← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Why the Blue State Project Is Imploding Before Our Very Eyes | Victor Davis Hanson
01:25:29
President Donald Trump has Democrats between a rock and a hard place.
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- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
As a leftist, that's typical because they pose as they're egalitarian and worried about the poor and the people, but they're actually elite snobs that run the party. They always have been.
- [00:10]
Sammy Wink
Do you think that the Democrats are losing this fight?
- [00:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think they are, but I'm not sure the American people think they are because there's no rationale to it. They want to defund the Department of Homeland Security, but it's already funded. They can't affect that. So they're hurting FEMA and TSA and they want to make that connection to the people and saying, well, we're trying to protect you from. But here at the airport, there's ice. So the only thing they can really do to win popular support is start to protest ice, where ICE is now at the airport, but they're handing out water. Everybody likes them. They're speeding along the lines, so they can't.
- [00:46]
Sammy Wink
I have this feeling that something's going to happen this weekend, some sort of ground forces. We seen Trump moving ground forces if
- [00:54]
Victor Davis Hanson
he is going to open the Straits of Hormuz. You can see these missiles are being aimed at the Emirates, Qatar, Israel, two or three salvos. Well, they have these cluster munitions, so theoretically they could shoot them right at a aircraft carrier or destroyer. So he's got to go have a sanitary corridor on the shore opposite the strait. And that would mean he puts troops there, and they would have to go house to house or field to field and make sure there's not missiles, drones, speedboats with mines, and that would be a very difficult operation. He would say that that's not inserting ground troops on the war, that it would be more like putting ground troops to rescue Maduro, rescue, I mean, kidnap him. And it has a definite mission and a definite term. And then if he were to do that, he would think that he could back off and he wouldn't even have to bomb very much anymore. He'd say, we'll just sit here and wait till they go broke. Politically, that's almost impossible to pull off. So that's why he's frustrated. That's why some days he says, we're going to negotiate an end any minute or we're almost done. Some days he says, give me more troops. Come over. Foreign.
- [02:12]
Sammy Wink
Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. This is our Saturday edition where we do something a little bit different in the middle. Victor's going to be talking about the ancient goddess Hera today. But first we'll look at some continued news stories from our Friday news roundup and so on deck we have DHS new secretary has been appointed and then the airport disruptions of the TSA due to the shutdown in D.C. so stay with us and we'll come back with those stories.
- [02:48]
Bradley Devlin
If you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen, you might enjoy the Daily Signals flagship show. The Tony Kennett 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. Good old American sarcasm Thom Tillis I'm pretty sure might have been useful at one time as a doorstop. Find the Tony Kennett cast on YouTube, X radio, TV or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [03:18]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to Victor Davis Hansen in his own Words. Victor is the Martin and Neal Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne Marsheboski Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, Victor Hansen.com and the name of the website is the Blade of Perseus. And we'd love everybody to come join us there for all things Victor. So so Victor, I just thought I would ask you a little bit if you have any thoughts on the new secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Mark Wayne Mullen, and or Jimmy Kimmel's bad joke that ended with we are, we have a plumber protecting us from terrorism now. And I was wondering if you had thoughts on that derogatory statement.
- [04:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, Jimmy Kimmel, I mean, you could say so many things about that. As a leftist, that's typical because they pose as their egalitarian and worried about the poor and the people, but they're actually elite snobs that run the party. They always have been. Remember that guy for cnn, Mark Caputo, and he said he went to a Trump rally and he had more teeth than everybody in the audience thought that was cute. Then of course, you get to the clingers, the deplorables, the irredeemables. Then Joe Biden, common man using the word garbage and chumps and dregs, they do that all the time. They can't help it. They have nothing but contempt for the middle classes. But Mark Wayne Mullen, first of all, as someone who lives in a 150-year-old home and has been onto the house a lot doing plumbing, every time I see a master plumber, they're like a heart surgeon. They'll say, no, no, Victor, no, no, no, no. Long, not 4 inch, 3 inch here, inch and a half is okay here, pressure hot water they know everything. They're very skilled people. They're much, they're much more skilled than a psych major in high school, college. Then the second thing is he took a, he took that business and then he made a multimillion dollar. I think he has over 150 employees. It was at one time one of the largest plumbing supply companies in Oklahoma. I think. So he was a businessman. He had four or five companies. Jimmy Kimmel's just ignorant. He's just so consumed with the fact that he thinks he's smart. He thinks only he knows what's wrong with the country and it's Trump and nobody listens to him. And he gets more and more desper to find an audience and he's going to go the way of Colbert. They're not very funny people. They're boring. You hear the same thing every night and it's sad. But he represents that bi coastal elite contempt for people who work with their hands or they don't have degrees. Even though in many cases they're as successful or more successful than the so called college educator. What these people don't understand is getting a BA from Stanford, I'm just taking the place where I work in 1940 meant you really knew something. You really knew something. Getting a BA from there now. I mean there's remedial math, high school math they teach and Yale gives 90% A's. That doesn't mean anything anymore. They're not teaching real stuff except for math and engineering. So it's not hard to graduate from college. It is hard to be a master electrician, a master plumber, a skilled sheet rocker, a really good woofer. Those are hard things to do besides a toil on your body. And so these people are dinosaurs. They're anachronism. They don't understand what's going on right now. We have enough Jimmy Kimmels in the world. We don't have enough good plumbers.
- [07:14]
Sammy Wink
And Mark Mullen will probably show himself. Mark Wayne, sorry. Mullen will probably show himself to be very skilled at his upcoming jobs.
- [07:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
He's been in Congress for years, so he's. And he's done a lot in business, Congress. He was a mixed marginal arts guy for a while. So he's got a very varied background, which is good.
- [07:35]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, it never hurts to be successful in business. Well, let's turn then to the airports and the disruption because the TSA agents are not being paid yet. We all know they'll get their back pay probably so that you know that in the long run it's not going to be problematic, but it's still a problem for travelers who are stuck in these lines. And I was wondering one thing. On this whole showdown between the Democrats and the Republicans, do you think that the Democrats are losing this fight?
