Victor Davis Hanson (3:34)

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Jack Fowler (3:43)

We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show again. This is the 28th. Victor I just have to have to do a little hat tip to my faith. This is a day for a lot of a lot of people. The Feast of the Holy Innocents. These are the children slaughtered by Herod. And it's a day that many pro lifers take as a symbolic of what happens with abortion. So we'll be going to church later. Victor On a more interesting level, these aren't the most vital topics in the world, but let's take some of these social etiquette pieces. There was a Wall Street Journal article earlier this week that has gotten a lot of attention. It's titled Flying Was Already the Worst Then America Stopped Using Headphones. And let's read a little bit here. If security lines, flight delays and long layovers weren't enough, there's a new scourge facing holiday travelers. A surprising number of people who think it's totally okay to have phone conversations on a speaker or watch movies and shows without headphones. At first it irritated me, then it annoyed me, then it got me angry, and now I'm just bewildered, said Brendan Smith, 43, who flies across Canada every few weeks for his job as a railway foreman. I don't know why they don't have signs up. There should be an announcement on the plane. Victor I notice the same thing, you know, when I occasionally, once or twice a week go into New York City, everyone had headphones and you did not see anyone watching a movie and having to endure it. But something happened recently.

Victor Davis Hanson (5:22)

Yeah, I don't know whether it was these health alerts that said that people with EarPods are wireless or even wired can create electronic stimulation or radiation in the brain. There were some of those early reports about cell phone use and they want to keep the cell phone away from them or it's the culture of nar. Everybody thinks that they're movers and shakers and we have to listen into their conversations. But it's, you know, it's part of the whole Greyhound bus phenomenon, which is what characterizes flying today. I hate flying. I can't stand it in fact, I spent most of my life flying on weekends and, you know, red eyes when I was teaching four classes a semester for very little money. And I got my belly full of it. And there were four or five things we've talked about that drive me nuts. One of them is the number of people, at least at the Fresno airport, but also other California airports in particular, that require assistance and are in wheelchairs versus the number of people who, when you get off the plane, you count the number of wheelchairs and it diminishes by half because they've had a. When they want to put their overhead bin space and bored early, they are terminally ill. And when they want to get out to make a connection, they've healed in flight. And then the other thing is the attire. It's yoga pants by people who should never be seen in yoga pounds. It's sweatpants. And then it's smelly food, taco chili bowls and all sorts of sauerkraut hot dogs that they eat. And then there is the menagerie. I mentioned to you a long time ago that I think there was a donkey boarding a little tiny pet horse. I couldn't tell what it was. I thought it was and I didn't. And then I looked online and it said that those were permissible at the time. But the animals I sat, you know, I think I've had three flights the last, oh, four years where the person next to me had an animal in a cage on the bottom by their feet, but they let the animal out and it just passed wind the whole time and barked at my. And then they just designate it. Was it the word special dog or service dog service. And that is. It used to be for the blind, but now it's what psychological support that you're empowered or you're less depressed if you have your animal. So there's one philosophy that sums up all of these things. And you know, there's other things. Why doesn't the airline charge you for carrying on bags and give you free check in baggage rather than vice versa? They could board the plane in half the time. Everybody cheating on the carry on bags. And when you get on, especially the regional jets, and you see some person's been told, check your baggage, and they have this huge roller, you know, roller suitcase and they're trying to put it in. It's like a square peg into a round hole and they just sit there. And sometimes they're on the cell phone with one hand and then they're doing this. And I think I've Been hit two or three times. When people open up the thing mid flight to get their purse or computer and everything falls out, it's a mess. And the theme of it is they want to accommodate individual eccentricities. And they do not want to have a uniform code of behavior either because they reflect the therapeutic society in which we all are afraid to, you know, enforce norms of behavior, or they're afraid that these people are so crazy that if they say to somebody, you know, you've been in the restroom. I remember I counted when 21 minutes a guy was in there that he'll go nuts and disrupt the flight. So they don't really have any rules or regulations. And now they're trying to. On boarding, I think they have a little alert when you're boarding. When you try to board, it says board according to your group number. And you always get somebody. Mostly they're immigrants and they feign lack of comprehension of English. They'll say, group two, and then you see the person and they see they have group four, and then they crowd in front of you and then when they stop, they go, oh, I don't understand English. Oh, I don't know. You know, I'm sorry. And it's all a ruse, so it's. Everything about it is bad. And you get the impression that, thank God for computer assisted flying, that the planes are now safer as the pilot skill is reduced. The pilots don't seem as adept, but it doesn't matter as much if you don't have unusual wind or weather or something, or mechanical failures. What I'm worried about is when you get on a plane, there's going to be a situation which you go through a storm or, you know, Shelly, remember with the seagulls? Was that his name? Sully. Sully, yeah. And you're going to need an extraordinary pilot to save everybody. But otherwise, it's like the Greyhound. I'm not making fun of Greyhound buses. I used to ride them when I was in college. Well, you.

Jack Fowler (11:09)

You told us last week. I forget the name of Victor. One of your favorite movies, the John Wayne movie.

Victor Davis Hanson (11:15)

Oh, the High and the Mighty.

Jack Fowler (11:18)

Any movie of that era where you're on a plane, that's the setting. And it's just a totally different world from what flying is now.

Victor Davis Hanson (11:29)

