From an Angry Reader:

Clinton lost because of Republican voter suppression, Comey and Russian hacking. Trump is the establishment. He Pence and his appointments will cripple America for years. You should remove your head from Trumps ass. People like you are the problem.

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Repeat Angry Reader Raye Harper,

You cite 3 reasons for Hillary’s electoral loss: 1) yet there is no evidence of voter suppression. The Pew Foundation in 2012 suggested that voter registration is unsupervised and leads to voter fraud. Their drift was probably not focused on golf course-Republicans. The President assured Latinos that there would be no scrutiny of immigration status connected with voting; again, his subtle subtext was not election reassurance to the VFW or NRA to not worry about coming out in force at the polls.

2) Comey was a neutron bomb who radiated everyone: most dramatically acting improperly as a federal attorney in stating Hillary should not be prosecuted, then again improperly that she might be, then again improperly that she wouldn’t be—all predicated on his perceptions of his own political viability and keeping his job amid rising anger in his ranks. Two of the three times, he gave her a favorable nod—but never should have given a single press conference in the first place. AG Loretta Lynch prejudiced her position by meeting stealthily with Bill Clinton, and in response she outsourced Hillary’s case improperly to Comey, who was an investigator, not a prosecutor who weighs investigatory evidence. He should be fired for malpractice.

3) As far as Russian hacking: we have as yet no proof who hacked what. But so far no one has questioned the authenticity of the hacked materials. If Clinton, Inc. had not engaged in surreal machinations like attempts to leverage Haitian relief, or ridiculed Latinos, Catholics, or blacks, or outlined to donors pay for play rules, or not had a stable of fake journalists who weighed in with everything from leaking debate questions to requests for free anti-Trump research, the leaks would have been irrelevant, or merely embarrassing like Colin Powell’s emails, but not incriminating.

Of course, Trump is part of the establishment. That is a banal statement. The mystery is how he appealed to those who are not the establishment that he was their anti-establishment paladin. No candidate in American history has won the presidency without prior political or military experience. He destroyed 16 fine primary candidates, the Bush, Clinton, and Obama dynasties, and brought with him a Republican tsunami—all without much spending, ground game, ads, or political help from the establishment. You need to study how that happened rather than bark at the moon that it did.

We have no exact idea about what the Trump appointments will do; I doubt a Jim Mattis at Defense will cripple anyone other than our enemies. I hope you were as worried about the actual circumstances of so many of Mr. Obama’s departing (and mostly discredited and shamed) appointees at the VA, HHS, NSA, IRS, FBI, EPA, CIA, Labor, Justice, etc. as you are about hypotheticals. Using fake email names at the EPA, screwing up the ACA website and delivery, leaving veterans without adequate care, using tax returns as political leverage or allowing the Secret Service to become Keystone Cops are not small things.

Why the vulgarity? I’m not the problem. If I were, my absence would remedy the problem. Unfortunately America’s dilemma is far more fundamental, in part reflected by a certain sort of zealot, who in rage writes profanity to strangers, rants banalities, and apparently believes that his vulgarity can substitute for an idea. Sadly, it just cannot.

Sincerely, VDH