Logan on Nostr: On Tim Walz and his repeated digs at J.D. Vance for getting an education and making ...

On Tim Walz and his repeated digs at J.D. Vance for getting an education and making some money:

I was born and raised in a small rural town near the Appalachian Mountains, 2 hrs from the nearest major city. Still work in this town today.

My father was born and raised in an even smaller town, even more rural town with a population under 2,000.

I have three degrees from three elite institutions because my folks believed in aspiring to education, that it opened doors, created opportunities, and allowed you to experience more of the world. They instilled that in me.

I am a cocktail of my upbringing and my education.

I shoot guns, and I quote Shakespeare.

I eat venison, and I think about Dostoyevsky.

I am comfortable in both Waylon Jennings and Mozart, Steve Earle and Alice Coltrane.

I can cite Luke Combs and Lou Reed, wax poetic about Top Gun and Le Mepris.

I buy food (and milk) from farmers.

I am an attorney, yes, and my J.D. is from an elite institution. I represent the blue-collar folks of my hometown.

I am neither a supremacist, nor a relativist.

I am a dad and a husband.

I am a #bitcoin er

All my life I have had one foot in the ethos and spirit of my rural hometown and the other in the rarefied echelons of the elitely educated, the financially successful, and the well-connected. It's not always comfortable.

All my life I have climbed, my folks sacrificed and pushed me to climb and to aspire. "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield," to quote Tennyson (see, I told you I can do that).

And all my life I have kept my upbringing close to me, because it is a part of me. I don't shed my lived experience, nor do I forfeit its imprint, its impact, simply because I pursued the best education and got a professional job. The validity of my experience does not expire upon achievement.

So when Tim Walz repeatedly attempts to invalidate J.D. Vance’s upbringing, to cast him as some inherently callous, rich interloper, out of touch with the "heartland" simply because he pursued the best education he could and made some money, it bothers me on a deep, personal level.

In the Walz taxonomy, which is binary, but only binary for non-Democrats apparently, financial success or an Ivy-League education, automatically and irrevocably renders one out of touch with "regular" people. Further, aspirations to these things are no longer to be applauded; they're punchlines in campaign speeches.

Never mind the financial success and education of the Obamas, the Clintons, Kamala Harris, Oprah, etc. This does not invalidate their respective experiences, the journeys they each took to get there.

Only if you're J.D. Vance does success actually make you a charlatan to yourself, an interloper in your own life, an enemy to your past.

It's not right. We should be applauding folks, no matter their race or political affiliation, for aspiring, for traversing the brutal terrain of class, region and familial afflictions and making it.

You may agree or disagree with J.D. on the issues, of course. That's perfectly fine.

But dismissing him simply because he managed to go to Yale (like so many Dems, by the way, who readily purport to be regular, working class heroes), or because he majored in philosophy, or because he eventually worked in finance and made some money, is craven, disingenuous, breathtakingly lacking in self-awareness, and offensive to anyone who has actually grown up in the "heartland," myself included.

Like so many other Americans, I contain multitudes, Tim Walz, but your taxonomy apparently doesn't allow that.