Return to Normality and Meritocracy

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Victor Davis Hanson Show – "Return to Normality and Meritocracy"

Release Date: February 4, 2025
Hosts: Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler
Guest: Unnamed Expert

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Return to Normality and Meritocracy," co-hosts Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler delve into a range of pressing political and social issues. The discussion primarily centers around former President Donald Trump's foreign policy maneuvers, the impact of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in educational institutions, the automation of agricultural labor, and recent developments concerning Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) standards. The conversation is dynamic, insightful, and peppered with notable quotes that underscore the hosts' perspectives.

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Donald Trump's Foreign Policy: A Hardline Stance

The episode opens with an analysis of Donald Trump's recent activities in South and Central America, particularly focusing on his dealings with Colombia, Venezuela, and Panama. The hosts contrast Trump's assertive approach with that of President Biden, highlighting Trump's willingness to employ economic pressure to achieve diplomatic goals.

• Unnamed Guest (07:07):
  "He just went to Venezuela and he said, we want the hostages back and you're going to take all of the criminals you deliberately let out of your jails... and if you don't want it, we're going to boycott all of your oil."

This statement emphasizes Trump's tough negotiating tactics, portraying him as a "tough guy" who doesn't back down in international relations.

• Jack Fowler (09:33):
  "There's two interpretations of it. That's probably the most likely, that they're incompetent... or you could have the minority view that the Bidens are highly compromised..."

The discussion reflects skepticism towards the Biden administration's competence and suggests that Trump's methods, although aggressive, might yield more respect from other nations.

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The Downfall of DEI in Universities

A significant portion of the conversation critiques DEI initiatives within higher education, arguing that such policies undermine meritocracy and lead to administrative bloat without enhancing institutional effectiveness.

• Unnamed Guest (13:02):
  "They made America be our penal institution."

This provocative statement underscores the belief that universities have become overly punitive and bureaucratic due to DEI policies, turning them into de facto penal institutions.

• Unnamed Guest (18:11):
  "They're getting to the point where they're going to make some concessions on the border. And I think we should not fly anybody back to Mexico..."

The guest argues for stricter immigration controls and criticizes universities for maintaining policies that prioritize DEI over competency.

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Automation in Agriculture: The Erosion of Hand Labor

The hosts discuss the dramatic shift from manual labor to automation in the agricultural sector, using blueberries as a primary example. They argue that technological advancements have drastically reduced the need for human labor, contrary to some political narratives.

• Unnamed Guest (44:21):
  "The reduction in hand labor is just astronomical. I'm looking out the window and we used to have 180 acres, but I have 43 acres."

This highlights the significant impact of automation on farm operations, decreasing the reliance on manual labor and increasing efficiency.

• Unnamed Guest (51:30):
  "If you want your house rebuilt, there's a 62% labor participation rate in the United States..."

The guest points out the ample available workforce in the U.S., challenging the notion that immigration is necessary to fill labor gaps in agriculture.

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Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Standards and Recent Accidents

The episode shifts focus to the FAA, scrutinizing its current standards and recent mishaps. The hosts argue that DEI policies have compromised the FAA's operational effectiveness, leading to increased accidents and near-misses.

• Unnamed Guest (60:11):
  "Donald Trump was right. So if he's wrong, then let us get the information out. But, you know, we don't get the information out."

This critique suggests that Trump's focus on DEI may have indirectly contributed to systemic failures within the FAA by sidelining merit-based practices.

• Unnamed Guest (75:35):
  "And Donald Trump was right."

Reiterating the position that Trump's criticisms of DEI initiatives have merit, particularly in the context of FAA's performance issues.

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Conclusion: The Path Forward

In wrapping up, the hosts emphasize the need to return to meritocratic principles across governmental and institutional frameworks. They advocate for policies that prioritize competency and excellence over identity-based initiatives, arguing that such a shift will lead to more effective governance and societal stability.

• Unnamed Guest (83:37):
  "The DEI is the majority. If you're a woman or you're gay or you're non-white... it's an enormous portion."

This encapsulates the guest's view that DEI has expanded beyond its original intent, affecting a significant portion of the population and undermining merit-based selection processes.

• Unnamed Guest (86:15):
  "And Donald Trump will just blow on it and it will collapse."

The guest expresses optimism that Trump's policies will eventually dismantle what they view as flawed DEI systems.

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Key Takeaways

• Trump's Foreign Policy: Assertive and economically driven, aiming to restore respect and reciprocity in international relations.

• Critique of DEI: DEI initiatives are argued to compromise meritocracy, leading to inefficiencies and administrative overreach in universities and federal agencies like the FAA.

• Automation in Agriculture: Technological advancements have significantly reduced the need for manual labor, challenging narratives that advocate for increased immigration to fill labor shortages.

• FAA Standards: Current DEI policies within the FAA are blamed for operational inefficiencies and increased aviation incidents.

• Meritocracy Over Identity: A recurring theme is the advocacy for merit-based systems over identity-focused policies to enhance effectiveness and societal cohesion.

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Notable Quotes

• Unnamed Guest (07:07):
  "If you don't want it, we're going to boycott all of your oil."

• Unnamed Guest (13:02):
  "They made America be our penal institution."

• Unnamed Guest (44:21):
  "The reduction in hand labor is just astronomical."

• Unnamed Guest (75:35):
  "And Donald Trump was right."

• Unnamed Guest (83:37):
  "The DEI is the majority..."

• Unnamed Guest (86:15):
  "And Donald Trump will just blow on it and it will collapse."

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This episode of "The Victor Davis Hanson Show" presents a robust critique of current DEI policies and supports a return to meritocratic principles. Through a combination of policy analysis and anecdotal evidence, the hosts argue that such a shift is essential for restoring efficiency and respect in both national and international arenas.

Transcript

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack Fowler]

But my wife grabbed the new delivery.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack Fowler]

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Jackson. I'm Jack Fowler, the host, the deranged namesake, as he calls himself. Victor Davis Hansen is the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Let me pull my microphone closer. And the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. We are recording on February 1st. It's a Saturday. This particular episode will be up on Tuesday 4th February. Groundhog Day will have come in the, in the midst of that and Lord knows, Victor, what else? We could say this. Every show from now on, by the time we, when we record, by the time it comes live, there will be about 10 important things will have happened. And a lot's happened in the past few days.

[Unnamed Guest]

Something's making everybody's head explode at.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Warp speed, right? Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. So it's, it's every day I'm enjoying it, but I'm taking it too.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Number of people have.

[Unnamed Guest]

Heard they're not the Victor people.

[Jack Fowler]

Like, they're very happy that Victor's happy, you know, yours.

[Unnamed Guest]

I'm very happy. I am very happy.

[Jack Fowler]

All right. Well, let's see. Victor, we're going to start off the show today by talking about Donald Trump's activities related to Colombia, Venezuela, Panama. We have some Ivy League topics to discuss later on. Democrat dis ongoing disconnect with reality. Actually part of it involves blueberries. We'll get to that. Money being pulled from dei, foreign aid programs, FAA standards, so much more. And we'll get to all of that when we come back from these important messages.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack Fowler]

We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. I did not mention Victor's Got A website, the Blade of Perseus. Its web address is victorhansen.com Go there, check it out, and I'll tell you why later in this episode, why you should be subscribing. Victor. The news today on the first is Rick Grinnell, Donald Trump's special ambassador. I guess he's got a portfolio of do whatever the hell Donald Trump wants him to do. And he's a big, he's a big tough dude. He's, he came back yesterday from Venezuela with six Americans who have been imprisoned there. It just seems like another example of Donald Trump, tough guy, don't mess with America.

[Unnamed Guest]

He just went to Venezuela and he said, we want the hostages back and you're going to take all of the criminals you deliberately let out of your jails and mental institutions to screw up the United States. And if you don't want it, we're going to boycott all of your oil. And who knows, we might embargo the whole thing because we don't need it. We have more oil than anybody else in the world. So that's the beginning. So he just gave him a list of steps and he probably said, I don't want to do this. This is being mean, but you force us to do this. Da, da, da, da. Whereas Biden would either be incoherent or he'd send some special envoy that would apologize and say, your minimal patients are completely welcome here. We're an open borders country. So it's a big change. And the weird thing about all these things is the Venezuelans will like the Americans better when they, they're treated as adults rather than indulged as children.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, well, I think you like people you respect.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yes.