- [08:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think they are, but I'm not sure the American people think they are because there's no rationale to it. They want to defund the Department of Homeland Security, but it's already funded. They can't affect that. So they're hurting FEMA and TSA and they want to make that connection to the people and saying, well, we're trying to protect you from ice, but here at the airport there's ice. So the only thing they can really do to win popular support is start to protest ice, where ICE is now at the airport, but they're handing out water, everybody likes them. They're speeding along the lines, so they can't. And so the problem is that they have a lunatic. I can't use the word base anymore. The base is expanded to the party and it's lunatic. It's not just Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and it's the Squad and AOC and Jasmine Cross, the ex Congress, soon to be ex Congresswoman, and they're not in touch with reality. And then you have Chuck Schumer, who's this old stegosaurus that just mouse everything he says on conservative sites, Fox News. All they do is pull up something he said in the 1990s and he contradicts it completely. Nobody believes him anymore. He's going to be gone pretty soon. Then there's Hikem Jeffries, and he gyrates from really awful things he says sometimes they're foul mouth. Remember he was hitting practicing with a bat, like he was going to club somebody during shut down. And then he said ICE will shoot people in the airport. And there's something about him that he doesn't seem to be process information. When you look at him and somebody asks him a question, he looks like his eyes go blank, like his mind is blank. And then it's like, oh, oh, what should I say? And then it doesn't come out right. So he's a very ineffectual leader and they were wise they'd get rid of both of them. And so that's hurting them. And then the other thing is they go back to chaos theory. Elon Musk is going to run Doge. Let's go run Teslas off the road. Let's scratch them in parking lots. Let's firebomb Teslas. Donald Trump, he has a lot of executive order, let's do no kings. No kings. We'll just go out there and make all. And they, they cause so much chaos. As I said, they think we're going to go into a fetal position. So the ICE is, this is the third shutdown that they have done and it's getting close. It'll get close to the longest, the 42, day one. And all three of them have shut down Department of Homeland Security. But they have no. What do they want? They want. I mean, it's a federal agency. So these state governors who say they're going to forbid ICE to do this, they can't. They're federal officers. I don't know that. I don't know what they want. They want when you get an illegal alien who shoots somebody, they want to keep them here. I mean, they're so patently obvious now that three years ago you would say they believe in the great replacement theory because they write books called Demography is Destiny and the New Democratic Majority. And they destroyed the border to let in 12 million people who were in dire need or supposed dire need of housing, food, educational supplements, supplemental income. And then they wanted to grow the bureaucratic welfare state. And now if you say that, everybody goes, yep, that's right. That's not controversial, that's not racist. That's what they do because they say it. And then the other thing is their protection of illegal aliens. When they couldn't stand up in Congress when Trump asked them, you know, who do you prefer, them or citizens? They don't prefer citizens because they think that illegal aliens are more left wing than citizens. So they prefer them and they don't mind if they're violent. They don't mind at all. That's collateral damage. So when Lincoln, Riley or this poor girl in Chicago was shot, that's acceptable for them. And that's why they say wrong place and wrong time. Or that Mayor Johnson, who is the worst mayor in the history of Chicago, going all the way back to the gang killings, he stands there and an illegal alien who had been let out, had not been deported, had tuberculosis and may or may not have been out killing somebody so he could join the Tren Gang, shoots and kills this innocent girl who runs. He shoots her in the back. So it's got all of the classic symptoms of a cowardly, despicable act, and he can't even talk about it very much. And then he says, and we're not going to let this affect our concern for every, every. He said, all, every, all Illegal. Does this mean all the criminals that just happened? And then he's speaking with a garbage truck that has abolish ice on it. He's the mayor. He's a complete buffoon and he's just had this huge riot. It's all over the Internet and it's on news where dozens, if not hundreds of black teenage youths have gone through the million dollar mile and just swar. And beat people up and looted uncontrolled. And you think, given that and the murders every weekend, that he would say there is a crime problem among black youth and we're going to address it. And he's not. He's just blame. All he can do is blame white people and call people racist while the city goes bankrupt. I'm really worried about Chicago. It was, you know, Carl Sandburg's. Chicago was the second biggest place in the country. It's going the way of la. We're going to lose two big cities, Los Angeles and Chicago, in the sense that their downtown area is going to be uninhabitable unless you get rid of this paradigm of a blue DEI mayor pandering to DEI constituents, promising them more stuff and more stuff. And then we get the corrupt, the SoMali Corruption, now California Corruption. It all has the same thing. Democratic operatives, Democratic officials turn over billions of dollars to crooked NGOs or whatever, aid societies or bureaucracies that don't serve the people who need it and abscond with the funds. And then if you say this is wrong, oh, you're making fun of the Somali community, or you're making fun of the Latino community in la. No, you're not. And that's. And that's a way. And then they say we've got to raise taxes, Washington's got to raise taxes, Chicago's got to raise taxes. So everybody's leaving that can leave, that's not tied to a business or something. And I've never seen anything like it in this country, that the whole blue paradigm, the whole blue state project is imploding before our very eyes. And these were the most picturesque, most beautiful places in the world. You know, there was. Chicago was a beautiful city. So is Seattle, so is Portland. They've destroyed them. San Francisco may be the best of all.
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Sammy Wink
Yeah. And LA has already, just FYI, L.A. has already. Its downtown is already uninhabited and uninhabitable. And now it's got the destruction of the.
- [16:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
I used to go down to LA a lot to speak downtown to one of the downtown clubs, Jonathan Club, Capitol Club. And you had to time Your drive carefully. It was like bumper to bumper. The sidewalks were full of well dressed people and it was this 1990s to 2010 renaissance where you had these new skyscrapers and everybody was bragging that LA finally had a downtown. It wasn't just spread, it was beautiful buildings. You had Wilshire area, rodeo, all this stuff. And then of course, I think it was three years ago, drove down there and I thought, oh, I'm back going down. There was nobody there. We just zoomed right in. And then when I parked at the hotel, I could see why there was no one there. You had canteens selling. There was all the stores were closed, but you had canteens, black market probably. And then you had homeless people everywhere. And then you looked at the parks and there's all these thugs in them.
- [17:17]
Sammy Wink
And all the storefronts had windows broken and were boarded up.
- [17:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
And then the high rises, like I'm not Talking about the ground floor floor, 5, 6, 10 floor have graffiti all over them. They destroyed it. Karen Bass more than anyone destroyed it. But Villa Rosa did too. And at some point people are going to say they're going to be like Mycenae or Tiryns. They're going to be Mycenaean deserted cities. And everybody's going to go, what were these things? Who destroyed them? Were they sea peoples? Were they Dorians? Somebody came in here and destroyed all these beautiful cities. Where are the people? Well, they destroyed themselves.
- [17:53]
Sammy Wink
Omega Man Victor. Love that movie. One of my favorites. All right, I would like to 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 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 is for you. The natural ingredients in lymph system support help gently flush extra fluid and toxins out of your body. And right now, for a limited time, you can get 35% off liver health formula or 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. So, Victor, let's go ahead and turn to Iran. I have this feeling that something's going to happen this weekend, some sort of ground forces. We seen Trump moving ground forces, a thousand paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division into the region. Also, the Iranian naval commander has been killed. So I was wondering your thoughts. Our audience may be listening to this and there may be a ground operation already going on is my feeling. But what is yours?
