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Comment by OhMeadhbh | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to note that Vance's assertion he grew up in poverty has been challenged. My assertion was that his position as a white middle class kid from suburban Cincinnati taking golf lessons does not necessarily make him the best person to speak from first hand knowledge about the effects of poverty on educational attainment. I'm also fairly certain that Vance did not wander the streets of Middletown, feral and unparented. My understanding is that he was raised by his grand-parents, not that he lived with the chaos of his mother's situation.

Also... great deflecting.

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>I'm also fairly certain that Vance did not wander the streets of Middletown, feral and unparented. My understanding is that he was raised by his grand-parents, not that he lived with the chaos of his mother's situation.

So an addict mother, having to be raised by grand-parents, having to go to the army and then use the GI Bill to study, growing up in an declining small working class town in Ohio, are not enough?

He had to be "feral and unparented" to qualify? Because that's what people mean when they talk about the working and middle class "white American struggles"? Vicorian street urchins?

In any case, by those elements alone, he knows 100x about "white American struggles" than the average champion of the poor at the Met Gala and the New Yorker.

>In any case, by those elements alone, he knows 100x about "white American struggles" than the average champion of the poor at the Met Gala and the New Yorker.

Doesn't that kinda make his current actions worse? The "met gala" people can claim ignorance, he understands struggling and still screws over the struggling.

There is legitimate trauma in his past. But "grew up in poverty" is a distinct thing.

Is your point that childhood trauma makes him an expert on public policy about poverty? I would suggest the public administration degree he got did that.

I'd suggest first-person experience makes you more of an expert than any public administration degree. No shortage of clueless public administration degree holders, with no idea of the thing they're administering, only good in theoritical bullshitting and backstabbing.

No. My point is that "JD Vance famously grew up in poverty" is not well supported.

Okay. Dude. You triggered me. The Marine Corps is not the Army. Nothing else you say has any merit with me because you can't get that basic fact right.

Are you an AI? Probably not. I think most LLMs would understand the difference between the Army and Marines.

Who cares about the exact breed of government dog?

I do.

I don't know or care which specific branch he went to. The point I make is that he had to enlist as a way out and to fund his studies, he wasn't some dude born with a silver spoon.

Don't care about the distinction between them either, or their subdivisions. Most of the times I call all of it "the army" (as in armed forces) anyway, chalk it to dyslexia if you wish.

That's not how I've heard him tell it.

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