← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson on What Holds Nations Together This Memorial Day
01:22:16
Political dysfunction in California, the collapse of communist regimes, the meaning of Memorial Day, and the importance of the citizen soldier all point back to the same question: what happens when leaders become detached from the people they govern?
Loading summary
Transcript105 lines
- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
World War II, we ended up with 12.2 million soldiers. People forget that about the United states. Russia had 240 million people. Soviet Union, and they only did 200,000 more. 12.4. So for a country of about 145 million, 50 million to get into uniform, 12 million.2. That's amazing. Of course, the sadness of it is if you look at the people who actually a, were deployed overseas and then were deployed in combat units, we were very short, we were exhausted. So we, we took those soldiers in the Pacific and they landed on Normandy. They got killed finally by the time they got to Germany in May. And if they were in a B17 or a B24, their life was not very long.
- [00:46]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. So on Memorial Day, then, we are celebrating all of those killed. Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own Words. This is our Saturday edition and in the middle segment or one of the middle segments, we do something a little bit different. And today, since it is Memorial Weekend, we're going to talk a little bit about Memorial Day and the citizen soldier. So stay with us for that. And first we'll start with some news. And we've got Raul Castro's indictment on the dock and a few things about politics in California. Stay with us and we'll be right back after these messages.
- [01:34]
Bradley Devlin
Hey, I'm Bradley Devlin and just like you, I'm a huge fan of Victor Davis Hansen, whether it's his long form podcast, Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, or his short form content for the Daily Signal. Victor Davis Hansen in a few words. I always leave an episode learning something new.
- [01:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think they forgot the 1982 Falklands War.
- [01:53]
Bradley Devlin
And in the age of clickbait and rage bait, that's a really good feeling, right?
- [01:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
The media. Thank you. You can leave now.
- [02:00]
Bradley Devlin
And if you agree, you might like my show, the Daily Signals long form interview podcast called the Signal. Sit down. Every week we take you behind the scenes of the biggest battles in Washington, D.C. as they happen with some of the biggest names in politics. We explore big ideas and we analyze the policymaking process from an unabashedly and unapologetically conservative perspective. And that's important now more than ever, especially with the Trump administration back in office, because in 2024, you sent Washington a message it couldn't ignore. It's your government and together we're taking it back. So check us out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen, we're there too. And drop me a follow on X radleydevlin to stay Updated with what's happening on the signal. Sit down.
- [02:42]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back, Victor. For you who are new, Victor is the Martin and Nealy Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Bussky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, victorhanson.com and the name of that website site is the Blade of Perseus. We hope you all come to join us there. Victor's articles and his podcast, both audio and video are linked there. And please join us as a subscriber and you can get the videos ad free. So please think about that. And also Victor writes two articles and does a special video for the Ultra subscribers as well. So those are reasons why you might want to subscribe to Victor's work there. Well, Victor, we have an indictment of Raul Castro, who is the current leader in Cuba. I believe he's 94 years old and he's being indicted for bringing down two planes to kill four individuals. But they were civilian planes, so they killed a lot of other people in addition. But I was wondering your thoughts on the indictment of ra.
- [03:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I mean, we could indict almost half the leaders in the UN for killing people. But what makes this different is he ordered the assassinations of American citizens. And they have a recording of the air traffic controller pilot communications that it was deliberate. So it wasn't an accident. He's 94. I don't think he's going to be snatched up like Maduro. But it's part of a psychops effort to tell the Cuban people that there's going to be a change. And they're bit by bit insidiously destroying the reputation, such as it is, of that government. So what do I mean by that? They've got Cuban Americans going in there and talking about investment. They get the CIA Director Radcliffe to go in there and tell them that it's unsustainable. And basically the Trump message is out after 50 years. Were were fed up. Excuse me, I shouldn't say 50 years, because they were communists from the very beginning in 1959. So you're talking about 68 years. Of just communist tyranny. And they have caused havoc all over the Caribbean. We remember the Grenada. They were there, they were in Venezuela, they were in Africa, in former Portuguese colonies. They're everywhere, Cuban expeditionary forces. So they're just tired of it and they think that the Caribbean is impoverished, it's destabilized. And one reason is you've got this. The linchpin. Cuba was always the most important, most beautiful, most powerful, most economically robust of all the Caribbean. And if they could flip it, I don't think they want to go in there. They don't want to bomb it. They don't want to send in another Cuban expeditionary force of expatriates. They don't want a Bay of Pigs, nor should they want it, but they can put this maximum pressure on that government. And all they're saying now is if you get rid of the communist government and you get a transitional government, just like we did with Maduro, and that transitional person is not, does not know, does not expect, does not assume that he'll be there forever, that he'll be a transitional Juan Carlos type of figure in the case of Franco Spain, then we'll relax everything, just get rid of the Castro Mafia, get somebody in there that may be peripherally affiliated with him, have him restore order. The foreign aid will pour in, the money will pour in, and then schedule election. And they, I'm not sure they're going to do it.
- [06:54]
Sammy Wink
Mafia is a good term for that because they just have robbed Cuba while the Cubans are not doing so well themselves. And in fact they, I've seen read some reports that they have 22 hours of blackouts in Cuba at a time, so they're not doing very well and never have really been doing.
- [07:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
And yet they were popping up by the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union fell apart in 91, Yeltsin stopped the subsidies and the other problem was they drove out all of the entrepreneurial class that left, as they were called, insects or enemies of the revolution. And they all went to Miami and Miami's booming, so that could happen to Cuba very quickly. But it's part of this plan that Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, and it will work if he keeps in mind there's certain rules, both from the American misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the MAGA Doctrine, no optional, forever wars. Okay, so last June, bombed the facilities, no problem. Tucker kind of bolted and said it was World War Three and he was done. But he kind of lempt back after that because it was, I don't know, three hours over the target at most. And then there was the Maduro. Yes, there were ground troops, not one person was killed. And you got rid of Maduro and you didn't try to nation build, you just left his lackeys in charge. And you said, we have a deadline and you're going to start to liberalize at that critical point. If you review the five years of the Trump two tenures, soleimani taken out Baghdadi taken out ISIS bombed the Wagner group obliterated in Syria, Maduro, pressure on Panama. They all have certain things in common. No one was killed. They were all very effective. They were all very short with the exception of Venezuela. Those weren't really ground troops. Those were troops put in there to protect the extradition. And then the flight over Iran and then this 42 days of bombing, no ground troops. The problem with the present war is it was 42 days of bombing and now it's getting up to another 40. We're approaching all of March, all of April, all of May, we're approaching more days now are been in negotiation and we've lost 13 soldiers. That's historically a very low number. But he's got to set a deadline on the negotiations. And as I said last time, it may be Memorial Day and four day news blackout but I don't think there's a chance ever that they are going to negotiate surrender of their nuclear components, enriched uranium, centrifuge, any of that. And I think there's zero chance that they will voluntarily open up the straits. Just not going to happen because that's equivalent to their removal. Once they do that and show concessions then the people are going to rise up and say you humiliated us and now you're weak.
