万斯和特朗普一样，都是骗子
J.D. Vance Puts the Con in Conservatism
纽约时报专栏作家：保罗·克鲁格曼 翻译：杜然
2024年7月19日
J·D·万斯曾经担心唐纳德·特朗普会变成“美国的希特勒”。现在他是特朗普的竞选搭档了。但是，无需太在意那段历史。特朗普和万斯有很多共通点，其中之一就是：他们都是骗子，对那些最热爱他们的支持者充满鄙夷。
J.D. Vance once feared that Donald Trump might become “America’s Hitler.” Now he’s Trump’s running mate. But never mind that history. Trump and Vance have a lot of things, including this, in common: They’re both con men who despise their most avid supporters.
事实上，万斯可能是现代美国政治史的重要人物里最自私冷酷的一个，尽管这是个相当拥挤的赛道。你没法确定特朗普是否相信他自己说的那些假话，但以万斯的头脑，他应该清楚自己实现了一次非凡的政治虚假营销。
Indeed, Vance, despite stiff competition, may be the most cynical major figure in modern American politics. You never know whether Trump believes the false things he says; Vance is smart enough to know that he has pulled off a monumental political bait-and-switch.
如果特朗普-万斯这对组合获胜，鉴于特朗普显然对政策细节缺乏兴趣——当然还有他的年龄问题，很有可能万斯会以某种方式成为这个国家的领导者。
And if the Trump-Vance ticket wins, there’s a fairly good chance that, given Trump’s evident lack of interest in the details of policy and — yes — his age, Vance will, one way or another, end up running the country.
那么我们来说说他的骗术：如今作为来自俄亥俄州的资浅参议员，万斯经常谈起自己的困苦出身。但是大家应该去读一读他在《乡下人的悲歌》里都写了些什么，从中可以看到他对伴随自己成长的那些人怀着惊人的蔑视，这些人跟他不一样，没能逃脱小镇的贫穷。人们也应该注意到，尽管他在周三的大会演讲中抨击了“华尔街的爵爷们”，但他的平步青云很大程度上正是一群科技业亿万富翁一手策划的，他是彼得·蒂尔的门生。
So, about that con: Vance, now the junior senator from Ohio, talks a lot about his hardscrabble roots. But people should read what he wrote in “Hillbilly Elegy,” which shows startling contempt for the people he grew up with but who, unlike him, didn’t escape small-town poverty. And people should also be aware that while his convention speech on Wednesday denounced “Wall Street barons,” his rise has to a large extent been orchestrated by a group of tech billionaires; he’s a protégé of Peter Thiel.
《乡下人的悲歌》既是个人的回忆录，也是社会评论，公平地说，这本书的确是在面对一个真实的问题。在过去的几个世代里，美国的相当一部分乡村和小城镇出了大问题。青壮年男性处于失业状态的时间出现猛增，尤其是美国东部腹地。社会问题波及很广，在经济学家安·凯斯和安格斯·迪顿的纪录中可以看到，“因绝望而死”的情况急剧增多，因吸毒、酗酒和自杀导致的死亡都被归入此类。
“Hillbilly Elegy” was part personal memoir, part social commentary and, to be fair, it responded to a real issue. Over the past couple of generations, something has gone very wrong in much of rural and small-town America. There has been a sharp rise in the fraction of men in their prime working years without jobs, notably in the eastern part of the American heartland. Social problems have proliferated; as the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton documented, there has been a surge in “deaths of despair,” which they defined as deaths from drugs, alcohol and suicide.
这是怎么回事？我认为重点在于一些经济变革导致许多小城镇在失去存在的意义，这个过程始于里根时代，并且并非我国独有。经济机会的损失反过来导致社会失能——这与美国城市此前因蓝领工作机会的消失导致社会失能加剧是相呼应的。
What happened? I’d focus on changes in the economy that undermined many small towns’ reason for being, a process that began during the Reagan years and isn’t unique to our country. This loss of economic opportunity led, in turn, to social dysfunction — echoing the earlier rise in social dysfunction in America’s cities when blue-collar urban jobs disappeared.