Oh, it was just amazing. Everybody, the attendance. I mean, it was like everybody was well dressed, they were eccentric, but they were well dressed. And, you know, the attendant walks. I mean, I think they were smoking and there were no seatbelts, but the attendant was walking by, you know, fluffing up their pillows and patting little boys on the head and that's all over with. It's this we're in the we're a road warrior society. There are no rules in the arena at all on anything. And I can tell you as someone who just left my favorite Bate Noir, the supermarket near me, you should go into there. You should really go into there. When the person comes in with two shopping carts and 48 cans of non diet Mountain Dew Coke and then pulls out every EBT card and WIC card imaginable, four or five. And then again, Feigns, oh, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. Help me. And this person is the most sophisticated con artist in the world. But they all. There's something weird about, you know, we're getting into this immigration. I'm a big supporter of legal immigration, but not illegal immigration. And if you do not have civic education and you do not require assimilation and integration into the body politicians, then there is no reason why a person from another society would not retain the customs of which they're fleeing from. And I won't identify particular countries, but when I'm in certain places, I can see people in an individual pattern of behavior that reflects the chaos. When I think of, oh, you just left a country where there's 40 million people just like you. I was just in the parking lot and a guy rolled down the window and threw out some in and out bag right out the window. And I'm thinking that's what your whole country looks like. Or had another, you know, another place where the person, you know, you're coming in your cart into the aisle and then they see you and they speed up. It's like roller derby tries to cut in front of you. Americans are the easiest going people in the world. They quay, quay up just like the British. And we can't talk about this. So I drove the other day across to another town near here and I counted as I said to Sammy, I think it was four little stands and they were selling everything. And when I go over to the coast, I go across country and I see people that have stands and they're selling, I'm not kidding you, bicycles, lawnmowers, gas lawnmowers, shovels. I think it's all hot because it looks pretty good. But my point is that when you have all. And they're all immigrants and when you have all of these people and you give them a pass and say, we're not going to worry about sales tax or we're not going to audit you because you come here and you're trying to better yourself, and you're coming from a poor country. You don't understand what you perpetuate. The alternate principle is you came to this country and you came to this country because you sensed, correctly, that it was more prosperous, free and secure than the place you left. And therefore, you need to make the obvious connection that your behavior was multiplied millions of times and destroy your country. So if you come over here and you retain that behavior, you're counting on the idea that you're not the normal, not the norm, but you're the exception. And there's enough people among your hosts that don't emulate your behavior so you can get away with it. And America works because if everybody did what you did, it wouldn't work. But there's not many like you. But when you have a lot of people like that who come and they retain the characteristics of their mother country, then you start to see this erosion in. Just pick up the local paper in the San Joaquin Valley, and you can see what I'm talking about. You know, I just picked it up the other day. Beautiful. Probably 100,000 John Deere tractor, brand new. Anybody's seen it? It's just somebody stole it out of my field. There's another little blog that I go on. It's every day, three or four beautiful dogs are dumped. I got a dog dumped outside. And the idea that you would just, you know, you would raise a dog, you wouldn't get it spayed, you wouldn't get it neutered. You come out, you look around, you drive out a mile outside of the town, then you just look around and see which house looks like you might be able to take, and you just open the door and kick the dog out. I think I was counting the other day. I think I've had 21 dogs in the last 50 years that I picked up here. They just walked in. And that's really a cruel thing to do. So I think that one of the things about Trump is if he reduces illegal immigration and he restores civic education and he gets rid of WOKE and DEI and insists on civic education in common values and behaviors, and he stops this therapeutic society and says, you know, if you do something, you're going. There's going to be consequences, good and bad, depending on your behavior. It'll be a different situation. But the Biden, that's another topic. You know, Jack, as we look back at the end of the year at the Biden administration, just Gets worse. Yeah, it gets worse.

Jack Fowler (17:34)

Go ahead.

Victor Davis Hanson (17:35)

Well, it's like everybody who worked for him, they're just basically saying, I lied, I can't do it anymore. You know, it's the end of the year. Yeah. We tried to auction off the wall and the judge stopped us. Yeah, we let in all these illegal aliens. Yeah, yeah. He was senile. I lied to you all. I seriously lied. He was senile. It just, it's all coming out. And oh, yes, Hunter. Yeah. We are in the National Archives. We're professionals. So that's why we went after Trump. That's why we went after him. We got the FBI to go to Mar A Lago, but we didn't go after Biden in the same way, nor did we go after, after Obama. Yes, we were hiding pictures that were very incriminated that the nation and the public needed to know about because they directly contradicted to their commander in chief, who swore on three occasions that he never met in a business context with his son, much less foreign leaders. And we're going to suppress those faux de foto. And then there's a lawsuit. Judge decides, no, you can't do that. You're a public entity. These are public. In the public domain. And we find out, wow, there's Joe Biden, he's with the head of the Chinese Communist Party. And there's Hunter, the crackhead. And they're over there and maybe that's where they got most of their 20 million. So it's all coming out now. And it gets worse and worse for Joe Biden. He's not going to have a restoration any historian, and they're all left wing presidential historian who says in five years we're going to have a reappraisal of all the good things. Joe Biden. That's not going to work. It's not going to work. He's headed for Jimmy Carter territory.

Jack Fowler (19:17)

Well, we hope the appraisal includes Obama, who chose him.

Victor Davis Hanson (19:25)

Well, Obama started it all.

Jack Fowler (19:29)

We should get back to any number of these things. And you mentioned immigration. I forgot to bring it with you before you started recording. But the HB1 visa fight that. We should get your thoughts on that since you raised immigration. But first, I just want to take a moment for our sponsor, open phone. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system. They'll help you separate your personal life from your growing business. Just $15 a month, the cost of a few coffees. You get complete transparency, visibility into everything happening with your business phone number. OpenPhone works through an app on your phone or computer and integrates with HubSpot and hundreds of other systems. It's easy, it's affordable. Right now, OpenPhone is offering 20% off your first six months when you go to openphone.com Victor that's OpenPhone O P E N P-H-O-N-E.com Victor for 20% off six months. Openphone.com Victor and if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge. And we thank the good people at OpenPhone for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Victor, I want to beat to death. Finally, I just have to raise this about the travel stuff. There was another story in the Daily Mail. Flight attendants horrified face as emotional support. Great Dane board's plane, the huge dog went viral over the weekend after footage shared to Instagram showed the Great Dane filling the carriage of a small jet which had just two seats per row. The person who shared the video questioned, have we taken this support animal thing too far?

Victor Davis Hanson (21:16)

I think so, yeah. You think? It's so funny. So they have all these supposedly, nothing strict, but supposedly they have strict regulations about the size of Carry On. Right. You know those little charts where they sell, they can be this high. Why don't they just have a dog chart and say this, Put your dog next to this silhouette and if it's too big. But they can't say no to anybody who might pose as a victim. Maybe it's a legalistic society, they're afraid of getting sued. Maybe they don't want to hurt people's feelings. Maybe we're all victims. Maybe everybody hates the airlines for a variety of legitimate, illegitimate causes. But they cannot start, they don't start with a premise that we are going to serve the needs of the 90% of normal people who fly and we are not going to let the 10% scream and yell and sit there while you're trying to make a connection. As they board, they're trying to jam in, as I said, an oversized carry on. And they act as if they didn't know. And then they're on the phone at the same time. And then the attendant says, well, everybody, please sit, finish your boarding and sit down so we can have a smooth translation. And then it's like, well, I said it so I don't have to say it again because I don't know how to herd these people. They're nuts. And so it's just, you know, I can feel my blood pressure as soon as I get into an airport, I thought, oh, and then I go in There. And my wife will call me and say, yes, my wife will call and say, well, you're there early. And I checked on the computer and it looks like you're ready to go. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're in the plane right now and we're not ready to go. And we get out in the tarmac especially. And then the chronic line. I like pilots a lot when they say, well, we're taxing out and we have a little hitch. It's a little light went on. There's nothing there to worry about. I'm sure it will be taken care of in 10 minutes. Twenty minutes later, the mechanic is in. He's in the area, he's in the terminal and he's on his way out. So we may have to taxi back. But I don't think an hour later we're taxiing back in. But don't worry, it's something. We're at a major hub. We could an hour, two hours later, I think, don't leave the area, boarding area. And then three hours later, flights cancel. And they do that all the time. And I don't know what it is. I wish I could. I try to drive even though California is. The freeways are just a joke, but it's better than flying within California.

Jack Fowler (24:05)

I can help it if something's 10 hours. Now my preference is to drive. Same thing.

Victor Davis Hanson (24:10)

But I hate it.