- [10:31]
Sammy Wink
So you think that that'll be a Gorbachev moment then in Iran if they
- [10:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
did that, which of course they'll never do that. So what'll happen is at some point he's going to have to, I think the Israelis will join and he's going to have to destroy all their ability to hold the straight captive and all their ability to reclaim the nuclear enrichment. That would be bunker buster bombs again a huge campaign in Pike Mountain bombing all of their facilities, bridges, military facilities, cargo handling, derricks, crane, a whole thing on Carg island, sanitary corridor across from the straits and see if you can do it without ground troops and then get it over with and say you know what we think they will not be able to get enriched uranium. And then you just say to them this is not the end of the story. We have such sophisticated space satellite reconnaissance, we can see a dog next to Pike Mountain. The moment we see any of these areas that we suspect were used for nuclear re enrichment, we're going to hit them again. And you have to do that. And they will. If they're devious and diabolical what they are, if that goes into a bombing campaign, then they'll cry uncle at some point and then they'll wait for a Democratic administration that won't monitor him and then they'll go in there and get it. So that's the danger. But he can't stay there very much longer if he wants to have a 50, 50 chance in the midterm. This is important. People say, well, Victor, this is more important. Trump said that getting rid of the nuclear program is Agenda one. Yeah, it is. But he's staging a multifaceted political, cultural, economic, military, social revolution. And if he loses the House and Senate, there won't be one federal judge he can appoint. They'll stop everything. They will start impeachment against him and drain the last two and a half years of his administration. So he's got to at least hold the Senate and hopefully he could hold the House. It's possible still. So it's high stakes.
- [12:56]
Sammy Wink
You say it's possible still. Did you have doubts that he. Do you have doubt? Like I'm just asking, do you think that the gerrymandering will do enough to hurt the Republicans?
- [13:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's helping the Republicans, absolutely, that gerrymandering. And by the way, that didn't start in Texas. It started in New England years ago. When you look at those New England states And there's only zero or one House seat for Republicans, even though they got 40 to 45% of the vote in national elections, what Texas was, was a wake up call. And then that started this chain reaction in California, Virginia. But if all the legislatures do what they're able to that are controlled by Republicans, they can probably get anywhere from 10 to 13, 14 seats that are likely to re elect Republicans. And then with the end of the racial gerrymandering, maybe four or five. And then when you look at the seats that are solidly Republican, solidly Democrat, lean Republican, lean Democrat, completely up for grabs, you're down to about 45 or 50 seats are completely open and the candidates will matter. And most people think it's about 50, 50 right now. And that's a historical achievement because usually almost, except for George w. Bush in 2002 and FDR and 38, 36, 34 and 36, I think every president's lost seats. And because they only have a two or three seat margin, losing seats means losing the House. So they could pull it off and, you know, get a two or three seat margin. When you get rid of guys like Massey who are apostates and Marjorie Taylor Greene that are apostates, maybe Boebert too, then you get solid people that will not defect like the Democrats don't they never have one defection. Nancy Pelosi taught Hikem Jeffries. She said if you're going to be the leader of this party, you tell every members on every critical vote I don't care if they're in a purple or red state that they defect, that we're going to primary them and they never do. And then when votes are, you know, and they're if they're going to win a vote by 30 votes, they'll tell a congressperson in a purple, well, you can vote against it. This crazy literal that's okay because it doesn't matter. But the Republicans don't have that kind of discipline.
- [15:30]
Sammy Wink
Well, since we were on Cuba and you started talking about the Venezuela, I just had a poll this week that was taken in Venezuela on whether Venezuelans believe their country is the same, is better off after Maduro was gone was how the question was asked and 80% said it was either the same or better. And 53.5% said they thought it was better off. I thought that was pretty amazing.
- [16:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
Pretty amazing when they have the second largest oil reserves in the world and they don't have control of it now they being the dictator, we do. So we're refining the oil in the United States into gas and then we put it into an account and so that account can't be touched by the Maduro unless we sign off on it. That means no Russia or China oil sales. But how that translates to the Venezuela street is the Yankees have our oil Yankee go home. But it hasn't yet. There's a window on that too. If they don't get an elections pretty soon it's a fine line because you don't want chaos and killing. And they'll Maduro out operate, they're still in power, will do that like they always do. So you have to on the one hand say we're not going to extradite you, we're not going to kill you, we're not going to imprison you, maybe give them amnesty but you're going to have to oversee an election pretty soon. In a year or two.
- [16:57]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. All right, Victor. Let's welcome back a sponsor, Pure Health Research. If you want to drop extra pounds, boost energy levels or reduce swelling in your legs and feet, then this message is for you. Pure Health Research is on a mission to make America healthy again. And two of their best selling health supplements are leading the way. First is Liver health formula. Over 100 million Americans have a sluggish liver riddled with fatty deposits. This can kill your metabolism. Pile on the pounds and make you feel tired. Liver health formula takes care of all that. It supports thriving liver health with special nutrients like artichoke extract and milk thistle. This is one of the easiest ways to slim down and revitalize your energy levels. Next is lymph system support. If you struggle with fluid buildup or swelling in your legs, ankles or feet, this one's for you. The natural ingredients in lymph system support help gently flush extra fluids and toxins out of your body. And right now, for a limited time, you can get 35% off liver health formula and lymph system support along with all 50 plus health supplements pure Health Research has to offer. Head over to PureHealthResearch.com and use coupon code VICTOR at the checkout. That's PureHealthResearch.com with coupon code VICTOR to save 35% on your order today. And we'd like to thank Pure Health research for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. Well, Victor, let's turn to California and lots of things going on, but some of the political things. Karen Bass was recently on a doing an interview and they asked her what she would do different in her second term. And of course, she didn't really have any good answers for that. But what she did say was that the street lights, she was going to keep them on by using solar panels to light them because of all the copper thieves that have stolen the copper in the lights and caused that. Doesn't sound like much.
