Voters 'rightfully grossed out' by J.D. Vance's nonstop whining: columnist
Voters have recoiled from Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) since Donald Trump rolled him out as his running mate, and his penchant for whining seems to have a lot to do with his unpopularity.
The Ohio Republican can't seem to speak without whining, noted Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte, and she believes that he's so deeply steeped in online right-wing discourse that he believes that petulance is a virtue and not off-putting.
"Vance can't seem to speak without whining," Marcotte wrote. "Every interview with him is a grievance-fest where he plays the victim of 'the media,' lies while falsely accusing his opponents of lying, and acts put out by inconsequential nonsense. He's as full of self-pity as Trump. Vance can be even more aggravating because, by all accounts, has a great life well beyond what he deserves: a beautiful family he doesn't appear to appreciate, a Senate seat purchased for him by a tech billionaire, and millions of dollars, despite not offering any real value to society or the economy."
Marcotte rounds up a number of other writers who've noticed the same linguistic tics that Vance seems to have picked up while associating with the "hyper-online far-right milieu."
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"Vance was mentored and funded by Silicon Valley billionaires who imagine themselves to be bold and edgy thinkers because they embrace 'neo-reactionary' views, which is just a fancy term for fascism," Marcotte wrote. "It's a movement that imagines itself to be intellectually heady, replete with allusions to ancient writers and philosophers that mostly go unread. In practice, as Ginny Hogan at the Nation wrote, it's mostly defined by the childish behavior of men who should have outgrown this long ago: silly memes, lazy trolling and lots of whining."
"Nothing is too small or light to avoid being sucked into the vortex of the extremely online right's decade-plus of endless griping," she added. "It's a world full of men like Musk and Vance, who think they are unbearably clever but are incapable of even coming up with a new way to insult people, beyond accusing them of having pets. The result is a life of perpetual outrage because the rest of the world seems uninterested in flattering them endlessly about how they are the greatest, smartest, funniest, best boys of all time."
Vance has been unable to escape the revulsion elicited by his "childless cat ladies" remarks, and Marcotte said that's partly because that comment manages to insult large numbers of voters while also underlining his own personality flaws.
"In the dull world of the extremely online right, where 'cat lady' is forever the sickest of burns, it is also common to mistake throwing a tantrum for strength," she wrote. "'Free speech' is defined as 'we speak, you listen — and faint in adoration.' Live in that space long enough and you start to think that yelling at a reporter for asking a question isn't embarrassing behavior. No, in the online MAGA world, sputtering 'How dare you!' at a journalist for doing their job is regarded as a feat of strength on par with storming the beach at Normandy."
"It's tempting to see Vance whining yet again and assume that he's sorely in need of therapy," Marcotte added. "That may be so, but it's also true that his online space is a culture where whimpering like a spoiled child is mistaken for toughness, and he's forgotten that most people are rightfully grossed out by it."