- [20:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, there was never any chance that you could negotiate with them because nothing they say or do can be verified. They never tell the truth. They just said they that sent out a missile that could have gone 2,500 miles. They said they don't have missiles over 2,000. They just disclosed they had enough fissionable material, which supposedly didn't exist to make immediately 11 bombs. And they said they didn't kill any of their own. They killed 35,000. They're killing them as I speak right now. So you can't deal with that regime unless it's completely defeated. It's like you can deal with the Tojo militarist Japan, you can deal with Hitler if they're defeated, but you can't ever negotiate with them because lying is their brand. So then the question is, who's winning? Well, they think that they can take an enormous amount of punishment to their military assets and their power, their water, their sewage, their communications will be untouched because they think we believe that the people will rise up and we don't want to hurt the people by taking away their daily sustenance. And so that's what their rope a dope is. In addition to that, they believe that Donald Trump is under pressure from the midterms coming up in seven months from the Europeans and the Japanese and the world, the Western world about the economy and his MAGA base. If I had said, you know, six months ago, Tucker Carlson, who was at the White House or Mar Lago all the time or Megyn Kelly or even Candace Owens would be personae non grata, nobody would have believed it. But there's a breach there and it's getting bigger. And we don't know how big that ultra MAGA to quote Joe Biden is, but it's something that, that in a narrow election might matter, especially in the midterms and getting out the vote. So that's what Iran is thinking. Trump is thinking, I have destroyed probably a trillion dollars of munition they can't rearm for 10 years, and I did a big favor for the Israelis. I need to get out of here because I have different agendas than the Israelis do. My agendas were enunciated as stop the missiles, A, B, get rid of the nuclear material so they can't make a bomb. C, stop the subsidies for their terrorist proxies, the Houthis, the Hezbollah, Hamas, or destroy them. And that's pretty much done. And D, protect the Gulf monarchies and don't let them be the radical influence they were in the Middle East. He's more or less accomplished that. And then there's a little asterisk and people said, but that, that, that's fine and good, Mr. Trump, but it's not set in stone unless you change the regime. So now he's starting to think, yeah, he believes that, but he all. Then he has Nancy Mays and he's got all the Rand Paul, all these other people, and say, you promise no ground troops? You said we're going to get out of it because they're all up for reelection or up for office. And so he knows what he has to do. If he really wants to stop the war, he has to take an enormous risk, and that would be going into Karga island, which is. It's not as risky. It's not the mainland, but they know it's sort of like part of half of Manhattan. It's got about eight miles, but it's big and it's probably been mined. It's got labyrinth, like Hamas, underground facilities. It's got drone coverage. We would lose a lot of soldiers, probably, but that would stop all of their oil revenue, and that would starve them very quickly. And then two, if he is going to open the Straits of Hormuz, you can see these missiles are being aimed at the Emirates gutter, Israel, two or three salvos. Well, they have these cluster munitions, so theoretically, they could shoot them right at a aircraft carrier or destroyer. So he's got to go have a sanitary corridor on the shore opposite the strait. And that would mean he puts troops there, and they would have to go house to house or field to field and make sure there's not missiles, drones, speedboats with mines. And that would be a very difficult operation. He would say that that's not inserting ground troops on the war, that it would be more like putting ground troops to rescue Maduro, rescue, I mean, kidnap him. And it has a definite mission and a definite term. And then if he were to do that, he would think that he could back off and he wouldn't even have to bomb very much anymore. He'd say, we'll just sit here and wait till they go broke, and then they will go broke and the people will take over. But politically, that's almost impossible to pull off. So that's why he's frustrated. That's why some days he says, we're going to negotiate an end any minute or we're almost done. Some days he says, give me more troops, come over.
- [25:42]
Sammy Wink
Well, let's then turn back to the Gorman murder in Chicago, because I know we talked about it on the Friday news roundup, but a few things have popped up since, and one of them is the school newspaper at Loyola University apologized for using the term term illegal immigrant, even however accurate that term is. And I was wondering if you had thoughts on that. And then also I'll just lay it out. The tuberculosis that the assailant has, there seems to be an epidemic appearing in the world of tuberculosis.
- [26:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
I know that for a fact.
- [26:19]
Sammy Wink
And then the third thing is, what do you make of Rod Blagovich, who said, I've been in prison for eight years before. He's not currently in prison. He said, I could see this easily being and killing to initiate into a gang. And I was wondering any of or
- [26:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
all that was the first that he wanted to be in the Tren gang. And he just put his hoodie on and his black clothing and just sat out there waiting for somebody to stroll up here and then shoot them. Why he was ever here, I don't know. He should have been deported then. He was a shoplifter. He's a murderer. He destroyed this family, whole family by killing this wonderful girl. And the mayor Johnson doesn't really care. And Pritzer, all he wanted to do was wait four days so he could figure a way out to blame Trump. They let in 12 million people, and then Trump's trying to find the 500,000 criminals and he says, well, the fact that you haven't found them means it's your fault. Fault. It's the most absurd thing I'd ever heard. And then when you look at the sky, then you look at the sick left wing mind of all these people, these Democrats and these leftists. So the school newspaper is more worried about the word illegal alien, which is the IRS uses it The Supreme Court uses it. It's the only accurate term. Are they aliens? A alpha privative in Greek or Latin. And you know, Leon, place not of this place. Yes, alien. And are they illegal? Not. They don't have Lex on their side. That's where the word comes. Yes. So what's the problem? Undocumented immigrant doesn't tell you anything. It just says they're an immigrant and they don't have your. Oh, this guy was coming in from Venezuela and he left his passport and documents in his car. Venezuela. So now he's undocumented? No, he deliberately came in without documents. He never had documents, he never wanted documents. He's illegally here. He entered illegally, he's residing illegally. And when these papers do that, or this university academic left wing mind does, that just shows you how absolutely and utterly callous they are. It's the same style I mentioned before. It's a Stalinist idea to make an omelette. Make a socialist omelette. You gotta break some eggs. And so you can get a Democrat. Literally a Democrat in the back room would say, well you know what? I didn't say we're not gonna muss up some people's hair when we let in 12 million people without audit. But the fact is they're here and there are constituents and they're gonna be voting under mail and valley. And it's gonna do cosmic good for the poor. And if you have to lose a few people, people, it's not going to be us. We live in safe neighborhoods, we have security details. But if she's in the wrong place in the wrong time, as we were told, then things happen. That's how, that's how evil these people are. And I don't know how you deal with them. It's, it's, it's so it gives them a high to think that they're liberal and caring and magnanimous. As long as it doesn't affect them at somebody else's expense.
- [29:50]
Sammy Wink
Yes. But their use of language seems very detached from reality. So we could look back at all of their uses, what George Orwell said. Yes. Their terms racist or no Kings rally when you have an elected president, I mean it's completely detached from any real world thing. So there's something wrong with them.
- [30:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
Not an aggression because they can't find any racial aggression. So they have to come up with a way word micro. Micro because they can't detect it otherwise. So trigger warning. What does that mean, a trigger warning? You have to pull the trigger on Mark Twain so people will know not to read it. Is that what it is? Safe spaces? What does that mean? That means a segregated place by race in a university. And what does a microaggression mean? It means a complete fabrication or excuse to call somebody a racist.
- [30:47]
Sammy Wink
Do you think though that it's human nature really to seek out things or people, or in this case people who use vocabulary that really reflect reality and to reject people who are living in sort of a delusional or hazy world where they can't decide what words mean here and there.