Jack Fowler (24:11)

I hate driving. But it's less anxiety, I think, than some.

Victor Davis Hanson (24:16)

Yeah, it is. It is less anxiety. And then you know the planes, about every 10th flight you get on a new 737 or Airbus and it's like a different world. Everything is clean, everything works. But the airlines have. These planes are like used cars now. So you go on and your seat is broken or you want to put head. You do want to put headphones. The headphone thing doesn't work. Or you look out the window and it's been so scratched and glazed it looks like you've got cataracts. It's just. It's like a junker airline, you know what I mean? It's these airlines. They used to, in the old days, sell them overseas and then they buy new ones here. But, you know, and I guess I said the problem is the therapeutic society that can't say no. But I think a lot of it is flying is too cheap. It really is. I think they would be better off to charge a little bit more and get a more selective audience. Slantel.

Jack Fowler (25:20)

I think airfare Travel is up 20%.

Victor Davis Hanson (25:23)

Since it's getting more expensive, but it's.

Jack Fowler (25:30)

Well, one isn't getting more expensive. Well, anyway, Victor, let's get to the immigration issue, actually, because we're going to have to take a break. Let's do a short piece on that and then get to the. After the break, get to Elon and Vivek and Maga. Here's a headline about Mexico. Mexico braces for the tide to come in Mexico. This from Red State Mexico braces for Trump's mass deportation set to open 25 new shelters for illegals on Inauguration Day. You surprised by this, Victor?

Victor Davis Hanson (26:11)

No. You know, in the Mexican government, its attitude is the following. We open 50 consulates and we demand that you take all of our illegal aliens. And we're deliberately encouraging them to leave because most of them are indigenous people and we're a racist society. And we do not want to offer them a social fabric or social network or anchor them so they don't stay mired in poverty. So basically, we are going to empty out Oaxaca, Micho Khan, Chiapas, and we want them all to go to the United States. And then we want you state, local and federal governments to subsidize them with health, food, education, housing, etc. So you can free up, oh, three to six hundred dollars a month. So they send back to subsidize their families who are in dire need of help back in Mexico. Why? We just. And that just excuses us. That's one reason we like it. The other reason is it's a safety valve. We believe in the Frederick Jackson Turner theory of exporting people rather than having social turmoil. So we don't have any social turmoil. They don't march on. There's no revolutionary movements because they go to your country. We just say, you don't like it in Mexico, please go there and send us back $63 billion. And then the other thing is, every once in a while they think, wow, there's an American president, he gets kind of angry and he's mad that we are letting raw fentanyl come in from China. And then we have people to launder the profits of the cartels who are deeply embedded within our government. And then we have these specialized cartel factories that disguise the fentanyl to make it look like Valium or whatever. And we send it. And the good year we send, we kill about 100,000 of you Americans. A bad year, maybe we only get 50,000. So every once in a while, one of you guys said, oh, that's terrible. And then we do our little shtick. How dare you Say that given the history of our Mexican sovereignty and Yankee imperialism, you don't talk about our internal affairs. We have a perfect right to kill you. We can kill 100,000 of you, given what you've done to us. That's their attitude. And don't talk about the cartels. You're not going to set one foot in Mexico. We understood what happened with Woodrow Wilson and General Patton. We're not going to let you come in. No, we have a perfect right to send in, you know, we're going to let 12 million people cross our country and flood your country. Don't dare make offense. That's racist. And they count on their expatriate community, the La Raza activists, and they have a, they're going to have a. I think they're going to have a cold awakening because what they don't realize is that the, the elite media, professors, government, Latinos, third generation, usually second, that don't speak Spanish and they hang out with very wealthy white people and they are the DEI people who are the beneficiaries of it have lost all resonance with the communities, the first generation Mexican American community and Latino community, Hispanic whatever, who are in the Rio Grande Valley, in the Central Valley, in major cities and have to pay for this. And they wanted to get away from this and they are being used as the communities to absorb this 12 million and they don't like it. So I think there's some hope there. But at some point, Donald Trump is going to reflect the majority of opinion, not just of so called white people, but of all Americans, especially African Americans, but also Hispanic. And he's going to say to Mexico, we're going to build a wall. If you don't like it, that's tough. And I said you were going to pay for it. Well, you're going to pay for it by remittances. So we're going to slap a 10 or 15% on anybody. Don't think you can get out of it. Anything that goes to Mexico from the United States online. Western Union is going to have a 10, 15% tax that'll pay for finishing the last 15. And you know what, if you keep sending fentanyl in the cartels, we're going to do what we did with Colombia. We sent special forces, they partnered with the Colombian police and they destroy the cartels in Colombia. We can do that, but we're not going to let you continue to do this. And then every time we catch you, you start to bring up, you know, 19th century Gadsden Purchase or racism or the Chuko Rock, and we're just sick of it. This is a postmodern era now, so get over it. And I think that tough attitude has a lot of support. It really does. It's not a tenable situation when you have an American soccer team and they're in LA Coliseum, that's happened a few years ago, and the majority of the fans are booing the Americans and they're rooting for the Mexican team. And it just doesn't work that way. And it doesn't work when you have Gavin Newsom, who campaigned against the law that restored legitimacy and penalties to the idea of shoplifting, and he said it was racist and it was going to hurt people of color, which was racist in itself. And 70% of them voted against him, and his approval rating is below 50%. So he has announced that he's having a special legal fund to sue Donald Trump's enforcement of federal immigration law. And he thinks he's going to demagogue that to the White House. And so you can see what's happening, Jack. The left knows that they're losing on the immigration issue, but they think that they can win on the deportation issue, that they're going to say that this is like the Japanese internment of 1942. This is like police state, and they're all gearing up to it. And I think Tom Holman's outsmarted him. He's going to do iterations, as I said earlier, the 500,000 felons, killers, rapists, first, the 1.5 million that have already gone through the process and they didn't show up for their deportation. And then the people who have no work history at all, they're on public support. They're not working. They're living in a hotel in New York, and they're just living off the taxpayer. Everybody wants them gone. And then the people who came here from North Korea, Somalia, Russia, Venezuela, any country that is a terrorist sponsoring country, I don't think anybody wants immigrants here from Syria, unless they're Syrian Christian refugees. And I don't think anybody wants people from Gaza are from the west bank, not because they're racially prejudiced or biased. It's just those are places that's very hard to adjudicate. Who's coming in? North Korea is another one. I don't think at this time, we want Russian immigrants, Russians coming in. We don't know who they are, what their views are. So it's a time when I think Mexico has overshot and it's counted on the left for too long and the La Raza movement for too long. And Mr. Obrador, when he said, oh, it was a beautiful thing, we sent 40 million people in against the law. And I don't want any of you voting for Ron DeSantis and I don't want any of you voting for a Republican. That was emblematic of where Mexico was. And for us to be liked by Mexico and for us to like Mexico, we have to have asymmetrical treatment. I think Donald Trump is going to look at it and say, you know what, this is not symmetrical. And I'm not Joe Biden and I'm not Barack Obama and I reflect what the American people want. And you're going to have to stop the illegal immigration, you're going to have to stop the remittances, and you're going to have to stop the cartels and the fentanyl. And if you don't do it, I'll do it. We'll see.

