The Man in the Mirror
I generally don’t spend a lot of time thinking about JD Vance, but lately his presence in the news makes me wonder who he sees when he looks in the mirror. I’m thinking it’s Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. Or at least the vice president’s perception of El-Sayed.
Hear me out. In August, El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination for US Senator in Michigan. It wasn’t a landslide win—he squeaked his way to victory. But it’s a sign that Democrats are getting tired of their party continually shifting to the right in a feeble effort to stay in the race. El-Sayed is a former health official who supports universal health care. He wants money out of politics and would like to abolish ICE. He is a leftist supported by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and is frequently accused by adversaries of being socialist or communist. And he is Muslim.
Hence, he has people riled—including our vice president, who was recently quoted in The New York Times, “People like Mr. El-Sayed see themselves not as citizens of a common nation fighting for every single person — whether they’re Jewish or Christian, whether they’re white or Black or brown – but see themselves as fighting for one group at the expense of others,” Mr. Vance said. “And that is how, ladies and gentlemen, you destroy the United States of America.”
If you look closely, you’ll see that Vance is actually describing himself: He is the man fighting for one group at the expense of others. The man who vehemently supports Christians above all (if they keep their women at home raising babies). The man who spreads lies about Haitian immigrants eating your pets, and paints single women as “childless cat ladies.” He is fighting for his personal view of a Christian nation at the expense of all other versions of faith or the right to live with none.
Vance was raised a Christian, but, as a young man, abandoned his religious beliefs in favor of atheism. He was reportedly the sort of atheist who thought religious people were stupid. So, his current presumption of atheists is likely that they are all as haughty as he was – finding religious people to be dull-witted.
In my experience, non-believers generally give the faithful more credit than Vance was able to allow. They don’t necessarily object to faith, itself. Rather, they object to the insistence that our country must be run according to a given faith. And stand in vehement opposition when public officials insinuate that Christianity supplies the only possible ground rules for what is appropriate and legal in the United States, despite the first amendment to the US Constitution.
I know plenty of non-believers who dwell in harmony with the faithful – neither trying to persuade the other. I know Vance as the Catholic who essentially told the Pope to mind his own business.
In case you have any doubt about Vance’s arrogance, here’s a quote from his summation at the recent Republican-not-really-a-Convention in Dallas (as per The New York Times): “It’s about the party of common sense beating the party of the crazies.”
In his view, if you’re not with him, you’re crazy. That’s about as haughty as it gets. Whether or not he recognizes it, the man in Vance’s mirror is a man fighting for one group at the expense of others. And that, dear people, is, indeed, how you destroy the United States of America.