April 22, 2021
From An Angry Reader:
Vic, I read your opinion piece today in my local Naples Daily newspaper and I had to wonder why the paper published this absurd piece of crap. Didn’t they realize that only right-wing crazy assholes work at the Hoover Institute!
I apologize as I realize right-wing and crazy assholes are synonymous. Your article is full of lying bullshit. Are you sure TRumphole didn’t write this for you?
I mean really you accuse President Biden has not kept our laws, but you say nothing about the whiner who got his fat dumb ass kicked by Joe. You attack immigrants for your typical stupid claims while again say nothing about Americans who refuse masks, maintain social distances and Bitch about vaccine passports!
You’re a fucking asshole and I’d defalcate not in the street but in your so could spew more shit!
Sincerely,
Bill McMaster a former CIA analyst and manager
—————————————––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Dear Aggrieved Angry Reader Bill,
Your analytical and managerial skills result in a high Angry Reader score: no detail or evidence to support your venom, plenty of profanity and crudity (crap, assholes, bullshit, ass, shit, Bitch, f——g, the neologisms (TRumphole), the strange vocabulary (defalcate [“embezzle”] for “defecate”), the usual misinformation (Hoover Institution, and general incoherence (“and I’d defalcate not in the street but in your so could spew more shit!”). All that earns an 8.5 on the Angry Reader scale. If your Angry Reader rant is a really the work of a former top CIA official, then perhaps it is valuable to readers in explaining the careers of some of its hierarchy such as John Brennan.
As for your argument, there is none. So I’ll quickly reply to the silliness. Newspapers select op-eds they purchase from syndicators to spark discussion. In some sense your rant is a form of discussion, so their intent was realized. I would imagine that if you went online and tabulated Hoover fellows’ campaign contributions there were more donors to the 2020 Biden than to the Trump campaign.
I’m not sure what you call “right-wing”; 15 years ago the Democratic Party advocated legal only and diverse, meritocratic, and measured immigration, but then again Obama himself ran in 2008 on secure borders, opposition to gay marriage, and a balanced budget. Please cite where I “attack immigrants.” Opposing illegal, massive, and non-diverse immigration is not an attack on “immigrants” but support for legal immigration. I imagine I live in an area with a far higher immigrant population, both legal and not, than in your own region.
While it is certainly true that red-states were more reluctant to impose complete lockdowns, you could at least try to make the argument that Florida and Texas fared far worse, case- and death-wise than locked down states like similarly sized New York—well aside from the greater economic, social, and cultural damage to New York than in Florida and Texas. But, of course, you cannot. I don’t see how the infection and lethality rates in Michigan, Massachusetts, or Connecticut are arguments for the blue-state, complete quarantine paradigm.
As far as vaccinating, there are two groups who so far show some resistance to it; one are conservative traditionalists who feel it impinges on their freedom or do not trust government assurances of safety. But the other are minority groups, especially African-Americans who likewise are statistically hesitant.
So there is no real political pattern here that you insinuate. I have always supported vaccination (and was vaxed the moment my age group was eligible), wearing masks where reasonable, and keeping a distance from others while indoors at the zenith of the epidemic. I wish BLM, Antifa, and LA Laker fan base had followed such guidelines when they violated all those protocols—ironically often supported by some health care officials who signed petitions claiming the protestors had good medical reasons to violate the quarantine leveled on all others.
Lots of Americans have immune challenges and health issues. They have good medical reasons not to be vaccinated. And the idea that we would reduce them to second-class citizenry is not feasible or desirable. The likelihood that herd immunity will be achieved with 80-85 percent of the population vaccinated or with antibodies will allow small populations with either medical or religious reasons to avoid vaccination not to pose an existential threat to others, especially when a new generation of pharmaceuticals are on the horizon that offer hope in rendering symptomatic COVID-19 to flu or cold status.
Sincerely,
Victor Hanson, a former farmer and CSU professor
March 28, 2021
From an Angry Reader,
“Keep your shit views to yourself. You disgust me – go kiss trumps ass somewhere else. The armed insurrection was leaderless and officer Sicknick only was “allegedly” murdered? ??! You’re delirious you sick fuck”
— Deb Chapple
Dear Really, Really Angry Reader Deb Chapple,
In a mere 4 sentences you hit the angry reader score out of the park.
1) How did you cram in ‘sh-t’, ‘ass’, ‘f—k’ in so little space? 2) The vocabulary of derangement was present too: “disgust me”, “you’re delirious”, “you sick f—k’. 3) You managed the adolescent grammar well: trumps for Trump’s, ‘sh-t’ is a noun not an adjective, etc., 4) You slipped only by not including the Angry Reader style of block letters and three three exclamation marks (rather than the less impressive ??!).
As for content. I’m paid not to keep my ‘sh-t’ views to myself; you seem addicted to them. So instead you should just tune me out and go “somewhere else”. There is a huge world out there on the Internet and air waves, and there is no need for you to self-inflict by fixating on me.
If the armed “insurrection” was not leaderless, then would you please name the leaders who were arrested or are now under warrant for carefully planning and leading the assault? (Was it some heroic Napoleonic figure like the bare-chested buffoon, with the body tattoos, and two-horned fur hat?)
Since you, not I, used the adjective “armed”, please produce the evidence that at least one of those arrested in the Capitol either had used, or even possessed when arrested, a firearm.
The death of Officer Sicknick was tragic. But there is as yet no public release of the autopsy or a toxicology report. So we do not know the cause of death, and his family so far has not released a statement concerning his exact demise.
No one except the New York Times and a few marquee newspapers, before their retraction, believed Officer Sicknick died from a violent physical assault from the protestors. He certainly did not die from head trauma from a weaponized fire extinguisher as was widely reported.
Again, his death was a terrible thing, but likely either due to natural causes aggravated by stress or, more likely, by an allergic reaction to pepper or bear spray, or some similar chemical agent, used by either the protestors (most likely) or the police or both.
No jury would find anyone under those circumstances guilty of either first, second, or third degree “murder”. Involuntary manslaughter might be plausible if the toxicology report identifies the agent and a video shows an attacker with just that agent spraying it into the officer’s face. If that proves true, then I hope the suspect is prosecuted on manslaughter charges to the full extent of the law. But again, there was no murder as the law defines it, and you have no proof otherwise in spite of your venom.
I am afraid that you project the charge of “delirious”, and so Mutato nomine de te fabula narrator.
What is the point of dashing off an unhinged rant full of smears, profanity, and statements that are either false or without any support—other than the Angry Reader rankings?
Calm down for your own sake,
Vic Hanson
03/22/2021
From A Not Angry Reader:
Dear Professor Hanson,
I am not an angry reader. I am an eternally grateful reader who only hopes to see this on your “Dear Angry Reader” page so that I know you read my note.
In your latest podcast you state that Rush Limbaugh is irreplaceable. Perhaps. I don’t know. (I do hope that someone, sometime is able to step up to that mantle and carry on.) What I do know is that your own voice has become my weekly Zen. Your sound, pragmatic and infinite wisdom has, during these increasingly unsettling and scary times, become my verbal Prozac.
As a writer, I have for decades saved hardcopies of my favorite writings for fear that I won’t be able to find them again, and I want a foolproof way to reread and share them. But lately I have started printing out your columns and filing them away out of fear that the Left will somehow succeed in its rabid quest to cancel any and all dissenting voices. I want to make sure I (and someday my children) always have access to yours.
While Rush was certainly one-of-a-kind, I hope you know how essential your own voice is to so many of us and how much comfort your writings and weekly podcasts provide.
I sincerely thank you.
Jennfer L.
————————————————————————————————————
Dear Not Angry Reader Jennifer L.
I wrote about Rush here in a syndicated column: https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/we-have-lost-an-american-genius/
|
We Have Lost an American Genius | National Review www.nationalreview.com |
I first talked to him 20 years ago right after 9/11, and then only periodically until about three years ago when we began texting and emailing almost daily. And I visited him when I had occasion to speak in Palm Beach. He was one of the kindest and most earnest people I have met. And he did more for the conservative cause than all of us academics together. His loss is irreplaceable.
Who knows what the Left will do in its censorship jihad?
You are right: it is wise to have hard copies of things we value since they seem to have a tendency to vanish, as books are now treated like tweets or postings that suddenly just disappear.
This Trotskyization reminds me also of the Serra Mall small street outside my office at work: one day it was there, the next it was cancelled and renamed. It was if the current Stanford student body (the student parking lot resembles an Audi/BMW/Lexus/Mercedes car deanship lot) is the moral superior to an impoverished, 18th century Catholic priest who originated the California mission system and sought to introduce agriculture to California and provide comfort and help to travelers.
Note his cancellation was due to his occasional use of corporal punishment to native Americans in age when all, both indigenous and colonialist, were often far more violent. Yet when his record is compared in toto to the morality of the times, he stood above most in his compassion.
Note that Stanford students selectively demanded incorrect street names to be changed, but not “Stanford” itself—funded by a brilliant 19th-century “robber baron” who wrote disparagingly of Chinese, whose labor was critical to Stanford’s railroad projects. That hypocrisy is a morality tale that reveals the Left’s opportunism: cancel the easy, but not the names that lead to career advancement. According to their own progressive logic of judging the past by the present, we would still have Serra Mall street, but they would now graduate from Chumash University.
Thank you for your kind note.
VDH
————————————————————————————————————
07/07/2020
From An Angry Reader:
Subject: Fox News appearance
Hi, As I watched you on McCallum’s show sort of hesitantly and with some confusion discuss your claims about Biden’s cognitive state, my mom’s dementia came to mind. I recommend you take the usual battery of tests to determine where you are on the spectrum…and perhaps refrain from discussing this topic (just in terms of low credibility). Good luck! CVS.
Cathy Scott
————————————————————————————————————
Dear Angry Reader Cathy Scott,
You need to quantify evidence of my dementia—with wrong referents, incorrect data, or inability to answer a question.
If I sounded hesitant on that interview it might be because I was scheduled to debate a Biden supporter and after my opening statement, his connection he said went dead and we waited for his response that did not come—a hiatus which in turn prompted the host to reset the interview and, after a pause, have me go on with another answer.
But again, my argument was not based on my own perceptions.