Jack Fowler (34:19)

Well, Victor, you mentioned Mexico and racism and we have some again, I said before the HB1 issue here. So let's get to those things when we come back from these important messages. We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson show. Again. We're recording on Saturday, 28th December. This episode is up on New Year's Eve. Victor's got a website, the Blade of Perseus. Its address is victorhanson.com. go there and you will find links to Victor's weekly essays at American Greatness and his weekly syndicated column, archives of these podcasts, links to Victor's books and his other appearances. A new feature, right? Well, first of all, Ultra, they're Ultra articles, so you have to subscribe $5 a month, $50 a year to read them. And Victor writes two or three ultra pieces a week. And now there's a new feature. Victor does a special 10 minute video for Ultra subscribers. So go there. The blade of Perseus. Victorhanson.com Victor, before we get into the HB one thing, I'm just, I'm curious about the race, racial stance of the Mexican elite to the folks in Oaxaca and other areas. Is it comparable or worse than Hillary and Obama at all, considering the deplorables?

Victor Davis Hanson (35:55)

Oh, it's much worse because I do think the deplorable dregs, irredeemables, there is a racial component. They look at poor white people as inferior peoples. They really do. But it's harder to make that argument because most of the people making that argument, not all are white themselves. The People who hate poor white people are mostly bi coastal professional white people who look at poor white people as the, they're useful idiots. They think so they can say to everybody, charlottesville, racism, white privilege, the Millies and all those people, white rage. And it's them, but it's not us. We are the good white people who expose the people we're ashamed of. They have kind of rural accents, they live outside of big cities. You know who they're talking, it's what that. His name was Caputo. He was a CNN reporter. I don't want to name him because I don't know his full name. But he said at that critical juncture during the stroke page controversy when I think it was Peter Strzok said he went into a Walmart in Virginia and he could smell them. And Caputo said I have more teeth. Whatever his name was, he was a reporter. He said I have more teeth than everybody at this Trump rally. So that is documented. But in Mexico it has a racial component. You know, it goes back to the conquistadors that, that the settlement pattern in Mexico was different than North America. The Spanish empire did not allow people to freely immigrate to its domains in Latin America Mexico, unless they were Catholic, but more importantly unless they had permission of the crown. And it turned out not in all cases, but in many cases they were Hildagos, upper middle and middle class Castilians, people like that from Spain that were male and they came over here to, you know, there were priests that wanted to convert and save souls. There were men that wanted gold or farmland and they, they didn't integrate or assimilate. They had indigenous women and there was nothing. The pilgrims coming or North American Germans or North American. Anybody family coming over here to get land, I'm not talking about it. That wasn't as disruptive to local cultures as the Spanish model. But the Spanish model was different and it was highly racialized. Not that the other one wasn't. The other one was that you brought African slave. That was racialized. But this was the red haired conquistadores, blue eyed came here and men and then they married indigenous women and that the Aztlan was create. The nation of Mexico was created. But they left as an imprint this idea that the closer you were being Spanish than indigenous and the Spanish people in Mexico City didn't know the indigenous Nahutu languages. They looked different, they acted differently, they thought they were more European, they had more contact with Spain and they were very racist to people especially from southern Mexico, which was highly populated, much more Densely populated where the old Mayan and Aztec empires were. So I think I can make a controversial statement that in my. From K through 12, I think I would say that I was at no point more than 25 or 30% white in my schools. And then one school from K through 12, I'd say the so called white population at Jefferson and Eric white school was maybe 10%. And I can say from K through 12, I heard the N word periodically. And I, and I, I never heard anybody that I knew say it. And of course I never said it from five, but I heard everybody say it. And the majority of the population were saying it were Mexican American or right from Mexico. So, and they were not, they were not using that term always toward African Americans. They were calling dark people from Mexico. Or you would have somebody come from school and they would say, oh, my grandmother doesn't like me because she calls me chocolate, I'm the dark one. Or you'd be working pruning vines with somebody. And I did that since I was 8 years old. And it would be a nice day in late February, early February, and it was kind of getting warm and it was at the end of tine vines and they would have a, you know, it'd be 2:00 and they'd have a long shirt on and you'd have a T shirt and you'd say, would you take. Why are you doing this? And they said, I don't want to look like an in. That's what they would say. I don't want to get too tan. I don't want, you know, in the summer you would have to shorten. So I. There wasn't. That's something that is never spoken about. Never. And if I know I'm going to get a lot of hostile comments. But there was something about that culture and it's institutionalized in Mexico. I just think if there were poor people in Oaxaca and they looked like the ruling class, like Ms. Sheinbaum or all those people, and they were mostly of Spanish descent, they wouldn't be treated the way they are. And they'll tell you this. I spent a year at a think tank when I was teaching at Cal State. But I went to a very prestigious think tank and there were two professors there. It was a universal think tank. In other words, you got a year off to work on your book. And there were two professors there from Mexico and I think one of them had red hair and blue eyes and the other one was very light skinned and they hated the United States. We'd get in big arguments because I had just. I was working on Mexifornia or I had the idea for it, and they basically said, we paid you back and you deserve what you get. And I said, what are you talking about? And they said, we are exporting all. And they didn't use the word indigenous. We're exporting all the people to the United States. And I would always say, well, maybe you don't understand irony and paradox. Maybe the people that you're exporting are harder worker and better people than the people like you. And they would think that was ridiculous. These were people with PhDs and Marxists. So it's something that no one ever talks about, racism in Mexico, and especially shown by the endemic among the wealthy, entrenched classes. It's a caste system. It's not unlike India. It's the untouchable class. They are the untouchable caste and they are the people coming to the United States. And one of the reasons they're coming is not just economic security. I asked a person I knew very well. He helped me for about a year working. And I got to know him really well. I won't mention his name. He's still around. I said, why did you come here? And he'd say, you know, I was treated with dignity for the first time. I'm just going to use a pseudonym. When I went to a doctor, they said, Mr. Garcia. When I went to the office, Mr. Garcia, we want you to do this. Can I help you, Mr. Garcia? It was that they treated me exactly the same as a wealthy white person. He said, that's unheard of. Where I came from, people would know that I was indigenous. And then if I went into a big city, I had expected to get less accessibility. So we don't talk about that. Another thing, we don't talk about the immigration. If you look at UN statistics on obesity, Mexico is ranked, and I think it used to be. I haven't checked lately in the top 10. We talk about obese Americans, but there's been a lot of studies, people can check this. But one out of four, as I understand that go into the hospital and have a comprehensive blood count or are found out to be diabetic or pre diabetic. One out of four California residents, and that is endemic among the Mexican immigrant community, at least, especially as people age and they're not doing physical labor the same degree. So what I'm getting at. It used to be a narrative, Jack, that we were told that there was this aging white population and there were all these Healthy robust immigrants that were coming in. And they wrote about, there was a very famous Chicano activist who said we're tired of taking care of all these white people. Meaning that the rest homes and assistants were young immigrants. And there was a lot of truth to that. They were. But what they didn't tell you is that the health related problems with obesity and you really saw it with COVID that just one of the things that no one talks about in California that took an enormous toll on the immigrant communities. And everybody said it was because they were denied care. And I can tell you in my own community they had as much care or as little care as I did. And I had I think Covid three or four times very ill from it. And obesity was a force multiplier. We had a really high mortality rate in Fresno county among Hispanic groups. And one of the problems was with obesity. And so what I'm getting at is if you were in an honest society and you really were compassionate, you wouldn't say that systemic racism is holding back the immigrant community. You would say legality is. And we have to have a Marshall plan on diet and exercise and healthy living because we have a population that has a higher percentage per capita of obesity and we know who they are and we can help them. But you can't talk about that because if you do then you're stereotyping or you're fat shaming or you're racist.