- [31:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think that's, that's why people were not offended by Donald Trump because he would, you know, I'll give you an example. Robert Mueller really used the law in a very vicious way when he was in Boston and he destroyed Carter Page's that Mueller investigate. They were evil. So Trump said he's glad he's dead and he can't hurt any more people. Everybody went outraged and they said he was a fine public servant, but Trump was actually closer. Trump was cruder than the left and you shouldn't speak ill of the dead. And he did. And that's regrettable. But he was accurate when he said he can't hurt any more people. He hurt a lot of people by intent. And so people appreciated that Trump was blunt because they never hear it from politicians. It's always euphemisms or sugar coated or misdirection in their speech. And you know, it's like Latinx. Has anybody ever seen anybody who's Latinx? I live in a community of 85 to 95% Mexican Americans. I've been everywhere with them. I have never seen one heard one person say Latinx. That's a wealthy white academic world.
- [32:35]
Sammy Wink
Well, I hope, I guess the elections will tell us, right? If human nature is inclined to people who have a attachment to a real world and are talking about a real
- [32:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
world, you would expect. But there's so many variables in the election. There's human nature has another aspect that after about two years, everything fresh seems old. So they think, think I want to vote for Donald Trump. I'm so sick of Biden and Harris. Now I see Trump. Now I want to go get something. So the president's almost an 85% of the cases lose the midterms. And then there's a question of women. Very lucky about this Save America act. The SAVE act because it shows you what these people really believe. When you have 85% of the Americans and about 75% of Democrats and minorities saying they want IDs and you have These Democrats in Congress that won't do it, then you can see why they won't do it. Because when you bring in 12 million people illegally and you register anybody who shows up at the DMV and they get a special exemption on their license, then they get mailed ballots and there's no id, then you can see what happens. And that's what they won't give up because they have no confidence in their agenda. They do have a lot of confidence in registering people who shouldn't be registered and getting out of the vote. And so that's a human propensity, too. And I don't know how you stop that other than you require everybody to show up at the polls and pull out an ID and show it. And then you have all of these white liberals and black elites who are so condescending and say, oh, you're going to suppress minority, as if they just, just. They sound like Gavin Newman making fun of black people. I mean, they, it seems to me like every time I go into local supermarket, when I see somebody asking for cigarettes, they ask for an ID and they. And they ask for IDs. They've asked me for an ID at 70 years old and I look 80. So my point is they have to have an ID. But I guess in the Democratic standard of value that what would you do if you said you don't have to show an ID for buying beer or, I don't know, buying cigarettes? Would they be for that? No, they're always asking for IDs for people. The government, they want the government to regulate. So in their way of thinking, going to a bar or drinking is a lot more. It is a lot more dangerous or needs to be regulated more. And it's more important than voting. Voting is just a way to get us in power, so we're just going to water it down. Then they have to lie about it, as they do and say that black people can't register. Anybody can go on the Internet and you can get a birth certificate in two seconds. And then you have a real id. You're supposed to only have a license that's guaranteed by the federal government, not just the states. And they have to follow federal government protocols. And it says you need a birth certificate or a passport. And I look at the airports and they seem to be pretty full. So either everybody has an ID or illegals are coming in and using their Venezuela or Salvador airport passports.
- [36:14]
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor, so before we go to break, another break. Let's. I just have one last thing. Did you See that? That John Brennan, the former CIA, Is he the secretary?
- [36:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
Don't get on John Brennan. You beat that horse to death.
- [36:30]
Sammy Wink
Speaking of delusional things he said on a talk show, I believe Iran more than I would. I believe Trump.
- [36:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
We don't care what he says because he is a pathological liar. He walked. He went into the Senate under oath and was asked by Dianne Feinstein and other senators, did you, as CIA director order that our Senate staff computers should be tapped? And he said, no, I did not. And then he came in again to a congressional committee and they said, have. Is there collateral damage? Are we killing civilians on these 500 Predator CIA target assassinations on the Pakistani, Afghan? No, there were 500 of them. And then they called him back, and then they said, well, we should get him for perjury. They didn't. And so he was a known liar. Then you'd think that he would be totally discredited. 2020 comes up. Laptop, guys. He sees his laptop. Hunter, being Hunter is so high, leaves a laptop. He's got the Hunter's name on it. He looks at it and, oh, my gosh. Gosh. And so he calls. He makes a copy, calls the FBI. They take a thing, they try to hide it, which they do. They verify it, but they don't tell us. And then Biden thinks, oh, my gosh, what are we going to do? And then his future Secretary of State, probably his other staff, they say, we got a. We've got a solution. We'll call up old Mike Morale at the CIA. He's a good liar. And he'll round up the usual suspects, and that will be John Brennan and Leon Panetta and James Clapper, and they'll all swear that this has all the hallmarks of a Russian. But we gotta be very careful because we know they're gonna lie and we know that it's a thing because the FBI has leaked it. So we'll use the word information. It has all the hallmarks of a Russian information operation. So if they say disinformation, we can say, well, we said it was information, just providing more information. And so it was all a bonus. And then we had a poll that said, would you have changed your vote if you had known that Hunter Biden in his laptop was talking about the big guy and 10% and theft by the Biden family and lying and he was a cokehead and pornography. Yes, Yes, I would have changed my vote. So that was. It worked. And he was at the source of that. That con, too. So now he comes out of the woodwork. And, you know, it's very funny with the laugh. They say, you guys are using lawfare. You're going after Brennan and Letitia. They're not very good at it. They're not doing what the left did. I mean, they put Trump in four, four civil criminal courtrooms, in one big lawsuit, five courtrooms, and they coordinated them all, and they impeached him twice, and they tried to get him off the ballot. But it's amazing that these people are still, after all, Comey. James Comey was asked 245 times questions. He said, I don't remember. I can't remember. I don't know. He just flat out lied under oath. John Brennan lied under oath. James Clapper said, well, has the NSA spied on American citizens? No, they have not. Everybody knew he was lying. So they get the data, they come back in, they said, you just lied under oath to us. I did it for the national security, and I gave the least untruthful answer. And they didn't do anything to him.
- [40:34]
Sammy Wink
Yes, they didn't do anything to him. So they're all getting away with it. And even recently, Comey has been in testifying, and he's still. Nobody's gone to jail.
- [40:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. And I'll tell you a rule in Washington about these people. If you commit a crime or break a statute and you get away with it. Like Clapper, Comey. Comey was really the instigator of the whole Russian collusion. He was the man on the ground that did it all. Then you get empowered and your attitude is, if I can get away with this big crime and they're afraid to indict me, or I can get a Washington or New York jury to equip me, and they know that then I can do anything I want. So I'm going to mouth off even more. So Comey now is back in the news mouthing off. Clapper is back in the news. He called Trump a Russian asset, a traitor. Brennan now is back, back in the news. They're all back in the news because they think there's no consequence. Even the generals when Trump was president, all of them. McChrystal said that he was a liar. McCaffrey said that he was Mussolini. Mattis said that Trump was like the Nazis on the other side of the d Day Beach. McRaven said he should be removed soon as sooner than later from office. Hayden said that he was like the architect of Auschwitz. All of them said it, but nothing happened to them. Nobody enforced the code of military Justice. So then when Biden came in, they knew. They all started and now they're doing it again. And so, you know. Yes, Very famous thing, what Rousseau said in Candide about Admiral Byng. The English have this peculiar custom. Every once in a while they hang an admiral pour encourage to encourage the others. Admiral Bing was pretty much innocent, but he came late. I think it was in Amsterdam or the Dutch campaign, I'm not sure. And they just said, well, we better hang him. And they said, well, Admiral Bing's a nice guy and he didn't do nearly as bad thing. Yeah, but we haven't hung somebody in a long time and that'll encourage the others.