[Jack Fowler]

That's what clearly don't like people you disrespect.

[Unnamed Guest]

Everybody gets mad when Trump said we're wrong every time he speaks. We were not respected across. And they think, wow, he's a machismo. Oh, and no, no, no, no, no. He's saying that countries will be easier to get along with and they will not do something stupid if they understand who we are and that we're serious and we deter them. And then they sort of respect us, but they have no respect. They have contempt. And then they do something stupid as go into, you know, the Donbass or Crimea or attack Israel or send a Chinese balloon over the country. That's all a sign, a symptom. They have no respect for us.

[Jack Fowler]

Hey, about the Chinese balloon, Victor, since you, you raised it, floated it, the stories that came out this week were that American Intelligence knew about it from when it lifted off. I think the Chinese island is Hainan, something like that. And yet no news of this was shared with the US Military until the balloons came too close to America to shoot them down. They landed, they would. God knows what disaster they may have caused. But this seems like a Biden administration Keystone Cop situation. I mean, they weren't. It was known. Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

There's two interpretations of it. That's probably the most likely, that they're incompetent. They didn't want to offend the Chinese. They remember Blinken and Sullivan were dressed down in Anchorage, I think, in March of their first first month or two or three months in office, and that would set the tone and then they appease. R. Or you could have the minority view that the Bidens are highly compromised and that Tucker, I mean, Hunter on Air Force Two. Air Force Two went to China with his father when Joe Biden was vice president and made a lot of financial commitments. And the Chinese know that. And part of the quid pro quo when they had dealt with these Chinese oligarchs where if your dad's ever president, we expect special treatment and he's afraid that would come out. The Chinese, I think, do have information about the Biden family. Nothing else explains why he said they're not right. He didn't say they were enemies. He said they were not even rivals. So he let China walk all over us. There had to be a reason, either sonality or naivete. Or he was compromised.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, back on Donald Trump and Central America, South America. Any thoughts about the Brinks? I don't even think it's brinksmanship because that implies there's some like uber sensational risk nuclear war on the brink of. But his dealings with Colombia, I mean, folded like a cheap suit or suitcase, whatever, folds cheaply. Your thoughts?

[Unnamed Guest]

I don't think people in the United States realize how many people want to come here, especially the elite of other countries. They come over here, they feel that if they're not white males are treated exceptionally well as DEI people. They're exotic. They're from the aristocratic class. They love the hotels, the universities, the billets. They loved to spout their fashionable anti Americanism to willing ears. And when Donald Trump said, you know, I'm not going to let visas you people come over here, and he suspended the visa office at the American Embassy in Colombia. And so that really hit them. And then he put a travel ban on the entire family of the president of Colombia. And then he said that he was going to have these reciprocal tariffs, and of course, that machismo. First impulse. Well, go ahead. Well, you know, I'm gonna drink whiskey with you. And you. You're a white slaver. And then people whispered and said, no, no, no, no. He's not Joe Biden, Mr. Presidente. He's. He's crazier than you are, and he means it. And you better be careful, because we have no leverage in a trade war with America, nor an immigration war. So we know what we did. We let all those people out. Remember you. You thought it was really cute. The criminals, the felons, the insane people. We put them on planes. We let them go. We cleaned out our. We saved millions of dollars in penal cost. We made America be our penal institution. Remember that? Well, he caught onto it, and he's not Biden, so we gotta take him back. And we just got to shut up or he can do great damage to us.

[Jack Fowler]

That's a great line, Vicar. They made America be our penal institution. That's a great way of capturing.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's what we were yesterday. He slapped a 25% tariff on Mexico, and everybody got very angry. Why is he doing this? Oh, my God. You know, the Wall Street Journal is really strange. They just keep attacking him. And I would ask the Wall Street Journal, do you find anything wrong when you pass. We pass NAFTA, that over the last 25 years, the trade deficit with the United States has gone from 2 billion to 10 billion to 50 billion to 100 billion to 170 billion. Or do you feel at all worried that 63 billion is sent back in remittances? Or do you feel at all worried that probably almost a million Americans have been killed over the last 12 or 15 years from fentanyl deliberately packaged to appeal to Americans? Do you feel bad about that? And do you feel that the cartels are making billions and they're infusing the Mexican economy? Do you have any idea that Ms. Sheinbaum, like Obrador was saying, now, let me think. $170 billion trade surplus here because we're assembling Chinese parts into computers and cars and helping China evade the tariffs. 20, 30 billion here because our cartels are making a fortune by disguising fentanyl and every type of drug, even candy, and we've got 63 billion because we encourage our people to go work for low wages and rely on American entitlements to free up 4 or $500 a month to send here. That's a great deal. But if they ever smart, get smart, and get rid of Joe Biden and object. Then we go right into, you know what racist, nativist Mexican War of 1848 where we used to have the lost empire of Atlant. You're Yankee imperialist. Would you that. And then somebody whispers to Shaim, it doesn't work with him. You are an academic, you've lived in the United States. You know what he's like. He's not going to listen to that. So we'll see. And I have a feeling that very quickly they're going to make some concessions on the border. And I think we should not fly anybody back to Mexico. We really shouldn't, Jack. We should just make a huge hinge and have a hinge door in that wall and have a huge transit station right on the border, bus station. And every hour buses would come in and we would swing over the door and we'd give people lunch, water, survival pack and say, you have to go back in the way in which you arrived here. You got all that publicity, you had your wonderful caravan, everybody waved you on. Now you're going to get in your caravan and go back to your home country. And if they want to fly you back, they can fly you back from a Mexican airport. We should just do that. And that would solve the problem very quickly. That and the wall being completed and no catch and release and refuge status required in your home country. One thing we haven't talked about, all of these radical protesters from the Middle east and I don't know what percentage of the protesters are, but a large percentage surely in fact are. He's going to deport if they break American laws or the university expels them or suspends them and he's going to call in their student visa and then they will get their wish. They hate the Great Satan. They At Columbia, Jack, the protesters took cement and they put them in the toilets of the university buildings to destroy, they said, hundreds of thousands of dollars of plumbing. Think of these entitled kids, these spoiled brats, both Americans and Middle Easterners who come over here and use our hospitality and then ruin a university's sewage system. And then some poor person who's a plumber who's probably maybe an ethnic poor white guy, he's got to go in there and break up all those pipes and deal with all that su age all over him and get very little in compensation compared to what these students do. These are the most selfish, pathetic generation of students I've ever seen. They're so self centered. You know, they call these now they're talking about Micro retirements. And they're angry they have to go in five days a week. Micro retirements.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, we'll look out on Microsoft retirement later in the this episode. Victor, that the, the donor base at Columbia or any of these colleges, I can't imagine why would you give a dollar?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Well, you should anyway.

[Jack Fowler]

But now even now those who stuck it out think I'm giving money so they can what re. Well, we have 17 replumb the busted room.

[Unnamed Guest]

17,000 people classified as an administrators or administrative staff at Stanford. And we have about 16,000 graduate and undergraduates and we have about a 40 billion dollar endowment and they get about 6% on it. So you know, they're getting 7, 8, 9 million depending on the interest rate, billion a year and they should pay income tax on that. And if they had to pay 30% on the endowment income and that would be a lot.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And then pay not only an endowment which is only about half of the annual revenue, but annual giving and take away the tax deductibility and all of a sudden these universities would say we got to cut a billion dollars. We cannot afford all these administrators, we cannot afford all these DEI people. Go. And that would stop a lot of it. I can tell the difference on campus, Jack, already with Trump. I don't see these big protests that were going on for a whole year. I don't see the tents. I don't see the people coming up to you and screaming in your face. I don't see at the law school the trans crowd going in and shouting down the likes of a Judge Duncan. I don't see students going into the president's office and trashing it. You just don't see it. And I think it's because of this, Jack, that deep down in the dark heart of every university president, he's thinking like this. This is really wonderful that Trump is here. Now I'm going to do my boilerplate trashing Trump. But now I have levers on these crazy students. I'm going to say something like this. This is a memo from the president of the university. We're in tough times. We're living under Donald Trump's tyrannical rule. But unfortunately for us, it means that if you violate university, we would be forced by statute to report you and suspend you and you may have to go back to your home country. Now, we wouldn't want that. We deplore it, but we want to warn you. And then the campus gets quiet where before they just trash the campus and the guy just keeps lecturing. They just say, shut up. We're not going to listen to you. So they like Trump. Just like the bankers in Davos. Like Trump. Yeah, yeah. Because he brings back normality. They can trash him for being normal and then appreciate his normality. And he's the greatest gift that ever happened to a college president. It takes away the punishment from them all. You guys just expel the student. Just put him on suspension and send him over to Tom Holman. And Tom will get take care of him.