As I pointed out, I simply echoed what 20 percent of Democratic voters have expressed in polls, what Democratic handlers take for granted when they urge Biden to stay right where he is in his basement and do only occasional scripted interviews, why Democrats view the Vice Presidential nomination as a de facto presidential nomination and a way to advance a leftist candidate into the White House who would have otherwise never have advanced through the primary elections, or as the formal head of the ticket in a general election, and the now large corpus of bizarre Bidenisms that range from strange stories about Corn-Pop to moments of dead silence, to confusion as to where he is and to whom he is speaking, etc. Had the other debater’s sound connection not belatedly resumed, I would have finished by noting that Biden also has a long-chronicled habit of touching, squeezing, and blowing on the hair of women, some pre-teen, violating their personal space, and in general earning the ire of a number of women who resent his creepy omnipresence—a topic that for some reason is taboo in his case. VDH.
Victor Hanson
————————————————————————————————————
07/06/2020
From An Angry Reader:
Professor Hanson:
In your recent article Class, Not Race, Divides America, you said:
Whatever Trump was, he talked to blacks just as he talked to everyone else—same accent, same mannerism, same vocabulary. He was not going to feign a black patois and pander in the Joe Biden style of “Put y’all back in chains” or “You ain’t black,” or reinvent himself in Hillary Clinton fashion as a civil rights veteran possessed of a phony drawl, “I don’t feel no ways tired. I come too far . . . ” Think of the logic driving these white liberal elites: “Blacks cannot understand my good English, so I will descend into their poor grammar, diction, and syntax to feign ‘y’all’ and ‘ain’t’ and ‘no ways tired.’”
I think maybe you are right, and probably you are more right than wrong. But it could be that the way Hillary, Biden, and Obama spoke were just efforts to blend, or to connect with their audiences, and there is nothing wrong with that. Trump used twitter and street language or layman terms, or even behaved and acted like one of the labor, low-income class when speaking as though he himself is a citizen, not a president, is another way to connect to his audiences.
Both ways are ok in my opinion, and the emphasis should be how genuinely one speaks. Trump in your eye is genuine even if crude, but who knows if he is a talented actor who went further by standing in with the crowd when in fact he is just an arrogant racist.
To be honest, I agree with you more than with the other medias (who provide too much criticisms without sound analysis) in many matters including Trump’s character. Writing to a well-known professor like you is very uncomfortable, you can guess, but I dare saying my thought because I am inspired by your articles and I am encouraged by your answers to other angry readers that you don’t mind if one has a point to discuss.
Thank you for reading my letter. I wish you well.
Nghia Vu
————————————————————————————————————
Dear Calm and Thoughtful Angry Reader Nghia Vu,
I give you only a 1 (the lower the score, the more professional the angry reader letter), given your letter does not contain the usual three-dot ellipses, capitalizations, exclamation points, profanity, threats, and general incoherence. It reflects a calmer and more thoughtful “angry” reader.
I agree that all politicians pander to a degree, but my point was that Trump does not seem to modulate his accent and mannerisms to fit the sociology and race/ethnicity of particular crowds, at least in the manner that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and, yes, even Barack Obama did. From what we know, Trump’s accent, grammar, and vocabulary are not contingent on his audience, as his critics note in their disparagement.
I confess I lose your train of thought with “but who knows if he is a talented actor who went further by standing in with the crowd when in fact he is just an arrogant racist.” If you mean Trump tries to disguise his tough talk on sensitive issues, I suggest that he does not. His critics go ballistic precisely because he says anything to anyone, anywhere, and anytime, without filters, euphemisms, or equivocation. His enemies are shocked at his directness; he handlers worried that he needlessly is so explicit.
I don’t mind at all discussing your points. A final one: I agree with those who judge one’s temperament and ideology on what one does rather than what one is interpreted as saying. Take two examples: Trump’s supposed “racism,” and his “Russian collusion.”
Trump’s policies lowered minority unemployment to record levels. He sought to reduce prison-terms for felony drug crimes that he said fell inordinately upon blacks; he championed inner-city charter schools, as well as tax-exempt enterprise zones; he has pardoned, paroled, or commuted the sentences of a number of African-Americans whom he felt were inordinately sentenced beyond what their convictions warranted.
On collusion, Trump has said many wild things about the Russians—most infamously joking that perhaps they could help find Hillary’s deleted emails.
But what he has done far exceeds anything punitive from the “reset” Obama administration: he upped sanctions on Russia, he got out of an asymmetrical agreement with Russia on short-range missiles, he sold weapons to Ukraine, he jawboned against the Germany-Russia natural gas deal, he killed Russian mercenaries in Syria, he crashed world oil and natural gas prices, the essence of the Russian economy, by green lighting horizontal drilling and fracking, and he upped the U.S. defense budget and pressed NATO members to keep their promises—all to the chagrin of Vladimir Putin.
Trump says all sorts of things in his art-of-the-deal manner, and the media often report things he didn’t say as if he did. What Trump actually does is what counts, and he has done more for the African-American community than most prior presidents.
Thank you for your letter.
Victor Hanson
————————————————————————————————————
04/20/2020
From An Angry Reader:
Professor Hanson,
I am not really angry. I apologize for the subject line but I guessed that it would get my email read.
My primary complaint…..
Your last “angry reader” entry is 2/28/20.
I know you are busy, but some of us would love it (and buy it) if you had a book form of telling us about your responses to the people who didn’t think very much before they wrote to complain at you (or, just put more responses up regularly). I actually printed years of your responses to share.
My father (US Army in the Philippines) and my father-in-law served in WW2. Melinda’s (my wife’s) father earned a Silver Star and a Purple Heart for his service (Ken was on the USS Trout before it was sunk). Your book, which I have passed on to another, explained the magnitude and importance of the service they gave and amplified the meaning of their service for us. Thank you so much for that.
As an average American, living all my life in the Bay Area, I truly wish there were people like you, with their brain on fire, who would give their time to guide the masses through their mazes (which is what I perceive that you do anyway), as “politicians” dedicated to improving the lives of the people who pay their wages. What our country needs is intelligent leadership. And now, it seems, that even Birx, Fauci, and certainly Trump, read your columns or pieces and respond as if they thought what you said. You have to appreciate that! And they all know where the thinking came from.
Please help them and us all in the process. Your columns are absolutely great but you should have a cabinet post or advisory position where they could absorb reality more frequently, I think. I bet that Trump is smart enough to do that (if he hasn’t already).
Chris Almeida
Newark, CA
p.s. While looking at stuff to write this and not sound too stupid, I found that I could take online classes at Hillsdale and I will do that.
Thanks again!
————————————————————————————————————
Dear Not at All Angry Reader,
Thank you for your kind words and the service of your family in the country’s defense. One must discover where one’s talents can help and where they would not. In my small case, I accept I would be a poor politician and a worse public official, but, in terms of commentary rather than historical work, had some role to play as a skeptic of the current progressive agenda.
It took about 6 days to weaponize the entire virus disaster to the point where Trump is now veritably running against the virus and presented with a political paradox that if he lockdowns the country much longer, he becomes Herbert Hoover who intentionally destroyed the economy; and yet if he opens it up, he is a murderer with blood on his hands. Stranger still, such politicization of the epidemic is so hotly denied by those who did it in order to project their culpability on others who call them out.
In the old days, conservatism and liberalism were sort of bookends; the former reflecting human nature, the latter a naive confidence that with enough money and kindness we could change human nature. Not now. Liberalism is dead, progressivism killed it and the hard left of the 1960s is in control. It is intolerant and has nursed an entire new generation on the campuses who are abjectly ignorant but strangely arrogant in such vacuity.
The epidemic brought this out, both the left’s intolerance of debate and dissent, and its inability to accept that science is a constantly changing and evolving discipline as more data correct, modify, adapt, prove, and reject prior theories, and is not a tool of supposedly sophisticated and university credentialed elite.
We should believe PhDs and MDs much of the time, but when they tell us that anti-viral masks are superfluous and drain resources from the medical professionals, then the masks are sort of helpful, and then that they should be worn by all, we can legitimately conclude that their certainty about the virus is misplaced.
Sincerely, Victor Hanson
Selma, CA
02/28/2020
From An Angry Reader:
Subject: Gray Matter
Your articles are so offensively lacking in context, thoughtfulness, and reflection on history–basically simpleminded attack ads– that I am going to erase the National Review’s bookmark from my browser. And there is no case for Trump any more than there was a case for Mussolini.
———————————————————————————————————
Dear Angry Reader “Red Harmony”
At least your letter is free of the usual Angry Reader capital letters, profanity, and slurs, although you make accusations about a recent essay I wrote on elite disparagement of so-called average Americans (“ ‘Gray Matter’–Deficient Americans”) without citing a single fact, quotation, or particular name to ground your accusations.
And, of course, also in Angry Reader fashion, you resort to the usual reductio ad fascism (e.g., “a case for Mussolini”). Trump, unlike Mussolini, is in constitutional fashion up for reelection, and his agenda has to be ratified by a Congress, while he is subject to constant judicial review.
In terms of fascist anti-Semitism, Trump is the most pro-Israel, and perhaps pro-Jewish president in memory. He has a decided distaste for optional or preemptory wars, and does not wear uniforms, give 4-hour speeches, or form “pacts of steel” with fascist nations.
Currently, he has taken on communist China on trade, is far tougher on authoritarian Russia than was the “reset” Obama administration, and broke off the Obama Iran Deal with a theocratic and murderous Iranian government. So again, you should supply some evidence to support what are otherwise incoherent assertions.
Erasing your bookmark to National Review I suggest is a superb idea and could spare you further heartache and angst of the sort you demonstrate here.
01/09/2020
From An Angry Reader:
Subject: The Dangers of…YOU
Mr. Hanson,
It appears that they let just about anyone submit an opinion even a Stanford grad. I guess you didn’t have what it takes to get into Harvard. You are obviously a Republican and that is not a good thing right now. Republicans right now are deaf, blind and stupid! It is the ignorant and uneducated schmucks like you that have all the Republican believing that party is more important than country. You may have a degree but far from being educated. Educate yourself on the facts and stop spinning the truth to make yourself look relevant. Talk about misleading your audience. Like all Republicans, you are blind to what Trump has done to your country. I’m not saying he hasn’t done anything. I mean Mexico did pay for wall right? You are an embarrassment and a traitor. You love your bullshit party over your country! I say you are a fraud. Better start to learn Russian.
You have a great future at Fox and Friends.
