A Serious Look at a Funny World

Summary

Summary of "A Serious Look at a Funny World"
The Victor Davis Hanson Show
Release Date: December 17, 2024

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1. Tribute to Lee Edwards [05:49 – 08:24]

The episode begins with Jack Fowler paying homage to Lee Edwards, a respected figure who recently passed away at the age of 92. Edwards was instrumental in establishing the Victims of Communism Museum, striving to highlight the human cost of communist regimes often overlooked by mainstream Western narratives.

Victor Davis Hanson reflected on Edwards' legacy:

"He tried to show data and argument and bring it to attention. So he did a great public service."
[06:37]

Edwards challenged the prevailing perceptions during the Cold War, emphasizing the atrocities committed under leaders like Stalin and Mao. His efforts aimed to counteract the narrative that Western policies solely fueled communist expansion, thereby bringing a balanced perspective to historical discourse.

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2. Joe Biden's Mass Pardons: Scope and Implications [08:24 – 14:00]

A significant portion of the discussion centers on President Joe Biden's recent mass pardons. Jack Fowler initiates the conversation by highlighting Biden's extensive pardoning spree, which includes his son and numerous low-level offenders.

Jack Fowler remarked:

"Maybe we'll say a few things about him. We'll get to all that Victor when we come back from these important messages."
[05:49]

Victor Davis Hanson critiques the breadth and targets of these pardons:

"He pardoned a judge that was a total crook. He's pardoned people who stole money and were embezzled... He's given 1500 clemencies many of them to violent drug dealers."
[09:35]

Hanson anticipates that Biden may issue blanket pardons covering a wide range of offenses, potentially including members of his own family. He draws parallels to President Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, suggesting that such acts can obscure accountability for past actions.

"There never had a pardon, except I think, Jerry Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon that gave blanket exemption for crimes committed of the past."
[09:35]

The discussion underscores concerns about the potential for these pardons to erode the rule of law and set a precedent for future administrations.

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3. Classified Documents Controversy: Biden vs. Trump [15:18 – 40:42]

The conversation shifts to the handling of classified documents by both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, highlighting perceived inconsistencies in their administrations' responses.

Victor Davis Hanson points out the disparity:

"Trump had one location. Biden had five. Trump took them out for two years. Biden had them for over 30."
[15:44]

He criticizes Biden for the prolonged retention and distribution of classified materials across multiple locations, including his library and garage, compared to Trump's more concentrated storage. Hanson suggests that Biden's actions demonstrate a lack of transparency and accountability.

The discussion also touches upon Merrick Garland's refusal to comply with a congressional subpoena related to Biden's handling of classified information, drawing attention to potential double standards in enforcement.

"Merrick Garland just refused, as everybody remembers, a congressional subpoena to turn over Robert Hur's transcript."
[09:35]

Hanson warns of the implications for future legal proceedings and the integrity of presidential administrations regarding classified information management.

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4. Race Relations and White Privilege [48:37 – 80:38]

A substantial segment of the episode delves into race relations in America, critiquing the discourse surrounding white privilege and systemic racism.

Jack Fowler discusses Congressman Jamaal Bowman's controversial "Dear white people" speech:

"Dear white people, I don't know why I feel I need to keep talking to you... fighting to end white supremacy."
[49:43]

Hanson criticizes the use of collective adjectives like "white people," arguing that such generalizations foster tribalism and alienate individuals. He emphasizes the importance of addressing individuals rather than entire demographic groups to foster constructive dialogue.

Victor Davis Hanson challenges the prevalence of statements attributing systemic issues solely to race, asserting:

"Anytime a person just uses a collective adjective for an entire group of people... it's racist."
[50:27]

The discussion includes an analysis of hate crime statistics, where Hanson contends that white individuals are disproportionately victims rather than perpetrators. He references high-profile cases like Daniel Penny and Al Sharpton to illustrate perceived biases in public perception and media portrayal.

Furthermore, the episode critiques the Black Lives Matter movement's stance on vigilantism, questioning the rationality and potential consequences of advocating for such actions.

Hanson states:

"There are more white people on public assistance than non-white... what they're doing is telling white people, we live in an age of tribalism."
[61:43]

The conversation extends to the sports arena, specifically addressing WNBA player Caitlin Clark's remarks on white privilege. Hanson argues that Clark's statements were misguided and lacked concrete examples, ultimately alienating her supporters.

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5. Drones Over New Jersey: National Security Concerns [38:19 – 47:18]

Victor and Jack address recent reports of unidentified drones flying over New Jersey, raising alarms about national security and the efficacy of current defense measures.

Victor Davis Hanson speculates on the origin of these drones:

"If these are accurate, it's Chinese drones that have some navigational ability from the shore."
[41:45]

He expresses skepticism about the government's ability to manage and respond to these incursions effectively, suggesting that foreign adversaries like China may be exploiting vulnerabilities in U.S. airspace security.

The discussion highlights the lack of decisive action from authorities and the potential risks associated with unidentified aerial threats.

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6. Caitlin Clark and White Privilege in Sports [68:40 – 78:30]

The episode examines Caitlin Clark, a standout WNBA player, and her comments on white privilege, which Hanson critiques for being superficial and counterproductive.

Clark's acceptance speech, intended to acknowledge her advantages, is portrayed by Hanson as lacking depth and alienating her fan base:

"She had a very good brand, and the brand was that she was very quiet, she was apolitical, and she was a superb female athlete."
[70:02]

Hanson argues that Clark's failure to provide specific examples of her white privilege undermined her message, leading to a loss of support from those who appreciated her athletic prowess without her political commentary.

"She didn't give us examples. And that's why, what's wrong with the DEI? They always use these adjectives..."
[75:17]

He contends that such statements contribute to societal divisions and detract from genuine discussions about privilege and equality.

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7. Audience Comments and Reflections [80:38 – 84:43]

The episode concludes with Jack Fowler reading and responding to listener comments, including reflections on historical events and personal anecdotes.

A listener named Bama Boy 591 shares:

"I do wonder why we went ahead with the invasion of Okinawa when we knew atomic weapons were coming."
[81:42]

Hanson provides historical context, discussing the timing of the Okinawa invasion relative to the use of atomic bombs, and expresses empathy towards veterans affected by these decisions.

Jack also acknowledges positive feedback from listeners, emphasizing the show's role in providing insightful historical and political analysis.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Victor Davis Hanson on Lee Edwards [06:37]:

  "He tried to show data and argument and bring it to attention. So he did a great public service."

• Victor Davis Hansen on Biden's Pardons [09:35]:

  "He pardoned a judge that was a total crook... He's given 1500 clemencies many of them to violent drug dealers."

• Victor Davis Hansen on White Privilege [50:27]:

  "Anytime a person just uses a collective adjective for an entire group of people... it's racist."

• Jack Fowler on Jamaal Bowman's Speech [49:43]:

  "Dear white people, I don't know why I feel I need to keep talking to you... fighting to end white supremacy."

• Victor Davis Hansen on Caitlin Clark [75:17]:

  "She had a very good brand, and the brand was that she was very quiet, she was apolitical, and she was a superb female athlete... She really blew it and she turned on the people."

