State of Monday: A WHITE PILL NAMED VANCE
It was a message of unity not just for the right but for America as a whole.
Greetings, Dear Reader,
Quick announcement FYI: SOTD will be off Dec. 24, 25, and 26, back from 29-31, then off again Jan. 1.
Just so you’re not cracking open your email Christmas Day, anxious to hear from me, which I know you would, Dear Reader, I will be with my family.
Now, on to today’s SOTD. I’ve been ruminating lately. I was entering black pill territory …
A WHITE PILL NAMED VANCE
Last week, I mentioned to some of my staff that I was genuinely kicking around a terrible idea. Terrible not because it wasn’t worth writing, but because the implications were awful.
“ASSASSINATIONS WORK” was supposed to be the title of today’s SOTD.
A provocative title, I know, but I had just about lost hope. It’s hard to put into words how deeply Kirk’s assassination affected me on a personal level. And it’s equally difficult to say how profound that effect was on the elites in the right-wing movement.
They immediately turned on each other.
Lefties have watched in glee as some of the biggest voices in the movement attacked each other over the past few months. Without Charlie as a moderate stonewall, an intellectual power struggle ensued. Over the direction of the right, but particularly over younger minds.
Would we be pro- or anti-Israel? Are we openly racist now? Are we explicitly “pro-white” and anti everything else? Pick a side: Are you with Ben Shapiro or are you with Tucker Carlson? Or perhaps you’re enthralled by Candace Owens?
To me the whole thing was stupid. I don’t care about Nick Fuentes. I shouldn’t be forced to care about him either. Israel is 6,000 miles away from me. One thousand more for Doha. The statehouse in Richmond, on the other hand, where a newly elected Democrat is set to take over despite not knowing the difference between men and women, is much closer.
A suspected member of MS-13 slaughtered someone last week about a mile from where my kids go to school.
And yet, the intellectual class in my political movement is demanding I take sides in a “civil war”?
All this I blamed on Tyler Robinson, a deranged maniac and a wet dream poster boy for prevailing leftist thought who slaughtered Charlie Kirk months ago.
About Robinson, I was deeply tempted to believe the worst.
The assassination had worked exactly as intended. It had throttled the momentum of a once ascendant conservative movement.
Then JD Vance took the stage in Phoenix.
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Over 30 minutes Sunday night in Phoenix, Vance laid out what I believe to be the most coherent vision of the United States since Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign four decades ago.
He acknowledged the disagreements on the right, but in a brotherly sense. We don’t agree with each other in every aspect of life and politics, of course. We do, however, agree that the distorted vision of the godless, confused and deranged left gave us the likes of Tyler Robinson. It gave us Somali pirates in Minnesota bilking taxpayer money to the tune of billions. It gave us elite universities that graduate kids who can’t do math and who can’t read critically but know exactly where they fall on the fake oppression hierarchy.
On racism, Vance went headfirst.
“In America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore. And if you’re an Asian, you don’t have to talk around your skin color when you’re applying to college. Because we judge people based on who they are, not on ethnicity and things they can’t control.
We don’t persecute you for being male, for being straight, for being gay, for being anything. The only thing that we demand is that you be a great American patriot, and if you’re that, you’re very much on our team.”
It was a message of unity not just for the right but for America as a whole.
It’s clear to Vance that the real problem the right faces isn’t Nick Fuentes — although he did say to UnHerd Nick can “eat shit” for trashtalking Usha — it’s the institutionalization of the left’s perverted hyper-racial worldview. If it isn’t producing violent people like Robinson, it’s allowing violent people to live among us. To rape and murder down the street from schools. To pillage our public coffers and then make absurd demands of America it can barely afford to provide for its own people.
I encourage you to watch the whole speech. Despite Erika Kirk endorsing him already, it seems premature to assume he’ll automatically secure the nomination in ‘28. In fact, I’m sure he’ll have challengers, and he should. There’s still a lot of football left, as they say. The competition will make whoever does win stronger, ultimately.
For me, it was the end of Vance’s remarks that offered the closure I didn’t know I even needed.
“If you miss Charlie Kirk, do you promise to fight for what he died for? Do you promise to take the country back from the people who took his life? Do you promise to help defeat the radicals who cheered his death? Do you promise to honor his memory by having faith in the God he loved?
My friends, commit to these things and I promise you victory. I promise you closed borders and safe communities. I promise you good jobs and a dignified life. Only God can promise you salvation in heaven. But together, we can fulfill the promise of the greatest nation in the history of the earth.”
That’s it for the free portion of today’s State of the Day.
The full subscriber edition continues below with expanded analysis and additional context.