Howard Selcer
Howard Selcer & Associates
302 Briston Private
Ottawa, ON K1G 5R1
Ottawa/Montreal/Toronto/Vancouver/Las Vegas/Chicago
————————————————————————————————————
Dear Angry Reader Howard Selcer,
You hit almost all the Angry Reader buttons: personal invective and ad hominem attacks (e.g., “traitor,” “ignorant and uneducated schmucks like you,” etc.), potty language (“bullshit”), personal arrogance (the pretentious titles and affiliations that remind us that you and your “associates” are pan-North-American and that a Harvard or Stanford pedigree equates with authority), the puerile grammatical incoherence (“that have all the Republican (sic) believing”; “You may have a degree but far from being (sic) educated”), the absence of a single example or fact to support your invective, and general ignorance about the target of your rant: I have never been a registered Republican, but currently am an Independent—after over thirty years of being a registered Democrat. Like most angry readers, you seem to deplore disunity even as your own harangues are clear evidence of why it exists.
Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson & Associates
The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, National Review, American Greatness, Tribune Publishing Company, Hillsdale College
Stanford/New York/Chicago/Hillsdale/Selma
01/08/2020
From An Angry Reader:
You are doing the same thing you claim Maddow is doing. Aren’t you an elite grouper, just on the other side of Maddow? You left out many facts in your article. You need to look in the mirror. You are old enough to know better. America needs to unite, what are you thinking? How are you making things better?
————————————————————————————————————
Dear Angry Reader Dr. Stady,
If you would just list one example in which I have erred about the dossier or the impeachment melodrama, you might be more believable. When I have appeared on television, I have tried to provide examples and facts to support what I have said, and I have done so without ad hominem attacks. Rachel Maddow, in contrast, invested her credibility in the Steele dossier for months; during that period a variety of disinterested journalists and observers had pointed out that Steele’s main contentions, from Mr. Cohen going to Prague to Carter Page being promised a huge multimillion payoff from the Russians, were simply false, well aside from the salacious fables. But Maddow and others continued to peddle such fantasies because they found them useful to their larger agendas of removing Trump. Don’t believe me, simply read the current series in the liberal Washington Post about the unprofessionalism of the media in its use of the dossier and the “collusion” fabrications.
Again, when you accuse me of omitting facts, and yet cannot produce a single example, then you fall into the same fallacy as all the others who refuse to look at unpleasant realities. As far as uniting the country, I think you need to look at the Left for the present acrimony. I opposed most of Obama’s policies, but I never would consider calling for violence against him, as is now a common Hollywood trope in the case of Trump. Obama used the DOJ to go after journalists, the IRS to hound political opponents, and allowed the FBI and CIA to surveil a political opponent in his last year in office. He bypassed the Senate to ram through the disastrous Iran treaty, and empowered Vladimir Putin with 5 years of disastrous reset appeasement, which included a hot mic quid pro quo deal with the Russians about dismantling US missile defense in Europe in exchange for Putin’s good behavior during his own reelection. All that was reprehensible and yet I don’t think impeachable—at least I never called for Obama’s impeachment or censure, even when by executive fiat he simply granted amnesties and stopped enforcing immigration laws—in a manner he had earlier warned was either illegal or unethical.
The country is disunited. But the venom came from those who called the middle classes, deplorables, irredeemables, crazies, and dregs. And thus I suggest you redirect your concerns to the Left and ask them to turn down the heat and simply seek to persuade Americans of their cause in November 2020, rather than engage in the current celebrity assassination chic, the psychodramas of invoking the 25th Amendment, the Mueller circus, and now the suspended-in-animation impeachment.
Victor Davis Hanson
07/31/2019
From An Angry Reader:
I have known hypocrite God mocking scum like you my entire life. Your cynical article mocking the suffering of the BRAVE German people and glorifying the demonic scum jew who CAUSED are are personally offensive to me and every informed TRUTH loving man woman and child on EARTH! I knew the German people FAR better than you. When I commanded a Special Forces A-team 55 years ago – my operations Sgt. had been a German national and remembered the horrors inflicted on him and his family by war criminal scum like the jew psychopath Eisenhower.
Hitler and the then prosperous German people NEVER EVER wanted a war and YOU KNOW THAT! I have forgotten more about the TRUTHS of that jew incited needless war than you will ever know. Most of my wisdom was by way of REAL LIFE EXPERIENCES – not just texbooks.
You evil conduct and ease with which you twist TRUTHS to deceive naive people is disgusting. Since you are probably not a brain dead moron – the only other possibility for your obvious to twist history are that you are either and or a jew loving leftist ( YOU were raised in the people’s republic of California) or you are just plain criminally EVIL!
While you were learning your ABCs I was commanding a company of 225 American youths to prepare them if need be – to DEFEND OUR COUNTRY against a REAL enemy – not a created one as you have attempted to do for your jew masters. You and YOUR FILTHY ILK are the REAL reason this nation remains CRIMINALLY ignorant of any REAL World War history.
Your use of the jew created slur “NAZI” betrays your ignorance or your loyalty to IsraHELL. I’ll wager you will not refer to blacks – collectively as ‘ NIGGERS” And for your information I too, am a historian having gathered much of my knowledge BOOTS ON THE GROUND in over 30 nations over as many years. I have also published several books dealing with the TRUTHS – as in GOD”S HONEST TRUTH about ALL of the evils of the murderous jews and their evil allies in this once great now degenerate lost nation.
And yes I have investigated jew LIES about the Hollohoax ON SIGHT. And YES I have investigated IDF war crimes in IsraHELL and in Palestine – including cold-blooded murder of defenseless orphan children with the CIA and top intel people – so please no lectures from the peanut gallery. I don’t deal in opinions gossip or lies. ALL my information is truth repeatable to the face of GOD! Even the jew guides at Dachau openly admitted that no jews had ever been “gassed to death in gas chambers”.
You Sir – do not have a clue as to the TRUTH in these areas – so just please keep you mouth shut should you mock/anger God even MORE!
If there is indeed a just God and a place for evil doers – you will go there. And spare me the insults/ lies intended for your useful idiot readers
STOP THE DECEIT!
Joe Cortina – Veteran – father – author – patriot – elite paratroop commander – aerospace physicist – foreign vice-consul – commercial pilot and independent investigative analyst.
————————————————————————————————————
Angry Reader Joe Cortina,
There is no need for the Angry Reader menu of multiple titles, capital letters, the exclamation marks, the personal attacks (“scum”), or the implied threats. Your argument speaks for itself, in that it cites no real data, but lots of anti-Semitic invective.
I think the first 100 pages of The Second World Wars offers a good rebuttal to your allegations. While thousands died of starvation and mistreatment at the concentration/internment camp at Dachau, the main extermination camps that saw the majority of roughly six million Jews gassed or otherwise slaughtered were located, by design, in German-controlled territory of what had once been an independent Poland—both to ensure that the camps were too far away from the reach of most Allied bombing raids, out of sight from the German public, and near the greatest concentrations of prewar European Jewry.
We have Nazi documents and data, physical remains of the eastern death camps, and the testimonies of both Jewish prisoners who survived and the concurrence of German guards and overseers. So the evidence for the Holocaust has always been overwhelming.
I have no insults for you, just a sort of sadness that you are so consumed with hatred.
Victor Hanson
07/30/2019
From An Angry Reader:
Dont worry , no silly greetings for you. Ha ha ha , reading your opinion in Albuquerque Journal made me laugh out loud. Fortunately, I rarely read such Bull Shit. Such crap is beyond belief.
Thanks for the Laugh ,
Darrell Little
————————————————————————————————————
Dear Angry Reader Darrell Little,
I have some admiration for you scoring so high on the Angry Reader scale in a mere three sentences: incorrect grammar, check; dirty words, check; lack of any detail or reference, check; strange rules of capitalization and punctuation, check; ad hominem, sort of check.
What is the logic of “rarely read such…” juxtaposed to taking the trouble to write to the website to offer this tiny little rant? One might think that in fact you read such “Bull S—t” quite often?
Since you have no referent other than anger, I cannot reply to any particular criticism of a column or essay, since you cite nothing other than the gibberish above.
Thanks for the whatever it is,
Victor Hanson
04/04/2019
From An Angry Reader:
Sir:
I thought you were supposed to be an intellectual. Hoover Institution and all that. Then you go off on an illegal immigrant killing an American. That’s Rush Limbaugh turf. (the 2 semester and out fellow) I guess you’re just another partisan propagandist after all. Sorry.
Gary Christian
_______________________________________________________________________
Dear Angry Reader Gary Christian,
Your attitude explains precisely why Trump was elected—an unearned and unwarranted sense of intellectual superiority and presumed authority.
Try hosting a radio show for 3 hours, 5 days a week, and see how long you in your brilliance can hold the attention of audience—over 30 years. Your email reflects no such imagination or talent.
In your arrogance of dismissing a “2-semester and out fellow” I suppose you also wrote off the Truman presidency because Harry Truman only finished 1 semester (of business school).
In contrast, did the Yale education of Bill Clinton translate into moral authority? Did Barack Obama’s Harvard Law Review imprimatur ensure that he would not state “You can keep your doctor and insurance plan” during the Obamacare debate or lead to annualized 3 percent economic growth?
I live 20 miles from where, in December, a twice-deported illegal alien, with a long rap sheet, murdered three innocents and injured more—and at about the same time and about 100 miles from where another twice-deported felonious illegal alien murdered a law-enforcement officer, and yet again about 90 miles from where a homemaker was slaughtered by yet another illegal alien previously deported and with a criminal record.
I suppose tragedies like that are jest to your “Rush Limbaugh turf” bombast, but that is only likely because you never experience, as do millions, the real consequences of abstract progressive ideology.
To stifle debate you virtue signal “another partisan propagandist” to substitute for an argument. Such ad hominem smears only reflect your own absence of thinking and poverty of logic. Sorry.
Victor Hanson
04/03/2019
From An Angry Reader:
Well, a quick scan of your website revealed you actually have a whole section dedicated to “Angry Reader” mail. One would think, a man of your so-called intellect, would perhaps have a small moment of introspection and realize the true damage Donald Trump and the current Republican Party are doing to our nation. YOUR angry rantings about “liberals” betray your own bias and lack of critical thinking. YOU buy into stereotypical tropes and pass along non-information and hate-speech inspired Right-wing agenda – then, when reasonable people react negatively to you, you adopt a repulsive, belittling, self-righteous condescension.
Frankly, sir, you are a big part of the problem. As John Stewart once so graciously asked Tucker Carlson on his own show: Please, sir, just stop. You are hurting our country.
So, I don’t need a response from you. I didn’t use any profanity, and only used capital letters for desired emphasis. So maybe this doesn’t score very high on your Angry Meter – but don’t be fooled, I despise you and everyone like you.
Hope you have a good life – there are many others who do not live as well as you, may their misery weigh on your soul.
