Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Who actually are the “garbage” people?
Are they one and the same with Joe Biden’s “semi-fascists,” “chumps,” and “dregs of society?”
Or Barack Obama’s “clingers?”
Do they include Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” and “irredeemables?”
Are they FBI grandee Peter Strzok’s Walmart shoppers who “smell?”
Over the last decade-and-a-half, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Harris-Walz, and a host of other self-described elites have variously invented a wide range of smears and slurs—but about whom exactly?
Who are these people that leftwing politicians have so vehemently derided—and why?
They include Trump supporters, of course, or what Biden also dubbed “ultra-MAGAs” and Tim Walz called “fascists,” now without the prior qualifying prefix “semi.”
In general, these adjectives of disdain denote about half the country according to the results of what will soon be the last three presidential elections.
This half is more rural than urban, characterized by larger than smaller families, more high-schooled diplomaed than college degreed, and more conventional and traditional than vanguard and trend-setting.
Statisticians tell us that the new non-clinging Democratic Party finds its greatest support from those who earn less than $50,000 and those who make considerably more than $100,000. These are the rich/poor bookends that surround the reformed Republican party in between.
So, in terms of generalized income and earnings, the left is now the party of the well-to-do professional and credential class and the rich, along with the subsidized poor. The Republicans, by contrast, are increasingly represented by the middle classes.
The Democratic top dogs are most likely to embrace agendas that never garner 51 percent of public support—vast reductions in gas and oil to lessen “climate change,” open borders to welcome in the world’s needy, the government promotion of a third, transgendered sex, abortion on demand without restrictions, the reifications of various critical (race/legal/penal/modern monetary) “theories,” and radical changes in the current system (ending the Senate filibuster, the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, the 50-state union, etc.).
Two truisms stand out about the elite boutique agenda: one, when these theories are implemented—often by the courts, and the permanent and unelected administrative and bureaucratic state—the architects of such experimentation do not really feel the inevitable deleterious consequences.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Silicon Valley masters of the universe, the professors of law, the corporate CEOs, and the Bill Gates of the world really don’t care much whether gas is at $3 a gallon or $6, or Romex wire is $39 a spool or $150.
Illegal aliens do not go to their children’s schools or crowd the offices of their concierge cardiologists and oncologists, much less dump trash on their streets and curbs.
They are strong supporters of teachers’ unions, despising the very idea of charter schools and homeschooling. And yet they send their children more often to private schools where students are not the lab rats of the public school system.
Their ideology is the fruit of their privilege and so is often more utopian and abstract. Given that if it results in economic, social, and cultural damage to millions, they will certainly avoid the ensuing flotsam and jetsam.
The fallout from defunding the police falls upon the inner city, not the privately patrolled Presidio Heights or the secluded sorts in Martha’s Vineyard.
Given their income and status, the new Democratic credentialed and moneyed classes do not care about the struggle of others to live one more day, clinging to the middle-class vestiges of their parents’ era. Instead, for the anointed who have transcended the fear of not filling up their tank or coming up short on monthly rent and power bills, it is not hard to mandate job-killing EVs or to chuckle over biological boys in girls’ locker rooms and pride flags flying from the abandoned American embassy in Kabul.
By the same token, the poor count on the left’s largesse to cushion themselves from the damage of their own party’s dreams turned into nightmares. Various food, housing, medical, legal, and educational subsidies to the poor are testaments that the left’s own agendas stagnant upward mobility and confine the poor to permanent poverty.
In a cynical sense, left-wing elites square the circle of the guilt over their privilege through government subsidies for those whom they’d rather not necessarily live next to or have their children attend school with. In other words, they find them useful rather than empathetic. They welcome in millions of illegal aliens—as long as they don’t camp out at Yale, the Hamptons, or Malibu Beach.