---

Conclusion

In "A Serious Look at a Funny World," Victor Davis Hansen and Jack Fowler engage in poignant discussions addressing pressing political and social issues, ranging from presidential pardons and national security to race relations and the role of privilege in American society. The episode underscores concerns about accountability, systemic biases, and the societal impacts of political rhetoric, offering listeners a critical perspective on contemporary challenges.

Transcript

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[Jack Fowler]

Hello ladies. Hello gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hansen Show. I'm Jack Fowler, the host. You're here to listen to this guy, Victor Davis Hansen who is the big brains here. Martin and Ely Anderson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. Victor's got a website, the blade of Perseus. Victorhanson.com later in this episode I'll tell you why I believe you should be checking out regularly and subscribing. We are recording on Saturday, December 14th. This particular episode should be up on Tuesday the 17th. Victor A lot to talk about. As much as race relations seem to have taken or the racial polarization seems to have taken a back seat or got sucker punched by the election, there's still a number of race related issues that have percolated in the last few days. We have Joe Biden's Pardon Palooza that's gone on and Lee Edwards, great friend of all of ours has passed away. Maybe we'll say a few things about him. We'll get to all that Victor when we come back from these important messages.

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[Jack Fowler]

We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson Show. You know, Victor, maybe we should start out a little bit with Lee Lee Edwards, who passed away. Lee was in his 90s for many years. He was at the Heritage Foundation. He actually wrote for one of the first issues of national review back in 1956. One of the sweetest men, and profoundly important because he created the Victims of Communism Museum and the Whole effort, it was like a one man. Well, I don't want to say wrecking crew, but somebody standing up to remember the victims of communism largely forgotten and intentionally forgotten by many in the West. Any quick thoughts about Lee?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I only met Lee once and I think he was 92 when he passed away this week. He was part of that group of people in the 70s, 80s and 90s that during the Carter years or the Clinton years when there was kind of this sense that over the Cold War the dominant media, the universities had said it was our fault and that we had estranged Joseph Stalin, he'd been a very good ally. And Truman, but especially Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles with containment, George Kennan. We had prompted the Cold War and we had fanned the flames of McCarthyism who lost China and that led to senseless things like Vietnam. And Lee Edwards and others tried to show that. They tried to show the human cost of communism. That Stalin had killed 20 million of his own people well before the war started and the great hunger and famine mostly in Ukraine. That Mao had killed 60 to 70 million people during his original rise to power, but especially during the 1960s cultural revolution. And that people like the Kim dynasty in North Korea or the so called romantic Viet Cong or North Vietnamese were cold blooded killers. That was not a very. I know it seems obvious today, but at the time that wasn't very popular to say that. And he tried to show data and argument and bring it to attention. So he did a great public service.

[Jack Fowler]

Victor, if anyone's in Washington, they should look up the victims of Communism museum. And you know, the things we fight about, we talk a lot about here. The march of ideology through our institutions come from the same roots spawned by communism. So this isn't just some quaint historical operation. I think what he's done is very relevant to the battles we are fighting today. So anyway, God rest his good and dear soul. Victor, let's talk about Joe Biden's pardons. We've got a lot of other things to to discuss, but as you know, he, besides the pardon of his son, we found out that prior to that he has pardoned some Chinese nationals for various sundry reasons. And then this week this massive pardoning of 1500 people and some of them are real, real low lives. Your thoughts Victor, on this whole?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, he pardoned a judge that was a total crook. He's pardoned people who stole money and were embezzled. I think 50 million, 40 million from the taxpayers of a small municipality. He's given 1500 clemencies many of them to violent drug dealers. And this is not the end of it. Remember, we've got 35 days more with this president, non president. And as soon as I can guarantee you, as sure as the sun rises, that in the last 72 hours of this man's presidency, you're going to get another blanket pardon for all crimes, whether known or unknown, in the past decade. That would cover the Biden vice presidency when he was selling his office. And that'll probably go to Ashley Biden, Jim Biden, Biden, Biden's sister, the entire crime syndicate of the Biden family. We never had a pardon, except I think, Jerry Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon that gave blanket exemption for crimes committed of the past. And any crimes that went undetected but in subsequent years will be found out to have occurred during the period of that pardon. We never. It's just a blank check. And it'll be very interesting to see the reaction when he starts to issue. These are people below the radar. I mean, they're all scoundrels. And there's probably people calling the Bidens money donors. This is all coming from donors and people that are politically connected that want these various people pardoned. And probably the Obamas, Michelle and Barack, they have their own list. But wait till we get to the people who have some criminal exposure and culpability. And I'm talking specifically, what is he going to do about the James Comeys, the James Clappers, the John Brennans, the Andrew McCabes, the Christopher Wrays, especially the Francis Collins, the Anthony Fauci people. These people, in theory, have a lot. Merrick Garland. Merrick Garland just refused, as everybody remembers, a congressional subpoena to turn over Robert Hur's transcript. He did that. But I mean, the oral transcript and I mean the actual recording of Joe Biden, remember, Joe Biden on that tape said that Robert Hur unprofessionally and cruelly had mentioned his son Beau's death, that he didn't recall the circumstances. And when you looked at the transcript, and that was only released under pressure, it shows you that Joe Biden brought it up, not Robert Herr. So. And we want to see that. We wanted to hear the transcript to see to what level of disability or incapacity that Biden exhibited on that tape that led to the conclusions of the special prosecutor that even though he was likely guilty, no jury would convict him because he sounded so debilitated. So we wanted to hear that. And Merrick Garland had a subpoena for that of the type that Steve Bannon or Peter Navarro had been subpoenaed and he just said, no, I'm not going to do it. And there was no criminal. There was a referral by the Congress, but there was no action by Mary Garland's own doj. Hey, boss, you prosecuted Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro and now you've done the exact same thing. You've resisted a congressional subpoena law for them, but not for you. And we go back with Eric Holder did the same thing when the Fast and Furious. And so I don't that's something that's going to come up and these people are going to want pardons. Especially when you look at the asymmetry, the Mar a Lago raid versus the three locations. Actually four if you count the library and the garage. The four locations were Biden for not two years but over 30 years, stored documents and whatever, the caricatures of Mar A Lago. It's a lot more secure your place in Biden's garage. So all of these things are going to be objects of re examination when Trump comes in.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, I'd like to see also.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And that's why there's going to be pardons.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Well, there's a little more on that. Victor, Let me do this first. I just want to take a moment for our sponsor, Quince. Are you looking for the perfect gift this year? Well, I found the perfect spot for timeless gifts made from premium materials. You've got to check out Quince. Quince lets you treat your loved ones and yourself to true quality at an affordable price no matter what you're looking for. All Quince Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They only work with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices. And Quince uses premium fabrics and finishes for that luxury feel in every piece. Gift luxury this holiday season without the luxury price tag. Go to quince.com victor for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Quince Q-U-I-N C E.com Victor to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Victor and we thank Quince for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson Show. And it was about 10 degrees today here in Milford, Connecticut and went out there with my Quince blue Sherpa, toasty warm.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack Fowler]

Sweater up, my friend. Hey, a couple things back on the investigations. It just seems off the radar. The Biden Institute where I know some of these documents were found and wherever the hell? At the University of Pennsylvania and University of Delaware. There's got to be a trove of problems there.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

University of Delaware, the Biden residents, of which some were in the Biden office, some were in the Biden library, some were in the Biden Corvette garage. As we saw from that picture, Trump had one location. Biden had five. Trump took them out for two years. Biden had them for over 30. Trump only had, out of, I think, 13,000 classified documents, they said there were only, I think, 103 that were classified. Biden alone in one location, I think had almost 30 of them. And then they accused Trump of sharing classified information with a third party, but they never really indicted him on that. They just dropped it and leaked it to the press. But in Biden's case, he admitted that he read out portions of classified documents or material to his own ghostwriter, who had no security clearance. And Robert Herr, of course, said, well, it was inadvertent, he didn't mean it. And, yeah, he destroyed the tape. They were taping it, and the speechwriter was on tape discussing a classified file that Biden illegally had removed. And then he, Hillary Clinton fashion, destroyed the tape. But he only did it because he thought somebody might hack it. Think of the argument. Donald Trump might have destroyed files, but he only did it because he thought somebody might tamper with it. The whole thing was so asymmetrical.

