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One of the actors in Ohio’s much-publicized US Senate race on the Republican side is the subject of a long – and not particularly flattering – profile in the Washington Post Magazine.

The article, titled “The Radicalization of JD Vance”, is teased this way: “As he ran for the Senate, the author of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ went from being a media darling to being an outcast of establishment. Is her fiery, right-wing new character an act? Or is something more interesting going on? “

Here’s a taste:

Five years ago, Vance eloquently decoded Donald Trump’s supporters for liberal elites, while lamenting the rise of Trump himself. Vance, whose mother is a recovering heroin user, has likened Trump to an opioid, calling it an “easy escape from the pain.” Now, since his race was announced, he’s turned on Trump and adopted a belligerent character at odds with the sensitive, bookish JD of his memoir. On Veterans Day, 48 hours after the Steubenville event, Vance tweeted that LeBron James – of Akron, Ohio – is “one of our nation’s most despicable public figures.” (James had joked that Kenosha, Wisconsin shooter Kyle Rittenhouse “ate lemon heads” before crying at the stand during his trial.) Watching Vance’s campaign, I felt him strain to deliver his arguments in a register of anger. It wasn’t just that the steel jobs had been offshored; they have been subcontracted by “idiots” in Washington, to countries which “hate us”.
Profile author Simon van Zuylen-Wood chats with several people who know Vance. The theme: “They say he’s the same guy but he’s radicalized.

Again, from the play:

“I think he’s become a lot more bitter and cynical – rightly so,” conservative blogger Rod Dreher told me. For Dreher, the change in tone is justified by the course of American politics over the past five years. “Trump has remained Trump – but the left has gone mad,” he wrote in an article defending Vance. Still, Dreher – who attended Vance’s baptism into the Catholic Church in 2019 – is worried about the campaign’s toll for his friend. “S – t-posting has become the signature style of young radical right-wingers, and it is particularly dangerous I think for Christians,” he told me..