Hillbilly Elegy-J.D. Vance

Among the countless benefits of turning a new leaf and devoting oneself wholly to God is the will and desire to do charitable works. Scripture reveres the act of charity as one of the grandest tributes to God, and by getting your hands dirty solely to benefit your neighbor while expecting nothing in return is both the greatest testament of your love for the Father and, outside of prayer, one of the most direct and effective ways to be the hands of Christ.

The emphasis of charitable deeds (done right) is reiterated repeatedly within scripture.

Luke 6:38 "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Proverbs 19:17 "Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward them for what they have done."

Acts 20:35 "In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

John 3:17 "If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?"

And, even the Qu'ran is in alignment with scripture: 2:254 "O believers! Donate from what We have provided for you before the arrival of a Day when there will be no bargaining,1 friendship,2 or intercession."

But scripture also warns of twisting the act of charitable deeds to benefit the self. I.e. self-aggrandizing and blasting off a trumpet to the crowds every time you drop a quarter into some bum's coffee cup. Fraudulent individuals who know deep within their soul that the ultimate goal is not honoring the Lord, but garnering acclaim from the crowds. Or, foolishly misconstruing charitable acts as some sort of polytheistic stock market. (Thank God this is not so, for I would be severely drenched in the cloak of red deficit.)

To wit:

Matthew 6:1-4 "Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2 So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."

So, to tow the line and remain true to scripture, rather than list off the ledger of time, money, and effort that I have put into performing charitable deeds, I shall, for the sake of relating the work of my mission trips to J.D. Vance's novel, keep the source of my mission trips strictly within the realm of reference, and, above all, hope that—rather than to seek applause for what I have done—it inspires others to go and do likewise in helping your fellow brethren.

***

On Thanksgiving Eve of 2020 the phone was bereft of text messages or phone calls to rendezvous for drinks on the biggest carousing night of the year. I took it as a sign and the following morning I drove to Fields United Methodist to lend a helping hand in their Thanksgiving meal drop-offs—the church's equivalent to Meals on Wheels.

Up until this point, the thought of taking out garbage, scrubbing tables, and doing dishes absent of cash payment seemed ludicrous.

But here I was doing just that.

After we closed up shop I noticed this small alien flicker of fulfillment that sparked within my belly. Something I hadn't felt in a very long time. Somehow, within my heart, I knew that what I had done, in some meager modicum, had pleased the Lord immensely. It sounds nuts. I mean, all I did was rudimentary labor. But nevertheless, the underlying fact remained: with my presence, the weight of the burden for those who coordinated the event became lighter.

I liked the way I felt afterward and wanted to get more involved.

The next year I signed up to deliver and learned and gained more within the window of an hour than I had in the previous 37 years combined. I gained the joy that accompanies giving when delivering to an indigent family that was happy to receive a hot meal during a day in age when times are tough. I gained compassion when delivering to a Desert Storm Veteran who had suffered a stroke and was paralyzed on %50 of his body, spending his holiday alone with just himself and his television set. I gained gratitude for my blessings when dropping off meals to a couple who would be spending their holiday in a darkened hotel room at the Ridge Motel, a bed bug-infested flophouse on Center Ridge that caters to ex-cons on the lam, drug addicts, and prostitutes.

Above all I gained a sobering understanding of the fact that hard times do not discriminate. The aforementioned folks span every spectrum of ethnicity, age, and race, and despite the horseshit pedaled to the masses by media scum, struggle knows nothing of boundary lines.

With my thirst for charity work unquenched, I signed up for my first mission trip in June of 2022 and we went to help the citizens of Western Kentucky rebuild their homes after a devastating F5 tornado carved a wide path of destruction on December 10th, 2021.

The following summer we returned to Kentucky, this time going to the Eastern portion of the state, to a city called Jackson in Breathitt County.

For the sake of context, here is what happened: On Monday, July 25th, rain began to fall at the astounding rate of four inches per hour. Flash floods overwhelmed the town and the people never had a chance to escape, and when the left-over gully's high up in the mountain ranges from previous coal-mining expeditions overflowed, it pushed all of the houses down off the mountains to collect in the valley. To make matters worse, because water from up on the mountains was full of chemical compounds, it managed to turn the collective rivers that flowed through neighborhoods into a toxic soup.

In the immediate aftermath staph infection, disease, and immense trauma ravaged the survivors.

By the time we had arrived, the waters had long since receded, but the pessimism and sense of loss that J.D. Vance speaks of in his book remained. Only now, after having been so blatantly forsaken by the government, it was even worse.

Politics aside, J.D. Vance is an individual whom I knew very little about.

Like the rest of America, I was privy to the broad strokes. He was from Ohio, went to Ohio State, was a conservative making noise in the political spectrum, and had written a novel called Hillbilly Elegy.

These elements aside, his debate with Tim Walz was my first time watching him talk at length.

I liked their exchange and found the debate to be a rather refreshing clash of ideals that was largely absent of mudslinging and vitriol.

I wanted to know more about this man, especially if I was planning on voting for him.