Not so the struggling middle classes. Modern theories can result in hyperinflation that can ruin them or easily send them into the ranks of the government-subsidized poor. They are conservative in wanting a secure border, legal-only immigration, affordable food and energy, safe streets, and equality of opportunity rather than of result, because they have no margin of error, lacking the wherewithal of secure home zip codes, or the perks of gargantuan grocery bills at Whole Foods, or a new foreign car every two years.
Such conservatism is reflected in the worldview of the clingers and irredeemables. They accept not cosmopolitism but 2,500 years of nationhood that remind them there can be no nation without borders.
There can be no modern comforts and security without access to affordable food and energy. There can be no public society without safe streets—and indeed, not even public places without sanitation and common decency.
So, the great middle class is wary about falling at the hands of others into government dependency and even more fearful of destroying what has worked over the ages. They resist experimenting with the unknown, especially when thought up and designed by those who will easily ride out the ensuing disasters when such harebrained schemes inevitably fail.
These chumps, fascists, and garbage people know that their advantages in numbers are outweighed by the Eloi’s absorption of institutional and government power. So, in depression, they often shrug and drop out. They assume wisely that the network news, the New York Times and Washington Post, Hollywood, and the corporate boardroom are mere extensions of the utopian and cultural left, who despise them for ignoring their supposed betters.
They pass on watching the Emmys, Oscars, Tonys, and Grammys. They are deaf to the top-down sermons from an Al Gore, John Kerry, the Clintons, the Obamas, or Joe Biden, which assume the grubby majority is either too ignorant or amoral or both to know what is good for them and so must be shamed, smeared, and slurred rather than won over by argumentations and persuasion. Is not the 2024 election about just that—the haughty who sermonize and those weary of being lectured?
The dregs could care less who is president of Harvard or how many letters and titles follow a professional’s name—except to confirm to themselves when watching or hearing such people that our elites increasingly have neither common sense nor integrity. A high school history teacher could have answered congressional questioning on race, anti-Semitism, and bias far more effectively and adroitly than a deer-in-the-headlights, clueless Harvard president Claudine Gay.
Yes, the semi-fascists are lectured that they are racist, sexist, and xenophobic. They are damned by the credentialed as “white privileged” who “rage,” as they dutifully go off to Iraq and Afghanistan to die in combat at double their numbers in our demographics.
They are advised of their toxic illiberality and bigotry, even as their children lack the race, gender, and ethnicity advantage accorded to the so-called Other and the inside edge that money, influence, and status provide for the elite.
What has recently brought this great divide to a head and exposed the fury of the elite is resurgent anger at the newfound impudence of the deplorable class, or the notion that they would dare call the dishonest media the “fake news” or suggest that “fit-as-fiddle,” “smart-as-a-tack,” cognitively challenged Joe Biden is the proverbial emperor with no clothes.
Who are these arrogant who pack the 20,000 seats of Madison Square Garden even after the good people have warned that they were mindlessly reenacting Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will?
The left believes that either racial victimization or money should guarantee privilege and so despises those qualifying for neither. In the elite’s view, the working class so often lacks the romance of the poor and non-white, but worse still, the culture and pretensions of the progressive Übermenschen.
Finally, the unspoken irony of this divide is that the self-professed elite know that they are not the elite by any definable standard or meritocracy. Yale gives a higher percentage of A’s on spec to its students than do trade schools and junior colleges.
Today’s supposedly brilliant Columbia student would likely struggle to earn an objectively graded C on a state college’s standardized, multi-choice history exam.
Those who run the Washington Post or NPR are less competent, worldly, and knowledgeable than the chumpy and dregsy sexagenarian who publishes a small town’s weekly newspaper.
The average salesman and electrician can far better spot fraud and deceit than an Anthony Fauci or Peter Daszak. And the tractor driver is more likely not to lie under oath than a John Brennan, James Clapper, or Andrew McCabe. The lineman working with high voltage is far more likely to err on the side of safety with the lives of others than the executives of Pfizer or Moderna.
In a wider sense, the deplorable class believes it can still build reliable pipelines, frack, truck our nation’s goods, and clean up after a hurricane. But it has utterly lost confidence that the best and the brightest at the Pentagon can win a war, at Boeing can craft a safe jet, or at NASA can send astronauts safely into space and back in the fashion of their grandfathers more than half a century ago.