- [19:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
It basically says the status quo is a status quo forever and it's untouchable. And certain people who steal copper wire and homeless people who inject and incompetence that drain reservoirs and don't fill them up, that's okay because they're marginalized, underserved communities. So when they cause havoc that affect my house, my mansion, the mayor's mansion, then I need lights on the street. So we're gonna. We're gonna act to compensate their criminal behavior. We're not gonna eliminate their criminal behavior. That's how they feel. They don't feel that lawless Los Angeles are these spinning brodies in intersections is a crime. They don't think that urinating and defecating and fornicating injecting is a crime and they've destroyed the city. Except she's basically saying her message from what I got from the debates. She never really apologized for going to Uganda on a junket or any of the people she appointed the incompetent fire chief, the incompetent director of water and power. The incompetent vice mayor. They were all incompetent. So what she's basically saying is, I have two constituencies, the liberal, white professional and Asian class. And those are all liberals. Those are people in the media, Hollywood, entertainment, sports, universities, academics, teachers unions, seiu. They all make good money. And it's not that much different. They can navigate around the catastrophes. They're in safe neighborhoods for the most part. And then they have the very poor. Those are illegal aliens, first generation aliens, minority communities. And she says to them, we have the most generous welfare system in the country. We're even going to fix your meth teeth if you have them. Take off your tattoos, you name it. And that doesn't require a renunciation or rejection of anything she's done. She just keeps mute. And now she won't even debate at all. And the other Ramna is far more dangerous because she's smarter and she's far more left. I know Karen Bass went to Cuba to harvest sugar for Castro as a student, but she's scary because she's voiced a lot of racist stuff about DEI and white people and all this stuff. And fascist.
- [21:54]
Sammy Wink
Is she part of the democratic socialists at all?
- [21:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
I can't remember. If she isn't. She should be because she's. Sounds like it.
- [22:01]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, that's true. Well, I don't know. We'll see how. How Spencer Pratt does. He seems to be taking the airwaves by storm anyways. Or the video waves by storm. Well, let's turn to Governor Newsom and a couple of things about him this week are he re. It came out that he removed the homeless from the. The home in front of the home of a. In NFL star Marshawn Lynch. And he did that for him, which was just like, okay, homeless are fine everywhere else, but Marshawn lynch does not want him in front of his house. So I'm going to go get rid of an encampment. That's one thing. And the second thing is, in a speech this week, Newsom has said that both Trump and Bernie Sanders are right. And that's his new line. Right on. I believe he was talking about supporting the working class or defending the working class.
- [23:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
Start with the premise that Gavin Newsom has no ideology at all. He's a leftist because he was brought up by the Getty family as a surrogate son who financed his business projects. And he was the son of a appellate court judge and he was affluent and he was a Nepo baby. And then he had the money and he had the Connections to Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Jerry Brown, Willie Brown, all the people. Nancy Pelosi was related to him by Mary. All the people that have power. So they groomed him and he just kind of mediocre. It was just a mediocrity on the border supervised county. And then he was mayor and then he was lieutenant governor and then he was governor. He just always just sort of, you know, he had a drinking problem, he was an adulterer. He had all these certain things he did, but he didn't really ever craft or think about a political agenda at all. I mean he said he was going to solve homeless. $10 billion. Completely got worse. Everything he's touched, he has the reverse Midas touch. Everything he touches turns to Dr. Fire. California has gone up three times in major blazes. High speed rail, it's hopeless.
- [24:25]
Sammy Wink
It's currently burning right now.
- [24:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, it's burning in Los Angeles. We had the solar plant in the desert blew it. It's being dismantled. We had the Monterey batteries factory storage for solar panel. It's blown up twice. The 99 in its four lane choke points is deadly. I five down, the whole west side is only two lanes in each direction. Hasn't changed in 60 years. And the 101, there's places that the 101 or two, you go down on the way to Monterey or Carmel from the Bay Area, you get in those choke points and then going down to la, there's choke points. So he didn't address any of our problems. And the does that he addressed, he made it worse. Highest taxes in the nation, highest gas taxes, highest electricity prices, some of the worst test scores, but high cost per pupil. He doesn't talk about any of that. So now he just puts his finger in the wind every week and says, I don't have any ideas, but everybody's starting to hate Trump. I'll get a team that kind of emulates Trump. They'll be just as uncouth. We'll use foul words, we'll use capital letters. And then people got angry at that. I'm going to hit him in the mouth. He did the Robert De Niro shtick and then he kind of dropped that. And then they said, you know, when you look at the field, there's not a moderate. Why don't you be a moderate for a while? So he had Charlie Kirk on his podcast, he had Steve Bannon, that's kind of been dropped now. So then they said, no, no, scratch that, everybody's going left wing. AOCs might may run for president Kamela is going to go more left wing. Buttigieg's, you've got to. Don't let anybody be to your left in California. So they did that and then he looked at their polls and they're very unpopular. And then somebody whispered in his ear, I think I told you the right thing is to. You'll be the only moderate. You can be in between Fetterman and Kamela. And practical, just say, do the Mike Dukakis thing. It's not about ideology, it's just competence. Well, he can't do that because he's incompetent. But that's what he's doing right now. He's trying to say two weeks ago Trump was Lucifer, Satan. Now he's kind of got some middle class ideas like Bernie. So he's a man that never was. He is, he's a chameleon. Whatever he is, he blends in.
- [26:59]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, but I think he's. There is a tactic here and it's the Hillary Clinton I'm going to tack to the center for a while until the presidential.
- [27:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
They've been told to it. Spamberger did that, she did that, and they all do that. Mondami acted like he wasn't as radical as he was.
- [27:17]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [27:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
When he ran.
- [27:19]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. It's very sad.
- [27:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, they have no choice because they won't change and the agenda is communist almost. And they know that if they were honest about it, they have various ways of winning. That way they can campaign as a moderate like Spamberger did and then lie. They can get a waxen effigy like Joe Biden and put all of their counselors in the shadows. Kind of like the wizard of Oz with gears and levers. And then Joe Biden's face was on that screen, you know. And then they can manipulate and say, I'm just good old Joe Biden, Scranton, you know, I need tougher law. And he'll think he's back in 1975 again. They do that. Or they can get really loud and say, well, we never can win under the election, so let's change balloting laws, get rid of the Supreme Court, nine court justices packet, get rid of the Electoral College, get in two new states, four senators, get rid of the filibuster, change the system. We change the system. Maybe our unpopular message can find a way into the White House.
- [28:27]
Sammy Wink
Yes. And so one last thing, and I don't know if there's too much more to say about this, but I thought it was very sad for the young high school girls that work so hard in track. But ab her now, who is the young man who is transitioned to a woman was in the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section, had a big track meet. And I just want to show how far beyond each in every single event he is. In the high jump, he went two inches higher than the second place, which is a lot for high jump. In the triple jump, he was 3ft beyond second place. And in the long jump, he was 15 inches from second place. Those are huge margins that are made because he's got a boy's anatomy.
