In the course of his interview with Ross Douthat earlier this week, J.D. Vance at one point starts railing about the "premodern brutality" that he claims prevails in immigrant-majority communities. Douthat—to his credit—doesn't let this slide without comment. "Shouldn’t this barbaric medieval landscape that you’re describing show up in violent crime statistics?" he asks (study after study—after all—has documented that immigrants tend to commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens; not that aggregate group-based statistics of this kind should have bearing on how we treat individuals anyway).
In response to this, Vance says, in effect: well, no, because the FBI is captured by elites and so they lie about crime statistics. Then he pivots, and says: anyway, he was really talking about fentanyl overdoses—which he falsely links to immigration. So when he said, "a migrant community [...] the level of violence, the level of I think truly premodern brutality that some of these communities have gotten used to"— that was really a metaphor for drug overdoses? That's what he was saying? (Vance plainly would rather stick to the topic of the Pope gifting him a Vatican-themed necktie.)
The Vance interview goes on like this. From start to finish, it is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a completely unscrupulous person who does not at all have a problem with lying, and then—when he is called on his lies—pivoting the subject or resorting to ad hominems. At another point, Douthat asks him about his administration's illegal renditions without due process to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Vance offers a host of irrelevant fallacies in response: "the people who complain about this never complained about Joe Biden opening the border," and that sort of thing.
Throughout, one feels one is in the presence of someone who fancies themselves a skilled propagandist, but who is unfortunately none too bright. He is also someone who yearns to be taken seriously and believed by the intelligentsia. Yet, he has to defend every inane thing that Donald Trump says. The two goals are completely incompatible. And so, Vance has no choice but to lie; and then try to put up a front of bluff bonhomie when he is called on his lies ("I’m giving you [expletive], Ross"); and then try to change the question (though Douthat—again, to his credit—doesn't let him).
The only real talking point that Vance seems to have memorized from his boss is—when all else fails, repeat the stale canard about immigrants committing crimes. Even if it's demonstrably untrue—say it anyway. So, Vance talks about "premodern brutality"—even though, as Douthat points out, the claim is instantly belied by the facts. Vance accuses one of the men the administration wrongfully deported to El Salvador of being a "high-level gang member"—even though this is a deception the administration deliberately cooked up after the fact to try to smear their victim's character.
The administration is also using the same line about "criminals" to justify the planeload of third-country nationals—from places including Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar—they are now trying to deport to the war-ravaged country of South Sudan. Now, these deportations are completely illegal. A federal judge said so. The laws of Congress say so: you cannot remove people to countries where they face a reasonable fear of torture—at least not without giving them a hearing to demonstrate the risk they would face. But the administration moved them anyway—and now they're stranded in Djibouti.
But when it's pointed out to them that these deportations are illegal, the administration responds with an irrelevancy: "but they're criminals!" Unlike the El Salvador deportations, where the administration appears to have targeted people who were completely innocent and had no criminal records, based solely on having tattoos—the administration here appears to have picked up people who have actual criminal convictions. But, as the men's attorney points out—that's not the issue. Regardless of what they've done, they still have a right under U.S. and international law not to be tortured.
There's a reason our Constitution and Bill of Rights don't permit torture to be imposed judicially in any U.S. sentence—regardless of the underlying crime. There's a reason, likewise, that our immigration laws do not allow the government to deport someone to a place where they reasonably fear torture. Vance knows all this. He knows he can't defend any of these policies. That's why he writhes and chuckles and tries to change the subject when Douthat presses him on it. And ultimately, he just keeps repeating the same tired incantation: "but, migrants, crime, migrants, crime!"
The hypocrisy, of course, is breathtaking. The Trump administration are the ones kidnapping and rendering people to offshore black sites in violation of the law—and they call their victims criminals? They are the ones who rounded up innocent people for having tattoos and trafficked them in the middle of the night to a foreign dungeon where they may remain trapped for the rest of their lives. Vance and Trump and Rubio and Bondi and Noem—they are the criminals here. They are the murderers.
I met Murder on the way –He had a mask like Castlereagh – [...]
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.
—to quote Shelley. Trump would I suppose be Castelreagh. And Vance absolutely would be Sidmouth. "Clothed with the Bible, as with light," as Shelley put it—just as Vance in his interview preaches out of one side of his mouth about his "faith"; talks about the "Holy Father" (who had actually just admonished him for violating the dignity of migrants); "OK," admits Vance, "there are obligations that we have to people who in some ways are fleeing violence"—even as his administration is casting those same people into a nightmarish prison in El Salvador without charge or hearing—
The just absolutely sickening hypocrisy of it all. The double standard for the rich and powerful. Trump and his goons claim the right to lock people up for the rest of their lives in a medieval torture-dungeon. Then they turn around and claim that the immigrant victims of their policies are the ones who are engaged in "premodern levels of brutality." They travel to the Middle East and shake hands with men like the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia—who had a Washington Post columnist assassinated on his orders and carved up into little pieces as a warning to his enemies—
But then they claim that it is migrants who are the "criminals"—not the murderous kings they seek to court for favors. Oh you, Vance, Bondi, Trump, et al.—to borrow a stanza of great invective from the poet Hugh MacDiarmid, in his The Battle Continues—you who subject vulnerable people to death, kidnapping, and torture, and then turn around and claim to be upholding "law and order"—you:
...stand for all
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