This election is about many things—left/right issues, of course, and the peculiar personalities of Trump and Harris perhaps.
But it will likely be defined by those who are not just tired of being smeared as the underbelly of America but, far more unforgivably, are beginning to enjoy and mock the disparagement from those who have never earned the right to smear anyone but themselves.
USA is getting to be two groups – the Swamp and the rest of us.
The top of the swamp is scum.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Thomas Jefferson.
Yes, scum. Unlike milk wherein cream rises to the top, DC lefties sink to the bottom.
This week the middle must burst (and then restore through success) the bookends.
I am perplexed by how this divide in America is so evenly divided. It almost always seems to be 50/50. Mr. Hansen, do you have a plausible answer to why this is? Is this by some design, or is it just happenstance?
All now worn as a badge of courage. Sticks and stones…..
The last paragraph sums it up nicely.
And now that I reflect on the campaign, I note the the RNC had normal everyday people testify to the damage, death and destruction delivered to them by this awful Administration.
On the other hand, the DNC had celebrity after celebrity tout their allegiance to the Cackle Queen and more of the same wrong-track governance. They don’t even realize, or more accuratelY, CARE about the great majority of Americans.
We are praying for a decisive victory and a return to common sense governance!
Thank you for pointing that out.
I like many, missed that connection to the majority of the nation by the RNC and or lack of caring by the DNC.
The RNCs closing slogan of ” Harris broke it, Trump will fix it.” is fine, but I prefer Trump’s own words, “You can’t lead America, if you don’t love the American people.” – double negative. It seems that, later on in life, we instinctively cut to the chase scene, because we’re running out of time.
Yes, there is a lot of distaste for the Biden/Harris schtick, but can Trump win if he focuses on these issues. The real truth is that most Americans are NOT GOING TO VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS. They are not going back to the Dark Ages with the republicans; back to “coat hanger” abortions.
Obama once gave a speech where he compared the political parties to the gear shift lever on an automobile: “D” is for drive and the Democrats and they are going forward; “R” is for reverse and Republicans and they are going backwards. The crowd cheered wildly.
VDH is correct that the majority of Americans do not like the policies of the Left, but they have bought into the Progressive idea that we are now an “enlightened” people. When they hear a right-wing/Republican scold talking about how “human nature doesn’t change” – their eyes glaze over. There is nothing to learn from those racist/unenlightened people of the past.
And so, it’s “enlightened” to allow women complete control of their bodies; it’s “enlightened” to allow young males to declare as female and shower with young girls and compete against them in sports; it’s “enlightened” to have open borders; it’s “enlightened” to defund the Police, it’s “enlightened” to close coal and natural gas fired power plants unless they spend billions on unproven technology to capture the carbon dioxide emissions, and on it goes with a whole litany of crazy ideas.
A true story about the lure of voting Democrat: I once had a co-worker who
Mike Howard
My faith in the American people was restored in 2016. I pray it will again tomorrow.
Best to all
It would really nice to see your columns in The Times or WAPO. It would be priceless to see the apoplectic responses, both physically and mentally by those elites.
When the abused start mocking their accusers, you know we have reached a turning point nationally.
One of your best. I was glued to every sentence. It’s all for naught if the Dems steal another election. If you aren’t talking about election integrity you are most likely engaging in a distraction.
Going out on a limb here:
I see two likely scenarios.
The first is that Trump will win in an historic landslide. Everything about this campaign has been different and fresh. This would be Trump’s Third Act.
The second scenario is that the race becomes very close and then the dems win in a very suspicious manner. I don’t see Harris losing in a tight race. Too many unauditable ways to rig.
I’d like to post on Wednesday, “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of (New) York.” Richard III’s opening lines. Unfortunately, Richard is not at all happy with his brother, Edward IV’s subjects’ happiness, and boasts in succeeding lines of troubles he has plotted. The history of the last ten years leads one to pray the analogy will not extend this far.
