Poor us: JD Vance and the white Christian nationalist suffering complex

On three separate occasions during his disastrous, lie-filled interview with Dana Bash on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, JD Vance referred to the "suffering" of his constituents in Springfield, Ohio.

"The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do," Vance told Bash. He admitted that he made up these stories so that the media would pay attention. That is, pay attention to the only people in Ohio that JD Vance believes are his (real) constituents.

Floundering after having been caught admitting the pet theft and eating stories were lies, Vance brought up suffering a second time. After saying he had "to create stories," he then claimed these made-up stories came directly from "firsthand accounts" by his constituents. "I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it," said Vance, quickly adding, "I didn’t create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield thanks to Kamala Harris’ policies." (This is not true. As Vice President, Kamala Harris does not have her own immigration policies; this is a lie built on the lie that she is the "border czar." Nor are these Haitian immigrants there illegally. Instead, they are in Springfield under various legal frameworks, and were drawn there in particular because local businesses were facing a worker shortage.) Vance went on: "Her policies did that. But yes, we created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about this story and the suffering caused by Kamala Harris’ policies."

Vance moved from admitting he made up the lies about pet-theft and eating because he wanted to highlight the "suffering" of his (real) constituents. When called out on that, he pivoted to saying he was merely trying to get the American media to focus on "it" (that is, the supposed "suffering"). Then he swung to claiming someone else had "created" something, not him—that is, that Harris had "created" the "problem" of the immigrants," which forced him to "create" a media "focus" on the "suffering" Harris caused.

Got that? But Vance wasn't done dog whistling to white people that the real story was their suffering. "All that l've done is surface the complaints of my constituents, people who are suffering because of Kamala Harris' policies," he said, using the word for a third time. "Are we not allowed to talk about these problems because some psychopaths are threatening violence?" The targets of the threatened violence, that is, Black people, in Vance's view, are not suffering; they can only cause suffering to the only people who matter to Vance.

Vance's emphasis on this supposed "suffering" was drawn straight from a series of stories that populated Christian right and right-wing media in the days before his Bash interview on Sunday. On Wednesday, the Washington Stand, news site of Family Research Council, claimed, "Over the past three years, the Biden-Harris administration has imported roughly 20,000 Haitian immigrants in the small Ohio city of Springfield. Now, a nearby community is also suffering the effects of the immigration influx. Tremont City, a village outside Springfield with a population of less than 400, has been impacted by the reckless driving of mass-imported Haitian immigrants." On Thursday, the Daily Signal, the news site of Heritage Foundation, ran a headline: "DOGGONE: Reports of Missing Pets True or Not, Ohio City Suffers From Huge Haitian Migrant Influx." On Friday, Fox News ran a story about Springfield pastors who claimed, "The suffering is real." On Saturday, the Washington Stand then cited the Fox News piece in its story claiming that "Americans in Springfield, Ohio, are still suffering after the Biden-Harris administration dumped tens of thousands of third-world immigrants into their once-quiet city."

That is, to Vance and his supporters, it is not important that Springfield has been inundated with bomb threats, closing schools and government buildings, and forcing arts fairs to shut down because of their incendiary, racist, xenophobic rhetoric. That is, Ohio Senator JD Vance's constituents don't really matter to him. (Surprise!) What really matters is that white people, (real) Americans, "suffered" an "influx," a "dump," an "import" of unclean invaders. Therefore it doesn't matter if the blood libel stories of pet theft and eating are false. It's okay to use the blood libel to highlight the (real) Americans' "suffering."

Last week the New York Times ran a story about conservative Christians who, facing the fact that their desired legal and policy outcomes are so unpopular that even their savior Donald Trump is panicking that he could lose the election over them, are feeling very very alone. (You know, suffering.) The lack of self-awareness is truly extraordinary; the sources quoted in the story simply cannot wrap their minds around the possibility they are feeling isolated because they, and their alliance with Trump, resulted in the evisceration of other peoples' rights. They cannot fathom that other Americans are repulsed by their eight-year alliance with a corrupt authoritarian who instigated an attempted coup. They can only see themselves as the "true" Christians, the "real" Americans, who "suffer" when others enter the scene with rights and freedom and chances at success and happiness.

"[T]he coming election feels like a referendum on the role of conservative Christianity in American public life. And some conservative Christians worry that it is a race that is harder and harder to win," the Times reported.

It's harder because the public had four years of Trump to see what it would be like to have more, and because they've had just two months of JD Vance ripping any semblance of a mask right off his own face. We can only hope, for the sake of democracy and human rights, that the race to defeat this Christian nationalist ticket becomes ever harder for them to win.