Yes, JD Vance Really Believes This Stuff

On Trad-Cath, Tech-Fash, and the Vice of Weird Arrogance

For someone who writes about intersection of politics and spirituality, JD Vance is irresistible. He’s catnip; a rabbit hole; an enigma in need of explication; an endless source of takes to read and write.  (I just wrote one myself, on Vance’s weird views on parenting and the meaning of life.)  

And so, dear reader, I have journeyed down the rabbit hole. Fortunately, I have emerged with notes — Notes on Vance, if you like.

There are many threads here: the question of whether Vance is a believer or an opportunist; the strange convergence between ‘Trad-Cath’ (traditional Catholicism) with ‘Tech-Fash’, the turn of many Silicon Valley elites to hard-right politics; and of course there’s the weird factor, now the most effective word Democrats have used against their opponents in two decades.  It will take me a bit more time than usual, but I’m going to try to weave these threads together.

The prolegomenon to all this is whether Vance is an opportunist or a believer.  Most folks seem to believe the former.  Pete Buttigieg, finally recognized as the best Democratic politician on television, said to Bill Maher, “I knew a lot of guys like JD Vance at Harvard who would say whatever they needed to, to get ahead.” Here on Substack, my friend

Chris Geidner

described Vance as an “empty vessel” not unlike Trump himself, writing “I cannot think of a belief [Trump and Vance] hold that could not be tossed aside if their ability to obtain more power required them to do so.”

I see it differently.  I think Vance has the zeal of the converted, which combines the strength of conviction with the ease of persuasion.  His beliefs have the appearance of depth, but on close inspection reveal a kind of youthful shallowness. Vance does believe this stuff, and believes it with a great deal of subjective sincerity, yet it all seems rather thin.

I will begin with Vance’s reactionary religious outlook, and then turn to what would seem to be in tension with it but which in fact is quite aligned: the libertarian eugenic futurism of the Thiel-Musk-Rand axis, which has funded Vance’s rise to his current position.

1. Trad-Cath

Vance’s faith is a very 21^st-century phenomenon, precisely because it claims to be timeless.

He has, in numerous speeches and written work, expounded on the virtues of Trad-Catholicism, including its authoritarian political offshoot,  Catholic Integralism, which holds that Catholic doctrine must be integrated into public, civic life.  (Leonard Leo is probably the most influential believer in that ideology.)  Like Russell Brand, Joe Rogan, and Jordan Petersen alongside him, Vance is convinced that human beings are prone to do evil, that our society has lost its moral and philosophical moorings, and that only transcendent, objective, rock-solid values can save us.

It's not easy to argue against this position, since it is taken as much spiritually and emotionally as intellectually.  Certainly, humans are capable of great evil, notwithstanding the progress of recent centuries (cf. Steven Pinker, despite reservations) and the many ways one can cultivate kindness and compassion.  And it’s also certainly true that our social fabric is fraying under the many stresses of technological change (and the new cultures it has brought into existence), globalization, economic disruption, and changes in morality.

Vance himself articulated his journey to faith in a remarkable essay entitled “How I Joined the Resistance,” published in 2020 in the Catholic magazine The Lamp. It is a fascinating read, mostly for what Vance apparently fails to realize, and I’ll quote liberally from it here.

Vance describes growing up in a rather typical independent-evangelical family, then becoming an atheist in his early twenties and enjoying “a brief flirtation with libertarianism.”  But then Vance had a crisis of meaning:

Though I had fallen in love, I found that the emotional demons of my childhood made it hard to be the type of partner I’d always wanted to be. Randian arrogance about my own ability melted away when confronted with the realization that an obsession with achievement would fail to produce the achievement that mattered most to me for so much of my life: a happy, thriving family.

I had immersed myself in the logic of the meritocracy and found it deeply unsatisfying. And I began to wonder: were all these worldly markers of success actually making me a better person?

Vance was moved, at this time, by reading St. Augustine, encountering the shocking-to-him fact that religion can accommodate doubt and science, and, surprisingly, attending a 2011 talk by Peter Thiel, who bemoaned the soullessness of the high-achieving life:

We would compete for jobs at elite law firms, and then for partnerships at those same places. At each juncture, he said, our jobs would offer longer work hours, social alienation from our peers, and work whose prestige would fail  to make up for its meaninglessness. He also argued that his own world of Silicon Valley spent too little time on the technological breakthroughs that made life better—those in biology, energy, and transportation—and too much on things like software and mobile phones.

Learning that Thiel was Christian (“He defied the social template I had constructed—that dumb people were Christians and smart ones atheists.”), Vance moves on to one of Thiel’s influences, scholar of religion Rene Girard, and comes to believe that

In Christ, we see our efforts to shift blame and our own inadequacies onto a victim for what they are: a moral failing, projected violently upon someone else. Christ is the scapegoat who reveals our imperfections, and forces us to look at our own flaws rather than blame our society’s chosen victims.