One of the things being widely discussed and I think plays a significant role in this paradigm shift is the general public’s access to other news sources, especially social media. The X platform has made various views and truths (and untruths) available to anyone who wants to read them. In addition, the continuing shift to podcasts to serve as a significant news source has flipped the discourse entirely. It’s not just the repetitive BS from the MSM media. The information you get is from people you like, respect, and choose to listen to on your own.
Victor, your podcast has helped shed light on many confusing issues, and I thank you for that. I think the MSM is in a doomsday loop. If they don’t change and produce a more balanced news output, they may end up in the ash heap of history.
While we won’t know the outcome of this election for a few days or a week, one thing on my wish list would be that Donald Trump would read your writings. In a perfect outcome he would win and ask you to be an advisor to the President.
I agree. A steering committee with Victor Hanson, Elise Stefanik & Bill Ackman on board would be a good start to address the serious issue of education reform.
An excellent suggestion. For the new administration this article alone would be a most useful guide for the Trump team.
Amen!
Paraphrasing President Trump: We shall overwhelm them. In my opinion, we should call them what they really are: Reprehensibles. I can detect no evidence of critical thinking and much evidence of being Useful Idiots. They are trying to drag us all down The Road To Serfdom.
Why do our leftist officials seem to express a genuine disdain for those who disagree with them?
Possible reasons –
1. They believe themselves to be superior and are entitled to do so.
2. Despite their inherent superiority, they are incapable of making persuasive arguments and their frustration leads to name calling.
3. Smearing and shaming American citizens are effective means of intimidation and getting their way.
4. Their underlying disdain and frustration are not towards men but towards God.
Psalm 8:1-3 Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Annointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”
The leftist worldview is more in conflict with a biblical worldview than a conservative understanding. Democrat leaders may not be able to malign God satisfactorily and so may target those who are more aligned with him instead. Psalm 8 expresses man’s rebellion against God and is indicative of men of both political parties but may be more characteristic of the Democrat party.
P.S. Regarding the outright vilification of conservatives and its intended affect to intimidate and change voting –
1. God ordains the ends but also the means. He determines the outcome and how it is achieved, and, in this case, it is through ballot casting.
2. Remember that God has empowered you in America to vote for your representatives who actually do represent you personally in governing.
3. Focus your attention on policy and not past personality. King David was a man who had many flaws and sins, remember Bathsheba and Uriah yet God used David for good.
4. Realistically remember that you are voting for a politician and not a pastor.
5. Stop letting the world intimidate you into not voting such as your peers, co-workers, and girlfriend. You will have a sense of freedom inside when you stop serving other’s expectations.
6. Do not let past loyalties to the Democrat party interfere with voting for Republicans. That party that enabled your grandparents does not exist anymore. Realize that the craziness is not what your predecessors would vote for.
7. Think outside of yourself, you may be comfortable but others in our nation are not, and things need to change or there will be no representative government.
8. For those who are Christians, take a stand and honor God in voting.
Correction: Psalm 2: 1-3
I wish the delineation was as clean as the Rich Elites and those depending on government handouts, but in my view it is not. What I find so perplexing is the number of “middle class” neighbors who can vote for an unelected incompetent Buffon who supports “Tampons in Boy’s Bathrooms”, “Boys in Girl’s Sports”, and ‘Teachers of 12 years old students not being required to share a gender confusion with parents.” Forget the major issues of inflation, the border, crime, wars….those cited are stances that are so utterly insane they should be automatic disqualifiers, but millions of the middle class are still voting Democrat? This election shouldn’t be close. But in my opinion, and I pray I am wrong, it will be 2020 again and she may win? Have a half of the nation become citizens of a modern Sodem and Gomorrah, and other half refusing to accept that morally like Ancient Greece, Rome, the British Empire we are rotting from within? Tell us, Dr. Hansen.