- [29:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, the point is, if you look at the male equivalent, he wouldn't even place. He knew that. So I don't want to be reductionist, but I kept getting back to this point. If they really do believe that when you transition from a biological male DNA and everything chromosomal and then you pump yourself up with female hormones, I don't think he's had surgically altered operations. And that makes you no different than people in your new gender. Then why don't we have all these women who have shot themselves up with testosterone, grown beards and they say they're men. Why don't they dominate men's sports? And they don't. Maybe in archery or shooting, but. But they don't. And the answer is that your muscular skeletal frame is formed before these people transition. And everybody knows it. But the left has decided that they're out of cause celebs. They've done the women's lib, they've done the environment New Green deal, they've done civil rights dei, George Floyd. And they need a new cause. So the trans cause, which was.001% of the population. And according to a lot of studies, they've decided that this is epidemic and they're going to latch onto it. And then the funny thing about it is it's kind of like when they made that big solar plant in the desert and they made mirrors and they incinerated all these rare bird species, or they put out in the ocean, they put windmills that harm whales and stuff, the sonar and everything. Porpoises, they don't care. Once they get on a crusade, they don't care that it contradicts all of the things they said that were exempt and precious. And if anybody else had dared injured a whale or dared to take away a woman's right to be honored for her achievements, they've done that. They've destroyed women's sports in a way. All across the San Joaquin Valley here. And yet he and his mother pose as they pose as victims. And then they go to every little city council in this area from Bakersfield to Sacramento. They are the cause celebs. So they'll all have some county supervisors, one or two that will pose and say, this is my issue. You know, this is. And then Gavin. Gavin said to Charlie Kirk that that's wrong. Well, that was Gavin 1.0. He's like 7.0 now, so he can't decide what to do. He's got his posters. One whispers in his ear, there's a backlash coming. You're going to lose some votes in the independent. And the other one says, you'll lose your base if you don't. This is precious to him. So he doesn't know what to do. So he does nothing. That's what he does. He gets into fetal position. And then when he's in the fetal position and he can't do anything, then somebody whispers on him, well, you can get out of the fetal position by Trump. Trump, you know, come over here. We're going to beat him in the mouth, hit him in the mouth. And you guys over there, in the Munich Security Council, you can bid on knee pads to Trump. Ha ha ha. Knee pads. You know what I mean? That's what he does. He's a very vulgar person, too. I don't want to be too hostile. I don't have any personal animosity. I just know that so many people in this state have been destroyed by him. They've left, their businesses have been destroyed, their storefronts are destroyed by home. Just yesterday in Sacramento, another person who came across the southern border illegally from India, who could not read English and was given one of these phony licenses, killed two people once again, it's going to keep going. And as I said, if on our old narrow avenue where I live, these drivers go at 80 miles or 70 miles. I saw one last night. I was walking along and this truck was going really fast, but I looked out in the distance because I walk at twilight. I was walking near the mailbox. I thought, wow, that's a loud motorcycle. It only had one light, and I could see it. Can you imagine driving in the dark at twilight with a semi truck with one headlight, and it was going about 65 miles an hour. So that's. That's what California is. There's no consequences. And he did that, Gavin. He gave all these people licenses, and then he hid behind DEI and said, anybody who objects is a racist. And then he goes to all these constituents and he says, you should vote for me because these white racists want to go after the Sikh community when all they don't. It's not about the Sikh community. It's just about anybody who wants to get a license in California to protect 43 million people on the road should learn English and pass the test, end of story. And be here legally. No brainer. But they can't even agree to that because they're lawless people.
- [34:35]
Sammy Wink
GAVIN in yeah, well, just to follow up on AB Hernandez, even the Olympic Committee can find an answer, and their answer is that these trans men or trans men are men, and so they're not going to participate in the women's Olympics.
- [34:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
And why is that? Is it because suddenly the Olympic community developed intestinal fortitude? No. They went back and looked at their TV ratings, especially that boxer from Morocco or Algeria that beat that Italian girl up to pulp, and they said people don't want to watch it. They don't want to go there. They think it's going to destroy the whole Olympic spirit. And this is so ironic because when I used to go up to watch the Russian, it was kind of my mom was an alumni of Stanford. She would buy us tickets. We'd go to the Russian American Games. They held it at Stanford. And there was some two sisters called the press sisters, and they looked like Hulk Hogan, Tamara and Ilya, I think her name was, and one was a shot putter and one was a hammer thrower and they could almost match the male. So we had all of these good sprinters, and every time we went two or three times, the Americans would almost catch up because they combine the women. And then you get into the women's heavy weightlifting and all that stuff, shot put and these two girls, and they would give them spit tests to see what their hormone level was. And they would try to they wouldn't let them be inspected physically, but it was obviously they were trans men. And that was considered shocking and a sign that Soviet Union couldn't be trusted. But now we've adopted the Soviet system, the same values.
- [36:18]
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor, let's take a break and then we'll come back. And we're going to talk today about Memorial Day. Stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [36:25]
Bradley Devlin
If you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen, you might enjoy the Daily Signals flagship show, the Tony Kenneth cast, the same common sense perspectives you love. Weekdays at 7pm Eastern. And unlike some of the other evening shows, we work up until showtime to bring you the latest breaking news, analysis and good old American sarcasm. Thom Tillis, I'm pretty sure might have been Useful at one time as a doorstop. Find the Tony Kenneth cast on YouTube, X radio, TV or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [36:54]
Sammy Wink
I welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. We are a subsidiary of the Daily Signal and you should go to the Daily Signal where you'll find these podcasts. You'll find shorts that Victor does and lots of articles written by other people. Conservative topics so. Well, Victor, what I wanted to ask about Memorial Day and you can talk about it in whatever fashion, but how is the citizen soldier different from other types of soldiers?
- [37:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
It goes back to classical Greece and it starts in the around 700 BC and from out of the dark ages they had 1500 city states over that period appeared and they were all consensual. After the age of tyranny they got rid of the tyrants and the narrow oligarchic class and they defined a person equal to another. And that reverberated in three aspects when you went outdoors. Some people have argued that democracy is hard to do in cold climates because you need halls that were sufficiently warm in winter to vote and you can't do it. I know that Nordic people sometimes say that, but in the Mediterranean world you can meet all year round and it depends. In a theater you can hear 25,000 people can hear if it's like Epidaurus. So each person had a seat in the open air assembly to vote in the Ecclesia they called it. That same person then had a farm that was roughly 10 acres. Plato and Aristotle said, you know what? This is very hard to enforce equal property owning. They didn't mandate it, but they encouraged it it that you could not be alienated from your land, you couldn't be foreclosed. And then the third one is each person had an equal slot in the phalanx. So the citizen soldier was someone who voted in the assembly. He was an independent, economically viable, autonomous farmer. And he took his own armor and he lined up with his like people. He wasn't part of the poor. There were light armed troops that were landless in the city. He wasn't part of the rich that had enough money to own horses and had larger estates. So there was a large landowning middle class. And that was the ideal then for the Italian yeoman under the Roman Republic. And it came in the Florentine Empire, the Venetian Empire, the Renaissance and in the United States. So that was the idea of a citizen soldier. And that's sunshine patriots kind of a prerogative term. But that's who the people were. The Militias. We had a professional. We had militias that were then trained into professional troops. And then we had irregulars, you know, Francis Marion, Swamp Fox, the Green Mountain Boys. But the idea was that these were all citizens and they had claims that they were going to be voting on the conditions of their service. And they owned property that made themselves. They were not peasants and they were not serfs as in Europe. Europe. And so that was sort of carried on World War I and World War II with the end of the draft. We're not mercenaries anymore, but we're professional armies and it's different.