[Jack Fowler]

I love that guy.

[Unnamed Guest]

You'll put him on a bus back to Jordan. A bus. He'll put him on a cargo ship to Jordan or Egypt or Syria, Iraq or Gaza or the West Bank.

[Jack Fowler]

Hey, before we continue on with Panama and I have something about refugees I'd like to bring up with you, but I want to take a moment here. Just because it's cold outside, it is where I am. It's 20 degrees here in Milford, Connecticut. It doesn't mean you need to stop grilling. Not if you have the right grill. And that would be a Solaire Infrared Grill. Solaire Infrared grills heat up in just three minutes. They perform equally equally, if I could say that correctly. Well, in the cold of winter, as in the heat of summer and grill food much faster. The Solaire Infrared grills heat your food directly, not the air around the food like conventional grills do. The intense heat also results in the juiciest food you'll ever taste from any kind of grill, gas, charcoal or otherwise, to get the great taste. It's all the heat in Solaire Infrared From Best Hot Grill.com it gets hotter than anything you've ever experienced during the season. Maybe a California fire would be hotter. Try the Solaire Infrared Grill now with the demo program. Don't be left out in the cold. Learn more about the USA made Solaire infrared grills at best hot grill.com besthot grill.com and we thank the good people at Solaire for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. Victor, I saw a little nugget on Sweden. I don't know why. Has nothing to do with you, my fellow son of son of Sweden. But for some reason I'm on a number of Swedish accounts. I follow some people on Twitter or x Excuse me. And there's a there's a lot of ruckus going on in in Sweden right now with the Muslim population there. But a headline was this has to do with what you were talking about before going back to the your home country. 70% of refugees in Sweden go back home like on vacation. What are they refugees from, if they, if they have no problem returning to the terrible place.

[Unnamed Guest]

I have been to Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait, I think I got them all. And if I lived in those countries, even though the Gulf countries are very affluent, I would want to come to the United States, even in our decline. So for them, they come over here and it's heaven. They can say, if they're from an affluent oil producing country, then it's the freedom to do whatever you want. If they're from a repressive dictatorship that destroyed the economy, then they can get an iPhone. It's everything. And then they look around, this is the key, Jack. And they look at the camp, these are mostly younger people, and they look at the woke, progressive, dei, whatever, and they think I qualify for that. So as long as I'm a victim and voice anger at my generous host for his magnanimity, then I will be accepted in the areas where it's important to be accepted, the media, academia and the welfare state, the administrative state. And so they like that two face attitude. And Donald Trump I don't think is going to. He understands that. He's a very blunt guy. And it's like, you want to come over here, then you follow our rules and you apply legally and you can come now. If you don't want to do that, go home, end of story. It's not complicated. They want to make it complicated, but it's not. And I think it's one of the. Now they're the Wall Street Journal especially. What I don't understand. The Wall Street Journal columnists are wonderful. You know what I mean? They're really good, with some exceptions. I like Bill McGurn, I like Daniel Hennegar, especially like Kimberly Strassel. But the news division, it's all negative, negative, negative. This Molly Ball was tweeting about how everybody hates what Donald Trump's doing and he's causing chaos. This is the person who wrote in time magazine in 2021, the cabal, this conspiracy that stopped Donald Trump and praised all the tech lords for stealth money, praised all the censorship that they did, praise the change of the voting laws, almost smugly triumphant. And then the left got angry about it. Don't give the game away, Molly. Come on. And as a reward for that, they hired her at the Wall Street Journal and now she's writing how Donald Trump is doing. Nothing positive. It's the old chaos. Well, for you, it's not positive, but if he can cut a trillion dollars, it's very positive. And if he can lower taxes and lower regulations and get the economy moving for people here in Fresno county, they're going to be very happy. It doesn't matter to you maybe, but I don't know. I was surprised that the Wall Street Journal showed that level of venom. On almost every news story, there's a subtext that Donald Trump can't do this and he can't do that, and they're really criticizing him for the tariffs. And I want to say to myself, well, at what level of trade imbalance would you be bothered? At what level? And do you really think that Mexico and Canada apply the same standards to American imports that we do to Camille? No, they don't. I can tell you they don't. Nor does the euro. It's all based on this ossified, calcified, post World War II idea. The United States is so strong, it's so big, it came out of World War II. It's got a duty to rebuild the world. It's so infinitely wealthy. We can screw it over on trade, we can do this on immigration. We're not that way anymore. So they can't do it anymore. Doesn't the Wall Street Journal see that we just want reciprocal trade?

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, Well, I agree with you with the Wall Street Journal reporting side and actually the editorial side, the actual editorials, as opposed to the columns, they're not often. They are often not friendly to Donald Trump.

[Unnamed Guest]

No, they're 50%. I don't know who writes those. Well, I like Jason Riley. He writes some good stuff. I like Martin Swam a lot. Yeah, but they have negative. It's mostly negative, Negative, negative, negative.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Even the New York Post has some negative stuff.

[Jack Fowler]

Oh, they've been going. The Post's been going tongs and hammer after RFK and his nomination. So, yeah, I get Victor. Some people have a tough time realizing they're not the vanguard of the proletariat any any longer. Right. Bill Kristol's had that problem for a long time. You know, you're supposed to listen to me, not him.

[Unnamed Guest]

I'm writing a book about Trump's comeback. So yesterday I was looking at the. I have a chapter on Never Trump people, the enemies of Trump, the media, the universities, examine each one of their motives and what the effect of any they had on him in terms of stopping his comeback. So I looked at Bill Kristol for 10 years. I didn't realize it. 2015 almost. There's a pattern there. Almost every other op ed he wrote, and they're usually co op eds, right. He didn't write them himself. But there's. Yes, there's something to the effect that yes, Trump has temporary popularity and some of us. But don't worry, he's doomed to fail. 20, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. And then, see, I told you, after five years he failed. And then, don't worry, 23, 24, he can't be elected. He's failed. And then, you know, almost everyone was wrong.

[Jack Fowler]

Permanent, transitory.

[Unnamed Guest]

Hey, Victor, where are you? Lucky. And his enemies in some ways.

[Jack Fowler]

Oh yeah, absolutely.

[Unnamed Guest]

And we saw that during the Senate confirmations. We have to talk about those people. Hysterical.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, we will get to a bunch more things, including we'll talk about Panama a little. We'll close up, maybe foreign policy and get on to blueberries and much more when we come back from these important messages.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[D]

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[Jack Fowler]

We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show. Quickly, Victor's website, the Blade of Perseus web address is victorhansen.com Go there, subscribe. It's $65 a year. That's discounted from the monthly rate of $6 and 50 cents. You can do the math on that. I don't know, is that 72, I forget $78.

[Unnamed Guest]

A lot of people. You know, I was writing three articles a week and I haven't missed one, by the way, to our subscribers. I'm very loyal to them and they paid the money on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I had been writing 7,500 words, 6,500 sometimes. But a lot of people said why don't we get a video, you know what I mean? Why don't you just talk to us? So that's why on Fridays we have a eight to ten minute video.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, it's excellent. And you get those two articles and you get the video when you do subscribe. So go there Blade of Perseus and please do check it out and subscribe. So Victor, yeah, last thing on foreign policy. Who knows, we may strike us straggle back into it. But Marco Rubio said Donald Trump is not kidding when he talks about America wanting to retake the Panama Canal. This is not some bluff, some seven dimensional chess. What are your thoughts on that?