One of the best election eve summations I’ve read Professor. You encapsulate the ral societal struggles occurring in our country now………not the phony race/white privilege nonsense being spewed by the modern Left.
Tucker Carlson today has a great 90 second closing message in support of Trump that carries this same theme. It’s a great view if anyone wishes to go view it. It should be easy to find on his TCN network.
Thank you Professor Hanson.
The vilified are those who regard man as supremely flawed and corruptible, and therefore remain humble knowing that God is the channel marker for morality and life.
The others have arrogantly place themselves as the ultimate authority for morality and direction of mankind.
I’m proud to be called a deplorable piece of garbage, by some absolutely despicable people like Tampon Tim, Crooked Killary, & Sleepy Joe & lets not forget cackling Kumala. Yes I worked my whole life with my hands, retired & just trying to survive on Social Security. Guess who I voted for in person in early voting ?
Yeah, same.
Another well written piece that encapsulates the mood and the life we all live. Except the elites. They have no idea. This election is not about Trump or Harris. It’s about right and wrong.
Maybe “that the left’s own agendas stagnant” should be stagnate? Also, I think I see “at” where “that” should be. Regardless, lovely piece as always. Payment member here.
The Generation Gap is now an abysmal mass grave. Good riddance. Bring on the Zoomers.
Sixteen years of vilification? More like 40 years…
Demonizing the mostly white working- and middle-classes as being historic beneficiaries of and/or descendants of the perpetrators of colonialism, slavery, indigineous genocide, Manifest Destiny, suburban redlining, anti-green consumerism, etc. has a purpose.
It will make it easy for the elites to control and dismiss their remaining 45 percent when minorities are the majority by the late 2040s.
How convenient it will be to ignore their future concerns in a majority-minority country by having called them “garbage…deplorables…irredeemables…chumps…dregs…troglodtyes…Nazis,” for 75 years, whose replacement and numeric diminishment was deserved.
The lefties are in it for the long term. Their long march through the institutions was matched by their wresting control of language and history.
The Snobbocracy vs. the Salt of the Earth folks.
Also, we are MORE than “half” of Americans. That’s a standard leftwing trope, intended to inflate their importance (they’ve been getting away with that one for years).
If anyone reading this hasn’t gotten out and voted yet, please: Join the dogpile at the one-yard line and push like hell! We need to have a decisive victory, a landslide that will resound down the years.
If we don’t All turn out for this, we’ll be tortured for weeks/months by Lefty Lawfare trying to drag that execrable woman over the goal line.
And keep praying.
–Former Country Club Republican and Ex-Snob
The self-styled elites, legends in their own minds, are an aristocracy, like the one in Czarist Russia. They don’t have their power because they did anything positive.
On this election eve, I am reminded of the song from the Musical “1776” where John Adams asks, “Is any body out there? Does any body care?” and I want to answer Johnny by stating, “Yes, I am here! Yes, I do care! Yes, I will fulfill my oath to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States! Yes, I will help our Great Experiment continue! Yes, I will wait in line ,for eternity, to exercise my right and my duty to vote! Yes, I will continue to remind Government, that I have only lent political power to them and that I am free to call in the loan should they breech their fiduciary duty!”
The direct links to catholic Christian faith are not mentioned here, but both camps are subject to the will of God, and, compared to Christ, we are all precious deplorables who have been offered grace. A good part of that grace are our Constitutional freedoms. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are conditional based upon the Love of the infinite Lord, personal and national repentance, and humility. We can hope that a faithful remnant still survives less we all be consumed in justified wrath. Do we have enough discernment left to recognize the least of evils? That is my prayer.
Talk about drinking from a fire hydrant. This essay, Dr. Hanson is prolific and profound as usual, but my garbage, deplorable head is spinning. So much to absorb. Hopefully, tomorrow, Novemer 5, 2024, we will have won and started back down the long arduous road toward Making America Great Again. Not going to be easy with 35 Trillion of Federal debt to overcome. Fortunately we have some Great Americans on our side, including at least one naturalized citizen, who will be selected by President Trump without regard to DEI to bring back common sense in our governance, security, education, defense, and fiscal management.
