Elites

Monday

Ben Domenech

Why does the left hate J.D. Vance so much?

Freddy Gray's latest Spectator cover piece on J.D. Vance's status as the heir apparent for Donald Trump, well-above the scrum of potential alternatives despite his relative youth and the fact he has been an elected politician for not even three years, brings to mind an underrated aspect of his appeal. I am often asked by conservatives across the country some version of the question: Why does the left hate J.D. Vance so much? Why does he prompt so much vociferous loathing? The answer is somewhat disguised by his uniqueness in background and resume, but the truth is: They hate him because they view him as a traitor to their class, after they welcomed him with open arms.

Vance

Wednesday

Batya Ungar-Sargon

Where to find self-esteem

It’s a month before publication day for my second book, Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women. I start an Instagram account in the hopes of drumming up interest in the book on a new platform. I post a few clips of TV hits from recent weeks and follow a few friends. Instagram immediately recommends an article about how to grow your Instagram following, and I click on it and learn that consistency is key on Instagram. Roger that. Later that day, I find myself arranging my overachiever elder millennial self into an artfully nonchalant pose while stirring a lamb curry I’m whipping up for my regular Shabbat dinner salon. “There once was a Batya,” my husband mutters on his way to the fridge. “Now there’s a content creator.

class

Sunday

Bill Zeiser

I refuse to get used to COVID

There was a factory. Now there are mountains and rivers. If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawn mower. I thought we’d start over, but I guess I was wrong. And as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention. Don’t leave me stranded here. I can’t get used to this lifestyle. So go the lyrics to the 1988 Talking Heads song '(Nothing But) Flowers.' As bitterly cynical as it is catchy, the tune is an environmentalist anthem written from the perspective of some laggard who cannot adapt to life after a cataclysmic refashioning of society into a paradise not unlike Rousseau’s state of nature. I think of it as my personal hymn in the age of COVID. Could there be a more fitting song for the present?

covid