I’m not saying ability doesn’t matter. It certainly helps. But there’s something powerful about realizing that you’ve undersold yourself — that someh… - JD Vance

whenever people ask me what I’d most like to change about the white working class, I say, “The feeling that our choices don’t matter.

But there’s something powerful about realizing that you’ve undersold yourself — that somehow your mind confused lack of effort for inability.

I'm not saying ability doesn't matter. It certainly helps. But there's something powerful about realizing that you've undersold yourself-that somehow your mind confused lack of effort for inability.

The American media totally ignored this stuff, until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.
If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.

There were many thumbs put on my scale. When I look back at my life, what jumps out is how many variables had to fall in place in order to give me a chance.

It wasn’t my fault that until that day I had never heard the word “multiplication.” It wasn’t something I’d learned in school, and my family didn’t sit around and work on math problems. But to a little kid who wanted to do well in school, it was a crushing defeat. In my immature brain, I didn’t understand the difference between intelligence and knowledge. So I assumed I was an idiot. I may not have known multiplication that day, but when I came home and told Papaw about my heartbreak, he turned it into triumph. I learned multiplication and division before dinner. And for two years after that, my grandfather and I would practice increasingly complex math once a week, with an ice cream reward for solid performance. I would beat myself up when I didn’t understand a concept, and storm off, defeated. But after I’d pout for a few minutes, Papaw was always ready to go again. Mom was never much of a math person, but she took me to the public library before I could read, got me a library card, showed me how to use it, and always made sure I had access to kids’ books at home.