The Informer

 The New York Times reports this afternoon: J.D. Vance was apparently interviewed today on Fox. When the hosts asked him what he wanted to see happen to Democratic officials, who purportedly oversaw the 2016 investigation into alleged Trump-Russia ties, he replied: "I absolutely want to see indictments."

It would seem, as Byron once wrote of Southey (after the latter submitted a list to the administration of allegedly "Satanic" fellow writers he wished to see prosecuted for sedition—including Byron), that Vance has set about "adding to his other laurels the ambition of those of an informer." 

Except that—it wouldn't be for the first time. This is no fresh laurel for our Vice President. He also made a great display of his "gross flattery," "dull impudence," and "renegado intolerance" (Byron's terms) back in 2023—when he, Southey-like, referred a former fellow Republican for political prosecution. 

"I'm a Never Trump Guy," Vance said—once upon a time. Mere months later—he was sending letters to the Justice Department trying to get a fellow "Never Trump Guy" sent to prison just for declaring himself as such. 

"[D]oubtless, he thinks his name very terrible to the enemy, when he flourishes his criticopoeticopolitical tomahawk, and sets up his [...] yell for the blood of his old friends," as Thomas Love Peacock once wrote of Southey's treacherous ways (the "Rat," as Shelley called him). 

"[B]ut," Peacock aptly finished, "at best, he is a mere political scarecrow, a man of straw, ridiculous to all who know of what materials he is made; and to none more so, than to those who have stuffed him, and set him up, as the Priapus of the garden of the golden apples of corruption."

After all—is not Vance the creature of everything he now attacks? Did he not echo the very same sentiments in 2016 (calling Trump a "demagogue," etc.)—for the mere expression of which he now seeks to send better men to prison? Was it not the liberal establishment that set him up and made him? 

Oh he is a sad and paltry sight. Note the sound of every word he says. There is the whinge of self-pity; the quaver of insecurity; followed by the sudden attempt to brazen it out—the bluff, hale and hearty manner, oscillating with the vicious, sudden, below-the-belt jab at people of greater integrity. 

One can tell from his whole manner that the front of strength and rage is meant to disguise the insecurity of his own position. He knows he has to persecute others for their political views because he once expressed the same views himself (when it was advantageous for him to do so.)

He has to haul the Democrats to prison—because MAGA still suspects he might be one himself. (And we all know that he would be tomorrow—if he scented in that direction any whiff of personal advantage.) They smell a rat here—in more senses than one. 

And so Vance has to try even harder to prove that he will persecute his former allies—lest he be mistaken for one. 

It's like a gang initiation rite. You have to show you are willing to pull the trigger on a former friend—compromise yourself irretrievably in the eyes of God and man—before the insiders will accept your pledge of loyalty. 

I quote again Hazlitt's verdict on Southey's character—which sums up the evidence on Vance's as well:

Of all mortals he is surely the most impatient of contradiction, even when he has completely turned the tables on himself. Is not this very inconsistency the reason?  [...] He says that "a Reformer is a worse character than a house-breaker," in order to stifle the recollection that he himself once was one!