J.D. Vance’s recent thrust into the national political spotlight has unveiled an array of the Republican vice presidential nominee’s “weird” ideologies. He believes the only purpose of women is to reproduce and that school shootings are “a fact of life.” Whether or not these are his exact beliefs, these are statements he has publicly made across media outlets.
Given Donald Trump’s track record, it is unclear whether Trump-Vance campaign’s PR managers told Vance to make these outlandish statements to uphold the spirit of the campaign or if he acted on his own accord. Regardless of how comically ridiculous these claims may be, it becomes far less amusing when we consider that Vance could soon be one of the faces of our country and that a substantial number of people accept and believe these assertions.
J.D. Vance believes that women are simply a means to produce children and they will be unfulfilled if they prioritize their professional life over motherhood. Women in countries around the world have fought for decades to reclaim their right to attend school, many of whom are still battling to this day. Vance’s perspective parallels incredibly closely with the ideologies held by the governments in these countries: that women are not meant to learn and put their education to use, that women should live to serve the men around them. By publicly announcing that women are meant for motherhood, he is spreading a message that minimizes the stories, hardships and work ethics of women around the world. How does this look to young girls, whose parents are avid Trump-Vance supporters and watch his speeches and interviews religiously on the living room TV? How does this look to the women who are infertile and cannot give birth even though it is something they had always wanted? How do Vance’s disgusting statements look to the women who have worked tirelessly for years to earn their Ph.D.? Are all of these women and girls suddenly completely worthless for not checking off all the boxes of J.D. Vance’s “ideal woman”?
J.D. Vance believes that school shootings are bound to happen and there is simply nothing we can do about them. There is something so disgusting about favoring one’s second amendment right over a child’s right to safely attend school without fear of being massacred, but acting as though nothing can be done to prevent this horrific occurrence takes it to a completely new level. By dismissing the possibility of meaningful action against gun violence, Vance not only normalizes a devastating reality but also signals a troubling acceptance of the status quo that prioritizes political ideology over the safety and well-being of our children. How many children have to die before something is changed? In the eyes of J.D. Vance, that number is inconceivably large because he has no plans to protect the teachers or students of this nation.
The issue even larger than the words themselves is the impact they are bound to have on the people of this nation, acting either as fuel for far-left extremist views or as a harmful and potentially lethal barrier to the futures of American women and children. It is dangerous to have a vice president who not only agrees with many of Trump’s extremist ideologies but also adds his own extremist spin onto them. J.D. Vance is not a man of the people, given that he does not support the rights and needs of over half of the country, and it is slowly being made clear that he will never act as someone who rectifies or challenges Trump’s thinking. Instead, he will continuously poke Trump’s extremist views further and further until the administration is so far removed from the needs of the people that they need a microscope to even see us.