So we’re all finding out that J.D. Vance mirrors Trump in a lot of regrettable ways, including offering a rich trove of embarrassing and offensive prior statements. One that’s been getting a lot of play in the last day or so comes from a 2021 Tucker Carlson interview, in which Vance opined:
We're effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.
And it's just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC: the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?
(Emphases mine.)
I know aspects of this quote have already been covered by at least 2 other diaries today (here and here) and I find myself in robust agreement with them and the multitude of their commenters. But I want to emphasize something a little different.
One wonderful thing I have in common with Kamala Harris is that we are each stepparents to two incredible kids, and despite all our other accomplishments, that might be the thing about which we are each most proud.
How do I know this about her? It’s pretty well known, but take a look:
My life and my kids’ lives joined decades ago, when they were still in grade school. They are now in their 30s and we even have a new grandson. For this incalculable gift, I owe my wife all the credit, because she already had a family constructed and she welcomed me into it.
Due to various choices and circumstances, I never had any “biological” children, and I know I never will. But that doesn’t matter. I have children. These are my children, and they always will be. Just let J.D. try to tell me otherwise, and see what happens.
It’s interesting to see how many groups he managed to offend in one idiotic quote: not just stepparents, but adoptive parents — and by extension, anyone with a blended or otherwise non-ultra-traditional family — as well as people truly childless by choice or tragedy, and cat lovers, and cats (and all animals, really), and people who have made bold or hard life choices and aren’t miserable, and people who truly are miserable yet have the human decency not to wish their misery on anyone else, and on, and on.
There’s another reason I’m deeply offended. J.D. says that because I don’t have (his definition of) children, I don’t have a stake in this country. What does this mean? That I don’t care what happens to it? That I’d be willing to trash it? Turn it over to an autocrat, maybe?
No, J.D., you don’t get a stake just because you spawn. You get a stake when you connect. When you join a community. When you learn to rely on each other and understand just how essential that is. You get a stake when you live in a place, and you love it, and you weave your life with it. And if you live in a place that’s based on an idea, you get a stake if you love that idea, and want to preserve and protect it, and want to welcome others to share it.
This, then, is the fundamental difference between you and me, J.D. Of course my stake in this country and its future comes in huge part from my daughter and son and grandson, but it also comes from my need and my willingness to connect — what I would call my humanity. I’m sorry your sense of connection, which might be very powerful within a tight radius, drops off so rapidly.
Your stunted sense of connection — your inability to perceive the rest of us as being worth connecting to, or to appreciate all the connections we value — is a fatal disqualification. A politician needs to connect. A leader needs to connect.
Not to mention that if you can’t perceive us, you can’t count us, which means you’re going to be very surprised at how badly you lose.
So which one of us is miserable?