[Unnamed Guest]

Well, take can be interpreted a lot of ways when Donald Trump makes his criticisms of Panama. If you look at them very carefully, he is saying we had no problem with Panama about 2010, but Panama knew of the special relationship that is enshrined in our treaty documents about preference for the United States ships in times of crisis, tolls, et cetera. And then they did not feel that they had enough toll money to improve the canal. So they joined the Belt and Road initiative as one of China's many clients knowing. Knowing that anybody who does that is essentially an imperial colony of China. But they did it nonetheless, over our objections. And then they invited foreign concessionary ports along the transit of the canal. But they reserved the two choice locations, the entry and exit, for Chinese franchises, not American. There was a story today, yesterday in the blogosphere, that people who live in Panama, who are Americans, noticed they were taking down Chinese signs quickly, before Rubio got there. In other words, they're everywhere. So what Panama did, everybody is they took a special relationship with the United States. And as a way of shunning us or resonating the old, tired, weary charge that we were imperialists or whatever the reason was, or to get rich, they invited our arch enemy into an area that we had a special relationship. We didn't do that. They did. And we warned them that when you do that, the Chinese are quid pro. So now you're joined at the hip with China. They're even going to build a bridge, a bridge over the Panama Canal. Can you imagine, in times of tensions over Taiwan, if we need six or seven cruisers or frigates to come from north through the canal, they're going to go right under a bridge that China controls, and you're going to say, no, it's just a traffic bridge. They control it, and they will control the entry and exit, and they will be able to do a lot of things. And does Panama really want that? And so that's what Trump's trying to say. He's trying to get some leverage. And he says, you broke all the agreements of the treaty. And then what's really frustrating is the people who attacked Trump, when you look at it, they're all in groups, like the Panama American Friendship Group, the American Advisory Group to the Panama Canal. They work for a canal company, they work for a shipping company. See what I mean? And they don't want to get on the wrong side of Panama. But I don't think he's talking about using armed forces and invading. Last time we did that, that was George Bush. That was when you and I talked about we broke the Geneva Convention because we played Barry Manilow to them. So, General Noriega, that was worse than waterboarding. And we drove him crazy and we extradited him. He said, I'll give up my entire country. Just don't play Barry Manilow anymore. We could do that again if we had to. Anyway, I think that's what he's doing. He's doing that with Canada. He's just saying, you know, we're a big country, we can survive without your imports or you will have to reduce your prices or whatever. But it's up to you. All you have to do, Canada, is get that 50 billion dollar surplus down to 10 or something. And all you have to do, Mexico, is get that 168, 67 billion surplus down to 10 or so. And you can do it, buy more products, sell us less. But we're not going to keep doing this. We're not Joe Biden. And he's telling Trudeau, you know, your border is open. You know, people come across it. You don't do anything. You know, drugs come across it. Not to the same degree as Mexico, but, you know, you should, you know better because you're supposed to be a closer friend to us than Mexico. And you've abused that relationship just like Mexico has abused that racial relationship. And it's, it's all this is a common sense counter revolution, and that's why people are upset.

[Jack Fowler]

Speaking of that, and I lied about leaving foreign policy behind us. Victor. Here's a headline from the Daily Mail. Trump strips millions from DEI foreign aid programs funding Irish musicals, LGBTQ programs in Serbia and more. And here are the first few lines of this article. One of the big ticket items that no longer will receive U.S. funding is a pro LGBT group in Serbia through a group called Group Izagi, which in English translates to group come out. This NGO received 1.5 million in Biden's administration to advance diversity, equity, inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business communities by promoting blah, blah, blah. I mean, this is madness. Serbia, we're promoting.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, put it in real terms that people are listening to this. Some of you are paying 20, $30,000 to the federal government and you're not getting good interstate freeways, you're not getting good FBI service, you're not getting good State Department. You've got problems in the Pentagon. Well, you're paying for that. I don't know how many. If you're, you know, a thousand of you who pay a thousand dollars that you're paying for that, and that's going, and that's minor. And that's what, you know, has to stop. Again, it's not just the money. It's the idea that Serbia is very anti American, given the NATO incursion in the early 90s. And the idea that we're sending money over to the LGBQ community in Serbia, I don't think they're saying, oh, thank you, it's more like, you owe us. Give it to us. You Bomb Belgrade. So, you know, it's got to stop. And then when it stops, people will like us better. They'll like us in two ways. They'll like us because they can't shake us down. And if we start to balance the budget, they'll like us like they secretly like Milei and Argentina. They think, wow, whatever you say about the guy, he balanced the budget and he's got inflation on it. Wow. What do you think about the United States? It's the biggest power in the world now. It's the biggest natural gas, oil, and it's almost balanced its budget. That's amazing. And they'll respect that. But they don't respect us now, printing money and just throwing it around the world on stupid causes.

[Jack Fowler]

I did not tell you this ahead of time. Have you ever been to any of Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, etc.

[Unnamed Guest]

I have been to Turanya, Bulgaria, or is that all? But when I was in Greece, I took a flight there for three days. And I've been to the border of Greece and Albania. I've been to Montenegro. I'll have to ask my wife. We took a cruise in the Turinian Sea, Adriatic, both sides of Italy, Croatia. We went from Trieste all the way down to Dubrovnik.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And Dubrovnik is one of the, you know, it's one of the most beautiful cities.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Hey, Victor, before we get on to the unalienable right to blueberries, I want to let our readers know. Pause here to tell them about a critical intelligence briefing our friends at American Alternative Assets have just released. As someone who studies threats to our homeland Security, not as much as Victor does, but I do. What I've read in Homeland 2025 confirms many of my own concerns. They've gathered analysis from former CIA officers about what's really happening with our borders. But more importantly, they explain how to protect your family's financial security. Central banks are already taking action. Shouldn't you know why American Alternative Assets is offering our listeners this vital briefing? Plus up to $10,000 in free silver and a secure American made safe. These are patriots we trust to help protect American families. Call 1-800-861-8047 or visit victorlovesgold.com call 1-800-861/8047. Again, call 1-800-861, 8047 and tell them Victor sent you. And we thank the good people from American Alternative Assets for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So, Victor. Yes. Here's a cnn. Here's a headline. Maybe this is from a Daily Mail the unalienable right to blueberry. CNN guests horrific take on illegal aliens proves libs don't know how voters think anymore. This is a Democrat strategist, Jenna Arnold, and here's what she said on CNN the other day. I can't wait until American women can't get blueberries for their smoothies. I cannot wait until there is a full crackdown on all small business. As if that's going to be the solution to the immigration problem she claimed is just going to put immigration related issues further into the darker corners, et cetera, et cetera. Victor, I cannot. Maybe American women are going to go because they can't get blueberries, but this is a disconnect with reality.

[Unnamed Guest]

