# books / Hillbilly Elegy -- JD Vance

At time of writing JD Vance is the Vice-President of the United States. Prior to his nomination for that position, by his running mate Donald Trump, I had never heard of him. Now he is more famous than any Vice President in my lifetime. This is most true since his leading role in antagonising & inflammatory encounter with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s President, in a press conference at the White House.

Vance’s politics are quite different from mine. That is okay. His style of lecturing European nations on freedom of speech issues while his administration intimidates & arrest dissenters: less okay. His encouragement of Trump, a man threatening to invade Greenland & whom Vance himself called Hitler less than a decade ago: not very okay.

Vance is tipped for power. He is an important person, I believe, to understand.

Long before he made his way to the White House, but, I don’t doubt, with that destination in mind, Vance penned Hillbilly Elegy, telling the story of his troubled upbringing.

No part of me likes JD Vance, but this book does give me a profound respect for him. Whatever kind of person he has become, the fact that he atleast appears to be a functioning human is impressive.

Besides that my two takeaways from the book were:

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

Vance reflects on his traumas, and refers to the ACEs which are categories of trauma, and their long-term impacts. He talks about how these traumas are much more common among the working class groups he grew up around, and more common in the US than most other developed countries.

“Not everything is cause for a blood feud”

The book is elegantly written and there were a few passages I noted down. This one stayed with me. He tells of how he grew up learning he had to fight, for honour, for respect. In adulthood, this made him want to react violently to somebody who pulls in front of him in traffic.

Somebody tells him “Not everything is cause for a blood feud”. People aren’t trying to attack you. They’re just going about their day. A good lesson. It reminded me of the passage from Anthony de Mello:

They are just going their way, being themselves, doing their thing whether right or wrong, good or bad. It is your computer that, thanks to your programming, insists on your reacting with negative emotions. You will see this better if you realize that someone with a different programming when faced with this same situation or person or event would react quite calmly, even happily…The only reason why you too are not reacting calmly and happily is your computer that is stubbornly insisting that reality be reshaped to conform to its programming.

Not only can we choose how we respond, we can choose how we see. The reality, the cold facts, are cold indeed. That person didn’t “pull in front of you”. They’re just trying to get home, same as you.