Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
We are witnessing a historic counterrevolution after Trump’s victory, far different from his first election in 2016.
The orthodox and the supposed scripted future are now suspect. And they are likely to be dethroned—from the trivial to the existential.
Critics claim Trump has no mandate to stage such a counterrevolution. They argue that he did not win 51 percent of the popular vote or achieve a Reaganesque landslide in the Electoral College.
Yet all the initiatives he advanced and won on polled landslide public approval.
Despite being the target of Democrat lawfare for years, a defiant Trump promised to end an open border, massive illegal immigration, rising crime, and soaring prices. He pledged to slash government and its administrative state, terminate racial and gender identity politics, and restore deterrence abroad.
The people overwhelmingly wanted those messages but were waiting for an unorthodox messenger who would actually deliver them.
The Trump messenger reassured weary citizens that they were not crazy.
Instead, they had good cause to be sick of being talked down to by a media, academic, bureaucratic, and political elite that never earned nor deserved such self-appointed status.
The FBI, the CIA, and the DOJ, not the massive crowds at rallies, were the ones truly out of control.
President Joe Biden was really suffering from dementia, not those who said he was.
Criminals with weapons are as deleterious to society as law-abiding citizens deprived of them.
It is not a thought crime to believe there are two sexes—not three or four or more. No one should be forced to buy an electric vehicle, disconnect their natural gas stove, or submit to racial or gender indoctrination sessions.
Americans should speak their minds and write what they wish without worry of being censored, blacklisted, ostracized, doxxed, or shadow-banned—or jailed.
Campuses are not oases of tolerance, disinterested inquiry, and free expression.
They instead increasingly became overpriced indoctrination centers that shred the Constitution and graduate indebted students who know less—but are far more biased—than when they enrolled.
Trump and his MAGA appointees promise to slash over a trillion dollars from the annual federal budget, disbanding entire agencies.
Is the objection that an ever-expanding government—$37 trillion in debt, running nearly $2 trillion in annual deficits—should keep growing?
Trump pledges to reform the Pentagon—ending DEI Pentagon commissars and revolving-door corporate generalship.
He vows to hold the 4-star class responsible for the catastrophe in Afghanistan and to reenlist soldiers who were driven out due to draconian vaccination mandates or woke intolerance. Trump envisions changing the entire system of military procurement.
Does the status quo object on the grounds that our military leadership has been winning our wars abroad?
Is the Pentagon currently awash in eager recruits?
Has it stockpiled a huge surplus of shells, bombs, and rockets?
Trump promises historic deportations of the 12 million who destroyed the southern border and surged in without health or criminal audits.
Trump vows to rescue swamped social services and stop crimes by illegal alien felons.
Is that really worse than the Biden administration’s original massive importation of millions of illegal aliens, empowered by drug-importing and sex-trafficking cartels?
Who are the culpable? Those flagrantly mocking and breaking the law, or those vowing to enforce it?
Trump says he will deter enemies without bogging America down in “endless wars”—and did just that in his first four years as president.
Is the current alternative preferable to convincing enemies that there are few consequences to their aggression, sandbagging allies like Israel, or feeding the war in Ukraine without any plan of either winning or ending it?
The Trump revolution is also cultural and social. Shared class interests have replaced race, ethnicity, and gender chauvinism.
Athletes of all races are no longer taking a knee in protest of America’s supposed systemic racism during the national anthem. Sometimes they celebrate their scoring by doing honorific Trump YMCA/golf-swing dances on national television.
Enlistments to help craft the Trump counterrevolution are not always predicated on degrees, conventional resumes, or past lengthy government service. Race and gender do not determine qualifications alone. Nor does class.
Common sense, successful lives outside of government, and a desire to end the current nonsense count instead as better prerequisites.
For Trump, party identification, titles, and traditional prestige matter less as he is surrounded by an ideologically diverse cadre including Elon Musk, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Dana White, Tulsi Gabbard, and Joe Rogan.
The country no longer must apologize incessantly for its past or present but can move on—content that it need not be perfect to be better than all the alternatives.
The age of flashing pronouns, renaming iconic landmarks, statue toppling, trashing the dead, vandalizing with impunity the campus library, or spouting anti-Semitic venom is passing.
So, another name for the Trump counterrevolution is a simple return to sanity.
I love learning from you. I am glad that you are out there for us.
Genius
VDH is a brilliant man to be studied.
Thank you for your words. They always give me hope and educate me! If only people that believe in the left would read them and truly understand what is best for all that live in America.
