Solving The Vance Puzzle of Rejecting Meritocracy While Rising Through Patronage To Make America Great Again?

Peloni

By Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America – J. D. Vance, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikipedia

In a recent interview, VP JD Vance announced his opposition to free market economics, Margaret Thatcher, and meritocracy, to which Steve Moore responded the release of a corrective statement which he followed up with the following two interviews:

What Moore misses in his analysis of Vance’s lack of respect for the fundamental principles on which Western civilization has been founded is that Vance’s career and rise to power has been in no small part due to his ability to wield influence so as to support his political success, what some might describe as crony capitalism.

In fact, Vance’s advancement in life has been tied at the hip to his relationship with Peter Thiel which began after meeting him in 2011 while Vance was in his first year at Yale.  Their subsequent correspondence may or may not have influenced Vance’s subsequent judicial clerkship, but it was clearly related to Vance’s success in the world of venture capitalism.  Thiel’s endorsement of Vance’s book was yet another aspect of the burgeoning benefits springing from Vance’s mentorship with Thiel. Hence, this protege-mentor connection between these two is arguably a better basis under which to ascribe Vance’s financial success than any form of meritocracy and this trend is naturally enough followed by Thiel’s support for Vance in his senatorial victory and later his being picked by Trump to stand only a heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the world.

So Vance’s lack of support for meritocracy would seem to be less of a point of being poorly informed than of a reflection of how he himself achieved so much in less than twenty years time.  He might easily and honestly ask his naysayers such as Moore to present an example of meritocracy which raised someone from Vance’s background to the position he holds today.  Of course, success earned on the shoulders of others provides for a poor learning curve of what made the American nation the envy of the world, which  explains Vance’s obvious derision of meritocracy, free market economics and those who advocated such fundamentally foundational Western values such as Margaret Thatcher.  Hence, while Moore explains Vance’s failure to support the values of Western democracy as being due to bad advice, it is arguably more a consequence of Vance’s own lived experiences which makes his fundamental anti-democratic world view all the more troubling and problematic.

Indeed, one might ask why the likely next leader of the Make America Great movement is cherishing values which have instead lead to making America in need of the Make America Great movement in the first place.

One more point to raise in all of this, is that as JD Vance was being pulled from success to success, we might want to look more closely at the puppet master who has paved the way for Vance to now advocate for defeating the enemies of democracy by adopting the values on which democracy’s enemies now stand, but first, one more astute review of Vance’s plans for America:

Who is Peter Thiel

Click Link for Insightful Analysis:

Peter Thiel’s Apocalyptic Vision: Why One Tech Billionaire Threatens Democracy

So, while looking more closely at Peter Thiel, perhaps Steve Moore was actually correct about Vance having been receiving advice from the wrong people, only this advice has actually filled the past 15 years during which Vance’s entire path to power and wealth has been in no small part the product of his acting on this advice.

So is Vance really to be the next champion of Americanism?  Is his criticism of American values likely to affect his advancement as Trump’s successor?  And why in the world is it that he stands as Trump’s successor in any event?  All good questions.