- [40:26]
Sammy Wink
And so these citizen soldiers were then able to vote on whether to go to war or not go to war. And then so they were all in. So do you see our current military as similar to that? Like all these guys that go off
- [40:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
to a war in Iran with certain modifications. We haven't had a large drafty army since 1971. In Vietnam, even then, when we ended the draft, the ground operations were over. Remember that? A good sign of what I'm saying is I was on a campus, I was a little bit too young. I didn't get a lottery number to. I think I was 1972 or something. It was 245. But my brother had been there earlier when that group, when they ended the draft and started the rotary. It was amazing. All of the anti war stuff dried up. I only saw one big one in 1972, about a Cambodia I think it was. But it dried up because the people in the university were no longer subject to going to Vietnam and they didn't conscience objectors go to Canada, say they were quick, all that stuff disappeared. And so the people who did go to Vietnam were volunteers, at least they were. Or they, in the initial round they got a lottery number and then that was dropped. And then they became they're voting citizens and they choose to serve in the military. And because we have not had a large scale war like Vietnam where we had 450,000 troops, we have manpower shortage, but we keep it about a million and a half soldiers and we don't need that many people. One of the reasons the draft was hard to maintain was we were becoming more technologically adept and sophisticated. The military said, if we're going to use these sophisticated tomahawks or submarines or sophisticated aviation, we need people more than two years. And then they looked at it and they said, well, if we had the draft, we could let people choose civilian or military, so you could be in the Civilian Conservation Corps. Then they came back and said, well, that Wouldn't work because the Europeans have found out when they gave that option, all of the people that went to college went to civilian and the poor and the under the lower classes went to military. So it didn't serve any purpose of integrating the classes and different people as it had in World War II. So now I think we've got a pretty good. It's a smaller military, but it's very sophisticated with technology and people stay in for a long time. And people have talked about bringing back the draft and registering just for national emergencies. But it's hard to see in a world of conventional warfare that's dominated by drones and missiles and strategically with nuclear weapons, it's hard to see why we would need an Army. World War II, we ended up with 12.2 million soldiers. And for our population, people forget that about the United states. Russia had 240 million people. Soviet Union, and they only did 200,000 more. 12.4. So for a country of about 145 million, 50 million to get into uniform, 12 million.2, 200. That's amazing. Of course, the sadness of it is if you look at the people who actually a, were deployed overseas and then were deployed in combat units, we were very short. We were exhausted. So we, we took those soldiers in the Pacific and then they landed on Normandy. They got killed finally by the time they got to Germany in May, and if they were in a B17 or a B24, their life was not very long.
- [44:35]
Sammy Wink
All right, well, there's a lot of
- [44:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
people killed, you know.
- [44:38]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. So on Memorial Day, then, we are celebrating all of those who have been killed.
- [44:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
And first Monday. Excuse me, the last Monday in May, and it's the bookend of Veterans Day in November, which is Veterans Day, is to commemorate anybody who served in the military in a war, regardless whether they were wounded or anything. It's a veteran of a war that was in the US Military. Memorial Day. It's kind of weird. It started later. It started kind of late after the Civil War because the Civil War remains. They keep upping the numbers. Now scholars do. It used to be 600, 650 dead. Now they say near 700,000 dead. If you do the American Revolution was about 25,000 dead. The War of 1812, if you go through the whole theater, could have been 20,000. The Mexican War was, I think 7. Spanish American War was less. And then if you look at World War I, 117,000 dead. If you look at World War II, that's gone up a little bit. It's about 410 to 430, depending on whether you got the flu or how they count it. If you got sick in a war environment versus if you died in the states in uniform from the flu or something. And then you look at Afghanistan and Iraq. Vietnam was 58,000. Korea was, I think something around 36, 35. Afghanistan and Iraq together was 72. So you look at all of them, it's about a million point two. But the point I'm making is for the population of the United States, that 700 was almost 2.5% of the population. Think about that. Two out of every S county, men, women and children. So after the war, the Confederates who had lost grievously for the size of their free population, they began to commemorate cemeteries, flowers Day and things like that. Poppies that came in really popular after World War I because of in Flandersfield, the great poem. And the poppy became kind of the memorial flower for graves after that poem was popularized in World War I. But it was the Confederates and then the Northerns. North quickly followed suit in honoring the dead of the Civil War. And then the people in border states or during battlefields from both sides, it was sort of a national reconciliation that both sides, if the battlefield was in the south, the battlefield was on a border state or in the north, which was much rarer then they took care of both graves equally and put flowers on them. So it grew up out of that. And then I think it was the 1970s. They regularized it or systematized it started in 1890, as is Memorial Day. But then they said that we're going to do it every year. I think I was in high school and I remember we had a big assembly about it. And it's going to be the last Monday. And you know, it's a three very famous. Our first big summer, three day weekends, late spring. And it's the only thing about it. When you read about the origins of Memorial Day, it was a genuine effort to never repeat that again. 700,000 dead. And the south was devastated economically. And so everybody thought they deserved it. Carpet beggars, scallywags, the rails were destroyed, Sherman, all that stuff. But there was this effort for reconciliation and it was really strong that you couldn't, you know, Jim Crow persisted. That was a big stumbling block. So the south was even more backward because they had legalized segregation. They had didn't have a big middle class. Manufacturers were under pressure not to go down there. And it really didn't change until the 70s when the Big Three had signed ruinous union wages and settlements that were great as long as they lasted, but they were not building a competitive car vis a vis Germany and Japan. And so what happened is the UAW went from about 40% union jobs in America down to 10% and they started moving factories into the south and so did Honda and Toyota and, and Nissan and that kind of. But my point is they were trying to reconcile. There was no statue toppling, there was no renaming. And you had a lot of very liberal Hollywood directors at Paramount and Fox theaters and Metro mgm, mostly Jewish Americans, very liberal. But if you look at their movies, I mentioned this before, they were all trying to suggest that you shouldn't rub in even then the south that you had. So in the Searchers, John Wayne, he may have read Road with Quantrell or somebody like it, but he's a tragic hero. Shane, when he kills Jack Palance Wilson, he says you're a no good Yankee liar. Yankee liar. He's from the South. And if you look at all those movies, the tragic characters are all. If you look at Major Dundee, a movie by Sam Peckinpah, the South is treated very reverentially. And so the idea was that even the most liberal people in the United States were Hollywood producers. They wanted to continue that even into the 50s and 60s and now we've lost that. I guess we're healed. When I go to Florida now or Texas, it's hard. I hear as many non Southern accents depending on where I am as Southern accents. And the infrastructure is much better than California. Texas freeway or Florida freeway is so much better than our freeways.
