Historian’s Corner

Victor Davis Hanson 8. The Garbage Baggers. Sometimes the encounters are surreal to the point of being comedic, yet always instructional about the oddities of rural existence. And after all, one must retain a sense of humor amidst the 21st-century’s absurdities, and sometimes things just don’t add up. Last year I walked along the alleyway and […]

Victor Davis Hanson 6. The fornicators. I’ll be brief. Recently, I have stumbled upon a growing number of fornicators, if I may use such a term of disparagement—in cars, on blankets on the ground, on mattresses even. As the town grows closer, so the farm seems ideal for trysts. I am no Puritan, but I resent

Victor Davis Hanson 4. The Shooter. Two years ago, during record rainfall and snow melt, the ponds were full, the grass was lush, and the once-ossified cottonwood trees abruptly came back to life as they always do after the end of a drought. Ducks and geese were everywhere. Herons flew in regularly. Bullfrogs croaked all night.

Victor Davis Hanson Here are my top ten encounters of a strange kind over the last decade in what used to be the safest, most wonderful rural space in the world. 1. The Tragic Dead. Two years ago, I came upon a parked abandoned Volkswagen with a deceased person in it. This was a real tragedy

Victor Davis Hanson The second incident was last week. I heard a bullet whiz through the almond orchard’s lower limbs. It sounded like it traveled 3 feet off the ground, about 20 yards from me. I could see that it came from a parked car about ¼ mile away. Two men from a dry pond

Victor Davis Hanson For the first 50 years of my rural existence, I don’t think I encountered more than 10 trespassing cars parked in the orchards or vineyards (one a decade)—aside from the intoxicated drivers who left the main road, veered off the pavement, destroyed several trees or vines, and abandoned their automobiles or trucks

Victor Davis Hanson Given the radical shift to 70 percent of the electorate not voting on Election Day as the traditional ballot rejection rate dived by a magnitude, given the billions of dollars that will be pledged to stop Donald Trump, and given the use of lawfare to restrict his availability on the campaign trail,

Victor Davis Hanson Nonetheless, here we are in mid-March 2024, some eight years after Trump entered the political scene and Trump has arisen from the political deceased. How many epitaphs have been written and will be written about Trump? And yet he is now leading an incumbent president in almost all the polls, with minorities

Victor Davis Hanson Almost every effort the Left has employed to destroy Trump has not—at least yet—succeeded. And there remains only one Trump opponent left—Trump himself. Let me explain. In 2016, the Clinton campaign, the DNC, the Perkins Coie law firm, Fusion GPS, and Christopher Steele, all with help from the DOJ, CIA, and FBI,

Victor Davis Hanson The final catalyst that led to our collective implosion was the election year 2020 and the accelerating Trump Derangement Syndrome. As the cities burned, unbelievable madness followed in efforts to ensure the incumbent president would not be reelected. Suddenly, congressional officials, mayors, and governors all refused to keep the peace by requesting