Until I cracked the first page I had no idea that J.D. Vance had ties to Jackson, Kentucky. I found it very surreal to read him reminisce about Jackson and talk about the ills of Breathitt County, all of which, after seeing firsthand, I can lend testimony to the fact of being true.

Until you see what life is like up close in the holler (hollow), you really won't be able to understand the hardships these people face.

Poverty is rampant beyond belief and in some areas, it is reminiscent of Communist Cuba.

*Now, mind you, I have never been to Cuba, so I cannot testify to these things firsthand. But I have been told by others who have been there that garbage piles up incessantly and, because of the trade embargoes, people still drive around in antiquated cars from the 50's and 60's.*

On this last and most recent trip, while skirting around the ridges en route to help a couple who resided at the bottom of a holler, we were privy to houses with shattered windows and crumbling front porches that still had people living inside. Broken-down cars and car parts covered in weeds littered the landscape. At the house we were fixing, there were bullet holes in the window from neighborhood delinquents who felt the need to take potshots at the house from across the creek with their rifles just for kicks. There is no garbage service along the holler, so it is common place to dump your trash at an open spot on the creek bed and set it on fire and then let the ashes and remaining debris which didn't perish in the fire float off into the rapids of the water and become someone else's problem further down the creek.

While we were on break, we watched as the next-door neighbors rode up and down the road on their four-wheelers and play basketball. The very same children were suspected of being responsible for licking shots off at the house we were fixing up. I noticed the chicken coop of roosters and was then told that the entire family lives off of the dole as welfare recipients two generations deep and for extra cash, they raise chickens to sell off in black market cock fights that still go on in that part of the country. One particularly heinous account was rehashed about a runt chicken that was of no use that the kids smacked around with bats like a pinata for entertainment until it was lifeless. Which they then casually tossed in the abutting creek.

The house of the people we were helping to rebuild was the top floor of a two-car garage. A dwelling they were forced to relocate to and domesticate for themselves after their trailer became ruined from the flood.

In town we were told by workers from the community rescue team that paramedics and firemen in that part of the country make a measly $8.00 an hour and that, if we were to ever see a five or ten-dollar bill laying on the ground, to resist the urge of picking it up. As it more than likely is the wrapping of pure fentanyl.

J.D. Vance covers all of this and more in Hillbilly Elegy. While the folks we were helping in Jackson may not have known J.D. Vance directly, in his memoir, it is almost as if you are provided with an oral history of their posterity. Had I not seen the devastating effects of rural poverty firsthand, I would have found Vance's tumultuous recollection teetering on the brink of unbelievable.

But it is very real, and very sad indeed.

The fact that Vance was able to persevere despite the overwhelming odds beset against him is nothing short of amazing. The traps of falling into despondency in both Jackson and Middletown are not only everywhere, but almost with red carpets of encouragement laden to induce a tumble. Employment is scarce, diets are trash, drugs are rampant, welfare programs are exploited, and alcoholism and domestic violence are simply seen as just another way of life.

J.D.'s upbringing within the fractured households of his childhood is incredibly sad to read about, but one that I fear is far more common than people would like to believe.

While Elyria and Lorain Ohio are hundreds of miles away from Jackson and Middletown, I see many of the same ills that had plagued J.D.'s upbringing play out in those cities as well—where teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, and deadbeat fathers—either at the bar or constantly in jail—is just as common.

In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. not only exposes these issues but puts them in an honest light and mirrors the quandary back at the culture he both loves and pities, asking the sobering question of how much of these societal ills are self-induced; as opposed to being blamed upon issues beyond their control and exploited as an excuse to be lazily resentful from the cradle to the grave?

One of the most potent scars of resentment I remember harboring against Detroit before I left, was how proud certain portions of their citizens were to play the system to their advantage. All of which I saw at the Blackjack tables. Chaldean party store owners would laugh and share tales about how they rolled store ownership over to another cousin's name every six months to avoid paying taxes and then would openly brag about how they would pay cash for food stamps at a %50 rate and then collect back the rest by selling the very same people booze and cigarettes. This, while some other leech two seats away would toss his WIC card on the table after removing the rubber band from a wad of cash to waste away at gambling.

J.D. recounts similar resentments as an employee at his local grocer. Where hillbilly families living off the dole would load six-packs of soda onto the conveyor belt to sell for cash and then return to buy booze or run off to cop drugs on the street.

It is compounding actions such as these that add up to a rapid erosion of both urban and rural infrastructures that have been fractured and then witlessly remedied by out-of-whack social services. One of the lingering questions J.D. asks by the end of the novel, is what is within our power, as citizens, to thumb this off-kilter scale back into balance?

Not an easy question to answer. But one of which requires not some magical elixir government program, but a severe amount of honesty and willpower in order to gain a solution with genuine positive progression.

Despite the tumult, there exists a beacon of hope throughout all of this mess, which is J.D.'s Mamaw. A gun-toting, chain-smoking voice of reason that serves as the proverbial anchor to J.D.'s potential future. One that, who knows, may even lead from the bowels of the holler all the way to the White House.

After having read this book and seeing what this individual has accomplished, I certainly hope it does.

Phenomenal book.

Grade: A

Verdict: Read