Thanks to all America loving voters.
Dear VDH and Team,
Whenever I hear one of our extremely wealthy, bi-coastal elitist name calling, I alway think of them sitting in a room, smoking cigars and playing the real life version of Monopoly.
Commit a crime? Here’s your get out of jail free card.
You trespassed onto my property. That’s a $100 fine.
You landed on my railroad? Due to a railroad tax you now owe me $25.
Monopoly (along with backgammon) should be taught in schools.
Another agenda “embraced by Democrat top dogs” is civilian disarmament. Or the way they see it, disarmament of their political opponents.
Sonnet: The Vilified and Forgotten
Who are these souls deemed “garbage” in disdain,
Or branded “clingers” by the loftiest few?
By those who mock with titles rich in vain,
Yet know not half the toil the workers do.
The “deplorables,” “chumps,” in rural fields,
With modest dreams, no gilded wealth in store;
Their honest labor daily bread it yields,
While others preach, aloof from common lore.
Yet by elites, their lives are thus condemned,
The laws they craft, yet suffer not the cost—
For gas, for bread, these rulers are not hemmed,
Their whims imposed, while others count what’s lost.
This race shall mark if truth or pride holds sway,
The mocked now rise, unbowed, to have their say.
Each time I read another one of your brilliant essays I tell myself it can’t be stated any better…until I read the next one. And this one is positively AMAZING. You have such a knack of expressing thoughts and societal things -right before our eyes- like no other.
When Donald Trump wins, I hope that somehow you could become one of his speech writers. [Why one of his surrogates like Stephen Miller hasn’t called upon you for this already is beyond my understanding].
Grook: The Forgotten Folk
The “garbage” folk, they call them so,
those clingers and chumps, the ranks below—
for they are not the lofty kind,
nor bear the gloss of the cultured mind.
The titles stack, disdain runs deep,
from towers high, they scorn the “cheap.”
Yet what they build, and fix, and grow,
the lords of light will never know.
The smearers sneer, with heads held high,
but they are the ones who live the lie.
For real life thrives in hands that toil,
not in the gloss, nor in the spoil.
A country song in the style of Roger Miller:
“The Folks They Left Behind”
(Verse 1)
I’m just a country boy, I work my land,
I got calloused fingers and a steady hand,
Ain’t got no fancy degree or suit,
Just my worn-out jeans and my muddy boots.
(Chorus)
They call us “clingers,” “deplorables,” too,
But they don’t know the work we do,
We keep the lights on, keep the fields alive,
While they’re out there preachin’ from a mile-high drive.
(Verse 2)
Now they got ideas up in them towers,
Thinkin’ big thoughts while we work the hours,
They got words like “progress” and “modern ways,”
But they can’t tell night from day.
(Chorus)
They call us “garbage,” “the folks behind,”
But we’re the heartbeat, the workin’ kind,
We don’t need their fancy names,
Just a strong back and the sun and rain.
(Bridge)
So let ‘em laugh and let ‘em sneer,
We’ll just keep on plowin’ here,
We don’t need no upper crust,
‘Cause all we got is grit and trust.
(Outro)
So here’s to the “chumps,” the “dregs,” and the “low,”
We’re the roots, the ones who grow,
They can try to leave us all behind,
But we’re the soul they’ll never find.
VDH,
These people -“the so called vanguard and trend-setting self-described elite, who are made up of the, rich well-to-do professional and credential class, left wing politicians, the network news, the New York Times and Washington Post, Hollywood, and the corporate boardroom,” are quite frankly not impressive people.
The Clintons, Obamas, Bidens, Harris, Gore, Kerry, Pelosi, Schiff, Bush, Cheney, the columnist of The NY Times, Washington Post, are the real dregs,chumps, fascists, and garbage people. I know that just from seeing them from afar, imagine if I actually knew personally.
They are the definition of the deplorables.