- [42:59]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, and still that hasn't been done. But we could go on this subject, I'm sure, much longer. We better take a break and then come back and talk about the ancient Greek gods. And this Saturday we'll talk about Hera. So stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [43:14]
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.
- [43:28]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think they forgot the 1982 Falklands War.
- [43:31]
Bradley Devlin
And in in the age of clickbait and rage bait. That's a really good feeling, right?
- [43:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
The media. Thank you. You can leave now.
- [43:38]
Bradley Devlin
Well, 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 policy making process from an unabashedly and unapologetic conservative perspective. And that's important now more than ever 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. Or there too. And drop me a follow on X radleydevlin to stay updated with what's happening on the Signal. Sit down.
- [44:23]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. He is a subsidiary of Daily Signal, so you should go check out their site. They have lots of great news stories and they have Victor's podcasts available there. You can find Victor also if you have social media and X is your outlet, his handle is Dhanson. And on Facebook it's Hanson's Morning cup. So join him there if you would like. Okay, Victor, So I'm interested in hearing about the ancient God Hera and her story and also how the ancient Greeks sort of conceived and understood their gods in their daily lives. That's my experience.
- [45:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
I was shocked in graduate school when I had to give a report to a graduate seminar on Greek religion and mythology. And I said I was talking about the inadequacies of polytheism, having 12 Olympic gods and all these demigods versus the Christian idea of monotheism. And about everybody in the seminar got really angry. Oh, what are you talking about, you right wing nut? Polytheism is much better. You get more gods, you get much more interesting gods. They have sex. They do. And it makes the Greeks look so much more confident that their gods are no better than people. Famous line in Euripides Bacchae when at one point Cadmus, they've killed Pentheus. And Cadmus and Tiresias say to Dionysus, men should be better than gods. Gods should be better than men. Excuse me, because Dionysus, being an insecure, horrific God, kills Pentheus for being arrogant. He says, you should be better than men. And that was what he. Anyway, anyway, so the thing to remember about the Greek gods is they represent historical processes. All of these names, Zeus, Hera, Athena are on Linear B tablets of the mycenaean period from 1800 to 1200. So all of those Tholos tombs, those big citadels at Tirin, those were Greek speaking people with these gods. We don't know anything about them gods because they didn't have a literature, literature. We don't know whether Kronos and Rhea, the first generation were there and they were on there too. And then you had this devastating phenomenon where all of the Mycenaean citadels within about 70 years were destroyed. Whether the Dorians, the sea peoples, of course climate change is now a cult explanation or whatever the cause was. Then you had a Dark Age ages, so now you have the ingredients for mythology. Then civilization comes back around 800 BC under very different auspices. The Greek city state, and they use a very different Alphabet. The Phoenician adopted alpha beta gamma, not the pictographs, syllabic though they were. And then in this Dark Age series, people saw the Mycenaean. The ability of Mycenaeans to build these wonderful things and population when they crashed dropped by 90% and people were not farming as much. They were had herdsmen and there were no city states and they were impoverished and there was no literature. Mycenaeans were, at least some of them were literate. That Linear B was lost. And so in the, in that oral culture, oral bards like Homer started to sing about these wonderful tales that their great great great great great great grandfather who was a Mycenaean had told them. They had gone to a citadel in Asia, they had fought Thebes. But these were probably factual events. But in that cauldron of 400 years they were exaggerated generation by generation. And it was this period in which those names on the midlinear B became the new gods of the stories started to occur that Zeus had a thunderbolt or Poseidon was responsible for earthquakes. So those gods were formalized. And then when the city state came in and people could write, then these stories in Homer and Hesiod were written down. Down and we had the, the official pantheon of 12 Olympian gods. And you know, it. It's sort of like what's going to happen to us someday. Well, I already feel like I'm in the dark ages when I go by the California Aqueduct on the way to Stanford and I see that beautiful aqueduct and I see the San Luis project and then I, I see that we can't the high speed rail for 15 years. Who were these people? Who were these Mycenaeans? Wow, look at this dam. Look at this aqueduct. We couldn't do that today. And then I was just reading about the animal parkway. I think it's 50ft. Oh, it's 200ft long. Excuse me. And it's taken four years. It's going to take five years. $115 million to let bobcats and. Bobcats and mountain lions, coyotes so they won't get run over. So they can go in these upscale homes backyard and kill their cats and pets. You know, it's from the more rural area to the suburbs. But my point is it's taken them already four years for this little 200. And they built the entire. I think it's 5,000ft Golden Gate Bridge in the depression in four years. And they built the 23,000 foot Bay Bridge same time, started the same year. Four years. So you go by the. I think we're going to go by the Golden Gate and say, who are you people? How do they do this? Maybe you better take pictures of it so we can build this animal ridge. Because we don't know how to do it anymore. Anymore. And that's where we are. But that's how you create myth. And you would say these people Were mythical. And so after the cataclysm and most of these gods had. They were explicatory gods. They explained natural phenomenon. If you heard a tidal wave or you saw a tidal wave or you saw a thunder, lightning, you had to explain that. And it would say Zeus is mad and he's hitting the mountains with lightning. Or we were wrecked by Poseidon because we didn't sacrifice to him. Or my husband left me. Because Hera was goddess of the household and marriage and the stable female as opposed to the asexual Athena who was warlike and the very sexual Aphrodite, goddess of light love. But her role was. And these replicated what people in their daily lives did. So in this male dominated society. Zeus is very promiscuous. He fathers all these illegitimate gods and half gods and Hera is always jealous. And people say how do you know that Victor? Because there is nothing in the early Greek mythology text that say handbook of Greek mythology. We just look it up. You have to piece it together from poetry, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Hesiod's works in days and Theogony. But she represents then the Greek idea of the perfect housewife and protector of the house and realm and reputation. And people worship her not as widely as Zeus, but she had three. All of these gods appealed to different people in Greece Greece, different city states based on their region. Whether they're by the sea or they're inland, whether they grow olives, whatever. And so her cult is most prominent on the island of Samos. There's a huge harem, one of the biggest temples, one of the first ones. And then there was a Argive harem at Argos. Really you can go there today. It's out in the country. But that was a region original worship. The Argives built it. She was the patron saint of the city state of Argos. And then Sparta. Sparta really thought because they really championed women and they felt that they, you know, they had. Artemis was one of their patron gods. But Hera had a prominent place because they felt that men were away for so long and fighting and you needed somebody to hold down the home front. And so people would pray to Hera, keep the family stable table these gods names originally, then they came out of Indo European they meant something. So Zeus is cognate to. I think it's Sanskrit Dios. And when you decline the word Zeus the nominative is zeos. Sometimes you can say xenos for the genitive case. But the genitive is dio di delta iota omaga Omega Sigma. And that means light bearing the light God in Indian and Sanskrit. And so Hera people don't know what that word means. There's so many different ways. They think it might be hero, she's heroic or. But nobody's ever been able to take a Greek word that sounds like Hera and say, this is what her original task was, was in a way that they can with other gods.