- [51:24]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, schools are better. That's true. Yeah. Yeah.
- [51:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
So the south has risen again and it's booming. And the red state model works as Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Nevada and the blue state doesn't.
- [51:43]
Sammy Wink
And hopefully we'll never have a civil war in our borders again.
- [51:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
Despite. I look at my email sometimes and the animus comes from the left. I've been threatened a lot in emails and sometimes I've had angry readers. You go back and look at it. Luckily what I like about the conservatives there is they band together. So I'll get some guy will say if you ever walk in Washington, I got your name and number and then somebody will write. I think he did. He said I'm a federal prosecutor in Texas and there's no state jurisdiction limitations on me and if you're going to cross state lines I'm going to prosecute you. So I don't see a lot of animus from the right to go no,
- [52:30]
Sammy Wink
you know what I, you know, any
- [52:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
demonstrations were, I mean, January 6th, but the left tried to say there was no person that was violently killed on the part of the right. There was natural deaths. They tried to say that Officer Sicknick, Brian Sicknick was killed. He wasn't. He had a hemorrhage, cerebral hemorrhage. The next day. It might have been from stress. Then they had that ceremony where they said eight or nine people committed suicide. But that was weeks and months. They tried to claim it was on January 6th. Kamala Harris said it was worse than 911 in Pearl harbor, like that. But the only person who died was a diminutive 14 year old, 14 year veteran Ashley Babbitt, who was shot for the misdemeanor of trying to go through a previously broken window by Officer Byrd, who immediately they disguised his name, his profile. Unlike any policeman in the United States who shoots an unarmed suspect back his pictures in the paper the next day. Not Officer Byrd. He played the victim. Especially when we found out he had a bad record of being lax and unprofessional. Derelict in the use of weapons.
- [53:45]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, well, with our citizen soldiers, I know that it's a professional military, so they're all volunteers. We'd like to thank them all on this Memorial Day. The ones obviously that are still living and, and remember the ones that are not.
- [54:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
It was a big day for us because we had a big flag at our little house my dad put up and he had flown as a central fire control gunner 40 missions over Japan. Some of them weren't in Korea. And his father had been gassed in the Meuse Argonne offensive. He was a veteran and his first cousin by my grandfather's brother. His wife died in birth and he was blinded in a farming accident. So Victor was really brought up by my grandfather as my dad's first cousin, Dash brother. And he was killed in the 6th Marine Division on Okinawa. And then their other brother, Robert Hanson, he had a very dangerous job. He was in charge of transporting lend lees through Iran into Russia to supply the Russian army fighting Army Group south under Operation Barbarossa. So they all, if anybody goes to Kingsburg, California, that was the home, the park. And there was the Hansen family farm. And on one corner it says Hansen Corner. And they have all the names of that family, Swedish that fought in those wars were killed or wounded or made it through.
- [55:24]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, it's wonderful that you have that whole history that in your family of all of those soldiers.
- [55:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, it was kind of funny. They all said the same you don't volunteer, but if you get drafted, you're going. Because my grandfather got drafted when he was 27 and my dad got drafted when he was, I think, 23, and his cousin got drafted and Victor got drafted. But as soon as they got drafted, they went. So I remember when Vietnam came, they said, you're not volunteering for Vietnam, but if they draft you, you're going to go. There's no conscientious objector, there's no National Guard. So
- [56:06]
Sammy Wink
let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and talk about the main candidate for his force, the senator, a senator of Maine, and that is Graham Platner. Stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [56:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Back. Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife. The importance of passing along our values to our children. The faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive as long as we keep first things first. We've only just begun. America the Beautiful.
- [56:48]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to Victor Davis Hamilton.
- [56:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
I should say they didn't have an objection to volunteering, but they were all farmers, so they wanted to help their father or, you know what I mean,
- [56:59]
Sammy Wink
they had other things that were.
- [57:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, my grandfather in World War I was the same age as my Swedish grandfather, and he was considered because they were using raisins to ship overseas. So all the raisin farmers. Farmers. And he was 20, 27. So he stayed and farmed. And he had a disabled daughter.
- [57:19]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Well, Victor Graham Platner, they're digging out all sorts of things. And I think that this is important to illustrating that he is despicable. One of his Reddit posts criticized a soldier who took fire so that his compadres or comrades could get to safety. And according to Platner, that guy was a fool for doing that.
- [57:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
He said that the courage Kyle about the movie American Sniper, that he had exaggerated his kills by killing civilian. And then he, he said some things that were really ill that he liked the smell of Porta Potty antiseptic because it reminded him of self abuse, masturbation. I mean, you're going to have a US Senator who was using a public toilet to gratify himself when people were waiting in line to go. That's something you wouldn't even. I mean, that's a fireable offense. If you were a teacher on a campus and you had portable. And some of them do Porta Potties when they're under construction and your Teacher went in there and was master. They would fire him. So. And then he described in very graphic, that cannot be repeated, the. The anatomy of the phallus and stuff. And he, there was just. And he said, he said, he said things that were just unconscionable, pornographic, horrible, mean, cruel.
- [58:55]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [58:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
And every time they, they tried to ambush a Elizabeth Warren or Chuck Schumer or I, they just didn't want to talk. I don't know anything about it. I think their attitude is we have reached a saturation point. The left. Graham Platner is rsob. He's awful. But the more you say about him, you can't get any worse than where he is. So it's just going to roll off his back like water off a duck. And he's rsob. And this new generation that is in our party, you can't be too pornographic, you can't be too vulgar, you can't be outrageous. For this gen. This Democratic Socialist, all you can do. You can't be moderate. You can't be conciliatory, you can't be Fetterman. And he's hardcore and socialist, you know, tough.
- [59:51]
Sammy Wink
He should be careful though, because Eric Swalwell was also their SOB until he became non, you know, unacceptable. But back to Platner. I think that there should be some method of disqualifying people from. There's not, but there should be.
- [60:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
There's nothing in the Democratic Party that disqualifies you except being a moderate. Anything else? I mean, they had another woman who's running for Congress in Texas and she said she wants to use ICE detention facilities to put Zionists in camps. And then she said we can put pedophiles in there and castrate them as. And they're the same as Zionists anyway. So basically what you're talking about is 75 years after the Holocaust, you have a Democrat running for Congress and says, let's get back and get those Jews back in camp. That's pretty awful. And she's going to be the nominee, it looks like. And there's worse people than there. But see, the DIA thing is so weird. And I'll be graphic about it. She's got a Hispanic name and. The seek truck driver who just killed. He's in a protected group. Platter's got to be careful because he has no connotation. DEI bonus points. And neither did Swalwell. But what they're saying, there's no. I guess what I'm saying, there's no bottom anymore to the Democratic Party. You can Go lower and lower and lower. And then what? Lower you. If you come out and say you're happy that Luigi Mangione was an assassin and shot Brian Thompson, an executive, in the back, you can get three young girls to do a little skit and they will be given journalism credential by Mondami. No different. That would be like saying to the Manson girls who were visitors at his trial. But you can say, well, you're a journalist here. That would be unthinkable.