Still, 2 or 3% of agriculture, I mean of the 12 million are engaged in agriculture labor. Another thing people don't understand. We are in a radical revolution in California, especially in terms of hand labor. And what I mean by that, when I was growing up, we had about 400,000 acres of, say, Thompson seedless grapes. And we had about 250,000 acres of what I would call soft fruit. That's what my grandfather, that's what I did on the farm. It's all gone. And it's gone because it's been taken over by conglomerates that have vineyards and orchards in Chile, in Peru, in Colombia and Venezuela, in Central America and Mexico. And they just start right about now and they're shipping grapes up from Chile and Peru. And it'll go all the way until May or June. And then just for a tiny window, the American. And because the cold storage is so improved, you can put a bunch of grapes in cold storage for months and then sometime around June, October, they'll be local. But the point I'm making is the reduction in hand labor is just astronomical. I'm looking out the window and we used to have 180 acres, but I have 43 acres. And when I had a Thompson vineyard at a time when there was about 400,000 acres, you had people come out and prune and then you had people have to come out and tie the canes and then you had to shred the brush and then you had furrows and then you had to irrigate down the middle. Then you cultivated on a tractor five or six times down the row in the spring and summer. And then you had to pick hand labor and put them on trays and that's all gone. When you see. I don't see anybody. It looks like a ghost orchard. It's beautiful. And a computer has hydrometers they signal the pump. It goes on. There is no irrigation. Nobody walking with a little twister like I used to with valves. It's all drip foggers, and then fertilize. I used to have to go in there with shanks and shank fertilizer between the rows. No, there's about a 400 gallon tank and it's full of nitrogen, different types of nitrogen. And when, when the analysis comes that the soil needs nitrogen, then bam, it's injected into the drip system and it's just spread to every tree. And then harvest constitutes one guy coming in with a machine. It's like a little hand that grabs the trunk. It's got a computer. It tells you exactly how long it should be shaken so it won't damage a tree. But you'll get 95% of the almonds off. And as he goes down the road, they kind of have a little blower that puts it out. You wait two or three days. That's one man does 40 acres. And then another man comes in and a piece of machinery. And after they're dry, he just puts them in a nice row with blowers. And then the third person comes in with a scoop, sucks them in, gets the dirt, the leaves, the insects, and it goes right into a bin to the sheller. And literally, there's no pruning, there's no thinning, there's nothing. No hand labor. And that is replicated with pistachios and all the row crops. So we're talking about when she says blueberries. I live around 5,000 acres of blueberries. And that is hand labor. But it's not hand labor the way blueberries used to be. Used to be, you had guys out there every day with irrigation and furrows and cultivation. Now they're micro rows. They're planted very densely. It's all drip, it's all automatic. And they're trellised in such a way that a person just comes by and goes very quickly and picks them up right exposed. And they're getting to the point now where they're bringing machinery in to do it. It'll be mechanized. Even raisins are mechanized now, believe it or not. And picking grapes are mechanized. The only people that don't mechanize grape harvested are the boutique wineries in Napa, unless they have to because of a rain or something and get it hurt. So my point is, she's an idiot. And most California, the amount of agricultural laborers needed is probably dropped by 70%. And then you have another thing that's going on. She's got this old Democratic idea. It's kind of weird. It's like the South. We have slaves in the Democratic party now. We're the Democrats for open labor and cheap labor and imported. It's the same condescending, creepy idea. Because if you take a big concern, say the world's one of the world's largest producers of mandarin oranges, cuties, you know, those little. They're very delicious. And it's maybe five miles from where I'm speaking right now, but it is the most sophisticated. I've gone into the factory. They've got the most brilliant people in the world at Fowler Packing. It looks like a spaceship. There's almost no hand labor in processing. I don't mean processing, but when the orange is dropped in a bin inside it is washed and cleaned and packed and kept coal in a process that has almost no human interaction. They even have lasers that see which mandarin fruit is damaged, which is not ripe, everything. And to get there, there is some hand labor, but they've redefined it into expertise like a plumber or electrician. And so they have signs. Pickers must meet these types of standards. They have to be legal immigrants or not immigrants at all. And they're paid about $20 an hour, but they're experts at it. And then at. When they come into the big plant each morning, park their car, go out to pick. There's a dental clinic there. There's a beautiful cafeteria for a free lunch, breakfast, dinner or cheap subsidized. There's a doctor on call. It's nothing like what she thinks. It's a high tech emphasis on skilled labor. And what they're saying is if you can find somebody who will get up at 5 in the morning and go out and operate machinery that pick crops, are themselves pick crops, then we're going to pay them a high premium because they're not just what she thinks exploited cheap labor. These are master pickers. They're. They're redefining it into almost an apprenticeship, like a plumber, as I said, or electrician. And they make a lot of money. And I don't think she has any idea what farmers are paying people these days. $20 an hour, $25 an hour.

[Jack Fowler]

The other idiocy of this though, Victor, is the. Is the. The lifestyle. What if there were no blueberries for some reason that I'm not going to have my smoothie? Would there be a revolution over.

[Unnamed Guest]

These upscale women of America are all machine harvested. And so when I was on a tractor in the 80s for every day it was pretty bad. It was 110 as an old Massey or an old Oliver tractor, or a Ford 4000, 5000 or whatever. It was very hot. There was no such thing as cabs. There was no such thing as music. There was no such thing as headphones. And today when I see my neighbors, it looks like a luxury car. They have air conditioning, they have stereo systems, they have sound protection. It's not tractor driving as we used. They have computer laser guidance. When you're driving down a 2012 foot row and you've got a 9.39 foot 3 inch tandem disc and the berms are 1 foot on each side and 1 foot, then you got 10ft and you only got 3 or 4 inches on each side. And if you talk to yourself, you daydream, you will take out vines. But you just have to. You had to put your. The little crease in the, the hood, the line, you put it right down the middle and you're just staring there and you say, no matter what, I know that if I get the steering wheel and I'm guiding right down the middle and that line on the hood is absolutely down the middle of the road, then I don't have to look back and see what I'm doing because I will have an inch on two on each side. It's not easy, but now there's all sorts of automatic laser driven appurtenances. And it's. What I'm getting at is they have no idea about agriculture, how it's evolved. And we're getting to the point where they said that crops that you could never pick. I went by a strawberry field last year and there were people. It was weird, Jack. They were kind of laying down almost on machines and the machine was about two feet and they were going over the top of the strawberry and they were just picking them like this. And they had fans cooling them. It would be like you were laying down and you were looking at a hole in your bed. And as you were doing that, strawberries appeared, you know what I mean? And then you just dropped them on a conveyor belt. It wasn't stoop labor. And it's getting so now if you talk to the people who are doing these things, we're not going to have hand labor very much anymore. It's going to be automated like the auto industry. And she's got this idea that she has to have the same person. I forgot his name is. He's the delegated czar who's going to rebuild Los Angeles, at least temporarily. And he said Trump is going to send back all our workers, all our illegal aliens who are going to do all this work. And my answer to him is, look, if you want your house rebuilt, there's 62% labor participation rate in the United States of and I told that to Sam the other day, and that is able bodied, 18 to 60. So we have 38%. Some of them are, you know, home with children. But 38% are not participating and it's gone down under buying to about 60%. So there's a lot of people who are in their basement. And if the wage gets out, why don't they get out and work instead? Are they zooming, you know, or they're not going to work every day? So let's get out and get the country moving. There's something noble about physical labor and we're not getting people to do it. So Ms. Blueberry, why doesn't she go out and pick some blueberries once a week? That would help get her hands dirty. Meet the other that she so condescendingly thinks Donald Trump is. Believe me, if you're a U.S. citizen and you're a very skilled farm laborer and you're getting $20 an hour, you're not heartbroken that an illegal is trying to come in and get $8 an hour. You're not heartbroken about that, that he's going to go back to Mexico or Central America. Speaking of agriculture, strange for the left to want cheap labor. I never got that, you know, cheap exploited labor. It's like, well, I want to rebuild my 3,500 square foot home and I want to have perfect cedar flooring and I've got to get about six illegals in here to do it because it's very expensive, the flooring and the granite counters and the copper ceiling and all this. And I don't want to skimp on the materials. I got to have it tasteful. But I need cheap labor. Cheap labor, cheap labor.

[Jack Fowler]

Speaking of agriculture, California fire, water, Donald Trump, all those things, he got some water unleashed in your be able to.

[Unnamed Guest]

Do it all because Newsom's got his hand on the California Water project and he can unleash the Central Valley Project, which is a federal project that has a claim to the Sacramento tributaries, and he will do that. But Gavin Newsom, as I said, Sammy has been lying. The reservoirs are not full. They're not even 80%, which at this time of year you expect a large snow melt soon. So you keep them at 80% or 70 but we're not going to get a large unless we have a miraculous February and early March rain. We could, but they're about 6. I just drove by some of them. They're about 60 or 70% at most. And that's because the aqueduct is not completely full and it's not filling up the reservoirs as it goes south to Los Angeles. And it's not doing that because he is letting water in the delta out to San Francisco Bay because of environmentalists. And he's proud of it. He's actually very proud of it. When he blew up the Klamath Dams, he gave a great speech. Isn't this wonderful? We got rid of these artificial obstacles to whitewater and salmon and indigenous people restoring their ancient customs of spearfishing salmon in the calama. And then you said, yeah, and you destroyed four beautiful lakes, recreation, irrigation, flood control and 80,000 homes hydroelectric. But I don't know, you know, it's one thing in California. Very quickly, Jack, this special session that was called to trash Trump.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Unnamed Guest]

Disappeared. They decided not to do that.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. I was going to ask you.

