Regarding JD Vance: I think it’s more nuance than “people pleaser” and wanting “everyone” to like him. He suffered through a lot of abandonment, and learned to please *specific* persons. The family conflict during his formative years produced a situation where he had to pick between people who likely used him as leverage in their struggle for narcissistic control. Upon completion of HS, where he served as class clown, he decided to please the Geist of “society,” by going through school & then Marines. During this phase in his life history, he utilized the tactics he learned navigating his childhood to “get ahead.” The organized, consistent structures allowed him to advance upwards without being individually likable or unique. That’s when you see him shedding his “goofy” dispositions and take more conservative stances like “meritocracy,” “bootstrapism,” ect. His redemption arc accelerated through Yale & his patronage with a billionaire; he saw this as the death of his former self, an “elegy” if you will. His subsequent success, for Vance, was validating of his judgment through life—and given the circumstances hard to disagree—it’s sort of interesting though because you can see him wanting “validation” for his individuality & judgement, but he is constantly confronted with the dissonance that his only use is in the service of other, more competent & powerful individuals. Despite self-laudations, it’s obvious he has not escaped the traumas of childhood, and the conditions of his socio-biological existence. This dissonance is apparent in his thinly veiled resentment. He has risen through power but only *for* power, which will *never* be his. On one hand his reality is one where his judgement has carried him to the heights of global power, but on the other his daily experience is one where *he* is dismissed, minimized and disregarded as formidable figure, and even as a person.