As a Canadian could you please export some of that sanity up here, immediately!
RB
Once again, I hope you are correct but I do not think the cultural elites or the blue state governors will surrender without much turmoil. There will always be a fringe of people who want to fundamentally change America, DJT’s challenge is to restore sanity to the leadership and direction of the Democrat Party and unite America behind a common history that is primarily oriented to 1776 and not 1619. Can DJT cause the Democrats to move on from the Obamas, Clintons, Whitmers, Newsomes, Hochuls and that’s just some of the politicians, it still leaves academia, the media, big tech & Hollywood. I am optimistic but very cautiously.
Lew it’s not up to Pres Trump to restore anything at all regarding the DemoKKKrats. That is completely on them.
And if they’re smart – actually, better said, if they get smart – the Party will remove all of those on that list & more. Get rid of the Pelosis & the Schumers et al and get rid of all the problems.
While they’re at it, get rid of AOC and her nutty band of loonie lefty liberals.
Oh and one more thing …
All of those high & mighty celebrities who threatened to leave if Pres Trump gets elected? You can all go BUT you have to leave all the money the you made here in the USA because of the opportunities and freedoms to do so. Go on over “there” and shoot you mouth off like you do here – they’ll find you in a dumpster on short time.
Nailed it, again! Thank you!
Great analysis, as always.
I think another aspect of the revolution is the manner in which it was achieved. In the first term, Trump did not lack for “mean tweets.” Between his own somewhat abrasive conduct in the face of the media malestrom, and the Democrat’s primary political tactic, Alinsky’s Thirteenth rule: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” The target, of course, in 2016 to this day, is Trump. (In previous elections, the target would be that year’s Republican POTUS candidate.) The D electoral strategy in all three elections: Vilify Trump to the point where the only electoral strategy necessary is to present the D candidate as “Not Trump.” It nearly worked in 2016, and did work in 2020. It failed in 2024.
But the D performance, in office, was so bad, so vile, that their entire worldview was rejected, despite the intensely horrible characterization of their adversary. For me, the revolution is so amazing because it is the rejection of the D worldview across nearly every ethnic group in nearly every county in the nation: Trump, in 2024, outperformed his 2020 and 2016 electoral percentages across the board.
Correctly stated…a return to sanity…I would add a return to common sense.
Isn’t it ironic that the demographic of graduate/PhD’s is the the one that trended more towards Harris in this election, while virtually every other demographic moved to the right.
Most in this class may be “smart”, but they are far from being WISE.
Victor – you left out Hulk Hogan from the ideologically diverse group surrounding Trump. That may sound like a joke, but I believe characters like Hulk are quintessentially American and demonstrate Trump’s ability to relate across all of our social divides – while providing sometimes hilarious moments. Trumpamaniacs Unite!
And so the pendulum swings.
Does it? Until we fix our own criminal justice system just removing the illegal ones won’t make much of a dent in horrific crimes. 30+ years on Death Row. Appeal after Appeal. Parole hearings, Plea Deals, with no victim or family input. Weekend passes. You may not remember the likes of Willie Horton, I do. Robert James Bidinotto wrote a Reader’s Digest series on RECIDIVIST CRIMINALS, THE ACLU CRIMINAL RIGHTS CHAMPION. Victims or their families have few rights. FREED TO KILL AGAIN, FREED TO RAPE AGAIN, THE LAW CRIMINALS LOVE, REVOLVING PRISON DOOR. Tennessee Man Tortured Young Woman With Bleach Before Burning Her Alive In Back Of Car, Police Say
https://www.lawyerherald.com/articles/60927/20241119/tennessee-man-tortured-young-woman-bleach-before-burning-her-alive-back-car-police-say.htm
More than a year after a young woman was found dead in the back of a burning car, police arrested her suspected killer. Sencere Hayes, 22, allegedly poured bleach down the throat of Mercedes.
Eliza “Liza” Fletcher, 34, was identified as the person found dead Monday in the rear of a vacant duplex in the Tennessee city, roughly 7.5 miles from where surveillance video shows she was forced into an SUV early Friday, Memphis police said. https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/02/us/memphis-police-missing-teacher-eliza-eliza-fletcher-jog/index.html JUVY RECORD, IN AND OUT OF PRISON. RAPE KITS NOT RUN IN A DECADE.
Alabama mother was kidnapped and tortured for hours before being gang raped and murdered by 8 ht
How can Trump root out DEI and other Wokeisms embedded on campuses in 4 years?