[Unnamed Guest]

They're so brilliant. Somebody, when they were all posing right after the fight, we're going to have a special session and we've got a fund, a war fund to stop Donald Trump's racist, sex as homophobic protectionist measures. Then somebody said, well, we have $77 billion in debt that we blew and the federal government is cutting back. And if we start suing Donald Trump and ridiculing him as a racist and a sexist and a homophobe, he just might not want to extend federal funds to us. He wouldn't do that. Yes, he would. Okay, well, let's just cancel that special session and start praising him. And that's what's happening. He's got a very good attitude. That's why I resented that Molly Ball, she said, he hasn't changed. He's a disruptor. He's very philosophical. They asked him yesterday, is there any chance that the 25% tariff could be stopped? No, it's going in. It's Friday as scheduled. They said, well, aren't you afraid it's going to destroy the economy? It'll take a little adjustment, but then we'll get back normal. Why are you doing? Well, I'm doing this to protect all of us. Because they're deliberately running up one sided trade surpluses and they don't want to, you know, share the wealth and be fair. And they also are letting fentanyl and it's killing people. I'M worried about people being killed. It was really good what he said.

[Jack Fowler]

I bet in one week he has answered more questions than Biden answered in four years.

[Unnamed Guest]

He's very good at it. He looks tired, though. I'm really worried about him. He looks very tired. 78. I'm 71 and I, I just got back. I flew to Chicago one day and flew back the next and I took me about four days to. To get back to normal.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

But he, he doesn't seem to. I don't know. I don't understand what his metabolism is. You know What I mean? Four hours sleep.

[Jack Fowler]

Four hours sleep. Diet Coke, McDonald's. It's.

[Unnamed Guest]

It's.

[Jack Fowler]

I'm game for that plan.

[Unnamed Guest]

I hope, I hope he's going secretly to some health clinic and laying down and getting intravenous turmeric or guthy ion or a supplement mix. You know what I mean?

[Jack Fowler]

Yes, you would know what I mean.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

The king. The king of supplements. Hey, Victor, speaking of you flying in a plane, we should maybe get your thoughts on. Yes, I know you talked with Sammy about this terrible collision accident, but let's get your thoughts on FAA standards and we'll do that when we come back from these final important messages.

[E]

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack Fowler]

We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. We're recording on Saturday, Saturday, February 1st. This episode will be up on Tuesday the 4th. We have another topic or two to get Victor's wisdom on and let's start off Victor with the Federal Aviation Administration. And in the light or in the aftermath, immediate aftermath of news on this accident not only in in Washington but in Philadelphia area lots of stuff has come out about FAA standards. Today's New York Post has an article about a lawsuit of representing I think a thousand people who were denied, who wanted to be air traffic controllers but were denied because they were white.

[Unnamed Guest]

I think Adam Laxalt was the spearhead lawyer on that. A thousand people. So Trump. Everybody got mad at Trump because they said he was jumping the gun. He was demagoguing because he said he was going to take a look at dei and I thought to myself here we go again. But not in the way they think. Here we go again. Here we go again. In the Los Angeles thing. He said the same thing almost immediately. He said, we've got to stop the dei. And then it came out that Karen Bass was finding her African roots in Uganda when she had been warned about the chaparral and the high winds and left. And then it turned out that her African American DEI appointee as deputy mayor was under house arrest or suspension for phoning in a bomb threat. Then it turned out that her DEI fire chief had been bragging about she was going to hire 70% DI and she was the first gay woman. Why? There was, what, a hundred vehicles that were needed maintenance that were inoperable. And there was, she said, foolishly, that's not my. My responsibility starts when the hydrants pump water. No, they don't. They don't. Fire chief. You're responsible to tell water and power that you don't have enough fire hydrants and then you're to partner with her. But in her defense, the water and power was Ms. Quinones, who came under a checkered career at PGE. They paid her 750,000 and she drained a 117 million gallon reservoir because it had a tear in the COVID which would have saved, basically, they only had 3 million gallons. And that 3 million gallons last four to five hours. They had 117 million. It would have probably lasted 100 hours. They could have saved Pacific Palisades. But then I could go on. The assistant deputy chair notoriously said that she had to pick up a man. He was in the wrong place. I was really funny when she said, well, we have diversity because everybody feels relieved or they feel comfortable when the first responder looks like them when they come to the door. I had a bee sting last March. Jack and I went to total anaphylaxis. And my blood pressure went down to 70 over 35. My heart rate went up to about 160. The last thing I remember was calling my wife, who called 9, 11. And then I fainted. And then I woke up and I crawled to the front door. And who met me at the door? The Selma ambulance. Two young Hispanic women. The paramedics and the driver was Hispanic. And they were wonderful. They gave me two EpiPens immediately. And they made me take off my shirt and look at all the welts. And then they looked at my closed mouth that they gave me liquid Benadryl. They gave me predisone. And then they said, you need to get in the ambulance right away. And did I say, jack, I don't feel comfortable because you don't look like me. I would feel. Can you just go get a white guy? Because I feel like I would feel much more home. No, I thought that they were heaven. I thought they were angelic, they were competent. And I said, I am yours. You save me, take me to the hospital. We're going to give you another EpiPen, some more steroids. And then by the time I got to the hospital, I was stabilized and they were wonderful. But the idea that I would feel more comfortable if they had been white, I don't think so. I was happy. I wasn't happy that they were white or not white or Hispanic. I was just happy they were competent. And then how they looked was a secondary.

[Jack Fowler]

The theme of the Confederacy is pigmentation rules, and that is fixated on race.

[Unnamed Guest]

And so all of that, Trump kind of predicted, and that's. That's in addition to the timber policy, the insurance policy, the water policy. So then this thing happens and Trump has information that we don't. So somebody. This was a multitask, multifaceted systems failure. No plane should be flying at 4. No helicopter should be flying at 400ft at night in the pathway of jets. We don't know why they were doing that. No one should be having night goggles in one of the most heavy trafficked airline areas in the world. Why would you wear that? I wore them in Iraq on. The guy let me wear them on a Blackhawk. First thing I knew, I had tunnel vision. I thought I had cataracts, glaucoma. So. And then any light you saw was like an explosion. So my point is, if they had night vision goggles and they were on this training mission and, and they were flying at the same level, that typically that was a administrative error. Somebody had told them something and they either didn't follow that or the instruction was wrong. And then the air traffic controller, we find out, was doing two jobs because one air traffic controller wanted to go home, and he had one frequency for the helicopter and one frequency to the plane, and they could not communicate. And Donald Trump said air traffic control. So then they got angry at him at the Caroline Levitt news conference. This is. You just had to jump the gun and say this about. And then we learned, as you just pointed out, that they had plenty of aircraft control people the last four years, plenty of them. They were encouraging at one time, people in college who were interested in avionics or math to go into apprentice programs right during college or from the military to take their air traffic controllers or pilots, and there was a thousand of them. And guess what? They were White. And we have overwhelming evidence. The assistant FA director got on a video which is roundly played, and he says, we're here to get diversity. If you're in a Native American school or a black school, we want you, but not white. And then we had the former nominee to be the head of the faa. I think he was rejected or withdrew. And they asked him a series of questions. Yeah, how long is an air. How long does a jet need for its air Runway? What level do you react, how quick? He didn't know one thing. Have you ever been an aircraft? No. Have you ever been a pilot? No. Have you ever run an actual airline? No. He was kind of a administrator of the Denver Airport, but knew nothing about airplanes. So, yes, Donald Trump was right. So if he's wrong, then let us get the information out. But, you know, we don't get the information out. So when Ashley Babbitt is lethally shot, lethally shot while she's on arn. We have a rule in America. Look at George Floyd. When anybody dies at the hands supposedly of a policeman and that person is unarmed, then the policeman who does that is immediately put on suspension. And whether it's good or not, his picture is plastered over every newspaper in America. Officer Byrd was not, as soon as I saw that, that we were not going to disclose who Officer Byrd was. Then everybody said he is a DEI person. Then we find out he had a checkered record. He left a loaded gun in a bathroom in the Capitol. And then he said he played the victim and said, oh, they're going to hurt me, or, oh, I need compensation for all the trauma. And so whenever we had the same thing was at the Scott Bridge and off Baltimore where that tanker ran into it. All they ask is who was in control. They never told anybody. They were so careful not to release. I don't know who was to. To the day, probably nothing. It was probably some old white guy. But they didn't want to talk about it for certain reasons. And when you went on their website of the tanker company, what was the first thing you saw? I wrote a column about that. DEI D E I D E I D E I and so now they don't want to release. They release the two people who died in the Black Hawk, but they do not want to release the identity of the other pilot, female. I don't know why they don't. Why don't they just do it? And they'd say, well, I've never heard of that before. They don't want to release the name of the Aircraft air traffic controller that went home early. And they don't want to do any of this. They will because of the Trump administration. But the point I'm making is if you believe that DEI enhances efficacy, then let all the information go out. Let people win that argument. But when you try to repress it, after you've made the argument that if you're good at math or you flew an airplane or you ace the FA test, that's not so important, it's your color of your skin that's important because that makes us better. Okay, if that makes you better, then give all the information out. When you have these disasters, if you look at the statistics, in 2023, there was a record number of near misses. It went down a little bit in 2024, but it was really high. And people like NPR, the New York Times wrote an article, Jack, I saw it was in 2023. It said, what's up with all these near misses? And of course, you know what the liberals said? They said, oh, everything's too crowded. We've got too many people flying. There's too many flights. The airline people are too greedy. Yes, yes, yes. But also we didn't have enough air traffic controllers because we put racial limitations on who could participate. And we drummed out people who had been there for years who were disgusted with that racist policy. And that's what Trump was saying.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And all they have to do is disprove that. All they have to do is disprove that. And they won't. Instead, they do not release information. And I have no. I mean, it's probably that the woman was a great pilot. Who knows, she may be a multimillionaire, white as snow, great, more power to her. But when you don't release the information, then people get suspected. Why you don't. And it hurts your cause. It's better just to come out and give the information on everything and let people decide and make the argument.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, we deduce when that happens, somebody from a protected class is being protected, like the trans shooter murderer in Tennessee.