Jeff Hennefeld
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Dear Very Angry Reader Mr. Hennefeld,
Please Mr. Hennefeld,
You may “not need a response” from me, but your angry-reader venom perhaps deserves one. First, please, take a deep breath and cease your typical angry reader rant.
Such vitriol is precisely what is hurting the country. You don’t need capital scare letters to make points, even if you acknowledge your addiction to them. You do not need to rave without citing a single example to support your argument. You do not, in angry reader 10 fashion, need to sink to ad hominem hate language, “I despise you and everyone like you.”
Is it a requisite of the progressive mindset that as soon as one asks for healing and to stop replying negatively to hate letters, he then follows up with the Sermon on the Mount expression “I despise you”? The scam of apophasis is ancient but claiming that you do not do something does not excuse you when you do it.
If only you could detail exactly what Trump has done that has so upset you. Make the argument that GDP is too weak; minority unemployment too high; energy production too anemic; judges unqualified; or that the Iran Deal was a brilliant arrangement, and there should be no worry about China. We need just a single argument in lieu of virtue signaling your hatred by the quite shameful invocation of the poor and your concern for them—an unfortunate sort of mask for such unhinged venom and hatred.
As far as misery is concerned, I think I know of it first hand as well as anyone, and where I live, with whom I associate, and whom I like I think reflects a likely far broader empathy with those without means than might be true of you.
I do hope you have a good life—and without your sort of qualifications added.
Vic Hanson
06/11/2018
From An Angry Reader:
Subject: 1972 REDUX….The carnivores of civil liberties.
“You talk like a man with a paper ass”. Someone needs to enlighten you about the need to cite examples.
How did you ever get your job at Stanford?
Gary Seager
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Dear Angry Reader Gary Seager,
In such a brief note, you still warrant an Angry Reader score of 2—given vulgarity and ad hominem attack in lieu of an idea or argument.
How odd you demand “examples” in a 750 word syndicated column nevertheless full of examples of officials such as Brennan, Clapper, and Comey who have all three, as I wrote, lied to Congress; Clapper and Brennan have admitted to such and apologized. I noted the FISA court and the flawed email investigations. What examples in fact are you citing for your crude assertions?
As to your last inquiry about how one gets a job at Stanford:
One gets a job at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, by both outside audit and internal review of one’s publications, teaching, public commentary, and prior conduct as a professor and academic, all a matter of record. Anyone is welcome to apply, you included.
So simply send an application to the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford CA 94305. Be sure to include a vita with your education and terminal degree, teaching record, list of scholarly books and articles, public op-eds, and list of scholars in your field willing to offer candid and confidential assessments.
Then your application with be examined by:
1) the director,
2) a select committee of Hoover senior fellows,
3) a vote by all the senior fellows,
4) the relevant academic department in which you would teach if a full professor at Stanford,
5) an outside assessment conducted by that department, based on evaluations of your work by those in your field at other universities,
6) and a final decision by the provost at Stanford whether you meet Stanford University tenure and promotion standards for full professor.
The entire process can take only a year or so, is professionally conducted, and I certainly urge you to apply if interested.
Sincerely, Victor Hanson
05/02/2018
From An Angry Reader:
Fake Claims. WE HAVE A CONGENITAL LIAR AS A PRESIDENT. HE HAS SCAMMED THE US WITH TAXES AND BANKRUPTCY. HE IS A SERIAL ADULTERER AND SEXUAL PREDATOR. EVEN AS I TEXT HIS BUSINESSES ARE PROFITING FROM MY HARD EARNED AND MEAGER INCOME. HE IS A NARCISSIST AND EGOTIST. AND YOU CRITICIZE MUELLER???? CLEAN UP YOUR OWN (to quote the president) “SHIT HOUSE” FIRST. THEN START ON MULLER- IF YOU HAVE ANY TIME LEFT.
______________________________________________
Dear Angry Reader Louise Roam,
I will give you a “9” on the angry reader OUTRAGE scale. You hit almost all the right buttons:
All capital letters? Check.
Obscenity? Check.
Strings of ad hominem slurs instead of an argument? Check.
Misspelled words and incoherent grammar and syntax? Check.
How exactly are the President’s businesses profiting from Louise Roam’s hard-earned but “meager” income? All presidents are egotists and narcissists; do you remember Obama’s various boasts that he would cool the planet and lower the seas, or that he was more adroit in his various fields of political expertise than were each of his various advisors and aides? Do you remember the faux-Greek columns, or the first-person pronoun monotony?
“Muller” (sic) is federal special counsel. If he cannot appoint disinterested attorneys to his team, or follow the mandate for which he was appointed, or stop deliberate leaks from his staff, or control the amorous passions and wild communications of his various subordinates, then he is not deserving of respect due simply to his appointment.
It is hard to calibrate whether Trump’s crudity is unusual for a president or amplified by the biases of the media and our current 24/7 social media culture. Certainly, he has not jailed video makers, surveilled Associated Press reporters, weaponized the IRS to hound his political appointments, or warped the FISA courts to monitor U.S. citizens and unmask their names for the purposes of harming a political opponent. I am waiting for proof of Trump-Putin collusion; but in the meantime, I do not think there is any doubt that the Hillary Clinton campaign hired a foreign national (Christopher Steele) to find dirt on her opponent. Steele in turn likely purchased gossip and dirt from operatives of the Russian government, and then he used contacts in the DOJ, FBI, CIA, and State Department to ensure such unsubstantiated smears were leaked to the media before the November 2016 election, in hopes of either altering it or at least providing “insurance” for the Clinton campaign.
When you write an angry letter, please try to be logical and rational. If any of the above seems unsubstantiated to you, please explain where and how. Meanwhile, ranting with capital letters and foaming about are no substitutes for an argument.
Victor Hanson
03/28/2018
From An Angry Reader:
Mr. Hanson,
About 15 or 20 years ago, I used to read your articles voraciously. I sent them to fellow graduate students—nearly all of whom were overwhelmingly liberal—in order to give them a jolting shot of truth.
That was then, this is now.
I recently took a peek at some of your recent writing. Oh, how different it is!
I expected a man of your background and intellect to be a fierce critic of the current President of the United States. Ancient history is chock full of bombastic demagogues. You know them well. The lessons of history are ripe for the plucking.
However, I have looked over your recent words with profound sadness. I am reminded of the sci-fi thriller, “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” It is as if your essence has been sucked into a pod and replaced by an alien being hell-bent on the destruction of our country and our world.
Sincerely,
Jeffery Sult
_______________________________________________
Dear Angry Reader Jeffery Sult,
I have used the body snatcher image as well in the past for both Trump supporters and his critics, so, as you know, the metaphor works both ways: previously normal sober and judicious minds have become unhinged at the very thought of Donald Trump as president. As a result, they have become obsessive and nearly renounced all their prior positions as if contaminated by Trump’s fingerprints upon them: their minds snatched mysteriously as it were by some mysterious alien force.
You mysteriously write, “Perhaps one day you will return to the side of freedom, democracy, and traditional Western values”—a charge which is mystifying. Where have you been the last eight years? Freedom? Obama rejected democratic Israel and reached out to undemocratic Cuba, Nicaragua, and Iran? Do you have any concept of what the IRS, FBI, NSA, FISA courts, and DOJ have been doing? Democracy? Hillary Clinton rigged the DNC nominating process, and perhaps as well the primary debates, and hired a hit dossier with unverified Russian sources, which, with the help of the FBI, DOJ, and FISA courts, was leaked before the election. Western values? Have you read the transcript of Obama’s Cairo speech? Do you know the anti-Westernism of the university campus which unfortunately has become the mother’s milk of the progressive movement? Are you “shocked” as it were in Casablanca style that a smiling Obama photo turns up with the racist, anti-Semitic and very un-Western Louis Farrakhan, a cosponsor of rallies with today’s progressive luminaries?
We do not live in a Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm world, but rather on Election Day a Manichean one of sometimes bad and worse choices. I voted for the alternative to the Clinton syndicate and deep state, and on the side of the deplorables, irredeemables, and the out of work forgotten people in hopes of low unemployment, robust GDP, secure borders, deterrent foreign policy, a strong market, fair trade, and accountability for roguish globalized companies such as those in Silicon Valley that make the 19th-century trusts look tame in comparison. Despite Trump’s melodramas, there has been progress on most of those issues. A Sophoclean Ajax, LeMay, or John Ford’s Ethan Edwards were not necessarily nice people, but then again what they were up against was not nice either, and they were able to address crises that the other more “moral” and “ethnical” retreated from. Life is tragedy, not melodrama. As a professor you should appreciate that. Reread Paradise Lost or the classic Achilles scenes in the Iliad or War As I Knew It to note ambiguity that is central to human nature.
I have written of Trump’s chemotherapeutic nature as well as the cancer it was designed to combat, and the side effects of the therapy upon the public. Try to avoid snap judgements in which someone who agrees with you is saintly and then satanic when they do not.
I too am profoundly sad about your change of heart, but hope that you return to disinterested and empirical thinking because history is full of surprises, in which supposedly tainted messengers have needed messages, and flawed tragic heroes accomplish things that the Achaean hierarchy, the Western town council, or the Joint Chiefs cannot—and often at great cost to themselves.
Sincerely,
Victor Hanson
03/13/2018
From An Angry Reader:
You might have had that intolerable delay because of my son and I (sic). We’re (sic) you the old guy with the nasty glare? We are use (sic) to people like you. Did you ever hear the phrase, “liberty for all” or “equality for all?” You are a Trumpite, which means your (sic) special…How’s that working out for you? I love the Neo-Nazis, the draft deferments, porn stars, staff loyalty, the overt incompetency and overt racism. As a father of a son who is alive because of embryonic stem cell research and would sit in a pre-existing death care policy if you (sic) nutters had your way. By the way, science is real, empirical and not swayed by greed, racism or ignorance. The last three terms apply to you. You are a terrible historian, (sic) you are a Reactionary. And sorry you had to wait, asshole. Dos Vidanya, Stormy
_____________________________
Dear Angry Reader Owen Hall,
When you write an angry reader letter at least try to be coherent and identify the source of your wrath. The above letter is just stream of consciousness blather, full of half-written thoughts that are almost impossible to fathom. In any case, here is an effort to address your harangue:
1) I do not need your lectures about the disabled. Had you read the column that I think you are referring to, my precise point was concern for special needs people by critiquing those who use special parking permits and who demand wheel chairs going into the plane, but mysteriously sprint off after landing. Meanwhile, those who need special assistance are often ill-served by drivers taking their spots or passengers using their wheelchairs who are not in real need.