[Jack Fowler]

Speaking of evidence destroying Victor and pardons, Bennie Thompson, who was the chairman, the Democrat from Mississippi who was the chairman of the Jan. 6 committee, gave a press interview and he said he wants a preemptive pardon from Biden. We shouldn't forget that as that committee chairman, they destroyed videos of witness depositions and they prevented the release of documents. I guess if I was him, I'd want to pardon, too.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, I mean, he's. We go back with him all the way to 2004 when the left has now, you know, yelled at Trump about election denialism and that he tried to disrupt the county. That's exactly what Benny Thompson did in 2004 when there was no doubt, he, along with Barbara Boxer in the Senate, and I think it was 30 something other house members tried to stop the recording of the Ohio Electoral College vote that was clearly won by Bush over Kerry. And then, therefore, they wanted to throw the election to Kerry. Then the left says, well, no, no, no, no, they weren't serious. They were just delaying. They were just making a point. No, no, no, no, they were serious. The thing about all of these pardons, etcetera, it's all suspicious. I'll give you an example. So on August 9th, they went into Mar a Lago, okay? And the SWAT team went in and they said, well, we didn't wear our blue jackets. We were trying to be soft. No, no, they went in with. They weren't armed, and they went into Mar A Lago and they scoured the whole place. We didn't know that Joe Biden had classified documents. Did he say that when he was a senator? Did he come forward? No, he didn't come forward. Did he come forward as vice president for eight years? No. So he came forward in, as I recall, November of 2023. Okay, so he came in November. And why did he come? Because Trump, his doj, had ordered a raid on Trump in August. And somebody said to him, Mr. President, do you think you have any. Oh, my God, I've kept this for 30 years. I better come out. So then he didn't come out and. And say, go to my garage. Go to Delaware, go to Pennsylvania, go to Washington, D.C. go to my library. No, he didn't. He just trickled it out over about three months. Oh, my God, there's some in the garage. Oh, I didn't know there was any in the library. The University of Delaware has them. My Washington foundation phony office has it. And then you read that report by Robert Hertz. Unlike Donald Trump, Joe Biden was cooperative. And as soon as he was aware that he had missing documents, he contacted our office. No, he didn't. That's a complete lie. He did not. He did not do it as a senator. He was aware of it. He did not do it as a vice president. He was aware of it. He did not do it for the first three years of his presidency, he was aware of it. He only did it when he ordered his own FBI and DOJ to go after Donald Trump. And then he got scared that it wouldn't look good, that he was going after Trump for the same thing that he was culpable for. I'm just giving that out because that's exactly what these people are scared of. And they do not want anybody to investigate why Merrick Garland resisted a congressional subpoena and broke the law. They do not want to know why Robert Hurd came to the Congress after producing overwhelming evidence that Joe Biden would not be likely prosecuted. That's not his judgment. He's a special counsel who's supposed. He's not a federal prosecutor who's going to take somebody to court at this point. He's supposed to look at the evidence and find out if the law was broken. And then he files a report. And then the attorney general makes an assessment. And the assessment that he made in that report was that Joe Biden broke the law and committed a felony. And then he added an editorialization by saying, but I don't think we could convince a jury because he would be so demented that there would be sympathetic jurors. In other words, he was telling us, the American people, we have a president who's not fit to stand trial, that he's so mentally compromised that no one would convict him because he doesn't know what he's doing. But he's perfectly, he's perfectly suitable to run for president again and, in fact, continue his presidency. And that was just, that was just silly. And that's why that was one of the iconic moments in the Trump recovery. Jack, that August 9th raid, Trump had not announced his candidacy yet. But when they did that, and then coupled with the revelations a few months later about Biden, then there was a whole series of iconic moments when Trump really started to gain traction. He was behind in the polls, in putative polls, behind Desantis before he announces candidacy. Then there was the February 2023 East Palestine visit where he went to East Palestine. Biden went off to Ukraine two weeks after. Nobody had really been there from the administration. They were in desperate straits. Trump went there and then there followed a whole series of things.

[Jack Fowler]

That was a pivotal. That was a pivotal moment.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

It was very pivotal because it reminded people that why Biden was a globalist in spending billions of dollars and ingratiating himself with the Ukrainians. There were these people in Ohio that were subject to a toxic plume and it came from a federal oversight interstate railroad. And they didn't care about it. And they weren't. And the reason they didn't care about it was they were poor white people that were caricatured traditionally by Biden as chumps. And the dregs. I'm quoting directly. And the clingers, they were Obama's clingers and Hillary's deplorables and irredeemable.

[Jack Fowler]

Victor on Obama. I know you talked a little with the great Sammy Wink about the piece you've written, the Obama mystique. I'd just like to raise one more point about the great Barack Obama. Let's do that when we come back from these important messages.

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack Fowler]

We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson show recording on Saturday 14th December. This episode will be up on Tuesday the 17th, and God only knows what might happen between now, when we're talking, actually talking, and the day this comes out given Joe Biden Let me just say Victor's website, the Blade of Perseus. The address is victorhanson.com. go there and you'll find the archives of these podcasts and links to Victor's weekly essays on American greatness, his weekly syndications column, links to his books and his ultra articles, which are two or three times a week, Victor writes a piece exclusively for the Blade of Perseus. You'll Want to subscribe. Five bucks gets you in the door. $50 discounted for the full year. I think it makes a great Christmas present to yourself. Even so, check it out. The blade of perseusviktorhansen.com and by the way, when you go there, do go there. If you haven't read Victor's piece the Obama Mystique, you'll find it there. Victor, two things I just want to make a quick mention of to you that Obama's culpability includes one, the fact that Donald Trump is president because Obama essentially goaded him into running, and the second is that it was Barack Obama who picked Joe Biden to be his vice president. I can't see that someone would believe well, you know we're only going to win this election if it's an Obama Biden ticket. That has to be one of the most colossal political judgment mistakes anyone's made.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Given everybody's he knew it right away, he said Never underestimate the ability of Joe Biden to F things up. That was from Barack Obama. And they were at war, Broccoli. Joe Biden played the same role in the Obiden administration. Well, the Obama, I should say the Obama administration that Tim Waltz did with the Harris candidacy, he was an embarrassment. He was a drag on the ticket, and he was a crook. So there were reports that people were getting very irritated when Hunter was on Air Force Two, flying to China, flying to Ukraine, etcetera, etc, etcetera. He was always a crook. He was a plagiarizer and he was a liar. And we don't know what he's going to do in the next 40 days. You're right about that. But we do know that whatever he does now will probably be quasi legal and it will be controversial and it will be unethical. And then historians later will say, as he thinks in his shred of clarity, well, he was depressed over the election. He had served the country well. He had stopped Trump's second term. And by the end of his career, he was a broken man with 35%, 36% approval rating, and he was suffering from dementia. So he didn't know really what he was doing by pardoning Hunter or Jim or Ashley, which I think he will do. Ashley and Jim and the other Biden scoundrel really will do that. And the left will make the necessary adjustments, as they always do. The only reason that they're quiet right now is they look at this presidency and they say, this has never happened before. And this is. We own this. We have never had a president elect that is de facto the President 40 days before the inauguration, and we've got our own guy, and he's completely unable to fulfill the duties of president. And we have told the American people that he was fit as a fiddle for three and a half years. So we're not going to oppress this. We're not going to bring up the old ossified, calcified Logan Act. We're not going to do any of this. We just want to have him out. So if Donald Trump, if foreign leaders want to treat him as the president, invite him to Notre Dame and Biden won't go. And then that's fine with us. We were humiliated. And we just want him out so we can start anew and start attacking Trump with a new face, a new agenda. But right now, we agree he's demented, he's unhinged. We don't claim him as our own. We want him out. That was their attitude. They've accepted Trump. Mr. Trump, go ahead and do it. Please start. That'll give us more time to criticize you. Just take over. Just keep, get him out of the stage. You know, it's like a prodigal son or something. Get just, yeah, you know, it's, well, he's an embarrassment now.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Hey, folks.

