- About last night’s Vice Presidential debate, and how Vance kept changing the subject;
- How Vance’s contempt for climate change science belies his purported concern for children, and reflects this recent Cory Doctorow column about marshmallow longtermism;
- How Vance’s conversion to a specific kind of Catholicism reveals his longing for a simpler, more structured past — in defiance of the classic liberal ideas of equality, personal liberty, and individual rights;
- And a final thought about how conservatism in general is about trying to change the subject, from the present to the past.
Last night was the Vice Presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz. I thought it went well only in the sense that both men spoke fluently. I kept noticing the tendency by Vance to change the subject. He would be asked a question about, say, war in the middle east, and JD would say, It’s more important to talk about why Kamala Harris is responsible for all the spoiled food in your fridge, or something equally absurd. Kamala is to blame for everything, never mind she’s only vice president; whereas Trump for some reason isn’t responsible for all the things he promised (like the Wall) and didn’t get done *as president*. The most telling example of this, and the critical point of the debate, was this.
NY Times, Matt Flegenheimer: The Moment When Vance Dodged a Jan. 6 Question but Said Plenty, subtitled “JD Vance sailed fairly smoothly through some 90 minutes of Tuesday’s debate with Tim Walz. Then the subject turned to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.”
