By Wayne Allensworth
GOP U.S. Senator J.D. Vance lived up to this supporter’s expectations in dominating the stage during last night’s vice-presidential debate with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Vance was self-assured, confident, knowledgeable, yet gentlemanly in his performance. He did not allow the biased “moderators” to spin the show against him, and the hapless Walz ended up looking as though he needed a security blanket, especially after acknowledging that he could be a “knucklehead.” Vance’s performance was probably reassuring to Trump loyalists and to potential swing voters, as he appeared presidential. If something happens to Trump, a capable man will take charge. Vance is the face of America First’s future.
Walz’s bizarre facial expressions and often flustered demeanor indicated he was what I expected — a mediocrity thrust into a difficult situation with which he could not cope. His admissions of falsifying his personal history and other gaffes only made it even more evident who the real man of substance on the stage was. Yet Vance let Walz down easily enough, treating him politely, skillfully undercutting him while not humiliating the clearly rattled and nervous governor. Walz settled down a bit as the night wore on, and even agreed with Vance on some issues.
The blogger Z Man called the debate a clash between of “Normal vs. Crazy,” hilariously writing that Walz came across “as a strange combination of Uncle Fester from the Addams Family and a highly caffeinated Mr. Magoo.” Z Man thought Walz’s demeanor suggested “there is something disturbing about his private life.” Your observer’s impression was that the befuddled Minnesota governor was a reasonable impression of the hormonal cat ladies who support Kamala Harris.
Z Man and Gleen Greenwald observed that the debate exploded the establishment media’s depiction of Vance as an extremist, a dangerous radical who was somehow “weird,” when the weirdo vibes were clearly coming from Walz. Walz’s attempts to come off as a down-to-earth man of the people didn’t fly — unless your idea of a man of the people comes from American Gothic. Greenwald agreed: Walz was a lackluster mediocrity, while Vance was clearly a man who knew his business. In briefly sketching his background out to voters whose only impressions of him may have come from media propaganda, Vance came off as exceedingly normal. Greenwald said that Vance’s life was a “classical American story” of successfully overcoming adversity. And because nothing the Blob’s media arm had been saying about J.D. Vance corresponded to the reality TV viewers could see for themselves, Greenwald continued, the propagandists had subverted their own credibility.
Vance made the usual noises about supporting Israel as a wider war in the Middle East appears to be playing out. I trust his — and Donald Trump’s — America First instincts will resist any calls for American intervention. As Professor John Mearsheimer has noted, the Israelis and their American Amen Corner may well be hoping to drag the United States into the war. The Biden administration has already sent additional troops to the region to, as AP, citing a Pentagon announcement, put it, “bolster security and to defend Israel if necessary.” Your humble observer is also suspicious of the stories circulating about Iran’s allegedly planning to assassinate Trump — a threat to which Trump has responded in the strongest and most bellicose terms possible. The story is all too convenient for the war lobby. And the source of the story is the same U.S. intelligence community that stabbed Trump in the back at every opportunity when he was president.
Vance understands that if the U.S. dives into another Middle East quagmire, that would be the end of any hopes for a Trump-Vance administration implementing an America First agenda. War would wreck any opportunity for curbing the power of the Deep State, reducing the federal government’s financial commitments, and undercutting the influence of the neocon/neoliberal war mongers, much less reducing the hold of the Israeli lobby on Capitol Hill. In his interview with Tucker Carlson, Vance mentioned ending wars as a major plank of a Trump-Vance administration’s plans. What’s more, in his debate comments on the wars raging around the world, including in the Middle East and alluding to Ukraine, Vance stressed that under Trump, there hadn’t been any such wars. The implication was that a Trump-Vance administration would seek strategic stability and peace as a prerequisite for their domestic agenda.
The Israelis are not the only foreign power hoping to drag America into a shooting war. Ukrainian President’s Volodymyr Zelensky’s hopes to pull the U.S. into a direct conflict with Russia. That’s one of his likely aims in lobbying to use long range missiles provided by the U.S. against Russia — something that Vladimir Putin has made plain will be regarded as direct American participation in the war.
If we are to have any chance of salvaging something from the current national trainwreck, Washington will for once have to give peace a chance. I trust Donald Trump and J.D. Vance to do that.
Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood.
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