[Jack Fowler]

Victor DAVIS Hansen, show listeners need to.

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[Jack Fowler]

The secretary of state, he testified before the House and slight tiniest whiff of maybe a mea culpa, but I really don't think so on Afghanistan, the pullout. Why, of course, blaming Trump. Your thoughts on this?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Victor? Well, he, he said that the DOAA agreement, the agreement that Trump basically made, that he was going to withdraw down to about 3,500 troops, withhold Bagram and Kabul and then hold the Taliban responsible and bomb them if they broke it. And that was a stable agreement, apparently, because we didn't have such a catastrophe in the last months of the Trump administrations, nor did we have it for the first eight months, seven months of the Biden administration. It was only when they started to withdraw precipitously that the Taliban saw there would be no ramifications that Biden wanted out. And he wanted out because this is very important. He wanted out to coincide with the September 11, 2021 attack on the World Trade center, then the subsequent late September October entrance into Afghanistan. So he was telling the military and telling Blinken, wouldn't it be great to have a parade a 20 year anniversary that all the other people got us in Afghanistan and it was Joe Biden who got us out and we'll do it on 9 11. So I want him out right now. That's what he was doing in August and then he had to go get all Austin and of course the ubiquitous Mark Milley to tell us everything is stable. The Afghan national forces are 300,000 strong. It'll be orderly. And then of course later, as works in Washington, they're all going to come back and leak to the press. I told him I worried, I told Biden it wouldn't work. And they're worried about this because Donald Trump has mentioned that he wanted to hold responsible and have a trial. I don't know what he means by trial, an inquiry, an inquisition. I don't know about the people responsible. I think he means to be relieved of command and jetsoned from the military. And I think Pete Hecsec's subtext is the wrong people are in the military and the right people were expelled. In other words, people who were really good were expelled. 8,500 for vaccination. Another 45,000 are not joining because they feel that they're going to be subject to dei. And meanwhile, the people who called their Chinese counterpart up to tip him off about the supposed mental incapacity of Donald Trump or the people who were the architects of the Afghan debacle, they're still there. Milley just now retired. And by the way, just a footnote, Milley had been calling Trump a fascist. Fascist, fascist, fascist, fascist. And then somebody whispered to him, donald Trump won the election.

[Jack Fowler]

Mark.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

You better be quiet because even though you're going to be retired when he is inaugurated, you are subject to Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And one thing they have all said is they're going to finally enforce it. Not just for colonels and majors who get in trouble, but for people like you. So cool. The fascist. Cool it. So then what did Mark Willie say? Well, you know, I don't know if he's a fascist, I wouldn't go that far, but he was worried that he would be robbed of his retirement and put cart martial. I have a feeling that if Pete Hecseth is confirmed, and I think he will be, that they are going to enforce Article 88 and they're going to tell all retired generals that you're going to abide by the, the Code of Military Justice. And we had a two star major general who just went on, I think it was CNN and just said that Donald Trump was a fascist and the people who supported him were fascists. He's retired and he will be subject if he says that again about his commander in chief even though he's retired, something is very wrong, Very, very wrong. Where you have very controversial presidents on the left. You've got somebody who was impeached, like Joe Biden, who harassed women. You have somebody like Barack Obama whose Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress. You had him weighing in on very controversy. He invited the Russians in to the Middle east for the first time in 40 years. They were very controversial and of course Biden and then. Yet all of these generals that are retired will not say a word about Joe Biden. No one said this guy is completely mentally incompetent. Maybe Mike Flynn might have. But all of a sudden they start mouthing off about Donald Trump and say that he's a fascist, that he's a Nazi, that he's a Mussolini, that he's an inveterate liar, that he's the architect of Auschwitz and now he's a fascist. This is Milley. And this new general just said that he was a fascist and there's no consequences. And yet there's a statue on the book that said there will be consequences because they're all on the left. People think they're exempt and I think they're not going to be exempt. It's not healthy. You can't have a four star general who is subject to recall in times of national emergencies. Go around the country and say that your commander in chief is the equivalent of Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler. You can't do it. It's not sustainable.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, well, Victor, I wonder about the, what do you call it when you commit a crime and then you have.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Two years or statute of limitations?

[Jack Fowler]

Statute of limitations, yes. Thank you for. Yeah, just you'd mentioned this Major general. If he says it again, I wonder why wouldn't the fact that he said what he said be chargeable under Article 88 by.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Because he said it. He said it just this week. And Donald Trump is not commander in chief. And he didn't say it about Joe Biden. Of course he said that President elect Donald Trump is a fascist and the people who support him are fascists. And if he says that, and I don't think he will after January 20, he will be in violation of the Uniform code of Military service.

[Jack Fowler]

Okay.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

All right. This thing grew up in 1950, 51. And it grew up because Douglas MacArthur was talking to the press about Harry Truman and belittling his confidence and suggesting he wouldn't obey an order. And Truman said, I should have fired that SOB earlier. And then people said, you know what? We can't have generals attacking the commander in chief. And that statute was passed 75 years ago. And it's rarely been enforced for 1, 2, 3, 4 stars. But remember, occasionally it is when Stanley McChrystal was in front of a Rolling Stone reporter who was embedded with him, and the phone call came and somebody said, it's Joe Bitemey on the phone, it was Vice President Biden. And they all laughed. They called McChrystal back to Washington and they said, you have insulted the vice president of the United States and you are in violation of Article 88 of the Uniform. And they relieved him of command. And he really learned his lesson because shortly thereafter, he began writing these articles that he had come to Jesus moment. And now he was a staunch man of the left in his corporation that was making a lot of money, was trying to advise CEOs about leadership qualities. And he wrote for the left wing Atlantic Monthly that he had seen the picture of his idolized, iconic Robert E. Lee too many times on the wall. So he went over and grabbed him. He threw it down and he put it in the garbage, and he felt better that it's in the dumpster. And then he weighed in, of course, recently about Donald Trump and leadership. And that's what these guys do because they understand that where the money is in retirement and the CEOs and the corporations and the defense contractors is all semi left, left, center. Michael Flynn is not going to be hired by any defense contractor that's of that magnitude with that kind of money. So they condition their public remarks accordingly. And I think it's injurious to the military, it's injurious to the reputation of the officer corps. And it's against the law, and they don't enforce the law, but it will be enforced from now on.

