Hash Brown Potatoes

 The strangest thing about the J.D. Vance obsession with childless adults—the aspect that won him the monicker "weird" that has lasted so well in this election—is that it seems so arbitrary. He has wormed his way into our private lives in the role of self-appointed judgmental relative. But we are not related to him. He has decreed standards for us that he thinks we ought to live up to. But we have no idea where these standards come from—or who he even is. We are like: "Excuse me; do I know you, sir?" 

There is something Kafkaesque about suddenly being condemned for failing to abide by someone else's arbitrary standards of social conformity—ones that we never agreed to honor in the first place. I was reading Ionesco's absurdist one-act play Jack, or The Submission the other night, and it captures this feeling perfectly. Jack, the central figure of the play, is hounded by relatives for a variety of mysterious and incomprehensible sins. He seems, for unclear reasons, to have let everyone down. 

But then Jack is able to reclaim his credibility in the eyes of the family. All he has to do is utter the magic phrase: "I love hash brown potatoes." This, it would appear, is all his relatives were waiting for. They are suddenly overjoyed. He is accepted back into the fold. They forgive him all his transgressions. He has become one of them again, now that he admits he loves a certain kind of fried potatoes. But then—other demands follow. He also needs to get married. Specifically, he needs to marry Roberta. 

Jack rejects Roberta because she has only one nose; so his family brings out a second Roberta—Roberta II, who has three. But this bride too, Jack rejects. When pressed for reasons, he explains that he can't help it. "There's nothing I can do about it," he says, "I was born like this... I've done all in my power [...] I am what I am." (Allen trans.) His family rejects him again. The expressed love of hash brown potatoes was not actually enough. There was a secret hidden clause. There was more he had to do. 

Here, in Ionesco's absurdist and surrealistic farce, with its farrago of nonsense overlayed on this incredibly thin strand of a "plot," is a parable for all the politics of social and sexual nonconformity. This man Vance has appeared from stage right and started issuing inscrutable demands. "You have to get married! You have to be straight! You have to conform to your assigned gender roles! You must produce offspring!" And it's like: wait, why? Where is this coming from? Who are you? 

It doesn't matter. Vance cannot be redirected. He keeps making his decrees. Why is it so important to you? we want to know in response. Why do you care if I like hash brown potatoes or not? Why is it any skin off your back? "If my ways are not as theirs," as A.E. Housman once protested in a poem, "Let them mind their own affairs." Or, as Tim Walz recently put it: "Here's a golden rule: Mind your own damn business!" But no, he won't stop. He keeps pressing. He will never leave us alone. 

And so at last we plead for mercy. We accept the charge but then say in extenuation: "But I can't help it! I was born this way. I'm gay; or I'm trans; or I can't have kids; or I don't like potatoes; or it's too complicated to explain to you—but what right do you have to know anyways? But he still won't go away. He still demands we like potatoes. Until at last, some of us submit. Very well, we say, you win. I love fried hash brown potatoes—there, are you happy? 

But no, the conformists are never satisfied there. If Vance could force everyone to have children and deprive childless adults of political power, he would of course not be satisfied. The hash browns were only the first test of loyalty. There are always more. There will always be a Roberta I and a Roberta II. Even if you manage to have kids, then you also need to become a Catholic. You need to convert to MAGA. There will be Robertas upon Robertas. One submission is never enough to appease. 

And so we are left "a stranger and afraid," as Housman wrote, in Vance's America, subject to mysterious "laws of God" and "laws of man" that we never chose for ourselves. We must pretend to love hash brown potatoes for reasons that will never become clear. We must accept the Roberta of three noses, without ever knowing why other people care what we do in this regard one way or the other. We will never know why society prefers some kinds of potato over others. 

We must submit. We must say: "I, too, love Big Brother." We must say: "how I learned to stop worrying and love the fried hash brown potato." "Keep we must," says Housman, "if keep we can/ These foreign laws of God and man." And at once, as Roland Barthes wrote: "There we are, rid of a prejudice that used to cost us dear, too dear, that used to cost us too many scruples, too many rebellions, too many battles, and too much solitude." (Howard trans.)