I think they do a pretty good job of holding his feet to the fire here. I’m not always a fan of the NY Times, but they do ride him pretty hard about his past statements.
Archive link: https://archive.is/SDntW
I think you missed the point OP was, I hope, trying to make.
The truth here is that JD Vance is absolutely trying to red herring and manipulate anyone with children, or who can empathize with parents, into sympathizing with his backwards world view. JD is painting this nice little picture about how nice it is for a parent to have kids, how nice it is for a grandparent to have grandchildren, all while purposefully ignoring the elephant in the room, and the real issue behind why some people are hesitant to have children given the current state of things.
The real reason people are hesitating is not for them, but for the child. They want to spare a potential child from growing up in an America that looks like “The Book of Eli” or “The Road”. They’re holding off because they don’t want their kid dying in super wild fires. They don’t want their kid drowning in their home when the worst hurricane anyone has ever seen hits a coast. They don’t want their kid getting murdered for their supplies, and left to bleed out under an irradiated sky, ash falling on them as they go limp.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to say, “of course people should have kids, mine have made me so happy!”; it takes far more character to say, “I can understand why someone might be hesitant nowadays.”
Now, I’m not even sure JD Vance meant to red herring here, and demonize people with very real concerns. For all we know his gross narcissism cannot even allow him to really feel for his children beyond an extension of himself. However, I know JD Vance is smart. Because of that, I’m willing to bet he answered that question so that people like you can say, “I absolutly agree with that response”, and not even recognize that he completely red herringed the issue, ignored the subtilty, gathered sympathy for his shitty world view, all while grifting into oblivion.