[Jack Fowler]

Victor. Also injurious in my eyes to the military is this drone situation in the New York area, which is now it's a national slave story and has been for a bit. And we had some seeming indifference from the Biden White House about this from Mayorkas. And then now in the last 24 hours, there seems to be a little sense of urgency. Coincidentally, I have a friend who lives in this part of New Jersey. Everything seems to happen in New Jersey, right? War of the Worlds and the Hindenburg and these kind of aerials, terrible things. But some fiction lives in Parsippany and he says it's crazy, these monstrous things over your house. Who knows what the hell's happening? You hear stories. The Coast Guard says we've tried to track them. They disappear. I don't think if I'm China, I think it looks like America doesn't know what the hell to do when it's under.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I think the. They're not aliens, of course. And I don't think that the average drone hobbyist has something the size of an suv. And that was some reports, but maybe even the size of a, I don't know, 10ft by 10ft or something. So it has to be one of two alternatives. It either has to be the military itself and it's some type of new weapon system. But if that were to be true and there was all this public attention to it, then they would want to suppress that public attention. They would cease doing it. But apparently, even though it's there, it's continuing. Which suggests to me, if these are accurate, it's Chinese drones that have some navigational ability from the shore. In other words, it was sort of like the last reports of the Chinese balloon. When the Pentagon assured us that they were not transmitting from the balloon classified information to China, they left it open. When they were asked were they transmitting or could they have been navigated on the ground. When you have 350,000 students from China and hundreds of thousands of other visitors here from the mainland China, and you know how the Chinese people liberation armies functions, then you get the impression there's a lot of people that might just, you know, be navigating a drone or that they built a drone or they bought a drone, or the Chinese themselves are sending drones that can be navigated by people over here. But it seems to me that it would have to be a foreign adversary of the United States. And then the question is, well, why would they keep doing it? And I think they would keep doing it to show us a lesson that you can't stop us and you won't stop us. And it's the same thing. It's the same attitude as we're going to basically spit in the face of Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan in Anchorage and what are you going to do about it? And it's the same thing about the Spy Ball. And, oh, it went off course. It's all over Alaska. Oh, sorry. Oh, it happened to go over here. And it's the same thing about, oh, we had a foreign national buying property that was close to air base. Oh, we didn't know that. What are you going to do about. That's how they act. Or make a video about nuking Japan, which they released not too long ago. Oh, what are you going to do about it? That's the Chinese, the communist Chinese attitude. So it makes sense and we'll see what happens. But John Kirby has made a fool of himself, the Pentagonist spokesman, because he gets angry and thinks everybody's crazy. And you know, he's basically saying, and all these federal apologists are basically saying that the people are crazy. It's a war of the world's hysteria. And the representatives from the congressional districts in New Jersey are crazy. And even the governor of Maryland, I think. Was it Larry Hogan?

[Jack Fowler]

Hogan, yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Said that a drone came near him. What I don't understand is given that they're also in rural New Jersey and you know that people have high powered deer rifle, why hadn't somebody shot one? I know it's against a lot of shoot. I'm not advocating shooting down a drone, but I would expect if some of them get low into the space of people's, you know, if you have your rural New Jersey and something flies in and hovers over your 4 or 5 acres at 100ft or something in your space, I would imagine somebody would shoot one.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Well, to be played out. I have a feeling between now and when we're talking on Saturday the 14th.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Then it's not the question of where it is. Even Trump had a really good point when he said shoot it down. The point is that if you have drones and they're near Air Force bases and the Air Force or the military says it's not theirs, then the security of the United States dictates that you err on the side of recklessness, that you say, we're going to take this off not because it's an international waters or airspace, but because it's on sovereign U.S. territory. We want to send the message to a private citizen, to a foreign student, to a foreign government that when in doubt, you lose. But this idea that we're, oh, it's against the law to shoot a drone down. Oh, we don't know what it is. If they don't know what it is, then what will happen in a war? They don't know what it is. They can't tell American people what it is. So it's kind of scary because if we got into war with China, I'm sure there would be some type of vest submarine that would come out of the ocean and release thousands of these things and what would we do? Because they've Already proven. They have the ability to come right into strategic space with impunity. It's a mystery. It shouldn't be a mystery is what I'm trying to say. Not in this, agent.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, well, the flippant attitude of the White House at the start of this is very.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

It's the same attitude as the border. It's secure, Jack. You know, 12,000 people coming across behind me, it's still secure. It's your problem, you're paranoid, not me. The border is secure. Corrine Jean Pierre and Alejandro Mayorkas have sworn sworn to us for four years.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, we have a lot of race tinged issues that have percolated in the last week or so and we'll get to them when we come back from these final important messages.

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack Fowler]

We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor, there's almost too many these things. I'll pick three of them first. Well, Jamaal Bowman, the great congressman who.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Likes to pull fire alarms, he didn't have a firearm. He was walking out during a critical vote and he saw a disabled button and he wanted to go out that door and he pushed the disabled wheelchair button. And you know, the next thing what happened, he just said oh my God, I go out of this door all the time. And suddenly somebody has installed a fire alarm where the wheelchair accessible automatic button is. And now they're, because they're racist. They're trying to frame me with deliberately trying to disrupt a congressional vote and committing a felony or high ranking misdemeanor by deliberately endangering people's lives by issuing a false fire alarm. So let's get Our facts straight. I'm sorry.

[Jack Fowler]

You forgive me? Well, here I'm going to quote him, because as he leaves the Congress, God only knows what he's going to do. Dear white people, he writes, I don't know why I feel I need to keep talking to you. I don't know why part of me still, still has hope for you and for us. Some of you have gone. Some of you are too far gone, but maybe enough of you aren't and will join us in fighting to end white supremacy. So thanks, Jamal. Don't light the door.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Dear white people. What does that mean? Is he saying that Barack. Is he talking to Barack Obama? Is he talking to actress Haley Barber?

[Jack Fowler]

Halle Berry.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Halle Berry. Halle Berry. Not Haley.

[Jack Fowler]

Haley Barber.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

He's not talking to Haley Barber, that's for sure. I like Haley Barber, by the way.