- [62:02]
Sammy Wink
Absolutely. Well, we have. Also in Minnesota, Amy Bach is considered the ringleader of feeding our futures scam that robbed their new. Or at least the recent ones. The recent estimates I saw were $243 million from the federal government.
- [62:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
Ms. Bach is the fall girl.
- [62:29]
Sammy Wink
You know, I. I mean, she's guilty. I thought that at first, but she's guilty, too. She knew what was going on, and she. She made 1.2 million.
- [62:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
On the whole, she was found guilty, and she's going to spend the rest of her life in prison. 40 years, 44 years.
- [62:43]
Sammy Wink
She will. I'm glad.
- [62:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
But I hope that she cuts a deal and becomes a stool pigeon, because she's been insinuating that it couldn't have happened without the conventional protection of Ilya Omar.
- [62:55]
Sammy Wink
I think she might have spent her credence on that because she's already said that stuff. I can't believe that Ilhan Omar didn't know this. Not that she had a direct line to Ilhan Omar, knowing it or not.
- [63:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think she said she got rid of assets somehow. I think they were paper assets, but they were assets because she went from $90,000 to $30 million, and she was bragging on that. And she must have had things in her name. And then she said that was a clerical. Nobody makes a clerical error. She had an account. Nobody makes that 30 million. So she must have had people in the family or someone or friends that she offloaded assets, because now she's back down to worth almost nothing. So many things were wrong with her. She's had so many second, third, fourth, fifth chances.
- [63:48]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, well, we'll see if she comes out, Scott, clean on this one. She did say she was happy Bach and others were being, quote, held accountable. And so that was her response to it. I don't know. It sounded like a fall guy until I started reading how much that woman benefited from what she was doing.
- [64:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't hear Tim Waltz or Keith Ellison, the attorney General. I don't hear them doing this blanket. Thank God for the Somali community. They've Saved Minnesota. They're the outstanding citizens. Given all of the people who've been indicted, they don't talk like that anymore.
- [64:29]
Sammy Wink
Well, I'm glad for the heavy sentence because that will be a good example for others who thought they could get away with fraud or who think they can in the future. Let's turn then to the Harvard faculty who just recently voted that they can only give 20% of their grades in A's. And so they are attempting to fight grade inflation at this point.
- [64:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
Harvey Mansfield was a very great scholar. I think he's in his 90s now. Years ago, he was a Hoover Fellow. He was one of our best visiting fellows. He gave two grades. The real grade grade and then the grade that he had to report so that people would take his class. If he gave the real grade, Ds and Cs, nobody would take his class. So he gave the grade they actually earned but wouldn't. And then he recorded the one he had to record. He thought Yale's, 80% A's. Stanford, they don't understand what they did. And so the question is, okay, the Ivy League that's supposed to be so Brilliant gave 70%, 80%, 90% A's. Then there's three things they have to explain. Why just 20 years ago was it 30%? Number two, do you think that there is a consequence by giving 80% A's to people who didn't earn them, that when they graduate and they go into law schools or med schools, and the med schools are doing it and the law school. But when they go out, do the employers notice a difference? Does a Stanford degree mean something when 75% of the courses are A's? And three, why are they doing it? Why are they doing it? Part of it is the therapeutic culture. You don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. T ball mentality. Everybody's a winner. Part of it is they set up these standards and they said to get into an Ivy League school like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, you have to have at least 750 on the SAT. You got to have at least 1500. And some people got 1600. And you have to have 3.9 and above. And they have to have a lot of AP classes. And now when they inflate those, it's going to be 4.6 or something. Because if they're AP. They did that. They did that. Nobody put the gun to them. And they said that we're doing this because our curriculum. Well, take a class at Stanford in German literature and translation. Take one in Latin Take one. In physics, they're so demanding. Oh, nobody could do this unless you meet our standard for mission. But once we get these talented, the best of the best of the best, then we can up the curriculum. And when we did that, that built our reputation. So then we would get calls from, hello, this is you at Packard. Bill Smith is a genius from Stanford. I'm not going to hire anybody from Georgia Tech or Texas A and M. Your guys are just the bet. That's what they said they were doing. Then they arbitrarily betrayed themselves. They said this. You don't have to have those standards to do our work. And then they let in people, mostly people who were dei, not all, but dei, because there's two types of dei. There's the diversity equity inclusion based on race, and there's a diversity equity inclusion that's based on your dad and whether he's an alumnus or a gifter. And they're both the same, but the DI is much bigger. Bigger. So when they let in all these people, the faculty said, and I was at Cal State, when we did it at Cal State, we had something called the group where the faculty went in rebellion. And I said to our president at the time, what are we going to do with this student? And he said, what do you mean? I said, here's his paper. We met with the president. I said, he does not know the English language. And he said, well, everybody. I said, he does not know the English language. He cannot write a sentence in English East. What do you want me to do with him? And I can't teach eight assigned readings anymore for humanities of the Western world. You think these people can read the Odyssey and then the Aeneid, Play of Sophocles, a Roman poem, Boethius, Dante, Shakespeare? No, they can't. So when they couldn't do that, then the next next iteration was they lowered the curriculum. So they either made new gut course, you know, the construction of gender in 1950s movies, Marvel comic books and the other, you know what I mean? They did that.
- [69:30]
Sammy Wink
Star Trek.
- [69:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. And then they did remedial classes. So we'll give you remedial classes so you can take the real class next. And then they lowered the requirements. All that did not work. Ultimately they had to just invent grades. So then they gave 80 grades. And then the employers said, after three or four years, I'd rather have a guy from Georgia Tech or Texas A and M than these guys. Because they don't. They're a twofer. They come to our Silicon Valley job and they can't do anything. They don't have skills, they cannot analyze, they don't write well, they don't speak well, but they do complain well. So they're always at hr. They're more trouble than they were. So we're not going to hire them. So I gave this lecture to a group of Stanford people that were in Silicon Valley maybe five years ago. And I thought I was going to be kind of bold and edgy and I said, just what I said, but I said, this is going to happen. It was like two years after George Floyd, maybe 20, 22. And the first question was, Victor, where have you been? And I said, well, I'm in Silicon Valley. He said, you know, nothing. You're, you're five years for. What do you think that happened when they destroyed all the standards in the SAT and they let in all these people and now the first classes were graduating or they're interning. We don't, we can't hire these people. We don't want them. We told them. And then when you add that all of our kids to get into Stanford, you need 10 million bucks to give. So that's only the big grandees, but the guys that are making 2 or 3 million can't afford to get their perfect straight A student and perfect into Stanford. And that was true. It was really unfair. And so they said they had lost their reputation. It's a joke. And now they're desperately trying to do what? Reinstate. They were so low that they had a press conference in the San Jose Mercury. You can go look at. The article said Stanford rejects 75% of their students who got a perfect, perfect SAT. Perfect. They were bragging that they rejected them. So sad, I guess.