[Unnamed Guest]

Do this. We can't do that. It's always this administrative state person who decides in his infinite wisdom what to release and what not because of the agenda. And usually when it's a white male, nutty guy like the Las Vegas shooter, in two seconds, you know every despicable thing about him. And that's great. I approve of that. But if it's the. Remember the police chief, New Orleans that didn't put the barriers on. Right. We didn't get any information.

[Jack Fowler]

Flaperoo from Oakland and.

[Unnamed Guest]

Right.

[Jack Fowler]

Wasn't she a failure?

[Unnamed Guest]

Absolutely. She was an advisor to the FBI and she was a DEI hire. And then after everybody's killed, then she goes out and does a news event. Well, these are barriers we put up. The horse left the barn. People got killed because you didn't do that. And then we didn't get information about who you were, what was your record and why you were the police chief. Because, based on meritocracy, you should not have been the police chief. Based on meritocracy, we should have had different people in Los Angeles. And that would have made a big difference had you had water in the reserve in the reservoir above Pacific, had the hydrants had all been pressurized, had all of the vehicles been on the road and not in the shop, had the mayor been there in a control environment, had the vice mayor not phoned in a bomb threat and been her delegate as the safety deputy mayor. Yes, it would have made a difference. And so people die. People die. The thing about dei, everybody is they don't. There's certain things about it. It doesn't start just. It doesn't end when you. I should say it doesn't end when you're hired. If you're hired for reasons other than meritocracy, then you will be retained and advanced and promoted for the same reason. You've got a lifetime insurance policy. So if something happens and you. You were at fault, you're going to use the same DEI argument. And in fact, I was thinking of that, Jack. And then I started to read about the ffa, changes in their protocols. And one of them is, if you've been cited for poor performance, you go into a special. You're not sent home with a fine. You're not anything. You're sent into a remedial program, but nobody knows about you. That cannot be disclosed. And then you're back out. And that's because of dei. And so it keeps going. And there's no life, remember, there's no tenure. There's no sunset. We're 60 years into the civil rights movement. And the thing about DEI is no one is saying in the DEI like Sandra Day O'Connor, when she ruled for affirmative action, said, I think by 2000 we won't have this problem because of integration. Assimilation. No, they think DEI is dei. If I could echo George Wallace on segregation, DIA today, DIA yesterday, today and forever. That's their attitude. There should be no end to it. It's not a means to an end. It's an end in self. And the other thing about it is it's not getting smaller. Twenty years ago, before Barack Obama, there were certain categories of say if you were rich, Arab American, if you came from India and you were techie, you were not eligible for dei, you didn't have that. It was a call to affirmative action. Now it's been completely redefined by Obama and Biden. Not that you are from a group that has suffered historical demonstrable demonstration and it's evidenced by your lack of parity and income, health, etc. No, no, no, no. It's just one criteria. You don't look white, you are not a male and you are not gay. And that's what it is. And you can be a wealthy gay person, you can be a multimillionaire Argentine aristocrat that trills as are. You can be anything. But it's now 30. Well, it's 80% of the population almost. If you think about it. White males are about 33%, I should say it's everybody but 33% of the population. So the DEI is the majority. If you're a woman or you're gay or you're non white. Non whites are about 66, 67% of the population. About 48% of them are males. So you're talking about 31, 33, 34% depending on the state, I suppose. And it just got bigger. So yeah, it's like any system. I mean if you go to the. I keep telling that story every time I go to the Middle East. I always ask people why things don't work and if I'd see a government official. I was interviewing one in Libya and he said, victoria, off the record, we hire our first cousins. We have hundreds of tribes here in Libya and we don't trust people outside our tribe. I said, don't you have civil service and merit? Yes, but nobody cares. We hire our tribe. We can try our if we can. The doctor that treated me for the ruptured appendix, he said, oh, I can get you on that plane back to England because that guy that is one of the stewards is in my tribe in Libya. I said thank you. And he did. And in the Soviet Union it was. If you were a Marxist Leninist ideologue and a member of the party, then the criteria for your performance was different. If you were international socialist, if you were so called Aryan and confrobit and a member of the Nazi party, then you were not held to the same standard. And that is the bane of civilizations that destroys civilizations they always employ. And when you use race, as in the Nazis with a yellow star or southern plantation owners with 1/16 drop or 6 categories of apartheid colors and yews in South Africa, then the society is going to implode because you're not going to be merocratic. Very ironic that we started with the idea, Jack, that there were millions of talented African Americans and this is what Martin Luther King taught the nation. We don't want an equality result. We want to be able to be evaluated on the content of our character and not the color of our skin. And then when that was open, then slowly, insidiously, over 60 years, it was the color of your skin and not your qualifications necessarily. I think, I don't think it's going to be. There's going to be a lot of resistance to the end of dei. I think it had a rotten foundation. It's like a house. And it was shaky. And I think Donald Trump will just blow on it and it will collapse. It will collapse because a lot of very talented African American, Hispanic people are sick and tired of being stigmatized that they got their job for reasons other than their talent.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And there's a lot of them and I know them personally and they do not like dei. And then, yeah, the people who use it are mediocrities. And people know that and they'll be glad to see them gone.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, let's end the show with a little staying on this theme. I was going to ask you about some FBI stuff, but we can do that on our next recording because the headline from the other day is the. Everyone's favorite person, Ibrahim X. Kendi. The person who must be read by General Milli. His center for anti. His center for Anti Racist Research at Boston University is permanently shutting down. Laying off.

[Unnamed Guest]

No, no, it can. He had $50 million.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, well, go.

[Unnamed Guest]

He went through 50 million as far.

[Jack Fowler]

As it used to.

[Unnamed Guest]

He. He laid off all his anti racist employees. And he went to Howard, didn't he?

[Jack Fowler]

Yes, he's going to Howard University. Yep. But quite a grift. Quite a grift.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah. The late great career of Professor Kendi in the aftermath of George Floyd. He was charging what, 30 or $40,000 for a Zoom, 30 minute prep talk, pep talk to corporations and universities. And then people said, you know what? We went crazy during the COVID scare. We went crazy during the lockdown. And that craziness burst out with George Floyd, with the fumes of the craziness of MeToo. And we woke up and we're no longer insane. That was a temporary madness and all the things that occurred in that madness are now going to be rectified and we're going to go back to a merit based society and it's not going to be racially fix it or sexually orient orientation fixated and not going to be gender fixated. Yeah, I think it's going to be exciting time. It really is.

[Jack Fowler]

I still think it's going to be tough for some of these people. Especially remember these ladies who would pay a ton of money to go to.