[Jack Fowler]

I do, too.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

He's no actress. Yeah. What does white mean anymore? Is it mixed race? 3/4, 1/4, a half? What does it just say? White people? And then what if somebody said the same thing? In this age of reciprocity, dear black people, I want to address you, and then give them a lecture. So it's racist. And anytime a person just uses a collective adjective for an entire group of people, especially when it's inexact and it doesn't really mean much anymore. When you say same thing with dear black people, who am I talking about? But dear Black people, the 27% who voted, males who voted for Donald Trump. Are you talking about Clarence Thomas? Are you talking. These are individuals, but we keep saying this, and it's, these are awesome. If we learned anything about the election, these ossified names don't really matter, but it does to the left. They have to keep saying white, white, white, white. Is he talking about, I don't know, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Dear white people, or what does he really mean? Is dear bad white people or dear majority of white people who are bad, or dear majority of white people are bad, but with special exception for socialists and left wingers who support my views. Is that what he says? I don't know, but it's kind of getting tiresome. You know what? That was another thing you can't keep telling a person. White people, you can't say, you know, we've got to watch out. If you're Mark Miller or Lloyd Austin, you say white supremacy, white rage, white privilege. You go to campus. This is a. I don't know, safe space. White people are not allowed separate graduations. We're going to have a Major graduation, and then we're going, maybe you had a point, maybe when it was 90, 10. But in a state like California where whites are a minority of the population, it doesn't make any sense anymore. And what it's doing is it's telling white people, we live in an age of tribalism, and we're going to disparage you collectively and sloppily, and we're just going to do it and do it and do it and do it, because we know that human nature being what it is, you're scared and you'll never react in kind. And that's not what human nature is. We know what's going to happen. It's like nuclear proliferation. If one side goes nuclear, they all do. So a lot of white people are starting to say, you know what, you're right, we're awful. So we're just going to talk to ourselves about white people, and they're going to say, well, you've been doing that for 200. No, not overtly, in the last 50 years, but that's what they want and that's what they're going to get, a very primitive Neanderthal tribalism. And I hope it doesn't happen. But I think, you know, as a kid before Jack, when I go into local establishments at 6 or 7 in the morning, they tend to be rural white in minority majority areas where I live. And all of a sudden people wave to you, what a white guy here. Hi, how are you doing? Hey, good. You're shopping too. That's the thing. And you think, why is he talking to me like this? I don't know this guy. But they're enthusiastically like you're some type of aborigine. And that's because it's a reaction against this tribalism, you know, And I don't know where it's going to end, but I do think the Supreme Court ending affirmative action and the universities will try to avoid that and subvert it. They already are. And I think the Trump administration will go after them. And to get rid of DEI is a good first step. That's why Bowman wrote that dear white people and his own voters who were not majority white people rejected him because they rejected his message because he's a buffoon. Not that he's black or non black, but he's a buffoon. He's just a joke. He's part of the squad, and the whole squad is a joke. And then the rubric is, I'm looking at my skin right now, and I think that AOC is a little darker than that. So she's not white, supposedly. I don't understand that. And so the rubrics don't even mean anything anymore.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, despite every. Not despite, but in addition to everything you've said, Victor, you've talked at length previous episodes about Daniel Penny's the Trial and, and he was exonerated by the jury. But Black Lives Matter, his uncle who's involved with Black Lives Matter, was also now calling for black vigilantes in response to the verdict. What are black vigilantes supposed to do, kill white people?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Is that I mentioned to Sammy about the father, father had been absent in his life and mysteriously showed up and said that he was aggrieved about the son, he never cared about when he sinned it, that he could profit out like a vulture. He could profit out of the death of his son. And then you had BLM talking about black vigilantism. So as I said before, when you see this accusation that there's racial prejudice, then I would like to do two things. I would like to look at high profile black white reported violence and I would like to look at the statistics. And one of the statistics would be crime, as termed hate crimes. And when you look at the FBI data and remember people are not reporting to the FBI because the statistics look good if you're a progressive. But they try to not report it in some jurisdictions. But the ones that report it show that white people are over represented as victims and underrepresented proportionally, percentage wise as victimizers. The opposite is true of blacks. They are over represented as victimizers. And when you look at particular, particular ethnic identification, Jews, who make up about 3% of the population or about 30 or 35 or even higher of the reported victims of hate crimes. And the perpetrators, Hispanics, are overrepresented, as are blacks. If you go to rare interracial crimes, about 8% of all violent crimes, blacks are six times more likely to be the perpetrator rather than the victim of white violence. If you look at the number of people who come in contact and are arrested or being in the process of being arrested or pulled over by policemen contacts, I think it's 11 million people a year. Blacks are underrepresented as victims of police lethal shootings while unarmed. They may be slightly over represented as a population, but not of the pool of people who pulled it over. So then when you look at iconic examples, Jack, Jussie Smollett, the Duke lacrosse, the Al Sharpton incident, Tanya Brawley, you look at all of them and you don't get the impression that there's a wave of innocent black people terrorized by white people. Even if you look at the most iconic of all cases, and that is George Floyd, an argument could be made that why Officer Shaalin should have stopped putting his knee to restrain him. That there was the initial coroner's report that was not politicized. That his status of recovering from COVID suffering from heart disease, suffering from fentanyl use, all of those comorbidities made him vulnerable in a way. And he was in the process of being an ex felon who had put a gun to a pregnant woman's body while he was staging a home invasion robbery. And he was in the process of trying to pass gun counterfeit US currency, which is a felony. And he resisted arrest and did not obey the officer's orders. So all of these incidents could have been prevented. But when you look at, I don't know, you look at Daniel Penny and as I said, Ashley Babbitt. So if Daniel Penny is black and Nile is white, most people in the United States, white and black, would not have a problem. They would say, I'm so glad, I would, I would be so glad that this Marine, who happens to be black, finally put a stop to this terrorist terror. He didn't mean to kill Mr. Knightley, but this man, this white perpetrator, if it would be that case, had been asking for it because he had been terrorizing and threatening to hurt the innocent. Somebody stepped up. But notice that no one is saying, no one is protesting. Officer Byrd, more information came out this morning week that when you looked at his file, it was, I think the Washington examiner, it was amazing that he was demanding money, money, money, money, money. And they said, we've already given you 30 something thousand dollars. He said, I want some out of that fund. They said that fund is for officers who have been injured in the Capitol Police. You have not been injured. And then the more that we look at his record, we find out not just that he left a loaded service revolver in a public bathroom, but he was on duty in the House or the Speaker's House, and he was eating his lunch while he was doing duty and he was reprimanded for that. And then when the more that you see about the January 6th evasion, insurrection, demonstration, whatever term the left or right uses, he came at a perpendicular when there were other officers that had a direct trajectory toward her who did not think that a 105 pound woman was a mortal threat, who was going through an already broken window and he shot her lethally. And then the left moved in and said she deserved it. She was a trashy, low class white person. We're going to defame her character, insinuate things about her sexual life, her husband, we're going to try to denigrate her and we're going to try to canonize and lionize him. And that's what they did. So race, race, race, race.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, well, two other race stories, Victor. One, you mentioned the high profile Duke La Cross case and the former stripper Crystal Magnum I think was her name. She admitted this past week finally that she lied. And everybody knew that.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

It was nice to see that the DA who tried to railroad the case, he apologized, the president of Duke apologized and all the professors who signed a petition blasting these spoiled white little snotty nosed kids that had raped a woman, they apologized. Oh, they didn't, Jack. I forgot.

