In light of J.D. Vance’s stirring speech last week to the Munich Security Conference, we’re republishing Ramesh Thakur’s Spectator Australia article from July, when Trump announced Vance as his VP pick – and thus spelled the long-overdue end of the neoconservative movement.
The phoenix-like rise of a bleeding Trump, with a fist-bumping chorus of “Fight! Fight! Fight!”, signalled the triumph of Trumpism over the remaining anti-Trumpers in the party. Every time that picture is seen – we will assuredly see it endlessly until the election and periodically thereafter – the world will be reminded of what strength and defiance look like. The positioning of the slain firefighter’s uniform on the stage during Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention and the poignant gesture of tenderly kissing his helmet offered a window into the human side that Trump rarely shows in public. So too, the cascade of security failures notwithstanding, Trump’s tribute to the Secret Service agents who rushed to smother him with their bodies as human shields in the chaotic moments when no one knew how many assassins had infiltrated the crowd. And also to the crowd which stayed orderly and burst into chants of ‘USA’ last witnessed in New York after 9/11.
Other potential picks for a running mate (who alone of the senior advisers cannot be fired) might have better helped Trump to win the election, but 39 year-old J.D. Vance offers the best chance to entrench the MAGA revolution in and beyond a second Trump administration. The selection caused a meltdown among those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Three articles on Sunday sealed the deal for me. Mark Episkopos explained on Responsible Statecraft the choice is principally about US foreign policy. John Bolton, who has caused much lasting damage to US global interests, wrote in the UK Telegraph that the selection is “profoundly disturbing in its implications for American foreign policy in a Trump Presidency”. Of course, Bolton is a leading representative of the neoconservatives and, Paul du Quenoy explained in Newsweek, the nomination of Vance “spells the final and long-overdue end of the neoconservative movement”. Hallelujah!
Vance grew up an Appalachian hillbilly, overcame ‘white trash’ origins and a dysfunctional family, joined the Marines and leveraged military service into degrees from Ohio State and Yale. His social, economic and governing philosophies are the result of this hardscrabble back story. His business and political success offers a lesson in redemption that is the very essence of the American dream. Between Vance and Kamala Harris, he is the underprivileged kid from Middletown, Ohio who made good while she is a California child of privilege and, as an adult, the beneficiary of political patronage starting with San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. Usha Vance, his wife, represents another stream in the American dream, of immigrants who come to America as the land of opportunity where education, talent and hard work are rewarded. Indo-Americans have achieved success without victimhood and grievance.
Vance is exceptionally attuned to the ravages of American de-industrialisation, with US manufacturing hollowed out, jobs shipped overseas and swathes of the homeland turned into a wasteland along the rust belt. As Vance said in his acceptance speech, China built its middle class on the backs of growing numbers of unemployed Americans. The message of a second Trump administration to China will be: if you want to sell it here, you have to build it here. Vance similarly prioritises the health of the US economy above the health of the planet under the alleged threat from ‘global warming’. The commitment to reversing this destructive trend rests equally powerfully on the recognition of the importance of dignity conferred on human beings by productive work and living wages and the role of well-paying jobs in sustaining stable family life. He brought his compelling back story to life in his acceptance speech and the introduction of his previously drug-addled and serially partnered mother, clean and sober now for more than nine years, to the whole nation was a fitting culmination of his life story to date.
The media still don’t get the twin reality that Trump has no interest in appeasing them but speaks directly to his base, and the latter share his contempt for the press. His voters believe him when he says they are the real targets of the Blob, he is all that stands between them and the Blob and that he literally took a bullet for them. To grasp the need and urgency to drain the swamp in Washington, look across to the Starmer Government’s slew of proposals to expand the entrenched administrative state, reduce freedom and destroy productive work with the many distractions of social justice activism. A man who came within an inch of having his head blown off on national TV has earned the right to ramble in his first public speech since. To me it came across as more of a conversation with the American people by an unusually subdued and sombre leader.
Instead of apologising, retreating and compromising, Trump doubles down and counterpunches in the war against the administrative-legal-industrial complex. They have slandered him, undermined him at every turn, persecuted him, tried to bankrupt and imprison him, and now even shot him. But still he picks himself up, missing shoes and all, and shouts defiance in the face of mortal threats. Millions of Americans are exhilarated by Trump’s visceral show of raw and muscular patriotism. Vance’s instincts too are not to flinch but to go all-in to turn the American nightmare into the American dream once again. His youth will ensure a continuation of Trumpism after Trump by an articulate and thoughtful politician, who in foreign policy will shy away from military adventurism but punch hard if and when necessary to defend American interests and values, and in personal traits comes without the crude vulgarities of his boss that millions of Americans are unable to get past in order to appreciate his policies and achievements.