- [72:01]
Sammy Wink
Oh, Victor, I have a question from one of your viewers. He says, Professor Hansen, would you please offer a video explaining the great game of the British imperial system? Did this game truly end after World War II? Or just take. Or what did it just take a new form in UK national relations controlled by modern day money changers? I'm not sure what that last question is, but what is the Great Game?
- [72:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's kind of a cynical term and it originated in the 19th century in areas that were far distant from Britain. But there were British colonies and they were not necessarily a. They weren't crucial to the vibrant economy of the empire, but they didn't want anybody else to be there. So the Locus Classic, the crown jewel, the British Empire was India. Rich, rich in natural resources and stuff. But Afghanistan was nearby. Remember Pakistan and India were India then So the Punjab, Khyber Pass. So they had three Afghan wars. And people asked, why are we. This is the death. That's why they always said, the graveyard of empires. And the Russians learned it. We learned it's not worth it. These are very fractious people. They just love fighting. I know that people, you're culturally insensitive it. But given what is in Afghanistan, the blood and treasure to control, it isn't worth it. So why did they do it? Because there was a great game. Because they were afraid the Russians or the French would get into Afghanistan and then they would pressure India. So it refers to all of the European powers. Chessboards. France is in in Syria, Damascus. France is in Beirut. The British are in Iraq and Baghdad and anything around there that affects those colonies that would give one an edge. They have proxy wars or they send expeditionary forces into. So British control the Sudan and the Egypt, and they want to keep people out. So when you use that term today, the great gang, it means superpowers strategically look at the map and they try to see areas of contention and advantage and disadvantage. So if we were going to use it today, we would say China is trying to get into the Western hemisphere to weaken our influence and then to control the Panama Canal. So Trump plays the great game. So he said they're not going to own companies. Chinese are not going to control the entry and the exit. And they told the Panamanian, you get them out and get American companies in there or we're going to take it over again. And then Venezuela is the biggest oil power in the whole Western world, Western hemisphere, north and south. It has more reserves than we do. It doesn't pump as much as we do. But Trump said, we're in Monroe. They're not going to let the Chinese take over that country along with the Russians. We're not going to do it because then they'll spread all that narco oil terrorism all over. And they've already subverted Peru and Bolivia and Colombia. We're not going to do it. And that's what the great game is. Cuba's a great game too.
- [75:32]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. I think maybe what he means by money changers controlling it is the capitalist class are going to benefit the most from transforming Venezuela, Cuba, Panama, etc, So I don't know.
- [75:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
I have some worries that after we went through the Biden Incorporated family mafia and Trump was really good on condemning that, but there are a lot of people who are making a lot of money in the Middle East. I don't know how they're doing it, but I hear they're making a lot of money now that can be completely up and bored. But if anybody would be saying, I have a concession. So I'm going to invest in your company and I need stock and ownership and I can give you access to a Pentagon on an advantage. I'm not saying they do that, but that would be. What I'm saying is I'm not so worried necessarily what they're doing because I'm not sure it's criminal or not or even unethical. I'm just thinking it's a type of activity that if they lose the House, the Democratic Congressional people are going to call them all in. They'll call all of them in, and it will be a sideshow. And if JD Vance or Marco Rubio loses the 2024 election, they will wage lawfare against all of them if it's not still in the statute of limitations. So they need to be very careful.
- [76:56]
Sammy Wink
Okay, so just a few short comments from our listeners at YouTube. Mary Black 3028. Burning man becomes a free city in the desert. So that's the Burning Man Festival, and Coachella is a music festival. So. Okay.
- [77:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's the difference.
- [77:15]
Sammy Wink
Yeah,
- [77:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
it's still in the desert, though.
- [77:19]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, I know. Both of them are. And they go. It's a Bacchanalia she's referring to. We were talking about the God Bacchus. Bacchanalia is what she's referring to. So peace, Stan.
- [77:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you for the correction. I appreciate that.
- [77:33]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, peace, Stan. 58.99 at the end of the meeting, notice how Xi sat on a higher cushion and he took the Genghis Khan pose. I didn't see that in when Trump visited China, but I'll trust her on that.
- [77:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
I wrote an article today called We're Not Thucydides Trapped. I really resented when he mentioned that Thucydides trapped. She did. We have to be able to navigate, meaning we are the ascendant power and you're the paranoid old, fossilized. And as I said today, it's just the opposite. The established power is us, but we're getting stronger and you're the ascendant power and you're slipping further behind. But that was really arrogant that he did that. He was very. He's very. I, I don't want to be rain on the parade of the summit, but I'm glad that Trump didn't come away with some big deal because they're like Iran. They won't tell the truth. They're a communist country. They can't tell the truth if they wanted to. They were going to help us in the last summit get rid of fentanyl. They never did that. They said they would voluntarily limit their surplus. They never did that. They said they'd be respectful about free traffic and not harass people in the South China Sea. They didn't do that. That everything they say is a lie.
- [78:46]
Sammy Wink
And then from Pen Pen Dragon film Dionysus was originally a toad stool God. And they would a dionysus toad stool God. And they would consume hallucinogenic mushrooms at his festival, which becomes orgiastic words like dithram. Dithyrambic came from Dionysius. Robert Graves goes into Dionysius and his toadstool in detail in the book White Goddess and His Writings.
- [79:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
The diathramb is a particular type of metrical poem that comes from Dionysic worship. That's true. But if I were to list 30 or 40 aspects of Dionysus, God of shepherds, sometimes, God of the irrational, God of wine, God of hallucinogenics, God of orgiastic activ activity, it would take all day.
- [79:42]
Sammy Wink
Of course. I was curious, though, about that toadstool comment by that guy. I guess toadstool must be hallucinogenic. Is that true?
- [79:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't think there were toadstools. If he means by toadstools poisonous mushrooms, Yeah.
- [79:57]
Sammy Wink
I don't know. Or who's hallucinogenic mushrooms, maybe.
- [80:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
Every year in California and spring, there's always somebody who goes out in the foothills and gets mushrooms and they're a manta or whatever those poisonous ones are, and they die.
- [80:10]
Sammy Wink
Oh, God, that's so sad.
- [80:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
Destroys the liver.
- [80:12]
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor. Well, we hope all of you have a wonderful Memorial Day and please remember our soldiers. And thank you, Victor, for all the wisdom and the.
- [80:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank everybody for listening and watching.
- [80:23]
Sammy Wink
This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen, and we're signing off.
- [80:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you for tuning in to the daily service signal. Please, like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. And also check out my own website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.