AMEN TO SANITY AND COMMON SENSE!! LET’S KEEP TRUMP, HIS FAMILY AND THE NEW ADMINISTRATION IN OUR DAILY PRAYERS THAT THEY WILL STRIVE TO ACCOMPLISH ALL THAT THEY HAVE PROMISED!! HAPPY THANKSGIVING AND MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!
It seems to me we now have, or are working towards, a bureaucracy governed by common sense rather than common insanity. As we know when a system (person) continues to make the same decisions leading to over cost, beyond schedule, and under performing programs- this is the very definition of insanity. The federal government is the very definition of institutional insanity, and the patients have been running it far too long. It’s time to defund “the patients” and let the adults in the room run the government and do the people’s work. Let’s follow the law and get’er done!
Hopefully we’re on the way to an end to grade inflation in all levels of the schools and a retreat from propagandizing the young about social, sexual and climate change panic issues.
The Bush/McCain Republican Party was never going to oppose the revolutionary leftists led by Obama. They cowered in the corner as soon as “racist” accusations were hurled at them, and Obama played the victim card to the hilt. Turns out that one trick pony has lost its potency. “Hater” is undergoing a similar fate. Long ago the left abandoned any effort at persuading those who disagree with them. We can be hopeful they languish in irrelevance for a long stretch while MAGA/MAHA implements the program you describe so well (and save the Republic).
Humble the deafening arrogant, hopefully their ship has sailed! Thank you Victor for staying true to the American dream.
we’ll see. yeah?
Well said, VDH. Keep up the good work and the truth-telling….
A correct analysis IMO. Well said, Professor. Joseph McCarthy, Diane West, and many others (even President Eisenhower in his own way, with his warning about the MIC) have been sounding the alarm on what was growing in our midst. One other person, Jack Posobiec (formerly of Naval Intelligence and now a Podcaster) has sounded the alarm about the onslaught facing us (it ain’t over with this election; it’s just the beginning) in his book; “Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions, and How to CRUSH Them”. I’ll leave with a quote from the Intro to his book; ” Communism is when ugly, deformed FREAKS make it illegal to be normal, then rob and/or KILL all successful people, out of petty resentment and CRUELTY. The Ideology is ALL JUST WINDOW DRESSING.” (@ MysteryGrove). We’ re dealing with a sinister Left riddled with MALEVOLENCE coming from Dark Place within their psyche. As Dr. Jordan Peterson described them; ; ‘They are people who are POSSESSED by an IDEOLOGY’. Expect stormy times ahead and strong police actions that the malevolent ones will paint as dictatorial “police state” tactics, the VERY ONES they ACTUALLY will use if they continue gaining power at the expense of we, the normal people.
Thanks Victor! You have been a great spokesperson for common sense, hard work and meritocracy for the continued success of a democracy. Your readers truly understand these fundamental principles. However, the left does not. They will continue to be relentless in their clear goal to destroy America. Every minute of every day is devoted to this pursuit. Let me be clear. If American patriots do not continually battle these destructive forces, and overwhelm them, our way of life envisioned by our Founding Fathers will never be secure. This is not meant to demoralize but rather to empower good men and women. Every specie of life has had to relentlessly battle something for survival.
Attrition should not be generous, but would not be worth the push-back to be draconian.
Even though, MOST Federal civil servants to be out on their butts, with nothing.
We should be very weary // cautious of the folks whom wish to undermine Trump and his Administration. Specifically, the “51” Intel Agents (source: https://nypost.com/2022/10/19/its-been-two-years-since-51-intelligence-agents-interfered-with-an-election-they-still-wont-apologize/) and the “100” Former National Security Leaders (source: https://rbmralumni4harris.substack.com/p/over-100-republican-national-security).
None of these individuals have been held accountable!
Amen to that Victor! Well said!
A Return To Sanity…Perfect! You have hit your readers square in the face with the truth!
Meanwhile, votes are still being counted in at least 4 states, congressional and senate seats are still being contested, and Trumps popular vote lead diminishes every single day as more and more illegal ballots are just created and counted. You may believe Trump received a mandate, and the DEI era is dead and gone, but as you can see, the election cheating and the criminal bureaucracy that enabled it and continues to operate with impunity, it is still alive and well and fully functioning, and in the end if nothing is done, Trump may not have a majority in either legislative body.
I’m in my 60s and have never been more hopeful about this country than I am right now. Thank you for summing up why so well!
