J.d. vance

There were many reasons why 2016 was a strange year. One of them was the halfhearted effort by people on both sides of the Atlantic to try to understand why voters had voted the "wrong" way in the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election. The book that was touted as an explainer for all of this was Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir by someone called J.D. Vance about his upbringing in rural Ohio. After the election of Donald Trump, Vance’s description of family breakdown, de-industrialization, poverty and drug abuse was said to explain why so many Americans had voted for Trump. There was much that was patronizing about all this – mirrored in France by the attention paid to Didier Eribon’s Returning to Reims.

After a week of international agonizing, it looks as if the first round of the latest peace talks between America and Iran will not begin today – at least, not formally. The Memorandum of Understanding has been signed – electronically by Iran and by Donald Trump’s hand in Versailles on Wednesday. But J.D. Vance’s big Switzerland trip, originally planned to kick off the talks, has been put on hold as the Lebanon issue reared its troublesome head overnight. Late yesterday afternoon, Hezbollah fired several salvoes of rockets at IDF targets, killing four soldiers. Israel responded with a wave of airstrikes in Southern Lebanon, killing 18 and wounding 33, according to the Lebanese ministry of health.

Vice President J.D. Vance went on The View Tuesday morning in the vain hope of talking about his new faith-focused book, Communion. Instead, he found himself locked in a debate with a group of ladies who subjected the VP to a show trial. Vance was questioned on topics including immigration and deportation, President Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and the release of the files. The most eye-catching exchange was with the show’s moderator, Whoopi Goldberg, concerning race. “What did black people do to this administration that has allowed it to really stigmatize folks of color?” she asked. “And you know how hard it is, you have folks of color in your family.

Geostrategists used to fret over the “Eastern Question” or the Maginot Line or the Missile Gap. Today there is no doubt that the overriding geostrategic question of our day is whether the President of the United States is playing with a full deck. With the US-Israeli war on Iran failing, and depleting much of both countries’ non-nuclear defenses, with the Strait of Hormuz closed and western economies spiraling toward depression, Donald Trump greeted the world on Easter morning with a message to Iran’s leaders to “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards,” then threatened the next day to wipe out Iranian civilization. He then denounced the Pope for having imparted Catholic teachings on just and unjust war.

It required an incredible amount of sophistication to achieve the desired result in Caracas: a dictator detained and transported alive. The mission had been planned and mapped out for months, worked and reworked at the behest of the Commander-in-Chief. No American casualties would be tolerated. Special Forces had been circling and at the ready for weeks. The helicopters were easy targets, so a vital part of the mission was to eliminate Nicolás Maduro’s ground- to-air response beforehand and claim total air superiority.