People come to truth in different ways, and I’m sure some will find this account unsatisfying. But in 2013, it captured so well the psychology of my generation, especially its most privileged inhabitants. Mired in the swamp of social media, we identified a scapegoat and digitally pounced. We were keyboard warriors, unloading on people via Facebook and Twitter, blind to our own problems. We fought over jobs we didn’t actually want while pretending we didn’t fight for them at all. And the end result for me, at least, was that I had lost the language of virtue...

That all had to change. It was time to stop scapegoating and focus on what I could do to improve things.

While, Vance says, we live in a “a society oriented entirely towards consumption and pleasure, spurning duty and virtue” (note the extrapolation from a very limited, specific experience to a broad claim about “society”), Catholicism is

obsessed with virtue, but cognizant of the fact that virtue is formed in the context of a broader community… and above all: a faith centered around a Christ who demands perfection of us even as He loves unconditionally and forgives easily.

After these realizations, Vance experiences a few synchronicities, is only briefly deterred by the Church’s record of systematic sexual abuse (he does not say how this issue was resolved), and becomes a Catholic.  And that is that. 

AI prompt: “a young, bearded white man has a spiritual experience of heavenly light.” Or is it the Singularity?

So, let’s recount. Raised nominally religious, Vance tried the hamster-wheel of high achieving Yale law students but found it empty of meaning (I can relate!). Then he encountered a billionaire bemoaning the same thing and followed him into a Christian belief that de-emphasized intellectually untenable literalism and emphasized meaning, virtue, and community. 

Which is all well and good, though it does seem Vance is swayed quite quickly by a few books and conversations.  But I don’t want to belittle Vance’s conversion experience. I became an Orthodox-practicing Jew in my twenties (when I was also at Yale Law School) on a similar basis.  I, too, found a community that valued depth and spirituality over superficiality and consumption.  I, too, was besotted. Once again, I can relate.

The trouble is, despite claiming in his 2020 essay that “I try to keep a little humility about how little I know,” Vance is now out preaching Trad-Cath morality as the sole path to happiness.  In just a few years, he’s moved from finding a personal answer to his existential crisis to imposing that answer on everyone else.  Everyone must have children, our entire society must conform to a specific set of moral principles. 

Otherwise, Vance says, we must all be as miserable as he was at twenty-four. Consider Vance’s now-infamous claim that the country is being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”  Really?  Has Vance ever met a progressive?  Maybe even smoked a joint with one?  Trust me, we are really not miserable.  In fact, unburdened by Vance’s body-shaming dogmas and myths of heaven and hell, I would say we’re having a pretty good time of it.  And we’re creating communities of mutual care and concern, and working for a little more justice in the world.  Vance’s depiction of us is downright silly.

Like most people who choose their religion, Vance came to his faith after a period of personal crisis, and religion delivered the answers to his questions.  But then he projects his own experience out onto five billion other people, and assumes that what has given him solace is essential to all human thriving.  It seems never to have occurred to Vance that his is but one path up the mountain.

This is perhaps the most obvious, glaring error particular to the Trad-Cath worldview, no matter how much it is gussied up by philosophical verbiage: that it is committed to its universalism, that what is best for me is best for thee, and that this is just how things are, a matter of Natural Law, which is as real as the laws of science.  This is how Catholic Integralists like Leo, and it seems Vance, can justify anti-democratic means to achieve moral ends: because the rest of us are objectively wrong.

2. Tech-Fash

As many observers have noted, there’s increasingly a convergence between this kind of traditional religiosity (and religious nationalism) and conservative elements in the tech (and wellness) world as well as in the still-somewhat-hedonist denizens of the Roganverse.  Here’s

Jules Evans

on the turn of some in tech to hard-right, sometimes overtly fascist politics:

There’s the popularity of Stoicism, of Nietzsche, Jordan Peterson, paleo-conservatives like Curtis Yarvin or Bronze-Age Pervert, even Traditionalists like Julius Evola. These different philosophical strands share a sense that the modern west is decadent, we’re in a twilight of values, and we need a New Order. Douthat noted this ‘congruence between the tech right and what I’ve called the neotraditionalist version of religious conservatism’. 

Indeed, there is a vibe shift in Silicon Valley, especially now that it’s partly located in Austin.  Vanity Fair noticed it in 2022 (thanks to Evans for linking to that piece.) At the extreme edge is the tech-libertarian utopianism encapsulated in the unwieldy acronym TESCREAL: transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, and longtermism.  But there are milder versions as well, and I’ve seen various versions of it firsthand among friends and acquaintances. It’s not just Elon and Peter; it is ubiquitous. (Here’s

John Ganz

and

Max Read

about the overall vibe.)

What has caused this turn? Some is a resentment of wokeness and DEI, which have spoiled a lot of parties (literally and figuratively, as Silicon Valley’s raucous sex parties now get written up in scandal sheets).  And, sure, some is economic self-interest as Washington tries, ham-fistedly, to regulate AI, TikTok, and the rest; as Buttigieg put it, these are very rich men supporting the party that helps out very rich men.

But it’s not just a marriage of convenience. I think most of it, having been down this rabbit hole for much of the last few weeks, is the congruence between the ideologies: that, as I wrote a few months ago, everyone is sure that it’s the end of the world, society is collapsing, and some sort of big change is in order.