2) I am old (64) but do not glare, much less nastily so. Projection and paranoias are not healthy for one’s soul. I have a disabled granddaughter and know all too well about glares, but I do not invent dragons to slay them and thereby virtue signal.
3) I do not know what a “Trumpite” is and I do not think you do either, unless you mean 46% of the country who voted for him as preferable to Hillary Clinton. I do not think those who voted for Hillary are “Clintonites.” Life is more complex that your simplistic us/them dichotomy.
4) When I read your first sentence, I assumed three or four angry reader talking points would inevitably follow. Instead, you managed six(!): 1) the Nazi slur (check), 2) the terrible grammar and near illiterate expression (check), 3) the victimized self-referencing (check), 4) the profanity, (check), 5) the personal slurs (check), and 6) the lame attempts at sarcasm and snark (check). All that was missing were the emphatic capital letters (only a quarter-check) and the veiled threats. I would still give you an 8 on the Angry Reader unhinged scale.
5) Science is indeed real and timeless. But some scientists are unfortunately throughout 2,500 years of civilized research and empiricism often swayed by “greed, racism or ignorance.” Money is often one incentive for non-empirical advocacy masking as disinterested science. Ask yourself how exactly “Earth in the Balance” Al Gore became a near billionaire, and mysteriously dropped his opposition to carbon-fuel profiteering when the anti-Semitic, oil-funded Qatari autocracy offered him many millions for his failed cable Current TV outlet (sold in haste to Qatari-funded Al Jazeera to beat new capital gains taxes that he supported).
6) Mr. Hall, try to calm down, and see the world as it is rather than as the way your dark impulses are terrified it is. Donald Trump was created not by haters, but by an often hateful contempt displayed to half the country. Please reference Hillary Clinton’s latest red-state slurs that update her deplorables and irredeemable invective.
02/16/2018
From An Angry Reader:
Sir, Your piece on political scandals is totally skewed of facts. The only so-called FISA-gate has been created by Trump’s lacky Nunes. Your writing of lies and inaccuracies only fuels the clueless base of this president. I don’t need to tell you what the real information about the Carter Page investigation reveals. The vomit you write is just total fantasy building up an immoral and totally unfit president. Hopefully you’ll come to your senses when all of these scumbags are thrown out of our White House. Kelly is on his way out along with two staffers. Forty plus other staffers still have no security clearances after more than a year. Nunes will be brought forth for obstruction of justice, not following his charge to investigate Russian interference, but trying to set up the Justice Department to eventually get rid of Dept. Attorney General Rosenstein. Your column was disgusting at best and a total disgrace to factual journalism. Jack Sweeney
_____________________________________________
Dear Quite Angry Reader Jack Sweeney,
Please calm down. I don’t think in my article I let emotions run wild as did you. Why so angry?
Let me address your outrages in the order you rant:
1) If you believe my analysis is devoid of facts, then by all means present factual refutation of the article. I am always eager to hear more information and will stand corrected.
2) FISA-gate was not created by Rep. Devin Nunes, who years ago warned the Obama Administration about the dangers of Russian hacking and cyber-warfare. Do you seriously believe that Nunes paid Fusion/GPS to collect fantasies about Donald Trump during the campaign, or he peddled such information to the FBI, or used it without full acknowledgment of its nature to spy on an American citizen with permission from a FISA court, or requested surveillance transcripts, unmasked the names, and leaked them to the press? Did he fire top FBI people or force them to retire or be reassigned, or force the same among Obama-holdovers at the DOJ?
3) Again, what is your purpose to allege “lies” and “inaccuracies” without citing facts and details?
4) An argument does not need hyped adjectives and nouns such as lackey, lies, clueless, vomit, scumbags, etc. They are poor substitutions for analysis.
5) There certainly have been departures of Trump political appointees from the White House reflecting the lack of prior political experience and a general amateurishness, but what is the excuse for the string of similar resignations, firings, and reassignments at the FBI and DOJ of permanent and professional lawyers and analysts?
6) Nunes was referred to the House Ethics Committees by leftwing groups for political purposes and to delay the investigation into Obama Administration wrongdoing. He was cleared of all charges by a bipartisan membership. Do you dispute that? He will likely be seen as one of the few who was willing to challenge the FBI, CIA, and DOJ. And without his efforts to subpoena and obtain repressed documents, we likely would never have known who paid for the Steele dossier or that it was used to spy on citizens and leak their names to the press, in efforts to thwart a campaign for president.
7) Nunes has expressed no animosity toward Rosenstein—and no desire, even if it were in his power, to see him removed. But that said, we still wish to know why Rosenstein signed a DOJ FISA request using a document whose origins and authorship were never fully disclosed to the court, and which was not used to demonstrate collusion but to leak supposedly incriminating details to the press to affect an election and presidential transition.
8) When I read invective like yours (disgusting, disgrace, etc.) in lieu of a rational argument, I conclude my analysis hit home and required adolescent slurs rather than reasoned analysis. Try to calm down a bit, look at things in perspective, imagine counter-arguments, and don’t work yourself into a self-induced mania. Time will tell, and eventually all the facts will emerge and we will separate the guilty chaff from the innocent wheat. If it turns out that Mueller finds indictable evidence that President Trump made deals with the Russians, quid pro quo style, to defeat Hillary Clinton in exchange for concession, and Trump is convicted by a jury of his peers, and that there is nothing to Clinton/GPS Fusion/Steel collusion with Russian sources to derail the Trump campaign, as well as improper communications and actions by the Obama White House, then I will be the first to offer a correction.
Victor Hanson
02/14/2018
From An Angry Reader
From SM:
Your article sucks. What if CNN didn’t hate FDR? You can’t debate a hypothetical situation.
Trump is probably going to prison. Have fun.
_________________________________________________________
Dear Angry Reader SM,
1) Define “sucks.”
2) It is called counter-factual history and offers food, however unwished, for thought.
3) Trump is not likely to be going to prison, because key Democratic Senators such as Diane Feinstein, Obama-appointed intelligence officers such as James Comey and James Clapper, and private FBI correspondence such as the texts of the Page-Strzok archive, all conceded that there is no evidence of Russian collusion, a conclusion borne out by the pivot in the Mueller investigation away from its original mandate. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton might face legal consequences, given her destruction of subpoenaed material, her use of an illegal private server, her quid pro quo relations with foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation, and her present likely permanent distance from power.
4) I always try to have fun.
From VH
02/12/2018
From An Angry Reader:
I was surprised this morning. Usually when I read your column I want to throw up. But today’s column was absolutely brilliant
Nice job
Mike Benbrook
Oakhurst CA
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Dear Reforming Angry Reader Mike Benbrook,
Vomiting is not healthy. If I were to do so each time I receive a reader’s ad hominem rant, I would be bulimic by now. Still, I appreciate your ability to find a diamond now and then floating otherwise in a sea of vomit.
Victor Hanson
Selma, CA
02/09/2018
From An Angry(?) Reader:
Greetings Professor Hanson!
For many years now, I have followed you on talk radio, TV interviews, YouTube videos, books and published articles. I greatly appreciate your commitment to truth, accurate history and the application of those two principles to current events. Your reasoning and observations are always clear, astute and logical. Good job!
However, I consider myself one of your angry readers, because you either show no interest in or have utterly failed to create 7,969 clones of yourself and get them elected to public office (1 President, 535 Congressmen and Senators, 50 Governors and 7,383 state legislators). I know there is a big drawback to all this, but your wisdom, knowledge and understanding more than make up for your willingness to live amongst the heathen there in California.
Since cloning yourself doesn’t seem to be a priority for you, could you do one other thing for me? Seriously, would you shoot me a “short” list of your favorite classical literature dealing with the nature of man, war, religion and government? I would love to read them.
All kidding aside, thank you for allowing the rest of [us] to benefit from all your hard work. Wherever they are, your folks must be very proud of you.
God bless,
JHL
____________________
John H. Lester
Attorney at Law
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Dear Not Angry Reader at All John Lester,
For your list: Thucydides, the so-called Old Oligarch, Plato, Apology, Aristotle, Politics, Sophocles Antigone, Euripides Bacchae, Virgil Eclogues and Aeneid, Tacitus Annals, Petronius Satyricon, Horace Odes I-III.
Everyone must know his limitations; mine are being somewhat of a duskolos and recluse out on the farm. I would be a terrible politician, largely because they must have unusual patience, be on call 24/7, know how to dress well and appear professional, possess superhuman energy and health, consort with the media, and enjoy city life—but most importantly they so often have sacrificed precious time to read and write and think, given the demands put upon them. And, of course, their families cannot quite come first given their time away from home. I say all that partly in admiration of their sacrifices.
Victor Hanson
02/08/2018
From An Angry Reader:
I initially became interested in your work after your podcast interview with Dan Carlin many years ago. The need to engage in a priori reasoning is an important lesson. It is disappointing that you have forgotten this lesson in your many defenses of Trump and your unhinged criticisms of Barack Obama. Most telling is how you criticized Obama (multiple times in print) of once pronouncing corpsman wrong while Trump is given a pass for savaging a gold star family and criticizing prisoners of war as losers who got caught. Let us hope you can regain your senses.
Rajdeep Kandola
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Dear Angry Reader Rajdeep Kandola,
“Unhinged”? “Prescient” is a better adjective for my summations of Obama’s tenure. Aside from never achieving 3% GDP annualized growth, eroding deterrence abroad, doubling the national debt, creating a dysfunctional health care system, the tragic Libyan misadventure, the Iran deal, the sudden appearance of North Korean nuclear-tipped intercontinental missiles, and the alphabet scandals (GSA, IRS, DOJ, VA, etc.), we now learn that the Obama DOJ and FBI (Comey, McCabe, Miller, Ohr, Page, Strzok, etc.) for political purposes likely peddled a bought Clinton hit piece, dressed it up with administration authentication, lied to FISA judges to use it as a means to spy on the Trump campaign to alter an election, and then had top security officials (Rice, Brennan, Rhodes, Power, etc.) requesting FISA transcripts, unmasking names, and leaking them to the press—again, all to warp an election and then to undermine a new presidency. “Unhinged” is apt for those not bothered by that—and far more to come.
I think if you really read what I have written about Trump, I have stated often that he can be cruel, crass, and buffoonish. But he made no claims otherwise; Obama, remember, alleged that he had the powers to lower the oceans and cool the planet, that he was smarter in each field than his subordinates, and was called a “god” by the press, often on the basis of his pants’ crease or tingling-inspired fits. The question is not whether I have criticized Trump, but rather have you been bothered by Obama’s jokes about the Special Olympics, or his boast to “get in their faces” and to “punish our enemies”? Trump the supposedly callous moron has helped lower black unemployment to its lowest levels in a mere year; Obama the mellifluous and caring social justice warrior saw middle-class income erode and the economy stall, with disastrous results for those in-between the two globalized coasts.
