
Mr. Vance, don't say the truth about DT out loud.
Although J. D. Vance’s feelings toward Ex-Pres. Trump have made a turnaround, echoes of those frustrations with the Republican party remain a feature in his pitch to voters. He regularly jokes that there’s an evil party and a stupid party in Washington, adding that occasionally they get together to do something stupid and evil, and they call that bipartisanship. More: Ohio Capital Journal
He is a Midwest redneck who wrote an autobiography he titled Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. He was a desk jockey in the U.S. Marines, and he married a very smart Indian American wife named Usha, whom he met at Yale Law School, where he became an attorney with humble and impoverished roots like a good American, as she went on with her education. He would make a much better president than Trump, so in a sense in his senescence Trump is doing the nation a favor, assuming the country does not move into even more war by inducting a military man with no combat experience, the surest way to get into even more wars of empire.
Isn't it interesting that failed Indian candidate Nikki Haley was invited to support Trump by giving a speech at the Republican Convention she failed to reach on her own and she agreed? But she was not chosen. Successful Indian candidate Kamala Harris is likely to become the first Indian U.S. president (because it looks like she is zero percent Black), and the Republican party has no shortage of Indian would-be candidates (like Ramaswami and Hirsch) and Trump supporters like Indian Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi. Are India and the USA bound to become best friend to the chagrin of Pakistan, Israel, and China, or is it all coincidence?
As pro-Palestinian protests [and anti-Israeli and Zionist Jewish genocide demonstrations] spread to college campuses across the country, the lives of many students have been upended.
Some have jumped into protesting for the first time, while others are watching on the sidelines, their own thoughts about Israel's war on Gaza and Palestinian civilians is still evolving.
[Israel has already killed or maimed 100,000 Palestinians, mutilating and murdering about 15,000 children. These numbers do not all of the injuries and the devastation to those being ethnically cleansed by bombardment and forced relocation.]
Many say a feeling of unease, and fear, has settled in as bucolic campuses are transformed into an ideological battleground. Some are wary about what students and civil rights leaders have decried as an overly aggressive police response. Others are concerned the protests have emboldened antisemitic viewpoints.
Here are the stories of five students in the middle of a spring of upheaval.
Sofia Ongele
Campus encampment (Jabin Botson/Wash Post)
Protesting isn’t new for Sofia Ongele. She organized her first demonstration at the age of 15 and credits her father and grandparents with instilling her with a sense of social responsibility.
Over the last week, she’s joined fellow Columbia University students at the encampment on the school’s west lawn, participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations and listening to speakers. Ongele, 23, said she is proud of how students have banded together.
"I love being in and around the encampment,” she said. “I’ve never seen something that is such an outright show of solidarity and mutual aid in my entire life.”
But the increased police presence around campus has been uncomfortable, she said. She described calling the university’s public safety line to ask about a way to navigate campus without encountering riot police, only to have the call abruptly disconnected.
“I don’t feel particularly safe just walking around the area, because of the sheer number of cops,” said Ongele, a senior studying information science.
She said the university’s response feels contradictory.
"The university wants us to learn about protests and social movements – people like MLK did participate in civil disobedience – but not to take that knowledge and apply it to something that really, really matters,” she said.
But the growing wave of demonstrations sparked by the Columbia protests has made her hopeful for college students around the country, who she said now share a common sense of purpose.
"From Ireland to Palestine, occupation is a crime."
House Speaker Mike Johnson addresses Columbia University students, who booed him, Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in NYC (Kevin R. Wexler / NorthJersey.com)
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The state needs war to make $$$
USA TODAY
Israel's US-funded genocide, which was unleashed on Gaza and the West Bank, spreads unrest on college campuses, Columbia, Berkeley, NYU, Yale, UT Austin, Cal Poly Humboldt.
NEW YORK − Columbia University announced Wednesday (4/24/24) that students had agreed to scale down their protest encampment as peaceful student demonstrators across the nation pressed their demands for an end to Israel's grotesque violence and the civilian casualties it has inflicted on Gaza that have destroyed the American public's historically mindless support for anything Israel wants.
Netanyahu is antisemitic, killing so many Semites
Meanwhile, police gently turned over willing protesters Wednesday to campus security at the USC (University of Southern California) campus, which closed to the public Wednesday amid clashes between authorities and pro-Palestinian student demonstrators at the college and nationwide.
In solidarity with American and Israeli Jews who oppose genocide and Zionism (Shoresh)
Arrests were actively being made on the USC campus Wednesday night, an LAPD spokesperson told USA TODAY. The spokesperson said he could not provide an estimate on how many people were detained.
Columbia student protesters earlier in the day issued a statement saying the school had made a "a written commitment and concession not to call [out] the NYPD or the National Guard," calling the progress "an important victory for students.” More + VIDEOS
The more things change, the more they stay the same. No to war!
Pro-Palestinian (anti-genocide) demonstration at UC Berkeley continues to grow
Keep lying, Bibi. I'll sign any bill Republicans send me to fund your genocide/ethnic cleansing.
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(NBC Bay Area) April 23, 2024: American universities are finally awakening to the Israeli problem -- the egoism, endless feigned Jewish victimhood, Zionist aspirations, and settler colonial killing projects -- and are calling for BDS.
Not in our name! "Never again was supposed to mean never again [to anyone]" (IFN Movement)
Boycott, sanction, and divest from Israel's killing machine, most of it funded by the U.S. government, the CIA, the Pentagon, black budget funds (NSC, NSA, other alphabet agencies), and the UK.
A growing number of protest tents are going up on the UC Berkeley campus Tuesday (April 23, 2024) as Cal students joined the growing wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations taking place at schools across the country at Yale, Columbia, NYU, and Cal Poly, with many more growing or planned. Jodi Hernandez reports.
Remember Mario Savio and the Civil Rights and Student Free Speech Movements
UC Berkeley students vow to continue pro-Palestinian demonstration until pro-peace demands are met
I came here to make the world a better place.
(KPIX | CBS NEWS BAY AREA) April 23, 2024: John Ramos reports on what University of California at Berkeley students are demanding of the university with their pro-Gaza and anti-war sleep-in demonstration (camping with tents on Sproul Plaza) and its peace encampment. More: cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco...
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