这些都是真实存在的问题，我们应该在全国层面努力去改善这些落后地区的境况。事实上这正是拜登政府在做的，其产业政策有很大一部分旨在帮助萧条的地区。这其中包括一项最高可达5.75亿美元的拨款——一部分资金来自共和党全票反对的法案——用于帮助万斯的老家俄亥俄州米德尔敦的一座钢厂更新换代。
These issues are real, and we should be making a national effort to ameliorate the problems of left-behind regions. Actually, the Biden administration has been doing just that, with much of its industrial policy aimed at helping depressed areas. Among other things, a Biden administration grant of up to $575 million — partly financed by legislation Republicans unanimously opposed — will help upgrade a steel plant in Vance’s hometown, Middletown, Ohio.
别忘了许多农村地区的美国人之所以能有医保，全都靠的是共和党人激烈反对的政策。
And let’s not forget that many rural Americans have health insurance only thanks to policies Republicans fiercely opposed.
然而在《乡下人的悲歌》里，万斯否定了“将问题归咎于社会或政府的白人劳动阶层文化运动”。他的看法是，许多小城镇白人要怪只能怪自己。他们太懒了：“你可以在镇子上走一圈，30%的年轻男性一周工作时长不到20小时，但找不到一个人意识到自己是懒汉的人。”他们受教育水平低，不是因为缺少教育机会，而是他们缺乏动力：“我们自己小时候不读书，那我们为人父母后也不会让我们的孩子好好读书。”
But in “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance rejected the “cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government.” Instead, he argued, there are lots of small-town white Americans who have nobody to blame but themselves. They’re lazy: “You can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men work fewer than 20 hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness.” They’re poorly educated, not because of a lack of opportunity, but because they aren’t motivated: “We don’t study as children, and we don’t make our kids study when we’re parents.”
想像一下，这话如果是一个自由派民主党人说的，会有怎样的反应。然而从政后的万斯突然就认定白人劳动阶层并不懒，而是受外部势力所害。他开始猛烈攻击抢走了工作机会的移民，那些工作本应该由本土出生的美国人来做。
Imagine the reaction if a liberal Democrat were to say any of that.After entering politics, however, Vance suddenly decided that the white working class isn’t lazy, it’s a victim of external forces. He became vehement about accusing immigrants of taking jobs that should be going to the native born.
在他的大会演讲中，有一段似乎是在说，通胀是非法移民造成的。他当然没有提到通胀自2022年中期以来已经降了三分之二，非管理岗位——尤其是底薪工人——的平均收入水平增速超过了价格。
One passage in his convention speech appeared to suggest that illegal immigrants are responsible for inflation. Of course, he didn’t acknowledge that inflation has fallen by two-thirds since mid-2022, and that nonsupervisory workers — especially low-wage workers — have seen their earnings, on average, rise more than prices.
而移民事实上也没有抢走我们的工作。本国出生国民的失业率仍然保持在历史低位。至于本国出生国民离开劳动力市场，则很大程度上是因为婴儿潮一代到了退休年龄。
In fact, immigrants aren’t taking our jobs. Unemployment among the native-born remains near a historic low. To the extent that native-born Americans are leaving the work force, it’s largely because baby boomers are retiring.
把小城镇和农村地区的问题归咎于移民是格外怪异的，这些地区的萧条远远早于移民潮，即便是现在，移民在那里也相对少见。万斯家乡所在的俄亥俄州只有5%的人口是外国出生的，相比之下纽约市这个占比达到约40%。
And it’s especially strange to blame immigrants for the problems of small-town and rural America, which began long before the recent surge in immigration, and where even now there are relatively few immigrants to be seen. In Vance’s home state, only 5 percent of the population is foreign-born, compared with around 40 percent in New York City.
总之，没理由相信万斯关于支持劳动阶层的任何一句话。他的书已经清楚地表明，他至少在一定程度上瞧不起那些没能像他一样把握好职业轨迹的人。他也许出身贫寒，但如今他只是一个聪明、无良的政客，他在利用出身掩盖自己作为财阀价值观与利益代言人的事实。
Anyway, there’s no reason to believe anything Vance says about supporting the working class. His book makes it clear that, at least to a degree, he looks down on those who haven’t managed some measure of his professional trajectory. He may have grown up poor, but these days he’s just a smart, unscrupulous politician using his background to hide the extent to which he represents the values and interests of plutocrats.
保罗·克鲁格曼(Paul Krugman)是纽约时报（The New Yorker Times），自由派政治观点，他因在国际贸易和经济地理方面的成就获得2008年诺贝尔经济学奖。
张口注，持自由派观点者一般支持民主党，所谓”左派“，持保守派观点者一般支持共和党，所谓“右派”