Jack Fowler (46:34)

Well, that's why we have the Victor Davis Hansen show.

Victor Davis Hanson (46:37)

Well, I mean it's not confined to a particular group by necessarily race, it's by class people. That's a proven scientific fact fact that the poorer people are, the more likely they are as a statistic demographic to suffer obesity. Maybe it's because food is cheaper than carbohydrate. Who knows fatty food pre processed. But these are things that we don't talk about. But I grew up with it and everybody talks about it and I mean everybody, the people that don't look like me talk about it. But we can't talk about that publicly.

Jack Fowler (47:17)

Well, let's keep talking about immigration, Victor. The Maga vs Elon vs Vivek Ramaswamy over the issue raised in the last week. The need alleged need for more HB visas for tech high tech workers. By the way, I just want to read here that Breitbart has a story poll. 60% of Americans say US does not need more H1B visa workers. It's a Rasmussen report poll that came out the other day. Elon seems to have stepped back a little bit or refined his position anyway. Victor, do you want to make some sense of what's gone on here?

Victor Davis Hanson (48:06)

When you hear these arguments, it's always better to look at the data. And the data is Elon Musk and Ras Vedek are right that we are short engineers. They're absolutely right about that. But they're insensitive to the truth that in terms of immigrants in actual numbers and in terms of a percentage of the population, we are at a record high. Much greater than the Irish influx In the mid 19th century, much greater than the Italian Eastern European influx from, say, 1880 to 1920. We were about, we're close to, I think 16% of the population was not born here and in actual numbers. Now, given the Biden influx, I think we're up to 50 to 55 million, might even be 60 million that were not born here out of 330 million. So the MAGA base, I don't think they understand that. The MAGA base wants legal, only immigration. And it doesn't want a million people. It wants about 250,000. And they want engineers, and so they want more than that. So is there a compromise? I would think that if you could set a number, 250, 300, whatever, of legal, only immigration, stop, illegal, then you would say to the forces of Silicon Valley, the tech people. For every tech person we bring in, if you. Their argument is the best engineers is we are in need of not just coders, but the top people, the really best engineers. And those people are not found among the population in enough numbers. Therefore, you don't understand. Elon is telling us we got to recruit like a basketball team. So we're trying to get all of the best people from India, Vietnam, China, and we want to bring them in. And so I think people should say, well, they have to be at the best level, that you don't have enough Americans. But don't tell us you don't have enough very good middle level people, because we do. But for each person that you bring in under there, we're going to stop another person coming in because we're going to keep to a finite number. And I guess if you were going to think about it, then they have to make the argument okay, for the good of the country and the powers of assimilation, integration, intermarriage and Americanization. You're right. We have a record number of people. It's completely chaotic. We only want to have 300,000, so we want 100. But we will tell you who can't come in and Then they're going to have to say, I think the obvious is the post Ted Kennedy era. He was the one that started the idea that you got preference by your uncle or cousin. I don't understand that. If you come in illegally and you have a child who's an anchor baby, and then that child grows up and says, I'm getting set of citizenship for my mom and dad, okay, but also for my first cousin and my grandmother. Well, we don't know who they are. We don't know why they should be given a slot just because they happen to be related to you other. Other than an engineer from India. So that's a legitimate argument. That's a compromise. Another thing I don't understand is I just, I'm not a. I don't believe that Americans are genetically inferior to Chinese and Indians as far as engineers. So if there's something wrong with our university system. But what I'm getting at is who trains these people? Mostly American universities. Not all, but when they talk about hiring foreign nationals and they're mad about visas, these are people who graduate with electrical engineering or computer engineering or whatever from Stanford or San Jose State or UC Berkeley. They're here and they came through a system that trained them. And maybe then the argument is, we're telling people to go into psychology. Why doesn't Elon or Vivex say we need to have more people with skills and that can be at the bottom, that are plumbers and electricians and that can be at the top that are electrical engineers or computer science people. But we have too many psych majors, sociology majors or social science majors and try to affect that. Or Elon, this is your next frontier. You broke into. And I've said that. I just did a video for our Ultra Jack. I tried it for a new. We have a new idea that maybe on Fridays we'll have a video instead of a third Ultra essay. But I would say to Elon, you revolutionized the space industry. You saved NASA with your rocket program. You saved us on social media by opening up on X, the old Twitter, and you have saved the electric car industry. The Tesla is by far superior to any other ev. You broke into the big three, so you have a new frontier. It's called higher education. Why don't you either endow an existing program, take a university that's got a good name, it's got infrastructure, and create the Elon Musk School of Computer Science, or maybe go to the University of Austin that's starting out and say, I want to put you put 300 million in the campaign. Put a billion dollars, you have net worth 400 billion. Put a billion dollars and endow this program and so make it merocratic and scour the nation for people who have potential and have it a BA combined MA program. Many of them already do. There's one at Stanford. That way you can get an MA in one year as your fifth year. So why don't you do that? You start when you're 18 and you're going to educate them and turn them out in five years and then you won't be short engineers. We could do that. But just to come in to the MAGA people and say, well, we're going to let in all these people. I think Vivek misspoke. But he said, you know, Americans have their culture, their education. They're too lazy, basically, he said, and we've got to get hardscrabble immigrants. Well, that's not going to, I'm not going to get into the argument. It's just not going to work with the mega base. Donald Trump is not politically able to satisfy that argument. So the only way that argument can be made is, as I said earlier, for each engineer at the top level, you have to say there's one less person admitted on purely family considerations other than the immediate family. So there's ways around to solve it, but they have to solve it.

