The Atlantic republishes JD Vance article about Donald Trump from 2016

The Atlantic also published another article that refers to this one and has very harsh criticism about Vance's hypocrisy.

What J. D. Vance Once Knew

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Which brings me back to J. D. Vance. Ten summers ago he understood, better than most, the threat Trump posed to America. Vance, who described himself as a “Never Trump guy,” thought Trump was an “idiot.” He admitted to a friend at the time that he goes “back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.” But then ambition made its offer, and Vance, who had seen the danger so clearly, discovered he could see his way around it. The first stop was the Senate; the next was the vice presidency.

Along the way, the Vance of Hillbilly Elegy—a teller of hard truths, a morally serious person committed to honesty even when it cost him, beholden to no one—became a cynic, a partner in a cruel enterprise, a peddler of lies he is surely clever enough to recognize as such, a man whose only fixed commitment is to his own rise to power.

In his memoir, Vance wrote, “Nothing compares to the fear that you’re becoming the monster in your closet.” It’s a poignant line, referring to a man raised amid the addiction and volatility he feared he might inherit. The monster Vance feared was a private one; the monster he became is a public one. His legacy turns out to be a much more destructive than the one he was afraid of inheriting.

The past decade in America has been a lost decade. Far too many Americans have cheered on the men tearing at the temple. But Americans can now see, later than they should have, the cost of the damage. It is within our power to make it whole. What remains is to find the will. There is a name for those who do: renewers of ruined cities, repairers of the breach, restorers of streets in which to dwell.

To many, Donald Trump feels good, but he can’t fix America’s growing social and cultural crisis, and the eventual comedown will be harsh.

What Trump offers is an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He can bring jobs back simply by punishing offshoring companies into submission. As he told a New Hampshire crowd—folks all too familiar with the opioid scourge—he can cure the addiction epidemic by building a Mexican wall and keeping the cartels out. He will spare the United States from humiliation and military defeat with indiscriminate bombing. It doesn’t matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan. He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.

The great tragedy is that many of the problems Trump identifies are real, and so many of the hurts he exploits demand serious thought and measured action—from governments, yes, but also from community leaders and individuals. Yet so long as people rely on that quick high, so long as wolves point their fingers at everyone but themselves, the nation delays a necessary reckoning. There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria. Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.

I’m not sure when or how that realization arrives: maybe in a few months, when Trump loses the election; maybe in a few years, when his supporters realize that even with a President Trump, their homes and families are still domestic war zones, their newspapers’ obituaries continue to fill with the names of people who died too soon, and their faith in the American Dream continues to falter. But it will come, and when it does, I hope Americans cast their gaze to those with the most power to address so many of these problems: each other. And then, perhaps the nation will trade the quick high of “Make America Great Again” for real medicine.