In Bed With J.D.
Imagine lying in bed with JD Vance. The night is young, and as you stare at the ceiling, you start reminiscing about how you got here, your train of thought paced by JD’s gentle breathing. You think back to his journey, once a testament to perseverance, hard work, and merit, a climb out of generational poverty. His memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, sits untouched on your nightstand recommended by your mother, borrowed from the library. You read somewhere that JD painted in it a complex portrait of his Appalachian roots, a world of despair yet capable of resilience. It was a story that resonated, feeding the belief that America and its gulf, despite deep divides, was still a land of possibilities.
But as JD drifts deeper into slumber, his breath morphs into something else entirely—a slow hiss, growing heavier and darker. The boy from Middletown, Ohio, who rose from hardship to Yale, has morphed into someone who no longer questions his own contradictions. The idealist who once decried his party’s moral decay, warning of its descent into MAGA extremism, now stands at its helm as Vice President under Donald Trump.
Lying beside JD, you hear him now murmur phrases. The press is the enemy of the people. Foreign aid is a scam. Immigrants are ruining America. At dinner that night, he assured you that political courage still existed, that his brand of conservatism was built on integrity. Now your stomach starts hurting.
And then, you dream of cats and dogs. JD is at a podium in his pajamas, declaring that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating people’s pets. It’s absurd. Grotesque. And yet, in your dream, when local authorities debunk his outrageous lie, JD merely smirks, urging his supporters to “keep the cat memes flowing.”
With the deceiving clarity of dreaming, you see through JD: it isn’t just the lie—it’s the knowingness of it. The understanding that truth no longer matters as long as the story feeds fear and resentment.
Then your dream cuts to JD standing beside his wife, their mixed-race children. He yells in his phone to someone called Elon to rehire a government employee fired for posting racist statements about Indian immigrants. It defies logic. And yet, it happens. You swear you’ll remember all this in the morning, and tell everyone at the coffee machine—if your office badge is still active.
JD shifts in his sleep, muttering. His voice now carries the sneering edge of his MAGA mentor. You’re now somewhere in Europe, listening in stunned disbelief as JD chastises leaders for not being more open to far-right parties, including those with neo-Nazi ties. You start wondering what you had for dinner last night.
And then, the snoring begins.
At first, it’s just a faint, nasal hum—one you can almost ignore. But it swells into something grotesque, something unbearable. You feel bad for the neighbors across the hall. But it’s so loud you’re embarrassed for those above and below as well. This sound no longer resembles sleep but rather a relentless, rattling declaration of JD’s presence. A snore that demands attention, that refuses to be ignored.
Lying in bed with JD Vance, you check the clock. It’s two minutes to midnight.
Somehow, you are both awake now, suspended in the silence, waiting for a reckoning—a flicker of doubt in the dead of night, a whispered confession of how far he has strayed. JD shifts on his side. Is he facing you now? In the darkness, it’s hard to tell. Then, a dim glow from the streetlight slices through the blinds, catching his eyes, and you realize—he is looking directly at you.
But there is no reckoning. No hesitation. No flicker of torment behind his eyes—only the cold, steady gaze of a man who has long since ceased wrestling with himself. What once might have been doubt has ossified into certainty, into the self-righteous tranquility of someone who no longer asks questions because he has convinced himself he already holds the answers.
There is no longer a question of whether JD has changed. That much is certain. That much is clear. The real question—the one that lingers in the silence, gnawing at the edges of your thoughts—is whether, in lying here beside him, you have begun to change too.
This text is an essay that solely reflects the perspective of its author.