Jack Fowler (55:23)

Well, Victor, we have another big story to get your take on as we come around the home stretch here and head to the finish line. And this has to do with the intelligence agencies doctoring the evidence of COVID and its origin in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We'll get your take on this, Victor, and maybe another thing or two quickly when we come back from these final important messages. We are back with the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Again. We're recording on Saturday, 28th December, and today's episode. You're hearing it first on New Year's Eve, December 31st, Victor. The show's also being. We're videotaping the programs now and they are findable on Rumble. I can't give out the address because I don't know it. Let folks search for the Victor Davis Hansen show. They want to watch it instead of just listen. They can do that. I apologize for the face of the host. That would be me. Victor. The New York Post has a story out Yesterday on the 27th Intel Biggs hid Covid origins. So asked to put together in 2021 an analysis of where this had come from, three scientists with the Defense Intelligence Agency's national center for Medical Intelligence. Their names were John Hardam, Robert Cutlip and Jean Paul Chretien. They came up with some very troubling findings and here were three of them. The first, the COVID virus contained a feature allowing for easier transmission to humans than was constructed in a manner similar to that described in a years old Chinese study.

Victor Davis Hanson (57:20)

That's one.

Jack Fowler (57:21)

The second, a Chinese military researcher applied for a patent for a COVID 19 vaccine just weeks after the virus was first sequenced in 2020. He later died after falling from the infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology's roof, according to U.S. investigators. I remember that the third thing, the WIV researchers work with U.S. researchers who train them to construct viruses without leaving a trace of them being engineered. Now the last thing I'm going to read here, Victor, rather than amp, this is again from the New York Post. Rather than amplifying these findings, they were all but ignored. As Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines was preparing her report on Covid origins which Biden ordered in May 2021. Victor, I'm going to. I often ask questions. Are you surprised by this? I know you're not, but if you give us your take on this and then also one of the core things here is why the hell is the United States of America dealing with population slaughtering whatever you want or I can't think viruses with the greatest enemy we have on the planet?

Victor Davis Hanson (58:41)

I don't know. As soon as anybody read about it and that was in early 2020. I wrote a couple of articles that it had to be the lab, not that I'm a scientist, but there had not been a human. There had been no animal with COVID before a human got it. So if it came from a pangolin or a bat, somebody could find a pangolin or bat that had it and they went and they searched. The pangolin and bat population was not in Wuhan. I know there was an open market but there were not these animals running around with it. There was a Wuhan biology lab, security number four that was conducting gain of function research in Wuhan. Everybody remember that. In Wuhan it was run by soon by the People's Liberation Army. Anthony Fauci was routing money to it and instrumentation and expertise through Peter Dasich's Echo Health. That's not in dispute Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci and others when this outbreak was becoming newsworthy. In a series of messages, most of them redacted, but enough was not redacted to show they had real concern that we, the people, might understand this to be subsidized gain of function, research. None of that is in dispute. There was an effort on the part, and I can remember the press conference, he came out very early and he said, the data, if you look at the data points, Jack, look at the data points, they all point to a natural origin. There was no data points. He just said that. And when people started to connect the dots, as he suggested, they looked at the genetic sequence. Biologists did, and they said the cleavage site. They went through all of the particular possibilities of mutations, and they said, this is not like something that would be very likely in the natural world. We had Stephen Quay on three times. He said very. And he was very dispassionate. He was not political or ideological. He just said it would be very hard to recreate this genetic sequence in nature. It is designed to be infectious at each decision point, each crossroad on the genetic material. So everybody understood that. Jon Stewart said that, Tom Cotton said that. Nicholas Wade, the renowned science writer for the New York Times, said that, Bill Maher said that. And everybody, every time they said it, whether they were a celebrity or a scientist or a politician, this engineered outrage came up from the Biden administration. And what do I mean by that? I mean the National Institute of Allergy Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, the National Institute of Health, the cdc, the fda, hhs, the intelligence agency, they all said the same thing. And so the question is, why? Now, let's go through the A, B, C, D alternatives. Number one, the Chinese were yelling from the very beginning, you're racist, racist, racist. Donald Trump calls it the Chinese virus, the Wuhan virus. That is racist, racist. The Chinese Communists, who were the most racist people in the world that wouldn't let African immigrants into McDonald's, when it broke out, had signs up and they thought they could appeal toward the liberal sensitivities of Americans. So we don't want to say it's Chinese. That would be racist. That's one alternate. And these are not mutually exclusive. Number two, the Biden family, as we now know from these archives, was heavily compromised by the ruling hierarchy in China. And there was the insinuation that if, if the Bidens came out, the Biden, CIA, FBI, intelligence agencies, and had a concerted effort to demand from China and say, 1 million Americans are dead because of your virus, and we want restitution, we want honesty. They would start to leak out all of the money that had gone to Hunter Biden and spread. That's another number two. Number three, Is it was just that our highest ranking health officials, when it was made illegal to conduct gain of function, wanted to continue it. Whether that was because, as they said, they wanted to make vaccines or they were working stealthily with DOD and they were afraid that the Chinese were developing bioweapons, biology, bioweapons. And we were falling behind because we were out. So DOD went over to Fauci and people and said, you can't. I know it's illegal, but can't you get your guy in there or can't you have some kind of information so we know what they're doing? That's number three. Number four, I think it was political. That's another. That Donald Trump, they really wanted to destroy him. The economy was booming in 2020. We were coming, coming out of COVID he was starting to be dead. Even in his approvals. He looked pretty good against a potential rival. There was peace in the world. And they really, really, really wanted to say that Donald Trump was a racist. And this whole idea that the Chinese cooked it up was more of this China bashing tariffs and China was let China alone, that kind of stuff. And that was really pushed by Nancy Pelosi and others, many of them with ties to China. And then of course, the fifth is, well, Victor, don't be so sophisticated. There was 330,000 Chinese students here. A percent or two were engaged in espionage. The other people were paying 110% of tuition, room and board. We had billions of dollars in investment by Wall Street, Silicon Valley. We had a lot of cross fertilization and no one wanted to rock that boat. And so they were going to lie that this was just. Oh, what was this? This is what they asked us to believe. If I was talking to me, they'd say, victor, you idiot. Now there was a pangolin and it just jumped into a human person. We don't know where that happened. It's just a coincidence that it was a mile away from the Wuhan lab. And it's just a coincidence that the original Chinese scientists who were knowledgeable of the origins have disappeared. And it's just a coincidence that we have a lockdown on all information. And it's just a coincidence that for at least the first two weeks or so, we banned all flights from, from Wuhan Wuhan to all other Chinese cities. But, you know, things happen. We let them go to Milan and jfk. A million people to the States, a million people to Europe that spread it. That's just a coincidence. So we all know that what happened, it was a Some type. There's only one mystery, Jack. It was a gain of function project with very sloppy rules by people who were too unsophisticated to be trusted with it, who were using foreign knowledge, foreign technology, foreign instrumentation. They couldn't even build their own lab. The French built it. And then we provided a lot of the instrumentation that they staffed it with and it escaped. And they tried to. As all totalitarian society, they tried to keep it quiet. And then when it was out it and they couldn't control it, it was just as well as the whole world got it than just the Chinese. And that's pretty much what it was. And then they had to lie about it. And they knew that Western society is very sensitive about racism and xenophobia. So then they played the wounded fawn. How dare you do this? Why? They cleaned up their act and eliminated all the people who might have had knowledge and would speak to the Western media. And then here in the United States in an election year, the left looked at this whole situation and they found it useful. The COVID lockdowns. And we now know from, I think Jay Bacharius got out the School of Epidemiology and what we see in Scandinavia, that it's a. It's as likely that more people died from decreased economic activity, suicide, drug abuse, spousal abuse, missed surgeries, missed consultations, and not even getting into the social fabric of the 2020 riots for 120 days. And what it did to the country and the looting and all, I think all of that madness was spurned in part by the COVID lockdowns. In any case, the left felt that this was valuable to suggest that it was a natural leak. You can't blame anybody but Donald Trump for allowing this to spread. That's what their attitude. And it worked. Without the COVID virus and without the lockdown, Donald Trump would have been president in 2020. And if anybody objected to that, and I can tell you that I did, but I wasn't one of the first, but I was one of the early people in three or four columns. And I had a letter from, as I said earlier, the Stanford alumni. And this person suggested that I should be professionally reprimanded, that I was unprofessional, that I was causing death. I wasn't talking about the lockdowns. I was talking about the origins of COVID And then he lied and said that I had gone on a radio show and said I was a doctor when somebody just said doctor because I had a PhD and I didn't correct Them and he said you were posing as a doctor. It was horrible. And the guy that one of the people from the alumni wrote a very nice letter and said, could you just please explain this so we can tell this person, call him off. And then that led to indirectly, after January, it was any. Anybody who was in a public or private situation that could communicate, writing a syndicated column, a podcast or at a major university, anybody who said that it was likely that come from the lab. The forces of repression, censorship, the left went after just like if you question Mask or you question the COVID thing. And they didn't go after, they tried to delete, destroy you. And so I'm kind of bitter about that. And then my close friend Scott Atlas, although he was more concerned on the wisdom of the lockdown, he also did say in commentaries that he supported the vaccination for older people and younger people. But he didn't think it would be an ironclad vaccination being infectious or infected. And he did think it was from the COVID lab. That was a whole package. If you bought into that package, have worries about COVID have worries about the vaccination being the cure. All have worries about the idea of a pangolin bat. That was it. You were done for. They went after you, right?