[Jack Fowler]

That's bizarro land.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

No, they didn't want to apologize because remember what, in the case of Jussie Smollett, even though it didn't happen, the reason that we're talking about it is it could likely have happened. And therefore if it could likely have happened, it didn't really matter if it did happen or not. White people walking around at 2:30 in the morning in Chicago, in in a liberal neighborhood with one hand on a cell phone and another hand eating a Subway sandwich that they got hungry for in the middle of the night are always vulnerable to be attacked by maga. People with hats that are steady loyal viewers of the black cereal show empire and always do. They walk around Chicago with bleach and a lynching rope just hoping to find black people like Juicy Smollett. And because they are white, they have white privilege. And white owned things about white privilege says the laws of science don't apply to white people. So when they throw that bleach at, I don't know, 40 below or 30 below or whatever it was that night when bleach freezes. It did not freeze, it just splattered him all over. And they were trying to say to him, we're going to make you white and we're going to lynch you. But being Jussie Smollett, he didn't need his hands free. So he kept his sandwich in one and his phone in the other. And due to his martial arts skills, he kickboxed two huge people and beat them off. And that's what we were asked to believe. And not us. Not just us, but Kamala Harris. Yes. And Nancy Pelosi. This was a modern lynching. Juicy. I'm so small. And same thing about all of these things. I think, you know, it's just. I don't know where it ends. But people, this election was about getting tired of that. And apparently a lot of African Americans are tired of it, too. And I mean, it's every. It's. Whoopi Goldberg was claiming now that RFK was shaming her because he was saying that obesity has health implications and that people like herself, I suppose, were being. She didn't say herself, but her sensitivity suggested that she was overweight and that he had no business. I think her subtext was people of color and the lower classes of society suffer from obesity inordinately. And then, therefore, somebody who was trying to combat obesity was not trying to help them, he was trying to fat shame them. So I guess she would have preferred that RFK had said something like the following. We have an epidemic of obesity, and thank God we have Twinkies and Hostess cupcakes. I want all of you poor people to go out and eat as much as you can, because I'm not going to fat shame you. There's no scientific evidence that you'll have a higher degree of diabetes or congestive heart failure. Go enjoy yourself. Eat, eat, eat. Is that what you wanted him to say? Yeah. I don't know.

[Jack Fowler]

You're funny, Victor.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I mean, the world. Winkies. The world is funny. You know, when I watched the Notre Dame audience and they were all in their own sophisticated, slick, European way, trying to edge each other out to see Trump, did you notice that they all wanted to get a piece of him? This is a guy. They said it was Hitler. And the same thing about Mar a Lago. It's weird. Trudeau went down there and now he's trashing Trump, but Bezos wants to get down there. Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg spent $419 million to destroy Donald Trump in 2020. Bezos did, too. And then all of a sudden this year, he said to Washington Post, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's going to win. I don't want you to endorse her. They're all doing this. And I guess the subtext is the madness is over. We were, for four years insane. This country went insane. We just said there was a third chauvinistic sex. And if you didn't accept men with testicles and a phallus and bathroom with your 12 year old, you were culpable. And then we said, there is no such thing as a border anymore. That is an ossified 19th century term. So everybody come on in. I'm quoting Biden, literally, in 2019. And come in. There's no border. 12 million people. We'll put them everywhere from Martha's Vineyard to be bussed to Chicago. And then we were said, you know what? After Afghanistan, humiliation. That was no humiliation at all. That was a rebooting of American foreign policy. And The Taliban needed $50 billion in weapons. And Israel, you know, it got a little out of hand on October 7th. They mussed up your hair. But that's no reason to go after and try to destroy Hamas in Hezbollah. You know, inflation is only 1 or 2% a month. It went up 20, 27% for your food, your insurance, your power, your gas. But, you know, things happen now. It's pretty good. It's your problem, not ours. And that's what they were told. And now it's over with. And everybody thinks, oh, my God, we went crazy. This is insane. Maybe it was George Floyd, maybe it was Covid. I don't know what it was. A lockdown, the Trump derangement. But it's over now. The cultural Revolution is ending and they're happy. And people abroad are saying, you know what? I think the United States might protect us if China tries to bully us. I think the United States might try to find an end of the war and stop this Russian juggernaut on our border and stop 1.6 million dead and wounded. It's a new day. I don't know if it's going to happen, but there is a sense of collective relief that this madness is coming to an end.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, there's still vestiges of the madness, Victor. Maybe it's three steps forward and one step back, and we'll head to the finish line here with Caitlin Clark, who was honored as athlete of the Year. She had a spectacular year in the playing women's basketball. Wnba. I thought she. She performed under great duress, under the magnifying glass of social media, et cetera. She was dishonored, I think, by not being asked to participate in the US Team of the Olympics. But she got a reward. But what did she do? She said she had to talk about herself as a beneficiary of white privilege. And I just want to read here 1 the Babylon Bee, which is terribly funny. Its take on her white privilege acceptance speech was Caitlin Clark explains that white privilege feels weirdly like getting beat up by giant black lesbians, which is kind of a knock at the wnba. Yeah, there's probably a lot there's some truth to that, but it's disappointing, Victor, I have to say, very disappointing. Personally. Any thoughts?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

She had a very good brand, and the brand was that she was very quiet, she was apolitical, and she was a superb female athlete. And to the degree that she had new people coming to the sport who were white, it was because of the left's principle of diversity. When you look at women's professional basketball, as in the case of the NBA, but increasingly, maybe not so much the NBA with its global recruitment, the NBA is overwhelmingly African American, way beyond the proportional representation canons of the left. So here is a rare single white woman who's playing in a sport overwhelmingly, I don't know what the statistics are. 60, 70, 80% black. And she's excelling. And that is bringing people who are not racist. It's the same thing when you have an Asian player playing in the NBA or a Russian player or Turkish player. They get a particular interest. So she had new people. And she was very careful not to mention that she wasn't political. She didn't weigh in in the campaign. But. But I think you could say soberly and judiciously, she was singled out to be roughed up by black players. And even the referees were basically saying, you come into this game and you've got a big white following and it's predominantly black. What did you think is going to happen? So lighten up, buttercup, here it goes. And they were kind of roughing her up. And that's what the Babylon Bee satire was about. So she was trying to do two things. One, she was telling her sponsors who are corporate America, who is left wing, you can, I will advertise thing. And because I have already renounced my white privilege, it will not seem like you're catering to the hard right. And more importantly, hey, all you girls that are beating me up under the basket, I'm with you now. I agree. You're beating me up because I'm white and I kind of don't like being white. I have too much privilege. That's how it came across. And what she didn't understand was there were people who liked her, not because she was white per se, but because she was white and kept her mouth shut and just played and wanted to be evaluated on the merits of her performance. And now she lost those people because she didn't understand when she said, I suffer from white privilege or I enjoy white privilege. And she doesn't give specific examples, she could have said, I got white privilege because I didn't have the statistics that would have got me in a college scholarship or I got to college and I was given gut courses because I was white. She didn't give us examples. And that's why, what's wrong with the di? They always use these adjectives, systemic, insidious, because they don't want to point to actual. It's like oxygen. I know that that bit of oxygen is bad for me, but I can't see it, I can't feel it. So I'll just say it's systemically air. And that's what it is. And so she really blew it and she turned on the people, called them racist. Basically she's saying to everybody who identifies as white, you don't know it, but I didn't have any demonstrable white privilege, but I know that I had white privilege. So you too, you're a professor, you're a successful business person, you don't know it, but you had white privilege. You're no different than I am. And they're going to resent that because a lot of people don't have white privilege. I would remind her that in actual numbers there are more white people on public assistance than non white. Maybe not as a percentage of their particular demographic, but in actual numbers there are more. I would remind her if you look at East Palestine or the people suffering from the hurricane, they do not exude white privilege. And I would remind her if you look at statistics of per capita income by ethnic, ethnic identification, whites are about 17 on the list, well behind Arab Americans, Pakistani Americans, Indian Americans, Korean Americans, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Greek, everybody. So almost. So I don't see why she had to do it other than what the Babylon Bee was trying to say, that it was for her own protection, she didn't like to get bruised and elbowed. And she thinks now that fellow black players will say, you know what, she's one of us. And she admits that she's not that good. And the only reason she's got all these high statistics is because she has white privilege. And I guess she means that when she shoots the ball there's some invisible force that says, has that ball been touched by a white person? I'm going to guide it through the hoop.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, really discouraging.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, it is, it is. All these people, they think they're going to, it's performance art, virtue signaling and they think they do it. They know they don't do it because of their character or because their exalted morality. They do it for self interested purposes, but they don't think that anybody sees what they're doing and they don't think that it has repercussions. And so there's a lot of poor white person hurt people that don't have any privilege at all, economic, social, racial. And when they hear that, it's like, okay, I don't know. My kid is a working class kid. He applied to UC Berkeley or Harvard. He's not going to get in with a perfect SAT score, perfect GPA, perfect everything because he's white. That's just a fact. 9%. Does she mean the 9% of white males that were admitted to Stanford University? And she means all the other 30,000 that applied and they only took, I don't know, 200 of them that were white males. They all had white privilege and that got them into Stanford? I don't think so. And I think anybody would ask themselves, if you're applying for a job on a police force, if you're applying to an elite university, would you rather put down black or white?

