‘No government can fix these problems for us’

should be trying to change their lives themselves — as he did.

After all, had it not been for the strength and willpower of his grandmother, he might never have fought his way out of the despair that had engulfed so many others in his home town.

The tragedy, however, is that millions of Mr Trump’s voters have projected their hopes and anxieties onto a man who, in terms of his temperament, experience and political style, is, I think, utterly unfit to address them.

After all, although J.D. Vance may be a walking advertisement for the conservative values of hard work, self-discipline and self-improvement, the same could never be said of Donald Trump, who inherited his fortune from his father and has conducted himself with staggering moral irresponsibility.

I think Mr Trump’s supporters are deluding themselves if they believe he can change things with the flourish of pen.

As Vance puts it: ‘Public policy can help, but there is no government that can fix these problems for us.’ That sounds fair enough to me. Indeed, whenever Mr Trump tells his audiences he is going to bring jobs to places such as Middletown and turn the clock back to the boom years of the Fifties, my heart sinks, because I can foresee the scale of disappointment to come.

But do I blame the people of Middletown for putting faith in a man who will let them down?

Not really. How many of us can honestly say that if we had been raised in such an environment, deprived of family, community, prosperity and hope, we would have been able to see through a political conman such as Donald Trump?

My fear is that when Mr Trump fails to bring the kind of miraculous economic revival for which his hillbilly supporters are hoping, he will double his aggressive, demagogic and often xenophobic rhetoric, which has already done so much to poison U.S. politics.

That would be a betrayal not just of the optimism and openness that have always been such attractive American qualities, but of bluecollar Americans themselves. As J. D. Vance’s book shows, they have suffered enough already.

What a tragedy, then, that they now find themselves with a leader who will surely let them down.

HILLBILLY Elegy: A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In Crisis by J.D. Vance (William Collins, £14.99).