Jack Fowler (71:07)

Well, Victor, I promised my wife as we were getting to the finish line here, because every day since the news came out about Joe Biden and the gold medal families, I just said, I'm going to raise it. There are things she cannot stand most about Joe Biden, looking back over the last, not only the last four years, but actually the last 40 years, was that he kept those families waiting three hours while he took a nap on a plane. The 13 dead soldiers.

Victor Davis Hanson (71:40)

People had suggested that, you remember, that he had been deliberately. And that was one of the things that Corinne Jean Pierre became. I read that was a cheap fake. That was a lie. Anybody who suggested that he was callous, anybody who suggested that he was a child and called people names, he slurred people he called African American, a citizen boy, just like during the campaign when he said you're a junkie or you ain't black. Any suggestion that Joe Biden was Joe Biden. In a weird way, Jack, he benefited from his dementia because he was always that way, mean spirited, selfish, a grifter. Anybody look at those houses he had and look at the salary that he was paid and look at the lifestyles of Jim Biden or Hunter Biden. You cannot explain it. If you looked at their IRS returns, it doesn't make any sense. You don't just write, you know, loan repayment and get 250,000 and not declare taxes on it. So they were all in on it. They were making money. And if anybody's. Everybody knew it. Everybody knew that Joe Biden was a callous SOB he always, always was. But when he got dementia and he continued or those traits were accentuated and they were, you know, being late. He was always late. He was late the other day for a picture of the G20. He always made people late. He always used racist epithets. The whole corn pop saga was innately racist. Everything about him was the praise of James O. Eastland. And they never called me boy, Jack. Remember that? Those white races never called me boy. And I have a boy over here that's doing a good job. I have a boy just, oh, Barack Obama's the first black candidate's articulate. He's clean. He did that the entire time. Oh, I'm from a slave state. Delaware was a border state. We had slavery. And he got away with all of it. And then the dementia came, and he continued that. But he was in a national.

Jack Fowler (73:55)

Forum.

Victor Davis Hanson (73:56)

So everybody could intently care before he was an old blowhard. That's why Barack Obama said, don't underestimate Joe's ability to F everything up. Or when he went to him and said, joe, you don't have to do this. They all know he was a walking disaster. But when he became president and the dementia accelerated, then you started to notice it. And then people on his side use that dementia as an excuse. And I don't mean they said, well, he has dementia. Don't take him literally. No, they said things like, how dare you suggest that the president. That is ageism. That is making fun of people. How dare you do that? And so he could be late, he could be callous, he could look at his watch when he was at a funeral service. He could come late to it. He could use the word S.O.B. he did everything. And it was all make himself the victim. Yes, he was the victim. He was the victim. And that empowered him for another four years. And now, you know what? He's not president in less than 30 days. There's nobody invested in protecting him anymore. The people in the media who lied and lied to us, like Joe Scarborough. I just talked to him. I've never seen him more fit. Joe Biden or he's fit as a fiddle. I think somebody called him sharp as a tack. All those people have nothing to gain from him. He can't help them. And he can't hurt them if they tell the truth. So now Joe is Joe, and he is a befuddled, just like Robert Hurst said, he's a befuddled old man. And there's not going to be anybody who's going to say you're lying. He's fit as a fiddle. They're going to say he's a befuddled old man. He played a fast one on us. The United States for four years has been led by somebody who was senile. And we all lied about it. So that's where we are. Yeah. And while he was lying about it, he had just finished the greatest con. He was vice President of the United States for eight years. And he used that office and the hint from it in the four ensuing years of private citizenship that he would return to the White House. And he used that in Ukraine, in China, in other countries, to meet with oligarchs and government officials to get some $20 million. And I think that's a low ball amount. And one of the ways that the left finessed this was they went on the projectionist offense. He's involved with Ukrainians, he's involved with the Chinese. It's Russian collusion. It's Russian collusion. It's laptop disinformation. It. That's the alpha bing as pinging. Remember Jake Sullivan? You got to cover the alpha ping. Trump is communicating with the Alpha bank in Russia. Or Jake. Mr. Tony Blinken. We need 51. Can't you. Hey, Mike, you were in the CIA for a while. Can't you get 51 intelligence off? Get old Leon Panetta, he's a good. He'll lie. Get James Clapper, John Brennan, he always. Get him in there. Get him out there. We two weeks before the election, we got to swear, swear, swear. That laptop was made up in Russia. There was a bunch of little gremlins in the Kremlin and they took a picture of a Mac and then they printed it out maybe on a 3D. And then they have all these clever pictures that they Photoshop. That's the narrative. And, oh, the FBI has it and they've authenticated. Keep that silent. Can't you call up Ray and tell everybody to put a lid on it? That's what they did. And now it's all over. Everything is over. You can. It's like everybody wants to know why everybody feels so happy. Every walk of life, it's like a dictatorship fell. The science writer can say, you know what? I'm going to write an article about where this thing really came from which you just referenced. Why didn't we have that article before? Everybody was praising the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal last week. Wow. They talked to 50 sources and they really showed Joe Biden is demented. I don't have any respect. They could have done that two years earlier and saved us. They didn't want anything to come out that might have helped Donald Trump.