Vance is a champion of the post-liberal Right. To decry him as isolationist betrays wilful blindness. He represents realism and restraint alongside strength. He has remained steadfast in US support for Israel in its war with Hamas; questions why Europe, comparable in wealth and population to America, cannot deal with Ukraine on its own (its military under-spending is “an implied tax on the American people to allow for the security of Europe”, he wrote in the Financial Times); and holds Asia to be the key strategic battleground in the foreseeable future. Similarly, Vance is no more racist and anti-immigrant than Trump. Both welcome legal immigrants who share in and commit to core American values. Both oppose discrimination – positive and negative – based on faith and skin colour. Why wouldn’t Vance want equality of opportunity for his own children?
Trump’s appeal comes from being different from the run-of-the-mill political leader, backed by an unmatched ability to project grit and promise a better future – just what the nation craves and the world needs in these challenging times. Australian conservatives could do with a Trump-Vance combination whose focus is on the wellbeing of productive workers on the farms and in the factories.
Ramesh Thakur is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Emeritus Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, the Australian National University. This article was first published in Spectator Australia.
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Leitch needs launching from the battlements of Edinburgh Castle. Preferably with useless Yousaf tied to him at the ankles.
A highly appropriate denouement for the pantomime that is the SNP.
Thank you.
Leich is a dentist! “Professor” my ar*e!
“Jamie Dawson KC, Counsel to the inquiry, challenged Prof. Leitch that he was advising Mr Yousaf how to avoid the SNP Government’s own rules using a “workaround”.
He asked: “If the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care didn’t understand the rules, what chance did anybody else have?””
As usual, missing point (probably deliberately). The question from the “secretary” wasn’t an attempt to find out what he should be doing to stay safe, it was just an attempt to establish how he could get away with normal human behaviour and still claim he was within the law. Not the same thing at all, and the KC bloody well knows this.
All theatre, just like “covid”.
What happened to “there was no pandemic”?
If the governments own senior medical adviser says it was legitimate to not wear a mask due to a “social occasion”, the KC should have been asking what sort of virus would understand that.
The very existence of these nonsensical rules shows in itself there was nothing as deadly as the government claimed. If there was something genuinely that deadly, people wouldn’t have been concerned with socialising.
The Scottish inquiry is probably more to do with getting the SNP ousted from government.
If the inquiry gets the SNP ousted from government then some good will of come from it.
…have come from it.
I’m usually holding a drink whenever I’m in the pub. It’s good to know that this means I’m safe from COVID. Does this count as beneficial health effect?
As long as “food and drink was being served” you would have been exempt as would have everyone else in a pub, restaurant, cafe.
That isn’t in any legislation and venues seemed to be enforcing a stricter policy but that was the official response from the Scottish Government to a maskless First Minister violating a pensioners territorial bubble shown here:
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/scottish-news/20074393.lulu-nicola-sturgeon-spotted-book-launch-glasgow/
“violating a pensioners territorial bubble shown here:”
Brilliant.
I also never found out if a Scotch Egg will keep you safe from Covid!
A pickled onion possibly but not sure about the Ova Scotia!
The recurring theme in “Scotch Egg: The Musical” is essentially the future BBC reporter’s search for an answer to that, based on reviewing documentation, media clips and an interview with “Boris Johnson” (and all the other survivors), reminiscing about what fun they had running The Lockdown some twenty years previously. The budget for the musical was far smaller than these inquiries, much faster-paced and more entertaining! Here is part of the musical item “The laws are set in stone”.
(2 min 56 s)
Football is safe//The virus just knows//
But it’s deadly as hell in the aisles of Waitrose//
When you walk to your table you risk dropping dead//
but sit down ……and it sails overhead//
‘Cuz the laws are set in stone//
Keep the people sheeple//Make them stay at home.
Terrific
It depended on whether or not the scotch egg self identified as a substantial meal. If it did then pubs could serve one, stay open and you’d be safe from covid.
I remember a big discussion wether or not a scotch egg was substantial meal or only someone’s trans-substantial meal and wether or not this mattered. The outcome was that trans-substantial meals are obviously substantial meals.
Must say it’s depressing being reminded of all this and having memories of all the nonsense – pubs with some sort of plastic alleyway you could only follow one way to get a drink and each table with plastic sheets between it and the rest and surly landlords getting to tell you what to do and to put your mask on even when going to the loo. Restaurants, as mentioned, where you were safe if you sat down but unsafe in a queue like a psychopathic game of musical chairs. These shysters have a lot to answer for. I hope they get put on trial one day and get put away for a long, long time, far from doing any harm to anyone ever again.
And being turned away from a half empty Pub, great for business. I went out in summer 2020, dragged out by colleagues. It was an unpleasant experience. Taking people’s Mobile numbers to buy a drink, that is a red flag and breached data protection.
It was a wonderful time to play with names and numbers…
The one occasion during the ‘pandemic’ when most Brits did the right thing and showed some guts: half the men’s names on those lists were James Bond.
I actually credit that resistance with finishing off this particular farce pretty quickly, in contrast to other countries.
Oh yes. I had a fabulous mobile number which consisted of sixes and the title of a book written by George somebody or other. It provided a chuckle.