So you miss the point: Trump is a Manhattan real estate developer without political experience. Voters entrusted him with the presidency for two reasons: 1) they felt Hillary was far more dangerous (born out by subsequent post-election revelations), and Trump’s can-do business experience and conservative agenda outweighed his pathologies (in the way Lincoln overlooked Grant’s embarrassing drinking on the job given his ability to win battles, or, to liberal insiders, JFK’s serial and callous womanizing did not detract from his Camelot presidency). But with Obama, there were pretensions of a legal scholar (who bypassed Congress to issue executive orders that he once said were improper, bypassed the Senate to cut de facto treaties with Iran, and had aides all but destroy the FISA process). With a booming economy and superb national security appointees, voters could put up with Trump’s not knowing details, but when the scholar Obama does not know where the Maldives are or how to pronounce “corpsmen,” then he suffers the additional wage of hypocritical pretension and is without the redeeming accomplishment of a strong economy and a strong deterrent foreign policy. In other words, when I see a pretentious and pedantic professor quote Greek wrongly, I am bothered; I am not so bothered by the skillful truck-driver who knows no Greek at all even if he would claim otherwise.
Victor Hanson
12/20/2017
From Angry Reader Jeffrey Rowland
So…after one year in office, Trump’s biggest (AND ONLY!) accomplishment is that he is King of Twitter? You must be very proud. By the way, how’s that Trumpcare thing workin’ out for ya?
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!
Idiot. Moron. Buffoon. Simpleton. Test Tube Baby!
______________________________________________________________________________
Dear Angry Reader Jeffrey Rowland,
You have many of the characteristics of the classic unhinged angry reader: the proverbial capital letters, the exclamation mark, the personal slurs, and the slang, but deserve credit for a new wrinkle—the onomatopoetic scream. So you score a 10 on the Angry Reader scale of inanity. Did you read the essay or simply write to slur? The defeat of ISIS, the new NSS document, a new principled realism policy promulgated by superb foreign policy appointments like Mattis and McMaster, coupled with tax reform, deregulation, record energy production, 4% fourth quarter GDP growth, record stock market levels, as well as increased consumer and business confidence, and new lows in unemployment, in some cases record low minority unemployment—all point to undeniable accomplishment (in addition to superb judicial appointments and radical drops in illegal crossings of the southern border).
A final suggestion: even slurs and smears deserver coherence; what does “test tube baby” as a finale to “idiot,” “moron,” “buffoon,” and “simpleton” actually mean?
Victor Hanson
12/19/2017
From An Angry Reader:
Dear Mr. Hanson,
I just finished your article about Trump’s tweets and it has moved me to ask a question. I was wondering if quite possibly, you’ve lost your mind? You write as if his tweets are harmless and of no consequence when they have caused the North Korean situation to become even more alarming. Furthermore, he insults people left and right for nothing more than disagreeing with him. His actions have not only caused hatred and division in the country but have fractured the Republican party.
Then there is the tax plan. In the past when corporations have benefited it has rarely been passed down to the working people and the division between the top earners and the average person has gotten wider over the years. Also, as a center-right, I’ve always believed that you need regulations, but the minimum necessary to do the job, not get rid of them completely. So, congratulations, you and the people that feel as you do have convinced me to do what George Will did and declare myself an independent.
Good work,
Benjamin Hudgins
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Dear Angry Reader Benjamin Hudgins,
What column are your reading?
I think being an Independent is wise. Congratulations!
The whole point of the essay was to point out that tweeting is a powerful tool, often in Trump’s hands effective, but also volatile and now often counter-productive. Do you really believe that in 2017 knowing that the North Koreans for some time have had thermonuclear weapons and the ability to send them into the U.S., and taking all sorts of efforts to stop them, is more dangerous than from 2009-16 simply ignoring what they were doing, or, in the words of former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, believing we could live with North Korean nuclear missiles pointed at us—the official position apparently of the Obama administration? I will prefer loud deterrence any day to judicious appeasement.
Trump certainly is a divider, but he is also a follower—in this case an adherent to “get in their faces,” “punish our enemies,” and “take a gun to a knife fight” us/them rhetoric of Barack “you didn’t earn that!” Obama, whose executive orders became a model for Trump as well as his commentaries on ongoing court cases.
Don’t become a captive of groupthink news: The top professional earners are the most likely to pay more taxes under the new plan. Almost half the country now pays no income tax at all; and the middling brackets who do will pay less. Trump is undoing for the most part the vast regulatory additions of Obama; he could cut thousands of needless regulations and yet the administrative deep state of today would still be vastly bigger than of just 20 years ago. Trump is mostly slowing down the growth of government, not dismantling it, however shrill his opposition.
Consider the role of irony and paradox in affairs and relax: Trump’s agenda is far more conservative than those “conservatives” who despise him; and while we deplore his often ad hominem attacks, he has shown an empathy for the working classes not displayed by more sober and judicious Republican candidates of the past.
Watch out for mellifluous inanity: Obama seemed a president out of central casting—but one who crudely brought a rapper to the White House whose latest cover celebrated rappers toasting a dead judge’s corpse (with eyes x-ed out) pictured on the White House lawn, and whose lyrics celebrated violence against the police. Did you object to that crudity or do you find tweets more jarring?
Or did you object that Obama stealthily exempted the terrorists of Hezbollah from sanctions to push through the Iran Deal, whose side agreements are only now coming to light? If you are worried about presidential excesses, recall the Obama administration’s surveilling of U.S. citizens on the likely basis of the fraudulent Steele dossier or the AP reporters or Fox’s James Rosen, or jailing a minor video maker to serve as a scapegoat for the Benghazi tragedy.
Do not confuse images with reality and consensus with truth.
Good work,
Victor Hanson
12/18/2017
From An Angry Reader:
Victor David Hanson, you’d sweep the table. Your post-tweet Presidency column entry tops all possible contenders in its unique blend of so-bad-its-good upending suspension of logic and unearned laudatory excess that the academy is bereft of adequate means of expression to honor its achievements.
Perhaps its heaps and heaps of praises could be stacked in a pyre with the rest of your journalistic output in the same vein, your reputation placed on top, and the whole saccharine malodorous pile set ablaze.
That guy with your name who writes those sober and sane books and historical studies must daily be abashed at being confused for you.
Paul Freedman
Vienna, VA
___________________________________________
Dear Angry Reader Paul Freedman,
Davis not David—not a good start. Whoa—slow down: your vocabulary and syntax of outrage have stampeded.
To write an effective Angry Reader letter, you must be specific and give examples, rather than start out with “you’d sweep the table” boilerplate. What then follows is mostly generic hyperbole without references or examples.
I made a simple argument: 1) Trump so far had defied expert opinion in using Twitter, sometimes crudely, for political advantage; 2) But after 10 months in office he has achievements (good economy, recalibrated foreign policy, likely tax reform, good appointments [especially judicial], soaring energy production, and deregulation; 3) Consequently, while Twitter is effective in reaching millions to convey his messages, he need not joust one-on-one with individual journalists and celebrities, but rather let his record and improving economy speak for itself and not be impaired by rhetoric distractions.
What, then, exactly is under dispute?—Has the stock market tanked, GDP fallen to past levels, consumer and business confidence crashed, unemployment risen? What exactly did you feel was not accurate and could be refuted with your own evidence?
But instead of rational rebuttal, you offer cumbersome and incoherent metaphors of rage (e.g., what exactly is the image conveyed of “journalistic output” and “my reputation” consisting of some sort of “pile” that in turn is “saccharine” (artificially sweet) but also “malodorous” (stinks) and yet combustible to boot? What a mess of a metaphor. And why as an adult do you descend to incoherent fiery imagery of burning up something (or someone?) with whom you disagree?
The article that you object to is actually constructive (but perhaps unwelcome) advice to Trump to cease ad hominem twittering.
In political commentary, I try to ensure three things that you apparently are oblivious about: offer examples to support an assertion, be clear rather than incoherent, and avoid ad hominem invective.
And as a historian and philologist I try to be inductive, not start with a preconceived notion, even if empiricism results in praising those with whose politics I might disagree or criticizing figures I otherwise admire (e.g., an often duplicitous and neo-socialist FDR was a brilliant wartime leader; good men like Omar Bradley and Mark Clark often made disastrous decisions; a sober and judicious George Marshall’s idea of a cross-Channel invasion in 1943 would have been an utter disaster; a rude and often arrogant Alan Brooke, chief of the British Imperial Staff, often offered wise if unwelcome strategic advice to his more polite and generous American counterparts, etc.).
Victor Hanson
Selma, CA
12/15/17
From An Angry Reader:
It’s a good thing I’m 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) away from you.
You can take that any way you want.
Daniel Weir
Washington, DC
___________________________________________
Dear Angry Reader Daniel Weir,
Making personal threats against someone with whom you disagree is not good for the soul.
Victor Hanson
Selma, CA
From An Angry Reader:
You live in an alternate universe, silly clown, silly institute, silly magazine. But the article was funny so congrats.
Sincerely,
Bruce Patten
___________________________________________
Dear Angry Reader Bruce Patten,
I congratulate you on your succinctness and your use of anaphora (“silly”…”silly”…”silly”) but otherwise your note is simply personal invective and underwhelming satire that is applicable to anything—and thus unfortunately nothing.
Sincerely,
Victor Hanson
11/30/2017
From An Angry Reader:
So, let me get this this right; you have the freedom to express your First Amendment Rights (your opinion article), the neo-nazi can express their first amendment rights (as they did this weekend in Charlottesville), but “multimillionaire young players, mostly in their 20s” cannot. If this country still had the draft, those 20-somethings would be at war, TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHT TO EXPRESS YOURSELF! What a phony you are!
Besides, you know the original protest WAS NOT ABOUT THE EMBLEM OF THE COUNTRY. What a hypocrite you are; and you call yourself an historian, not to even mention at Stanford. What a FAKE!!!! It’s your fake opinion that is diminishing, and don’t you forget it!!!!
- Harris Jones, MSW
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop,” —Rumi
___________________________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear L. Harris Jones, MSW
Calm down Mr/s. Jones. You confirmed the Angry Reader rule: anyone who resorts to capital letters and exclamation points in succession usually does so in absence of anything to say.