Upon examination, one finds that academic success stems more often from an ability to check boxes and successfully undertake rote tasks than from any superior intellectual ability. Those who consider themselves superior, merely, by way of an “advanced” degree would do well to redouble efforts at finding value in those whose experiences and expertise falls outside the confines of academia. And, if you don’t find much of the academy confining these days, there’s your problem.
This article expresses the hope and the relief that I have felt every day since the Trump won the election.
Your wisdom and your thoughtful words are exactly the truth.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
You have been the “word of truth” in your articles, book, and podcasts.
First for me was your evaluation of farming and the forces effecting the same.
Semper Fi.
More relief among us academic types than one might suppose.
I’m like the citizen from Missouri: let’s wait and see four years from now IF we have had: 1) PEACE 2) A BALANCED BUDGET FROM A REPUBLICAN CONGRESS BY THE TIME OF OUR 250TH BIRTHDAY, JULY 4, 2026 3) A CONTROLLED IMMIGRATION SYSTEM 4) AN EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT “DRAINING OF THE SWAMP AND
5) A TRULY NEEDED DOWNSIZING OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT THAT GIVES BACK POWER TO 100 STATES.
Sometimes it may be long and painful, but in the end the TRUTH always wins. Sunlight is the best disinfectant for corruption. 2025 is going to be a banner year for the USA.
As always very good read Victor. And, thank you for hitting the paragraph key! Love it.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Bravo. Another concise analysis we all hope reigns true.
Thank you for your writings and reports. You were one of the first professional intellects to show I wasn’t crazy and make clear the nation was on the wrong track. Nice to see us coming back to the center with common sense values. Change has been long overdue and the counter revolution is here. Lets save America. FREEDOM FOR ALL. Thank you for guiding us. A fan. Miss Laura
Great assessment, as usual. What I can’t rationalize with the results of the last election is how fragile the political power advantage remains when 45 to 48 % of the population support Chaos and the Party in power does not have a clear advantage in the Congress.
Fantastic piece! VDH is the best at articulating the past, present and future!
What Trump will achieve is a good start. I don’t think that one 4-year term will undo what progressives have wrought over 120 years of their ever-increasing influence on our political system, and then on our education system and our news and entertainment media. It’s going to take longer. Hopefully MAGA becomes the movement it can be, drives Republican policy, and guides the new generation of conservative candidates for office And that, at all levels of government-federal, state, and local. The actions of our Bucks County commissioners over our senate election here in PA illustrates that the Left has huge influence not just at the national level, but at the state and local levels, too.
Enter the mind and rational of the worlds finest policy consultant and host. Nothing less than a wonderful opportunity for all involved to demonstrate their inherent leadership capacity.
VDH,
Random Thoughts.
Paraphrasing from the Godfather’s Virgil Sollozzo
“We were the hunted ones”
We didn’t talk about leaving the country if Harris won.
What the 3rd term Obama/Biden/Harris administration put us through the last 4 years, how we have suffered.
The Stress
The end of America.
One man Donald Trump standing in there way.
Victor,
I am thinking of how scared you were, how worried, you knew Trump had a chance.
I will never forget when you said,
Trump has to realize he can’t take things so personal, the lives of so many Americans are at stake here.
You were hoping, humbly I know -like many of us who read every essay you wrote this election season, that Trump would listen to what you were writing and also repeating during your podcasts.
Remember Tom Hagen in Godfather 2,
about being owed an apology.
VDH, does anyone owe us an apology?
GOD BLESS AMERICA,and Thank God for people like you Victor.
Ding Dong’ the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know
The Wicked Witch is dead!
Expertly written as always.
I propose adding MANA – Make America NORMAL Again – as in “mana from Heaven”
I feel like we have been in a Cultural Depression these last four years, and that the song, “Brother, can you spare a dime,” has new meaning. VDH, Thank you for your writings.
The Biden Administration has piled up a massive amount of manure. I’m hopeful that Trump can muck it out with the same efficiency that Hercules cleansed the Augean stables. God speed President Trump!
Love the style used in this article professor. An method that got each point succinctly across and may even convince some still teetering on the fence; should they still have any semblance of common sense.
VDH,
Thank you for being a steadfast voice-of-reason through this leftist revolution. I don’t know anyone that understands what has been happening and articulates it as well as you do. I am really looking forward to our return to sanity.
I would like to echo the cautionary tone expressed by several of the commenters here. I believe that the tests will arrive very soon after the inauguration. For example: deportations. What will the new administration do when the first federal judge rules that deportations are unconstitutional? As I recall, at the outset of Trump 1.0, some judge ruled thusly after some rather mild border enforcement was put into place. And that was the end of that. Hope this time is different.