[Unnamed Guest]

A dinner to be get insulted.

[Jack Fowler]

Did I really do that?

[Unnamed Guest]

No. Because if your theory is correct that it wasn't specific on a particular topic that was just psychological sadism or I should masochism then they can hire some old white guy come in and he can yell at her and just insult her because those dinners were always how do I please talk to people? You're a racist. Well, I like not. You can't be all of your privilege. You have to give over.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Unnamed Guest]

And I guess that for wealthy white women that was therapeutic. But they could find another person to do it for them. They don't have to be all of a particular race or color. In the post di area. You could have somebody about environmentalists. They could go to somebody and say I have a big SUV. It gets 18 miles. You bad, bad, bad, bad. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Harder, harder.

[Jack Fowler]

Slap me, spank me.

[Unnamed Guest]

That's all they could do with imperialism and settler. You're as part of the settler colors. I saw you in San Francisco looking at the pioneer monument. Didn't you spit at it? I know I should have. I really wanted to. But I did try to tear down the Hornipio Serra statue. That kind of stuff.

[Jack Fowler]

Theater. Theater is important to them.

[Unnamed Guest]

Performance art, virtue signalings. That's what it is.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

Everybody have residents resonant. They want to resonate in some way.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, you have been terrific as usual. We want to we're going to cross the finish line here. Want to recommend again folks? Check out Victor's website, the Blade of Perseus. If you're on X, Victor's there at VD Hansen on Facebook. VDH's Morning Cup. There's a very good and friendly group there, the Victor Davis Hansen fan club. If you're on Facebook, check it out, maybe even join. It's for me, Jack Fowler. I write the weekly email free email newsletter Civil Thoughts. I do that for the center for Civil Society where we are trying to strengthen civil society. Please go to Civil Thoughts. Do sign up. It's free and every week and every Friday, I should say the the newsletter comes with 14 recommended readings of important articles I've seen the previous week that I think you will enjoy. A lot of folks rate this show on Apple. We thank them for doing that. And 4.9 plus percent well it's 0 to 5 stars so Victor's average is 4.9 plus stars. Thank you folks who do that. Those many folks leave comments also. Actually I have a comment to read Victor that somebody sent me as an email and it must be a subscriber to the newsletter. Hello Mr. Fowler, hope you're well. I'm an avid listener to the show and oh yeah, I'm a subscriber to your newsletter. I want to comment on something VDH mentioned in an earlier show that was very pleasing. When discussing the 51st state, Victor mentioned how close of an ally Canada was in the World wars and how we Canadians punched above our weight given our population size. Thanks to the incompetent leadership we Canadians have suffered under the past decade or so. Many have forgotten the great nation we once were. Obviously not vdh. It warmed my heart to hear something complimentary said about Canada for once. And these days making such comments is not an easy task. I'm thrilled our American friends now have a leader that will restore your beautiful country and I anxiously await the day I can say the same about my own land. Thank you for the informative information you provide each week, the fantastic conversation you facilitate with Victor. Well, thank you. I would like also to share oh this is fun. In a previous email to me you suggested I once again attend a mass. I have done so and I'm on the path of exploring my religious beliefs. That's a sign by Emmett Blakeney. I don't remember recommending going to mass, but geez, maybe she can. Emmett, that's good.

[Unnamed Guest]

About. I think it's General Creer. In World War II, the Canadians had, as I said at the time, one of three of the Normandy landing beaches.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Unnamed Guest]

And they fought superbly, especially in Holland. Even Canadians who helped liberate Holland. They were on the northern side of the push into Germany. Patton had a lot of good things to say about them.

[Jack Fowler]

They were the. They were at. Is it Dieppe? They were the force at Dieppe.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yes, they were treated very badly. That was a British designed operation, the Dieppe raid. And they landed them to see what would be the difficulty at the port there. I think it was.

[Jack Fowler]

It was kind of a suicide mission in a sense.

[Unnamed Guest]

It was. I think they landed 10,000 and only 1,500 got back. The rest were killed or wounded. Prisoners were treated very harshly because the Germans tried to say they were saboteurs, but they were very brave. And if you look at the size, I'm doing this by memory. But the American fleet, as I said, was larger than all the other fleets put together by tonnage and ship numbers by 1945. But then the British fleet, then what was left of the Japanese fleet, then the Canadian fleet. It was huge, and it was very necessary. And it guaranteed, even before we went into the war, they were the ones escorting most of the materiel coming from Canada to Great Britain. And the Canadians, as well as the British told us, when the war broke out, they told Admiral King, you've got to have a. You've got to have a convoy system and you've got to have destroyers and destroyer escorts there to stop this. And he didn't listen to them. And we took a terrible beating in 42 because of that. My only point is Canadians have a. I mean, they have fought so well in World War I and World War II. They were in Korea. This latest manifestation, this left wing Trudeauism, it's really not reflective of the history and traditions of Canada. Stephen Harper, whom I know a little bit, is a great Prime Minister. He really was. And he was very learned, he was very careful, sober. He knew how to get along with Donald Trump very well. And it was just a pity that I think he was there, one of the longest tenures of prime minister, 10 or 12 years. But it's a pity he's not there now. Pierre Polevera. He's going to be, I think, wonderful. And I think if he gets in there, he will know how to deal with Donald Trump and talk to him and say, let's negotiate from a position of mutual respect. But how can you respect Trudeau? He's a joke. He's a toy boy, and no one respects him. And as soon as Donald Trump was elected, what did he do? He got onto a podium and he said that he was sad that the first black woman wasn't president. That was really smart, Trudeau. When you're running a $50 billion surplus with the United States and you have an open border, that did your country a lot of service. So, yeah, this is an aberration, everybody. Canada is a great country, and especially Ontario, Calgary and places like that. And when you saw those Canadian truck drivers, those were very tough guys. They were very brave. They took on the Trudeau government. That's the Canada that we remember.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Guest]

And we don't want to make it a first. We like them and we like them to be an autonomous country. If, if Ontario wants to be a 50, that's another thing. But we don't need all of Canada. They've been a good neighbor. We just want them to be a partner and not a subservient country. Pay your way so you're under our nuclear Shield, we're in NATO. You pay your 2%, maybe up to 5%. You can do it, you did it before. Even out your trade deficit with us, maybe, you know, run up 4 or 5 billion at most. Close that border so you're not letting drugs and illegals and we're going to get along just fine. Or as Frenchie says, Rick says in Casablanca to Frenchie. I think this is going to be the start of a beautiful relationship.

[Jack Fowler]

Frenchie.

[Unnamed Guest]

Claude Reigns, I don't think.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

By the way, you mentioned the, the Tran, the Convoy Escorts. I just saw again recently the Cruel Sea. I think folks should look it up. This is one of the best war movies ever. You know, Jack Hawkins, just, just terrific.

[Unnamed Guest]

Jack Hawkins, a great. Yeah, he was in Ben Hur too.

[Jack Fowler]

Oh, he was in everything.

[Unnamed Guest]

He died very young. He was a, in his slate six. He's a heavy smoker.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, yeah, I think he died of lung cancer. Hey, I want to thank Emmett Blackney for the kind comments and for Victor and me and go to mass. Everybody who should be going back, thanks so for listening.

[Unnamed Guest]

Thank you everybody.

[Jack Fowler]

We'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Bye bye.

[Unnamed Guest]

Thank you. Thank you for listening.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

History, economics, the great works of literature, the meaning of the U.S. constitution. Did you study these things in school? Probably not. Or even if you did, maybe it's time for a refresher. Time and technology have changed a lot of things, but they've not changed the basic fundamental truths about the world and our place in it. Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses. That's right, more than 40 free online courses. Learn about the works of C.S. lewis, the stories in the book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian Church with Hillsdale College's free online courses. Personally, I'm enjoying Hillsdale's course the Second World wars, taught by Victor Davis Hansen and Hillsdale's president, Larry Pjorn. This free seven lecture course will help you understand this massive and complex conflict in a new way. It will give you a clear picture of why the war was fought and how the allied powers ultimately triumphed in order to save the west from a new form of tyranny. The course is self paced so that you can start whenever and wherever. Go right now to Hillsdale Edu VDH to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy to get started. That's Hillsdale Edu VDH to enroll for free. Hillsdale Edu VDH.