For the nth time: the players do have a First Amendment right to free expression; and their employers equally have a right, as the courts have long held, to fire them if they wish—in the manner that the airlines would fire a steward who insisted on wearing a “Make America Great” cap while on board that might offend customers, or UPS can fire drivers who wear FED-EX T-shirts to work on grounds that it is a bad business practice.
That the owners do not fire or fine the players—for now—is their own business decision that they would lose less money doing so by ignoring their own rules than enforcing them—a wager that may well change. If I were to decide to wear a logo on my T-shirt to work that offended co-workers (in the manner of Kaepernick’s police as pigs socks), and to take a knee during a meeting of my colleagues, I think I would learn that such “First Amendment” rights would collide with codes of behavior I have previously agreed to.
So like all of us, the players are employees and are subject to certain contractual codes of behavior that their employers can or cannot choose to enforce. Mr/s. Jones, do not confuse private space and the workplace: the players can choose to sit or kneel anywhere anytime they hear the National Anthem, as fans themselves or at a graduation or during a funeral. But in the workplace as paid employees they have contractually agreed to a code of conduct that they are currently violating. Why not, then, have the players go on strike to demand that standing for the National Anthem not be a part of their contracted behavior?
Your use of “If” can apply to anything; but if you find the characterization of NFL players as multimillionaires in their twenties somehow mistaken please explain how. Are they instead mostly in their thirties and making less than $100,000 per annum? Is it the reality or my identification of the reality that upsets you so?
I am confused about your statement that I “know” that “the origin of the protest was not about the emblem of the country”?
In fact, I did not know that and still do not know what the subsequent protests were about. Police shootings that supposedly statistically fall disportionately on unarmed black youth in relation to their encounters with law enforcement? Is that accurate?
Ferguson? That Eric Holder’s Justice Department really did not find that the shooting of Michael Brown was not an example of inordinate or illegal police force, and that “hands up, don’t shoot” had no basis in fact?
Twenty-million a year, Colin Kaepernick, of mixed ancestry and raised in a middle-class white household and facing a career downturn, previously cited by the NFL after referee and player allegations for using the N-word, and now dating a hard-left DJ, suddenly reinvents himself and decides that his country is unfair and racist and thus not deserving of respect? Was that the origin of kneeling we are supposed to take seriously?
Or is the anger that the meritocratic NFL is not racially diverse enough, or does not proportionally reflect the ethnic and racial and gender diversity of the nation and thus should be subject to disproportionate impact rulings?
So like millions of NFL fans, I am not sure what the particular existential gripe is that drives the protest. Has it now become Donald Trump’s unnecessary and crude use of the SOB slur? That regrettable transgression was analogous to Barack Obama’s more vulgar and widespread characterization of the entire Tea Party movement of tens of millions as “tea-baggers”—a homophobic slur suggesting a type of male-on-male sex act that was equally not befitting the office of the president but apparently drew no protests in response.
I’m not sure what your psycho-dramatic imperative “and don’t you forget it” with no less than four exclamation marks is supposed to mean: that I am not to forget that L. Harris Jones, MSW has announced me unfit to be at Stanford or to be a historian and therefore that indictment is to be seared in my memory—or worse?
In the end, Mr/s. Harris, I think you will agree that like most entertainment in America, the market adjudicates the NFL.
If 10-30% of the fans stop watching or attending games, the resulting drop in revenue will demand changes in NFL teams’ budgets and will shortly affect player contracts.
At that point, you will see the kneeling during the National Anthem stop and all talk such as yours of the First Amendment will cease, as the players tacitly agree that their employers have a Constitutional right to enforce their own published codes of behavior and that such enforcement is in their own financial interest.
If NFL patronage, however, is not affected by the continual kneeling during the Anthem, then it will continue—along with self-righteous talk of the First Amendment, the shifting rationales for the protests, and the loud support on ESPN and other progressive venues.
- Davis Hanson, PhD
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” —John Donne
_______________________________________________________________________________________
11/27/2017
From an Angry Reader:
Rarely have I read such infuriating nonsense as intellectual outlier Victor Davis Hanson spouts in his thoroughly delusional commentary about Trump. I know he’s been a blind Trumpeter since the con artist’s campaign began, and he remains steadfast in defending the indefensible. His pack of fraudulent claims, gross exaggerations, evasions and bizarre compliments should make us wonder what kind of mind is needed to get into a “think tank” these days. A mind with the ability to think clearly, marshal cogent arguments and use critical faculties would be excluded, I take it.
Even the part about Trump having superior “bare-knuckle” skills is laughable both in fact and in analogy. I guess what he means is the narcissistic blowhard and rank vulgarian has become adept over the years at using crude forms of bullying, belligerence, intimidation and insults in an attempt to cow the opponent. We see how much good those professed negotiating skills have been for him. No significant legislative accomplishments in his first year, despite him bragging that he’d do many big things quickly and all by himself.
What he has supported in the way of legislation was almost entirely devoid of the content he promised—healthcare that would cover everyone for less and be “easy” to accomplish–and he clearly didn’t know a thing about the bills a Republican congress fashioned to fulfill Trump’s exaggerated boasts. The man is an ignorant, incompetent, reckless and deranged demagogue, but Hanson remains a rube on the bandwagon sucking dry turnips. Such is the blissful state of “winners”.
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader TR Jahns,
On a scale of angry reader absurdities, yours ranks a 9 out of 10. The key to criticism is the avoidance of emotional jargon (nonsense, laughable, gross, delusional, etc.) that always appears in lieu of an argument. And imagery and metaphors must be consistent, not incoherent and mixed: what exactly does a “rube on a bandwagon sucking dry turnips” mean exactly?
Nonetheless here goes the refutation of your meltdown.
1) I was not a “blind Trumpeter” since the time Trump ran for office; check the record before making unsubstantiated accusations. In fact, I opposed Trump in the early primaries.
2) Instead of citations, you use inflated phraseology like “fraudulent claims, gross exaggerations, evasions and bizarre compliments”; specify rather than allege what bothers you about Trump; e.g., Is he more divisive than was Obama? Does he comment too much about ongoing court cases? Is he without basic knowledge such as the number of states or the correct pronunciation of corpsman? Are his IRS, GSA, VA, Secret Service, and EPA riddled with scandal? We need detail, not redundant exclamations.
3) You equate “first-class mind” with anti-Trump fervor, but then fail to demonstrate (rather than rail about) why this is so.
4) I was empirical and thus not always laudatory about Trump’s skills; yet he dismantled a quite qualified field of 16 more experienced and sometimes better funded Republican rivals, and often outdebated those with far more experience and rhetorical training. To deny that is to let emotions get the better of logic.
5) In fact, Trump’s team has passed lots of legislation, even as we hear only of stalled Obamacare and tax reform. At six months Trump had signed over 50 legislative bills, comparable to or greater than the record of the first half year of previous presidents.
Given the Obama precedent, he also issued a flurry of executive orders that, like it or not, have redefined energy production, regulations, immigration, and the administrative state. The furor at Trump from the Left is not that he is stalled and impotent, but that he is in a variety of ways reversing the Obama legacy. Does your anger arise because as a supposed incompetent Trump has done nothing and is merely idling on the job? Or that as a liberal partisan, you are furious that in breakneck fashion he is reversing the Obama agenda, from illegal immigration to deterrence abroad to EPA regulations at home?
6) Trump cannot be faulted for failing to enact health care or tax reform—given that his proposals are still stalled before the Congress and await either congressional ratification or recalibration or rejection. He still may get both tax and health care reform by the end of 2018.
7) You misrepresent, of course, what I wrote. My argument in the Los Angeles Times was that despite his often-alienating tweets and controversies, Trump remains about as popular as he was on Election Day (46% approval in the November 13th Rasmussen poll). And I noted that his success hinges on avoiding what are seen as costly optional wars and restoring economic growth. Should he do either he will be reelected; if not, he won’t.
8) I think part of your anger is not because Trump has failed (you wish him, after all, to fail), but because in some ways he is succeeding to your chagrin—record stock market levels, 6 months of 3% GDP growth, low unemployment, improving labor participation, near record consumer and business confidence, record coal/gas/oil production, upswings in manufacturing and service industries, etc.
In terms of foreign policy, Haley, Mattis, McMaster, Pompeo, and Tillerson are slowly restoring deterrence and reassuring allies in the Middle East that Iran, and in Asia, that North Korea and China, are not the predestined new hegemonies.
9) If a writer is to ascend from letter-to-the editor harangues to analytical commentary, then the key is to avoid hyperbole, remain capable of detecting the mistakes of friends and successes of enemies, and try to cite examples rather than offer bluster.
Unfortunately, you fail on all these counts and thus cannot be taken too seriously. Again, you score 9.0/10.0 on our newly inaugurated Angry Reader Emotional Harangue scale.
V.D. Hanson
From an Angry Reader:
Dear Professor Hanson,
I read your article on Stalingrad and I wanted to respond.
The German 6th army in Stalingrad had Slovakian and Croatian units in the city. On the flanks of the 6th army was the Italian 8th army which played a huge role in Russia and was successful in Russia and was a revere[d] force. The Italians committed many troops for army group south and by the way this is coming from a Greek. I would also stress the importance of the Hungarians and Romanians.
You write, “It marked the turning point of World War II.” I would say that R.H.S Stolfi has argued that Kursk was the turning point, because a counter attacked at Kharkov won a major battle that regained the stability on the eastern front, in his book Hitler’s Panzers East. I would also add that my view is that operation Bagration was more a turning point in 1944 because it destroyed Army group Center and annihilated whatever remained of the German infantry forces which had been severely weakened and its allies like the Hungarians and the foreign SS units. Operation Bagration also moved soviet forces closer to Hungary and Romania and pushed army group north to be closed off to Germany. I would call that a greater victory then Stalingrad. However your view on Stalingrad as the turning point is conservative which is somewhat true. Also the soviets overextended, still was losing battles even in 1944, and the Germans captured more troops before Stalingrad, which had destroyed the red army, and half of the USSR’s industry and agriculture was captured. The Germans fixed the inept railroad systems. The Soviets were able to gain ground because the Germans were exhausted, but German units were murdering Soviet divisions.
Sincerely, Angelo
Ευχαριστώ Πολύ (Thank You)
———————————————
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Sort of Angry Reader Angelo,
Patton’s Third Army included the 2nd French Division as well; so are we then wrong to call it an “American army”? The Sixth Army was overwhelmingly German and to call it such is just fine and does not deprecate the sacrifices of other Axis armies. The invasion of the Soviet Union was one of the most multinational efforts in military history, involving eventually Germans, Romanians, Hungarians, Italians, Spaniards, Finns, and Western and Eastern European volunteers.
