This is cross-posted from Evan’s side gig The Moral High Ground, where he dives deeper into stuff like this. If you are not subscribed to that — and many of you are not yet! — fix that right here.
You guys, JD Vance is Catholic. Just super-Catholic. He is so Catholic that he wrote a book about Catholic-ing that had a country mountain Methodist church on the front, the kind where you’re always running into the pope when the holy Papa is in the mood for some of that good old time religion. (But, like, not as old as his religion, which is way older.)
And that is why when JD Vance sits down to talk about his deep and abiding and legitimate and real Catholic faith, he starts yapping about the Antichrist and the End Times like some kind of rapture-obsessed evangelical who just read his first Hal Lindsey book.
He yapped about it recently in an interview with some bro-y Christian extremist bigot podcaster named Bryce (of course) Crawford.
“Do I think that we’re in the End Times? I don’t know,” said JD. He said he doesn’t think he should focus on it, though, even though he’s “fascinated by it.” Buuuuuuut:
“I think that there are, like, things about that world that make me feel like, not shocked, if the Antichrist was walking among us, but again, I try not to focus too much on it.”
Cool, sure, you bet.
JD explained in that interview that he actually has a lot of history being a rapture-obsessed evangelical who just read his first Hal Lindsey book, except that for him he says it was his first Bible, the John Hagee prophecy Bible — you know, that crazy bastard who called the Catholic Church the “great whore” and is really into all the prophecies about God throwing unrepentant Jews into the lake of fire — that got him into it. The Left Behind books were also mentioned. (For me, personally, it was Hal Lindsey, although I am not particularly older than JD Vance. Oh yes, I had that phase.)
I guess he just doesn’t understand yet that Catholics don’t talk this way. But anyway, about his new Catholic book, on Catholicism!
He also said:
“I’m trying to focus on doing as much of God’s work as possible right now. And if that leads to the End Times, okay.”
If JD Vance brings about the Apocalypse, that’s fine! He also said just after the quote above that “if that leads to, you know, us building a better world that thrives and survives for a very long time after I’m gone, that’s great, too.” So if he makes the world a better place, that’s fine too!
Glad he’s flexible.
Of course, small bone to pick, it’s a tiny thing, but in the evangelical John Hagee prophecy Bible and the Left Behind books and all the Hal Lindsey books about how Jesus was probably coming in 1972, just kidding probably 1974, just kidding probably 1976, etc., the Son of Man doesn’t come on the clouds — with or without swooping all the white evangelicals up in the rapture first, which is absolutely not remotely in the Bible and if you think it is, fuck off — because humans are doing such a great job creating God’s kingdom on earth.
Jesus comes back for a lot of reasons, according to the evangelical extremists, but none of them is to give humanity a smack on the ass and say “Good game.”
So either JD is bringing about the Apocalypse or he’s doing God’s good work on Earth. It is not both, according to JD’s own Catholic (not Catholic) belief system.
Anyway, so to recap, here is JD Vance, thinking the Antichrist might be walking among us, and that maybe his work is bringing about the Apocalypse, LOL, but maybe it’s not, YOLO, Make Armageddon Great Again, suicide cults are so awesome.
(By the way, we are supposed to be real scared of the religious extremists in Iran right now, and the ones who are almost certainly scheming to impose Shakira Law upon New York City and Michigan. The Beltway media says so, must be true. But when Republicans do actual religious extremism, which is always? Aw shucks.)
JD Vance didn’t mention in this interview who he thinks the Antichrist walking among us might be, but a lot of people are joking that ha ha, JD Vance works for him, it’s the guy he once compared to Hitler, I guess back when he was anti-Hitler.
And yes, I have speculated before on the Moral High Ground — just for fun! — about whether Donald Trump could be the Antichrist. But JD Vance said he thinks the Antichrist might walk among us, not waddle, and none of the prophecies mentions the Antichrist having some blonde sycophant named Natalie who feeds them their daily pureéd Big Mac and AI slop about how much everybody worships them.
So unless your version of the Antichrist eats a lot of pudding cups …
But is there another guy JD Vance knows whose name should be entered in contention for “Which Of JD Vance’s Friends/Bosses/Puppetmasters Is The Antichrist?”
Perhaps!
Like maybe, por ejemplo, the weird libertarian technogay billionaire who looks like an actual lizard wearing a human suit, who runs around the world giving speeches on the Antichrist like he thinks nobody will suspect he is the literal Antichrist if he is always out there talking about what a stinker the Antichrist is? That guy even has a South Park song about how much he knows about the Antichrist, while not actually being, himself, the Antichrist!
It’s kind of like when conservative Christian closet cases condemn gays THE LOUDEST, like without even needing prompting. “I’m so full of the Lord, I couldn’t imagine adding a bunch of dicks!” is a thing they might say, heterosexually, and no one suspects a thing.
That guy? Is the guy who actually happens to have co-founded a creepy, evil surveillance company that, on its best day, could potentially someday create something that could be a Mark Of The Beast, something without which “no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark.”
That guy? Also happens to be the guy who has bought and sold JD Vance, who plucked this empty, unimpressive, off-putting, ugly little nothing of a man out of obscurity and gave him everything he now has, who has imprinted upon JD Vance all the things Vance now claims to believe. Without Peter Thiel, JD Vance would just be that thing his mom missed the opportunity to trade for drugs.
By the way, have you heard about how Thiel and a bunch of other tech billionaires are certainly acting like they might be about about to bring about the Apocalypse, creating remote bunkers for the super-rich in Argentina? Seems like an interesting data point!
Will JD and Usha also get to go when/if/when Trump/Thiel/Vance/Antichrist/whoever completely ends the world sometime soon or just after the midterms, if none of Republicans’ schemes to steal those work?
Just curious.
This has been a post about how JD Vance thinks maybe his work will bring about the Apocalypse, maybe it won’t, what’s the harm in trying, probably time for the media to book another panel discussion on whether Abdul El-Sayed did 9/11 when he was in high school.
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Whenever the topic of JV Couch and religion comes up, I always think of this tweet (or whatever they're called nowadays; I'm not linking it):
@agraybee
Everything Price Sufferer (but especially eggs)
Every lifelong Catholic I've ever met is like "I think we're supposed to give this food to poor people" and every adult convert is like "the Archon of Constantinople's epistle on the Pentacostine rites of the eucharist clearly states women shouldn't have driver's licenses."
Thought bubble for JD up top
"Those pillows are right there..."