- [54:34]
Sammy Wink
Do, do these. Do these gods ever. The belief in these gods ever move people? Do we have any evidence, like in a play or something? You know, Hera got angry, therefore all the women went out and, you know, tried to stop the men from doing something or something like that. Did. Were they moved in mass by the gods? I mean, I could see in their private lives where they think, I want a strong household, I'm going to pay attention to worshiping Hera carefully and what she wants. Right. But, you know, do we have mass? Yeah, you do.
- [55:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
I mean, look at, look at Areopodes, Bacchae. When they reject Dionysus coming into Boeotia and Thebes, then they pay a terrible price. And then when Kadmus says, you should be better than men and you're not, he says, then you basically should worship of us. So the problem is by the 5th century, when these plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides are put on, the gods are just. All of the tales of the gods are like stock characters. They're like Star Trek, you know, Captain Spock, Spock, Captain Kirk. And then you can change them. You can any contemporary thing, birth control. Put Captain Captain Kirk on a planet and talk about getting somebody pregnant, murderer, you know, go to a different planet and see what their law. So that's what they did. They took these tales, about 30 of them, and then they reworked contemporary themes into their mouths. So one of the themes of the 5th century is a lot of people didn't believe him anymore. So the gods were angry about that or, or they were inadequate. Sometimes they don't always appear. You know, Aeschylus was the first generation of the 5th century, so he's more devout and his are more. Using the gods to reflect morality and laws that can't be changed. And the gods are more humane and just justice of Zeus. By the time you get to Euripides, they're not necessarily worthy of worship. But you also at this time have people, the Socratic movement, Platonism, the Epicureans, the Stoics and the Aristotelians, and they talk about the prime mover or the one God or they believe in transmigration of souls, kind of like reincarnation or the Pythagoreans. So there's a whole, whole bit of. There's a whole group of sects, S E C T S that are arguing for monotheism. And the gods themselves then become institute. Mostly they're institutionalized. So when you go to Athens, their patron God is Athena. So if you go up to the Acropolis, you see the Parthenon. That's Athena Parthenos. They all have subtypes, idols, so aspects of the worship. So when you go into the Parthenon, you are worshiping Athena, the virgin who never married. Chaste, smart if you want to go outside the Parthenon. And if you go there, you can still see the stylobate for that huge. They had a 60 foot statue of Athena with a bronze spear. You could see it all the way out from Aegina out in the Aegean. She was Athena Promakos, Athena the military protector of Athens. And then she was also Athena Popolos, a protector of the civic sense of the city. And so they all, each different city state and there's 1500 of them would pick a particular God or gods and then they would have a particular aspect and they would put that epithet after them. And then they had all of these mythological tales that they would enact out on stage, or they would have blind bards who were illiterate that had memorized these tales through the Dark ages. We find them fascinating because there's. If you add the Roman. Rome was captivated by the Greek gods and renamed them, you know, Zeus becomes Jupiter and hera becomes Juno, etc. But when you add the, the Roman mythologies to the Greek gods and Rome picks up some indigenous Italian agrarian myths that are not Olympian at all, then you get a very rich tapestry of all these different stories. They all have morals to them and the gods are very intimate, you know, in the Christian sense sense. It's very striking for the first time to read the New Testament and see that Jesus says he will rise again in three days and he's there for four. That doesn't. I mean that's commonplace that you'll be walking out in the country and a God, Hermes will see you, but he'll be disguised and how you treat him. Do you offer him food as a traveler? He's a God of travelers as well as a messenger God. So.
- [60:01]
Sammy Wink
So it sounds like, and maybe this is a subject for another time, that the 5th century was a time of obviously flourishing of ideas In a free society, Greece or as free as it can get. But it also was important to monotheism because some of the central ideas of monotheism came out of that.
- [60:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think they're 4th century, the piety of the 5th century and their traditional religion that had been codified when this city state arose, say 800, you're now 300 years later. Their degree of piety and observance was kind of comparable to America. So on Easter, how many American families realized that it's the resurrection and there's an Easter Sunday version of is Easter egg hunt and bunnies. Right. And same thing with Christmas, if you ask I, I, if I watch Fox and I see so called Johnny on the beach asking people questions and they have an iq. I shouldn't say iq, but they have a, they have a degree of knowledge. It's like a third grader in 1950, truly. And if you were to ask them what is Christmas or Easter? They wouldn't know because we have mass scale disbelief, agnosticism, atheism. There is a Christian renaissance going on. But that's kind of what the fifth century was like. A person might go out on the battlefield and cut the throat of a goat and sacrifice him to Ares, the war God. But he did that because you were supposed to do that. You know, he didn't really believe that Ares then would come down on the battlefield, fight beside you or make you godlike to kill the enemy.
- [62:02]
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor, let's go to a break and then come back for some more stories or more news. Stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [62:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many, 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.
- [62:42]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So, Victor, I wanted to look at that. The p. The protesters in Philadelphia, they're protesting the war. And we see this quite often, that there's a war going on. The U.S. is involved. We have protesters. They want the U.S. to be out of the war. They want to protect the soldiers from getting into a useless war. That's the type of protest we're used to. But these protesters are different. They're yelling things like we cheer on. On. Well, actually I better say it the way they did for every soldier brought back in a casket. We cheer so they are happy that the soldier has been killed and they also are yelling us to its knees. This is a very strange protest.
- [63:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
What would we, what would our grand. My parents and people listening to me, many of your grandparents and great parents. What would you do if, let's say, I don't know, right when Okinawa was being fought, you had Americans saying go Tojo and kill more Americans in Times Square or something. They wouldn't have put up for that. So, yes, free speech, but it doesn't. Nobody has a. I looked at the crowd. I would say it's 50%. Can't use the word, Karen, but 50% percent democratic, useful idiots, students and stuff. 50% Middle Easterners, probably with a large component that are here on work permits, tourist visas and especially student visas. But the left keeps saying they have rights. They have rights. Yeah. If they commit a crime, they're accorded the all the protections of the Constitution. They can say whatever they want. However, they don't have to be here. That's a guest. You don't have to give them any. You don't have to give any reason. You just said, I don't want that person. And so why do we. They. Can we just say, you know what? We just, we thought about it in that visa. We kind of changed our mind. You're undermining morale. You're causing grief and discomfort for families of the, of the deceased. You don't like this country. If you hate the country, you want Iran, which is a medieval theocracy to win and kill Americans. So why don't you just go back to Jordan or Morocco or whatever you want to go. Just go back. No hard feelings, but get out. And I think there's going to be a lot of people that comes from Philadelphia at the same time that was going on. Their da. Is it Larry Krasner? He gave some kind of. Wow. It was kind of like an unhinged rant at the airport, saying that he was pointing, I think he was in an airport and he was pointing to ICE people and they were trying to help, trying to get all these lines. Hey, I want to tell you, if there's any of you people and you do anything, I'm going after you and I'm going to. And you're going to be subject to the rules of Philadelphia. No, that's not right, Mr. Krasner. I mean, if they commit a felony, obviously as a private citizen, but you can't go in and arrest them for things they do at work. They are federal employees. And you should know that under Federalism. And that city seems unhinged. It really does. Well, they're all unhinged. All these blue cities, these great cities. It's really sad.
