Bombshells, Landmines, and Nemesis
For much of 2017 through 2021, Americans suffered the “bombshell” and “walls are closing” mythologies first of Russian collusion, then of supposedly vast Russian social media investments to sabotage the election. From there we moved on to the Alfa Bank ping-pong fable, the supposed Putin bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan that Trump was said …
Two Antithetical Billionaires
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Before the midterm November elections, Sam Bankman-Fried was a left-wing billionaire heartthrob. He properly grew up on the Stanford campus, where his parents were well-known left-wing activist law professors. He went to a tony prep school and on to MIT. Bankman-Fried mocked society’s bourgeois capitalist conventions by dressing and looking …
The Tentacles of the Social Media Octopus
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness A shared theme in all dystopian explorations of future and current totalitarian regimes—whether China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, or Cuba—is government control of all media information, fueled by electronic surveillance. A skeptical public learns to say one thing publicly but quite another privately. It nervously nods yes at the news …
The New Disinformationists
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness The Biden Administration feels that it must now use federal resources to attack “disinformation.” So the Department of Homeland Security recently announced the creation of a “disinformation governance board.” The board’s executive director, Nina Jankowicz, at least has clear qualifications for the post. She previously had spread false rumors on social …