Back in 2021 I visited England when all this crap was still going on. I went to a pub. I walked in the ‘out door’ and walked to the bar. Told I shouldn’t have done that – tough. Anyway i was asked for my phone number which I duly gave – it was an overseas number and needless to say I altered one digit. The staff just smiled and served me my drink. I had already told them I only had cash but they wanted a debit card. Somehow they were not impressed when I habded over my bangkok bank card.
The upshot was I had a lovely face mask free natter with the landlady and paid cash. I left by the indoor. A smirk of satisfaction on my face.
The depressing bit was that this was so obviously nonsensical but nobody of the supposedly civil, ie non-government enforcers, ever had a “Hold-a-sec, this is ridiculous and I’m not going to do it!” moment.
I discarded my face mask I had worn due to the “It’s just a mask!” rethoric despite it was oftentimes driving me near nuts with panic attacks about running out of air in supermarket queues I bravely overcame every time and because it usually doesn’t pay to draw attention to yourself (autists learn this thoroughly because this attention is usually violent and they’re always blamed for it) the day after the Michie interview where she admitted that masking was just something she had seen on holiday in Japan and badly wanted to introduce in England forever, but not specifically because of COVID. I was – as usual – standing masked in a supermarket queue, feeling the flashes of minor pain indicating lack of oxygen all over my body and worrying how I’ll get through this. Then, I remembered the interview and suddenly, the sky cleared up. I thought “Am I crazy? Why am I hurting myself just because this stupid old witch wants that?”, pulled the darned thing away and left determined to never wear it again.
Fast-forward to November 2021, when the fastest impregnating jellymop of the West made them mandatory again. At first, I was just angry and desparate. And then, I decided that I wouldn’t wear it again unless under the influence of direct force. I’m a small guy (5’6″, 10 stone, 12lb) and hence, forcing me to wear it wouldn’t have been difficult for most people. Next day in the supermarket, door guard was a nervous and aggressive rather small guy (still taller than me) very much in love with masks (he kept his for a long time after the mandate had been abolished). He tried to intercept me to mask me but I just sidestepped him, angrily half-shouted “No, no, no, no!” and made it absolutely clear that without getting violent, he wouldn’t score. He chased me a few steps and then gave up. Next day, there was a tall guy who just looked at me and said “You’ve told me you’re exempt, right?” I hadn’t and didn’t react to that and that was the end of it.
I’m pretty certain that many people wouldn’t be able to get through this and they shouldn’t have to try.
Nice long story. Here’s mine: I never wore a mask.
In the pub, it was mask on when standing, off when sitting.
In the chambers of the Houses of Commons and Lords, it was mask off when standing and on when sitting.
TheScience™
If you were perching in the pub on a barstool (i.e. head at standing elevation but bearing most of your weight with your butt cheeks), you imploded into a singularity and sucked the pub with everyone in it into a black hole – regardless of whether you had a mask on or off. God knows what happened in the House of Commons bar. Perhaps it just teleported to Mars. Here’s hoping eh.
My grandchildren will think I am insane. I hope I get at least one. Things are promising so far, my little 11 year old lad can’t stop talking about the little French girls in his little French school
You get my vote, Marcus, for making me burst out laughing!
‘I never wore a mask.’
Sir Christopher Chope.
The only MP who saw through this charade and this illegal attack on bodily sovereignty.
“I never wore a mask.”
Neither did I so Chope was in good company.
Nor I, cheers!
Well, there was that one time when the pilot spoke so loudly down the tannoy that all the speakers crackled like empty crisp packets and distorted the words “I WILL NOT LEAVE THE RUNWAY UNTIL EVERYONE HAS A MASK OVER THEIR MOUTHS AND NOSES”
I started to look around for the oxygen mask and attempted to find the lifejacket from under my seat but the very very very vicious Portuguese air hostess left me in no doubt about the seriousness of the situation.
She had to lend me hers.
“Prof. Leitch became a household name in Scotland during the {“pandemic”} There fixed that!
When anybody mentions The Pandemic, I quietly correct them: “The Pandemic? Oh, you mean The Lockdown.” However, the opportunity doesn’t arise much, since “Karen” (the fastest aisle vigilante in the West and the most rainbowed and loudest saucepan-banger in our street) is surprisingly quiet when we talk about What We Did In 2020.
You are on a roll.
Oh I do that religiously. Cheers!
Didn’t work for me. Threatened with arrest for drinking from a water bottle after cycling 30 miles to Birmingham International Station.
Almost nobody apart from 2 transport police in the carriage.
Still angry 3 years later,although I sipped it continuously to Euston.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
So all we have thought and often said, these people were superior to us.
Better pigs. They stink.
Ironically his Face is one that benefits wearing a mask !
Deleting messages will have happened across the political class. I do not believe the security services cannot get them back and they should do so becuae lyingto the courts and to the public is a serious issue.
Poe’s Law strikes again. The hypocrisy is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
It’s almost as if they knew their own rules were nonsense, and perhaps even that masks don’t work.
A typical elongated Telegraph article which repeats the message several times but with turning the words around.
Who’s the brainless twerp who has been downticking? Go and read the Guardian!