- [66:13]
Sammy Wink
Do we have any similar times in history? I mean, for example, was it. Is it any sim. Is it similar to the Vietnam protesters who were taking the side of the.
- [66:28]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's very similar. And they paid a big price. Price. Jane Fonda was completely disgraced until 20 years ago. Excuse me, 40 years ago. She's 88. Well, when she was about 40, 48, almost 50, I would say around 1983 or 4. She wisely apologized. She didn't mean it, but she apologized to veterans. And then she started doing exercise videos. She was kind of the first person who said you could do a video and people would watch it and she would go, you know, she would do all of these leg lifts and jumper jumping jacks and say, oh, oh, three more. Come on, girls. That kind of stuff. And she mainstreamed. But she went to Vietnam and got on an aircraft anti aircraft battery and posed with a Vietnamese helmet and. As if she wanted to shoot down American pilots. Pilots. And that was really. When I was at UC Santa Cruz in 1971, the war was mostly over on the ground, but there was a Cambodian invasion, I think the next spring. And it was Ho Chi Minh. They always chanted Ho Chi Minh. They loved Ho Chi Minh. And it was always, hey, hey. I remember him. I just used to listen to him from my dorm. Hey, hey, lbj, help me. Many babies did you bomb today, kill today? Yeah. And there was Country Joe and the McDonald and the fish, all that stuff. It was all pro. They got the biggest shock on their life. A lot of leftist journalists said, we're so sick of the lies of the American. We're going to stay here when the wonderful North Vietnamese come in. So they came in on Highway 1 and the first thing they saw, they stuffed up all the South Vietnamese and a million people just took off and got on boats. And the next thing they knew, Cambodia was taking. The Khmer Rouge started taking. They killed over 2 million people. They just sent every intellectual, anybody with glasses, anybody with Western out in this countryside to starve. And then you had Vietnam fighting China. And it was just exactly what everybody said. And they said, I guess that we said at that point. And we had about 80,000 refugees coming into Fresno. And it was. The Communists were just butchering people re education camps. Butchering. Driving them out.
- [69:02]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. I think that these modern protesters, though, the one thing that's maybe a little different is there was Nobody during the Vietnam era saying, we want our soldiers to come home dead. There were. Wow, okay.
- [69:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Absolutely. Sds. What do you think the Simbanese liberation was like?
- [69:22]
Sammy Wink
That's true.
- [69:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
What do you think the Weathermen were? What do you think Bill Ayers was doing? The difference is, are these people blowing up draft centers and are they blowing up police stations? Because that's what they did in the 60s. There was a bomb in 1970, a bombing about every week, 50 or 60 a year more. Yeah. And I listened to it because, you see, Santa Cruz had just opened. My agrarian father thought it would be a really cheap place to put three kids in the same place. No tuition in those days. We could rent a house together or something. So we all went there, and it was like. It was a nightmare. It had really good faculty. I learned a lot. But the campus life. It was like living in Moscow. It was just crazy. Crazy. Absolutely crazy. And that. It was hate America. I sat in a Greek. A Greek history class where they came in and overturned all the chairs. And it was to moratorium, because we had gone into Camp Bomb Cambodia or something. And a couple of us said, we're not leaving. And then Mr. Spaghetti Arms started confronting. There was one guy with me. There's three of us who wouldn't leave. And he was a penitentiary. Three years in the South Carolina Penitentiary under a new UC Santa Cruz prison program to bring prisoners. It was like a wolf among sheep. And he came in there and he just flattened that kid. And then he took off. And I'm sitting there, and this kid's going, oh, oh, oh. He's all bleeding. The campus police came, and they had blazers because he didn't want to be too offensive with their uniforms. The guy comes with a knife. What happened here? And I said, x person knocked this Y person down, and he's. This white person was trying to disrupt the class and destroy things in the class. So he wanted to protect the class. But then he thought he wouldn't get a fair hearing, so he left. He said, do you know who he is? I said, yes, I do, but I. I can't rat him out. And then the other person said, I can tell who he was. So they had, you know, and they got him. I don't know what they did to him. There was no such thing as expulsion. You could do anything at that place, and they would not expel you.
- [71:44]
Sammy Wink
Well, that's a scary thought that the SDS and the people like that were saying, we want our soldiers home dead. And Bill Ayers still had some Significant influence on the government after that.
- [72:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
It blew people, people up. They killed people and they shot policemen. They all went to Cuba. They were heroes in Cuba for killing police.
- [72:07]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [72:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
And the symbol, Assemblies Liberation Front, the SLA was a big heroic. That kidnapped Patty Hearst. All of that stuff was crazy.
- [72:19]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, sure was.
- [72:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's why when I see those protests in LA or Minnesota and I see the faces of those people, they're in their. They're my age. I'm 72. Some of the older, creaky jointed people, I just think to myself, I must have met your twin or your avatar or something at UC Santa Cruz, because they never grew up.
- [72:43]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, no, they haven't. Did you by chance see that video of that? They kept calling him the male Karen, going out in front of the guy who was driving his motorcycle around. And he was the actor Jack Reacher of the TV series. And he's big and that guy just tore him apart.
- [73:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
Part that was like a cultural contrast. That Mr. Physically fit tough guy is on a motorcycle. Nice one. With his two kids, teaching them how to ride. Very young kids. And they're just going around the block and then Mr. Male Karen's going to get out and like put his hand up and stop, stop and try to knock them out because he thinks it's too noisy. May have been too noisy. So as soon as that happened, he just threw him down on the ground and punched him about three times. Then the gu got up and he just kind of put his tail between his legs and walked over to his nice, big beautiful home.
- [73:41]
Sammy Wink
Didn't the police show up and kind of say, well, that's how things go.
- [73:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
The police, you could tell, were very sympathetic to see that guy beat up because that's exactly the kind of people they have to deal with.
- [73:52]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Well, Victor, we're getting close to the end, so I'm going to just skip to these news stories. Some where it shows that there are cultural victories in Trump's revolution revolutionary movement. We have the International Olympic Committee has announced that there will be no biological males in female sports in the Olympics in 2028. And I think that's a big victory. And then the case, Missouri versus Biden, which was about Biden's agencies, federal agencies, trying to force social media to remove and suppress stories they didn't like about
- [74:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
COVID Like the Hunter, Hunter boy Biden story.
