Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game (1985) follows a group of teenagers who grow up to influence the course of history. One posts under an alias on an online message board and ends up becoming a persuasive writer and an influential politician. Another, Ender Wiggin, is trained in the art of warfare through a series of immersive battlefield simulations — which are finally revealed to have not been simulations at all.
Vice President JD Vance has already run through the first path to influence. His trajectory from the downscale Cincinnati suburbs to the Naval Observatory would have been impossible without the power of his pen, which he used first as a pseudonymous blogger and then as a contributor for publications such as this one before writing his exceptionally successful memoir Hillbilly Elegy. His second book, Communion, is many things: a spiritual memoir, a tease at a likely presidential run, a reflection on how fatherhood can change a self-admitted “striver,” an apologia for his oft explored conversion from strident skeptic of President Donald Trump to his second-in-command. But perhaps above all, Communion captures the youthful “New Right,” of which the vice president is unquestionably the leader, at a crucial moment. Like Ender, the young and enthusiastic populists on the right are learning that there is no such thing as a dry run when it comes to governing. Podcasting and posting can’t achieve durable policy wins. It’s far easier to command attention in today’s media environment than to focus on the unglamorous work of changing policy and seeking converts. To defeat his adversaries, Ender had to learn to understand them; today’s right-wing populists may need to learn the same lesson.
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