Again, there are shades of gray in this worldview.  Among hyper-libertarians, there’s the recognition that TESCREAL dreams can only be achieved if government gets out of the way.  In the Musk/Thiel worldview, the salvation of humanity is going to come not from collective action but from extremely smart and powerful people doing things like enhancing AI, creating transhumans, and engineering the next generations of post-humanity.  Only these transformations will save us.  In a very weird way, it’s a kind of transhumanist humanism.

In such a view, anything that restricts these geniuses is bad—but government restriction is doubly bad, since the government is paternalistic, driven by politics, and prone to regulate the things that the Howard Roarks of the world want to do, from crypto to AI to building island nations. To save the world, we’ve got to stop Big Gov.

I haven’t seen any evidence that Vance believes all that stuff.  True, he has, quite recently, made the case for working with people who believe crazy things, but I haven’t seen him articulate the extreme versions of this ideology himself.  But you don’t have to drink the entire TESCREAL soylent to see areas of commonality. Both Trad-Caths and Tech-Fashs believe that democracy is in the way of the higher good; that the people do not know what’s best for them; and that as a result, society is in decline and some degree of authoritarianism is necessary to save it. 

“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” Peter Thiel wrote way back in 2009.  Which is what Project 2025 believes about morality and democracy: it’s either one or the other.  When society has lost its way, you can’t leave it to society to find it again; you – the cultural, intellectual, economic, corporate, philosophical, or religious elite – have to lead them back to it, whether they assent or not.

And if putting up with retrograde Christian Fundies is the price of achieving the Singularity, isn’t that good ROI?

3. The Weirdness

My last point is a redemptive one, because for once, I get to end this overlong newsletter on a high note. Two high notes, in fact.

First, there’s the schadenfreude that progressives like me are experiencing as we watch Trump’s Mini-Me become an albatross around the neck of the GOP.  As much as Kamala’s candidacy has invigorated the better angels of our nature, Vance’s Hindenburg-like self-immolation has delighted the lesser ones.  Finally, it feels like the winds of change have turned.         

Second, I am thrilled that the best word being used to describe Vance and Trump, apparently first used by possible VP candidate Tim Walz, is “weird.” 

I say this even though I’m a bit of a weirdo myself.  Because Vance and the rest of these natalist-eugenicist-tech-fash dudes are really weird, and finally, America is able to see that.  In the bubble that is Silicon Valley, this kind of weirdness often goes unremarked, because so many successful people are weird; some weirdness is clearly a competitive advantage.  And a lot of these guys confuse achieving great success in one field with having profound insight into everything; their great wealth and power has led them to great arrogance.

In reality, the only reason these guys can propound these weird, poorly-articulated philosophies at fancy conventions is that they’ve paid for the fancy conventions.

And, of course, because strivers want to get some of their money and attend out of self-interest.

So now they’ve paid for one of their own, more or less, to go on national television and run for vice president. But guess what: normal, center-right people do not like mean, weird jerks who think they know everything.  (Mean policies are fine, apparently, but they have to be delivered by normal-seeming people.)  

The problem isn’t that Vance is willing to say anything.  The problem is that he can’t seem to shut up.

There’s one final ingredient in the stew.

I’ve been reminded, over these past few weeks, of Mark Rylance’s brilliant portrayal of tech futurist billionaire Peter Isherwell in Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up. Isherwell has infinite money, power, hubris, and intelligence of a certain type.  He also has an unworldly, unsettling weirdness, which to some people must look like genius, but which really just makes him… weird.

Above all, Isherwell has arrogance. Having spectacularly failed to save humanity, Isherwood sets out to at least save the elite by shipping them (and himself) off on an intergalactic voyage to a habitable planet. Spoiler alert: this does not work. Isherwood is gobbled up by an alien within seconds of being defrosted, thousands of years in the future.

Vance claims to be humble, but his arrogance is overwhelming. He’s going to lecture us about what makes us American, about the way to a good life, and about the need to reclaim society from degenerate elites. And based on what? A few years in the corporate legal rat race? A bestselling popular book? A seminar-level syllabus on contemporary Trad Cath theology?

There’s an old saw that Americans elect the candidate they’d rather get a beer with. But can you imagine anything worse than sitting next to Vance at a bar while he drones on and on about virtue?

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Alright, this was a big one, and I didn’t even talk about Lord of the Rings. I hope you’ll share this post with folks you think might be interested.

For further reading on this subject, I can recommend:

• Judd Legum
  did an excellent summary of all the radically weird things Vance has said about women and child-rearing.

• Jules Evans
  did a great job connecting the backlash to the Paris Olympics’ Dionysian tableau with tech’s trad/fash turn.

• I can also “recommend” Ross Douthat’s take on Trad-Cath/Tech-Fash, not as a useful analysis but as an excellent exemplar of how Trad Caths like Douthat essentialize and misconstrue progressives. I can’t believe he has such a large platform to spread such ill-considered ideas.

• Here’s my piece on Vance’s natalism.

Please add your recommendations in the comments. And thanks as always for your support.