- [74:35]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. And the Missouri AG got a consent decree. So if the feds come in again and try to start suppressing.
- [74:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
That was Eric Schmidt. I think it was Eric Schmidt when he was an attorney. He was, he's been a very good senator. He. Yeah, he did that. So Trump loses in the lower district court and then he wins 60, 40 in the circuit appellate court. But at the, for all the criticism of John Roberts, he wins 90% in the Supreme Court and just takes too long to get there.
- [75:09]
Sammy Wink
But two cultural victories. I thought those were really nice. So let's turn to comments from people who actually write in. And I have one who wrote quite a long letter so I'm only going to read parts of what they wrote. Your stories of your mom being a wise judge and your dad being wise are wonderful. We enjoy your stories of farming, teaching, travels, your experiences in the 1980s, academia and family loss. And we know of. Sorry. And we know of your next phase, teaching us history and commentary in a special way. I especially like how you consider your audience to be practical and wise. I really think your audience wants to write you and tell you our stories and support you because we all, we all know about you. So they feel they know you really well. Victor. Yeah, it's very nice.
- [76:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think all of them are, I think from the thousand letters I've been reading and comments, they all, we all have one thing in common. We don't hate our parents. My generation blamed every neurosis and psychosis they had on a well meaning parent.
- [76:23]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [76:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I felt that I was very lucky. I had two wonderful parents.
- [76:28]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. That was from Sue Bartlett. Bart kauia.
- [76:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you, Sue.
- [76:33]
Sammy Wink
Walk. Sorry sue. Your last name was hard to pronounce. And here is from. Ooh, I don't have. Wait, I do have his name. One second. It is from. Oh, I don't have his name because it's hard to read. Sorry about that. And he says this as a 60 year old disabled veteran. I love your stories and sacrifice. I traveled all over the South Pacific in my 20s while I was in the US Coast Guard and felt all of those who died when I visited all of the Mariana Islands many times, Tinian, Saipan, Guam. I thank you for serving your purpose, sharing the truth and history. You are the real deal. Having lived in Sonoma when I was younger, I know exactly what you describe and I miss that innocent beauty of California. And these letters were both much longer.
- [77:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
But well, my first memories of California was when I was 4 or 5, 1956, 7, 8, all the way to I would say 1975. It was a golden age. Everything seemed to work. Can do. You had Pat Brown wasn't a bad governor. Ronald Reagan was a much better governor. Governor Pete Wilson, George Dian. It was really a wonderful time. They really invested in the state. They built the dams, the aqueducts, the reservoirs, the highways, the airports, the UC system. It was really advanced. The tripartite, junior college, state college, ucs. No tuition, no such thing as huge student loans. I remember I came home and I said to my grandfather, father, I came home from UC Santa Cruz, I think it was 1971. I said I could not believe it. Gas was 42 cents a gallon. Well boys, we have a lot of oil here, but there's some people who don't want to use it. That was even then. But there was, you know, there was. We were developing our resources, it was cheap to live.
- [78:47]
Sammy Wink
And so it's a whole different world almost.
- [78:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, it was. Think about it, we were three of us over there and we were all living in the dorms. It was like. So my father went over and he found a failed. There was a kind of a show house, you know, it was only 1200 square feet, but it was new and they were going to make small little houses. But the development failed. So he was walked in to look at it and he said where are the houses? He said we just have the demo house. And he had $4,000 and he put it down and bought it for $25,000. Then he put, and the mortgage was I think $180. So he put us three and then we had three renters to pay the rent. And the point of it at that time, that house was the same price as something here in Fresno or Selma. And there was no shortage. People were starting to build and then they just put a lid on it. Not in my backyard. No, no, no. Not going to do that. And housing just everybody that went to high school was. I came back home and they had all bought homes. It's so funny, they were all married and had children in their early 20s. And then we created this ethos of I'm going to kind of sort of maybe take some classes, I'm going to kind of sort of date and I'm going to kind of sort of maybe have an illegitimate kid maybe, but maybe not because of global warming. And maybe when I'm 35 I might get out of the basement of my parents house and I'll kind of maybe have a half a child.
- [80:18]
Sammy Wink
That's a grim tale, Victor. That's a grim tale.
- [80:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
What do you think fertility rate is 1.6. It's 2.1 in 2000, 2.4 in 1980. Europe's 1.32. We're shrinking and aging and disappearing.
- [80:36]
Sammy Wink
And with that, we would like to thank the audience for joining us today. And thank you, Victor. I was trying with our cultural victories under the Trump era revolution, there is
- [80:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
a big backlash crash coming. People are tired of it. They don't want to, they don't want to turn on TV and see a, a Julie Stewart looted or a poor guy works his whole life at a 711 knocked over or 83 year old veteran thrown into the subway by somebody or open board, 10,000 people swarming. They're just tired of it. Or some guy with a husky voice who says that he's a beautiful girl, you know, knocking somebody with a volleyball down a girl's throat. People are, they're just tired of that.
- [81:22]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [81:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think there's going to be, I hope it's a nice peaceful correction. I think it's already going on. But the left doesn't want a peaceful correction.
- [81:31]
Sammy Wink
No.
- [81:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I'm, I worry about it.
- [81:34]
Sammy Wink
Although I have to say those Chicago riots that just happened last night, it's Thursday today, they already had eight people arrested. Arrested by this morning for what went on.
- [81:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
Given what I saw, they should have arrested 300 of them.
- [81:49]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [81:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
They were kicking people on the ground. They were stealing. They were, it was just out of control.
- [81:54]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, sure was.
- [81:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
And you know, I don't think anybody is responsible for people of their particular ethnic affinity. But if you have Mayor Johnson there always talking about race, always talking about racism, always talking and you're getting 20 or 30 people wounded on every Saturday night in the summer and then you have these rampages, then he, because he's taken on that mantle as racial spokesman of grievance, then he has to man up to it and say there is a endemic problem in this community of broken homes and children growing up without fathers. And we need to address that. It's far more important than saying some wealthy white guy is a racist and he's made all off our problems and that's what he does every day.
- [82:41]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [82:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
And Lori Lightfoot and all of them, they need to say this is the problem of the community. We're getting too many people killed. We're creating havoc and we have to deal with people 12 to 30 that are growing up in broken homes without fathers and just deal with it. Yeah. But they won't touch it. Anybody who says anything about it is a racist. So then we put play this dishonest game or you go to Chicago and you, you talk to your, where can I walk in Chicago? What, where's dangerous and then somebody said, well, I think that's really racist what you're saying because that's a code for you don't want to be out with a young black teenager. Yeah, it is a code, you know. So I don't know.
- [83:26]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, let's go ahead and call it a day on this Saturday. We hope you all enjoy your weekend and thank you for joining us or choosing to join us on this. Thank you, Victor for all the wisdom.
- [83:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you for having us, everybody and watching and listening.
- [83:40]
Sammy Wink
This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen and we're signing off.
- [83:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features. In addition, Cancel Consigue productos gratis con TikTok e free Elijah productos comparte link TikTok busca free empiesa I slash.