Jack Fowler (78:22)

It's a great Claremont Review of books along those lines. Victor William Vogli, Tracking the.

Victor Davis Hanson (78:28)

I like William Vogli. He's a really astute writer. He's like, that's a great magazine. But my God, it's like everybody is rejoicing now because they can think, I can write about the Wuhan virus. I can write about the laptop. I can say the Russian disinformation. I can say the Nunes memo was authentic. I can talk about how decrepit our Navy is. I can say that Mark Milley is a joke and he called us fascist. And he. Under his reign, whether it was fleeing Afghanistan and leaving 50 billion or having 45,000 short recruits, it was people like him in the military. And then he can say, jack, but I'm just in an advisory role. I'm not in the chain of command. He said, I wish you had have told us that when you told the theater commanders to report to you while you assert control from your own commander in chief. Wow. What a weird, wild ride the last four years. And that's why everybody, everybody seems says something to you now. Do you feel. I just did an interview this morning with Larry Kudlow and he said, do you feel like there's a sense of relief and everybody's happy? I said, yes. And he said, do you feel that even the left are resigned? Yes, exactly. They're tired of lying. Not that they won't go back to it, but it's almost like, take him away. I can't take anymore. I'm going to get in a fetal position. I did my best. I lied to you for four years. I almost pulled it off and then he imploded. I did my best. I'm tired now. Yes, it did come from Wuhan. I know it did. Yes, we are. We did give $50 billion in weapons of the enemy. Yes. Israel is not. It's not committing genocide, but I just can't do it anymore. Let Trump come in. I promise I won't call about. I won't mention the Logan Act.

Jack Fowler (80:29)

There's a lot of co conspirators to what went on the last few years. Yes, we're at the end here. But as we do at the end, Victor, we look at and comment on some of the folks who've left messages about the podcast and rate the show. But you can do an Apple and Victor's rating is 0 to 5 stars and 4.9 plus. So thanks for folks that do that. Here's a really interesting comment someone left. It's titled A Voice of Wisdom and Good Old Common Sense comes as a letter. Dear Victor, I listened today to you discuss the recent attack on Christmas market in Germany. My husband and I spent two weeks in early December there visiting my family. We also experienced many hours at several Christmas markets in big cities. Cologne, Aachen, et cetera. The overwhelming influx of Middle Eastern immigrants is hard to miss. Rude and loud behavior was prevalent. The number of mostly undercover police officers was in stark contrast to what I remember growing up in Germany. There wasn't an underpass or a bridge with graffiti absent. The amount of garbage aside, the roadways was depressing. What happened to my beloved motherland? I'm a proud American now and I'm glad to live in a sparsely populated area of a sparsely populated state. Always thankful for your wisdom. Wishing you, you and your loved one much success and health in 2025. That's easy to answer from Montana. Yeah.

Victor Davis Hanson (81:56)

Well, Becca, you know what happened to your country? The left took over all of your parties. I think part of it was unification. You brought in a lot of former communists like Ms. Merkel, and they took over. So they destroyed your energy sector. They ensured that premium blue chip companies like Volkswagen or Audi would not be competitive on the war, Seymour, on the world market, because you're paying three times what the energy is elsewhere. And then you had that yes we can movement. Remember Merkel? Yes we can. We can do this. And you let in a million illegal immigrants from the Middle east that hated you. And then you let the left convince everybody that 70 years after the World War II and all of the reparations you paid and all, all of the revisionism you tried to reject your fascist interludes. And yet the left kept hammering away that you were guilty and terrible and you couldn't have a military and all of this, and you let this go on and you're incapable of restoring the rule of law and returning to the good Germany and they're not going to be able to get out of it. I don't see how they get out of it. Because it's not just that they destroyed their nuclear and natural gas industries for energy generation. It's not just that they let in a million People, they have a mindset that's taken over the country that is very anti. It's kind of like our left on steroids. It really is that Green Party mentality. It's going to be very. It's either going to do one of two things. It's either going to destroy the country and it's almost there, or it's going to create a big right wing backlash. And I don't know. The alternative for Deutschland has got some good ideas, but it's going to be a shock if it takes over. And they deserve it. But I'm not confident for what it's. It gets back to this idea that Westerners can't defend their civilization. They know that everybody in the world wants to share. They all want to come here in the west and they want to go to Dubai or Bahrain or Qatar, not because they look like Syria or Egypt, because they've completely westernized. And anywhere that a country has westernized, people want to go to. And the Western, they know that one of the ways they get in and they manipulate the west is when they get there, they tell the Western people, you are racist, you are horrible, you are colonialist, you're imperialist and the postmodern Western line. And rather than say, screw you, you came here, not me, and you're coming for a culture that is not your own, that you preferred and I'm going to teach you. But if you don't want to it, you can go home. They don't have that ability to do it and these immigrants know it. So they wait till Christmas holidays. They get on motorcycles, you've seen those in England and elsewhere. They just get on all these motorcycles and then they run. They kind of rev them up and they weigh Palestinian flags and they insult Christians and they drive through and then the Christians look like HD Wells. More Eloy oh, my God. We can't have violence, we can't have that. We must have earned that. So I don't know if there'll be awakening up in the United States. We've had awakening up. We really have.

Jack Fowler (85:43)

I think we have a little more religiosity here too.

Victor Davis Hanson (85:45)

Yes, we have more religiosity. And we also have a frontier culture of self sufficiency and pride and don't tread on me, democracy, populism, everybody makes fun of and we have half the country, thank God. Its attitude is, I don't have to tell you anything. This is our country. We don't have to be perfect to be good. I'll tell you one thing, we're a hell of a lot better than the alternative. You chose to come here. If you don't like it, leave. But if you stay, you're going to be an American. And that's why this country works. And we're not going to turn it into your country. You're not going to turn it in Syria or Egypt or Iraq. You can go back and we're not going to prejudge you. Great places love to visit, but we're not going to make it here.

Jack Fowler (86:37)

Some of them anyway. Well, Victor, you've been terrific today, as ever. I want to thank the folks that also send me little notes, appreciation for civil thoughts, which I do for the center for Civil Society. Every Friday comes out 14 recommended readings. Go to civilthoughts.com sign up. And trust me, you're not not selling the name or anything like that. You're gonna like it. Victor, again, you've been great. Thanks, folks, for listening, especially.

Victor Davis Hanson (87:04)

Thank you, everybody.

Jack Fowler (87:06)

We'll be back soon. Next year.

Victor Davis Hanson (87:08)

Yes, next year. Thank you.

Jack Fowler (87:10)

The Victor Davis Hanson Show.

Victor Davis Hanson (87:11)

Bye.