[Jack Fowler]

Just ask yourself, Victor, I was the publisher of National Review. My son was special ed, could barely talk. He ended up valedictorian, high school, captain of track, cross country, basketball, president of the National Honor Society, altar boy. He couldn't get into the Ivy League. Where was my white privilege? Right? He should have been drowning in it.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

The weird thing about white privilege is this, that all the people who have privilege, not necessarily racial, but privilege, she has privilege. She's going to be a multi, multi millionaire. She has influence. She earned it, but she still has it. They're the ones that go back and tell the majority of Americans, you're not successful, you're only there because of your skin color. And it's always some wealthy celebrity or wealthy politician or wealthy academic. I know a lot of people with privilege. And you know, and I know a lot of black people with privilege. I know a lot of Hispanic people with privilege. I know a lot of white privilege. But a lot of them have privilege because who they know, who their parents knew, who their friends are, what their zip code is. But what I'm getting at is those are the people who always revert to the racial cards. They always say it's because you guys are white. And why do they do that? Because it makes them feel good. It makes them do two things that makes them say, you know what? I'm not like that other white person. I'm not racist. I'm not bigoted. I'm so much not racist and bigoted that I can identify my own people. So Caitlin Clark you have a lot in common with people in Appalachia, don't you? And that's why you're saying that they have privileged. No, you don't anymore.

[Jack Fowler]

Give up your job then and give it to you.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Give up your job. I said that? You know, that's funny. You said give up your job. I was 1984 and there was a superb white candidate who was applying for a philosophy job who had been a part time teacher at Cal State where I was teaching for 10 years. And there were seven old white guys in the department in their 50s, 60s and 70s and they decided that they needed diversity. So they were going to hire only women and minorities in 1984. Good. They needed diversity. So they took this one guy who had been a very good teacher and had been told, if you just be part time and get 25 cents on the dollar year after year, we'll eventually hire you. So he came to me and I was an untenured professor. This is what happened.

[Jack Fowler]

So.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

So I went over and talked to the chairman and he said, it's none of your business. This is what academics do. It's none of your business. Number two, are you tenured? Are you tenured? What's your status? Number three, we need diversity. We, unlike you, are not Neanderthals. We believe in diversity. My final question to him, well, why don't you? You're 58 years old. Why don't you resign? You got a good retirement from the purse system. Resign and give your position to him or give your position to a minority. Why don't you resign? None of them did. They all stayed until their 70s and they hired people on the basis of gender and race. But nobody ever resigns that call all these professors and media types that keep talking about diversity, diversity, diversity, they cling to their positions, they really do. And it's very funny. You can see that they are the ones who are always accused of insensitivity. You know, right now we're hearing from the black staffers of half white Kamala Harris and all white Doug Imeroff that that Harris campaign, Jack, was full of racial hostility to black subordinates. They always do that.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, you've been terrific today as usual and we have a lot of terrific listeners. Some take the time to rate the show on Apple iTunes 0 to 5 stars. And practically everyone gives you Victor a 5, deservedly so. Some leave comments. Write them. Actually, we read them. Here are two I'm going to read. One is titled love the Wile E. Coyote comparison. The comparison on the description December 6th episode was just brilliant. Made me want to go back and rewatch to enjoy all the contraptions sent from Acme with a whole new perspective. And that's signed by Tim's gal. And then another comment. Loved your show. I loved your latest show. I'm a history buff that enjoys your take on history. I enjoyed your views on the end of the war in the Pacific. My dad was an infantry soldier under Patton. He would have been sent to the Pacific theater had nuclear weapons not been used to end the war. I do wonder why we went ahead with the invasion of Okinawa when we knew atomic weapons were coming.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

That's a very, very good question. We invaded Okinawa on April 1st of 1945, and as I recall, the bomb was let off in the desert on July 16th of 1945. So it was obviously at a point where they thought it had a good chance of working. And they just. I only say that because 50,000 casual. That was the worst battle of the Pacific War.

[Jack Fowler]

Slaughterhouse.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. You know, 12,000Americans got killed, including my namesake, Victor Hansen. But that was a very good point because my grandfather, who was born in 1889, and I remember him when I was a freshman in high school, he was right before he died, I asked him about Victor Hansen, and he had a very thick Swedish accent, and he said, I don't want anything more to do with the Marines. And they called me up and I said, I don't want anything. I either called him or his father up about Victor's death, who was raised by his uncle, my grandfather, or my great grandfather, his grandfather. And he said, I don't. Because I talked to the commanding officer who was 94 years old, who called me up in 2003 and said that he had called someone in the family with a Swedish accent who said he didn't want his ring and he didn't want anything to do with the Marine Corps because they had sent all these kids to get killed in Okinawa. And then they found out that the war didn't even have to be invaded and the worst battle of the war was waged when they already knew they had a solution. That's not quite fair because they didn't know whether it was going to work from a bomb, and they didn't know what the Japanese reaction. But I think there was enough surety that they might have not gone into Okinawa the way they did. But that's a good point.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Well, that's from Bama Boy 591. Thank you, Bama Boy. And thank you, Tim's gal. And I want to thank the folks who subscribe to Civil Thoughts, which I write every week for the center for Civil Society. You can go to civilthoughts.com sign up for it. It's totally free. And what you get every Friday in your Inbox is essentially 14 recommended readings of worthwhile articles I've come across in the previous week. So thanks for those who do that. Thanks to those again who take the time to rate the show. And for all our new listeners, and there are a lot of them, remember, go to Victor's website, the Blade of Perseus. If you're on X, follow Victor at VDHansen if you're on Facebook, VDH's Morning Cup. And then there's a friendly Victor Davis Hansen fan club.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

You should check them all out.

[Jack Fowler]

Victor, you've been great. Thanks very much. We'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye bye.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Thank you everybody for listening. See you next time.