So, how was your No Kings day? Mine was the opposite of cringe, a powerful riposte to that festival of geezer, commie, and mutant onanism that sent a tingle down the collective leg of those who hate both America and all those struggling to make it great again. The Vice-President’s communication staff invited me to follow him around on October 18th for Townhall when he came to Camp Pendleton to celebrate the Marine Corps’ 250th anniversary. Instead of America’s worst—we should have held a counter-protest called “No Dinguses”—I watched America’s best mixing and mingling with America’s next president.
The Veep did not make any major news or announce any policy changes. He just doubled down on what the Trump administration is all about—greatness —and that meant interacting with great Americans. I don’t need to build up the Marine Corps’ collective ego. That’s like feeding J.B. Pritzker more to make him fatter; it’s hard to do, but they’re happy to try. But the fact is – as the Veep (a former lance corporal who is now getting salutes from four-stars) observed to the audience of about 15,000 troops and families – the Marine Corps fought the trends of wokeness and remains the Marine Corps. The rest of the Pentagon allowed itself to be degraded into a woke nightmare of bulging waistlines, perversions, incompetence, and politicization, while all the Marines want to do is kill America’s enemies. These are tough, mean little guys. Jesse Kelly aside, Marines are generally tiny and wiry. This gave me great hope for the future, because the future is going to involve killing bad people, and it’s nice to know we’ve got folks eager to do it.
A quick aside: Don’t take that as a diss on my beloved Army. The Marines are unparalleled door-kickers with amazing amphibious capabilities that they showed off to their famous alum on Camp Pendleton’s Red beach. Still, the Army remains the decisive land combat force because it’s so big and it just bludgeons the enemy to death. Think “Hulk smash.” But there’s something about the Marines and their instinctive skill at public relations. From the Vice President to the Secretary of War to a bunch of lesser dignitaries, it was nonstop hype about the naval infantry. If there’s one thing these guys have down, it’s self-esteem. Of course, they tend to back it up in battle, which makes it OK with me.
Watching the Vice-President work the crowd, including off-script banter and signing a bunch of the Devil Dogs’ covers thrown on stage, is watching a future master learning his art. Republicans, we’ve got somebody special in J.D. Vance. Now, I’ve known that for a long time. I’ve had the chance to talk to him and his wife, and, importantly, my wife had a chance to talk to him and his wife. My wife approves of them, and so do I. We both meet a lot of politicians; a lot of them are nice but unexceptional. Some are stiffs.
Not the Vances.
The thing about J.D. Vance is that he’s so resolutely normal, even when he says things that drive the elite crazy. He wears his famous background on his sleeve; the guy grew up in Appalachia in a troubled home, surrounded by drugs and poverty and all sorts of other tribulations. He joined the Marines, got a college degree, ended up at Yale Law School (which I do not hold against him), came out of nowhere to write a bestselling book, went to Silicon Valley, became a senator, and was picked by Donald Trump as his running mate days after they tried to murder 45/47. It’s no secret that a lot of Republicans didn’t want him. Well, the elites still don’t want him. That’s because J.D. Vance came from what they consider nothing and beat them all at their own game. He’s uppity, and that’s intolerable to the snobs and swells.
Vance’s strength is that he has tapped the magical power of not caring. This is because he knows the elites, having been invited to join them, and he is distinctly unimpressed with their credentials and pretensions, their airs and arrogance, and their total inability to competently or honestly run the institutions they have inherited as America’s cultural trust fund babies.
But he was comfortable with his Marines. He served in Iraq as a lance corporal. That he was enlisted is huge if you understand the very, very hierarchical nature of the Marines. It’s really an aristocratic organization, much more than the Army, where officers are not looked on as minor deities. If you’re a young Marine and you end up talking to a colonel or a major, something terrible has probably happened. If you’re a young Army soldier and you end up talking to a colonel or a major, it’s probably a Tuesday.
The Vice President easily navigated this chasm, going over the heads of the assembled brass to talk to the young, working people out there in that Marine audience. That’s key, because young, working people are the nation’s future; the crusty geezers and shiftless pierced weirdos who didn’t have to worry about getting time off from a job to attend one of the No Kings cringefests are not. The mutants won’t breed (there were lots of strollers at the Pendleton speech), and the geezers can’t.
J.D. Vance had a natural cadence and rhythm communicating with these young folks. Again, it’s not just that they were Marines, though it’s important that they were Marines. He was talking to young adults in a way that others don’t seem to after the murder of Charlie Kirk. He didn’t talk in jargon. He didn’t talk about abstract concepts. He went right at their interests. His only political comment was to label the shutdown, accurately, “the Democrat shutdown,” and the reason was that he needed to assure these young Marines that they were going to get paid. After all, they’re not making a lot of money. They miss a paycheck, and that’s serious stuff. He mentioned that President Trump was working to get them paid, and they appreciated it.
I’ve always liked this guy. I’ve always thought he was going to go far, not just because we’re both sons of Ohio, but because he’s something special. He’s developing into a retail politician with some serious chops. And, of course, he’s going to need them. He’s not Donald Trump, and, to his credit, he’s not trying to be. Donald Trump’s not going to be president in a little over three years from now, and J.D. Vance wants to be. I don’t know that for sure; no one told me that, but I’ve got eyes and I’m not an idiot. We all know that he is the current heir apparent, and this little trip was part of his training program for the eight years to follow Donald J Trump’s awesome reign – oh wait, king's reign don’t they? Oh, I don’t want to offend the geezers!
And he was smart to do it on that particular day. What a contrast. His opponents gathered to talk about how America sucks. At the same time, J.D. Vance spent his day with the men and women whose service demonstrates that the administration and the Republican Party are making America great again. I know whose side I’m on.
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