After Stalingrad, the Germans could not complete Hitler’s original agenda of controlling Russia to the Volga River. The later “tie” at Kursk and even a German victory there would have made no ultimate difference, given the increasingly lethal Anglo-American bombing that was siphoning off huge artillery assets, even before D-Day, and successive open German wounds in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy—as well as vast diversions of Luftwaffe and artillery assets to offset Allied bombing.
Bagration came much later than Stalingrad when Soviet numerical and logistical superiority was unquestioned. In contrast, at Stalingrad the forces were much more evenly matched, and thus it was a turning point after which things went downhill for the Germans. Bragration was a continuation of what happened at Stalingrad to the nth degree, given far greater resources at the Red Army’s disposal.
Do not define German superiority in terms of killing ratios (anywhere from 3 to 7 / 1) or the German ability to destroy more tanks than it lost. There were no finer soldiers than those of the Wehrmacht but it eventually mattered little against a 12.5 million man-military, which received 20 percent of its supplies under Lend-Lease, at a time Germany was bombed 24/7 and under assault after June 1944 in Europe and Italy without much help militarily in Europe from its Italian and Japanese allies.
Sincerely, Victor
11/16/2017
From an Angry Reader:
Victor Victor Victor…
Come on lad … With your education I really thought that you would know that “nuclear” is pronounced nu-cle-ar, NOT nuc-u-ler. That is the way “dub-ya” pronounced it and he could get away with it because he is an idiot. You are not! Please fix that …
H.C. Southern
_____________________________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear H.C. Southern,
I get about 5 emails a day like yours on diction (careless), dress (tasteless), and even baldness, wrinkles, and facial scars (unfixable), and many of such citations perhaps have merit. I will put yours in the “I’ll get to it someday” file with the others.
Dubya is not an idiot, unless Gore (the “crazed sex poodle” who invented the Internet) and Kerry (“Actually, I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against the $87 billion.”) were too, whose GPA records and test scores were no higher—or Obama, who apparently believed there were “57 states,” thought the Malvinas were the Maldives, Austrians spoke “Austrian”—and assumed corpsmen was pronounced “corpse-men.”
V.D. Hanson
11/15/2017
From an Angry Reader:
Read your article in the NR.
Bad research, poorly written, some facts and a lot of your very biased opinions.
In short it is mostly drivel.
I hope your other work has good foundation and is better researched.
You should take the trouble to visit the so called “rogue states” so that you can opine with a balanced and, more importantly, informed view.
Best Wishes
Farhan.
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Farhan,
It is not wise to allege bias and “bad research” and then not cite a single example of error to support your wild claims. Otherwise the impression is that you are emotionally invested rather than empirically guided. I have visited many of the rogue states of the world and my opinion of them was not changed by visits there—except in most cases to have become even more pessimistic. There is a reason why many from Iran and Pakistan seek entry into the U.S.; but rarely do U.S.-born citizens seek to become citizens of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan or the Islamic Republic of Iran. The nuclear technology of both countries is derivative of Western science and technology; both have violated international accords on non-proliferation; and both while called republics are not true consensual societies, given their theocratic natures.
Best Wishes
Victor.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
11/06/2017
From An Angry Reader:
Professor Davis,
In your recent article “The Method to Trump’s Madness”, you claim Trump’s insults are retaliation to those who have said things against him. Even if that is (partially) true, that does not justify Trump’s immaturity and cruelty.
In many instances, Trump’s name-calling was unprovoked. During the early primaries, Ted Cruz was going out of his way to be nice to Trump. Despite this, Trump called Cruz a liar (without indicating what his lies were), cast Heidi Cruz as unattractive (by showing a photo where she had an angry expression) and claimed Cruz’s father was complicit in the JFK assassination (!).
Further, Trump insulted Carly Fiorina’s looks, Marco Rubin’s stature, Jeb Bush’s perceived lack of energy, the list goes on. And I haven’t yet mentioned Trumps mocking the disabled reporter.
Even if these people disagreed with Trump on an issue or criticized his (abysmal) behavior, poking fun at others physical features is never justified.
I was shocked at your attempt to justify this unacceptable juvenile behavior on the part of a now president.
I much preferred your writing during the primaries when you saw Trump for the swamp creature he was (and continues to be) and urged your readers not to vote for him in the primaries.
I realize that in the general election there was no choice. Despite major misgivings I voted for Trump over Hillary and am glad that he and not she is president. However to defend behavior that is indefensible is far beneath you.
Sincerely,
Arlene Ross
New York, NY
___________________________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Arlene Ross,
The title of my essay was “the method to” not “approval of” Trump’s Madness. It sought to explain why Trump’s madness so far has worked; it did not condone it as ethically admirable. In other words, I reviewed the logic of his outbursts and tweets and why so far that they have not eroded his base of support. Try to read more carefully so as not to confuse efficacy and utility with morality.
You write that you were “shocked” that I tried to “justify” Trump’s behavior? But after listing all of his sins in the primary, you yourself voted for him in the general election? Do you seek medieval exemption by confession and penance to justify your help in seeing someone so crude elected?
More likely, I fear you again were confused in reading why Trump has not turned off 40% of the electorate by his tweets and jibes—and unfortunately conflated my analysis of his effectiveness with a desire on your part for me to damn it as unethical or improper—perhaps a topic for another column. Again, I wrote about utility, not morality.
In sum, Arlene, your own statements are illogical: you praise me for suggesting that we shouldn’t have voted for Trump as long as we had viable alternatives to Hillary Clinton, but then fault me for urging conservatives to vote in the general election for Trump when we had no other alternative to the Obama-Clinton 16-year regnum—and then confess that you did exactly the same thing as did I! Furthermore, you, like I, so far are still glad that he is president and not Clinton.
So I suppose your position by default is: “I finally voted for Trump but I didn’t enjoy doing so given his comportment”—which was the very topic of my column: why did voters like Arlene support (and perhaps still do [you use the present tense “I am glad”]?) Trump despite his often outrageous behavior.
A more interesting philosophical question is why someone so outwardly outrageous is pushing through a far more conservative and needed agenda than prior Republican presidents, who were more sober and judicious. And why did Trump at least profess to care about workers, miners, vets, farmers, and the unemployed in a manner his better informed and experienced rivals did not? That is a tricky moral question that no one has yet answered (other than scream “demagogue!”). Trump did not write off half the electorate as deplorables nor did he, as Romney, a far more ethical man, write off 47% of Americans as dependents. Nor did he as John McCain write off Trump voters as “crazies.” There was a callousness and insensitivity to voters in other candidates that the otherwise insensitive Trump at least did not display about voters.
Sincerely,
Professor Davis (Hanson)
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
10/18/2017
From An Angry Reader:
You created this Frankenstein.
You have a lot to answer for.
G-d is looking down on you, and He is not smiling.
You all are in your 80s. That’s the good thing in all this. Nobody lives forever and you all are a helluva lot closer to the “final reward” than I am.
It will be wonderful living in a world bereft of you.
“Not a threat, just a thought.”
Daniel Weir
Washington, DC
__________________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader,
Actually if (a) Trump is Frankenstein, then (b) Obama created him by polarizing the country, ignoring the red states in-between the coasts, institutionalizing executive orders, commenting on ongoing criminal cases, allowing his administration to be plagued by scandals (IRS, GSA, VA, etc.), not investigating the Russian collusions of the Clinton Foundation (see the recent articles in The Hill), and bringing popular culture (cf. GloZell) into the presidential orbit.
Actually, I am 16 years from my “80s” and if there is to be a “final reward” as I think there is, then the end is not to be feared or what is left behind to be lamented.
Victor Hanson
Selma, CA
________________________________________________________
10/11/2017
From An Angry Reader:
Mr Hanson, we can only thank you for the correct verbosity and non overuse of the word anemic, as any student of creative writing or freshman English would appreciate the lesson in your overly wordy presentation; problem is, and this seems frequently to escape your need to be correct, whereas my Colbert may be vulgar in his choice of words, your vulgarity resides in your heart. I’ll choose the profanity every time; so, go f–k yourself and your filthy ideals.
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
10/05/2017
From An Angry Reader:
Mr. Hanson,
I read your opinion piece in Newsweek and wanted to respond.
I wish you’d included numbers, information on programs and systems, budget levels, and other trends, rather than just a few quotes. Funding within the DoD always fluctuates, given whatever is the shiny new toy of the moment (it was drones for a few years, for instance), but missile defense has always gotten plenty of money.
While there were plenty of detractors, missile defense was still given more priority than a lot of other programs before the never-ending war on terror began in the early 2000s. That’s when the DoD’s focus and funding shifted to aviation (drones, helicopters, etc.), ground vehicles, networks, and other systems that needed improvements, innovation, maintenance, etc.—because those are the capabilities needed for the current conflicts. One could say that’s shortsighted, but the U.S. got here by getting into a war with no predefined strategy or exit criteria (very shortsighted), so we all have to play the hand we’re dealt.
There is simply not enough money to go around. It’s not because of Congressional budget levels (and I’m not sure I understand the finger-pointing at “liberals,” given that Republicans have controlled fiscal spending for at least half of the past 30+ years). It’s because there is literally not enough money in America’s coffers to pay for the kind of military expenditure the country seems to expect. Wars are expensive, and long wars are basically black holes sucking in all resources that get anywhere close.
Building and testing missile defense systems is, likewise, extremely expensive. Defense contractors charge the Government ungodly amounts of money for systems that repeatedly fail to work as promised. And yes, that’s a systemic problem that needs to be addressed, but reining in free-market capitalism in the military-industrial complex takes a lot of time and requires political backing to put regulations in place. Contractors don’t like to have their hands tied, and they have well-paid lobbyists, so…we know how this story ends.
Also, to be fair, it is unbelievably freaking hard to develop a missile interceptor, especially one that’s effective in the midcourse phase. There’s a reason why we have the lower tier (PATRIOT) and upper tier (THAAD) fairly well covered with proven missile defense, but not midcourse yet. And those systems that work take years, if not decades, of development and testing to reach full operational capability. PATRIOT, which of course made its battleground debut in Desert Storm, was being developed under the program name SAM-D in the late 1960s.
Plus, I feel like people operate under the delusion that, even if we did have a fully operational midcourse missile defense system, it would be 100% effective. An intercept rate of about 70% or more is considered really successful. This is, in fact, rocket science. Actually, it’s more difficult than your everyday rocket science.
There are a lot of factors at play when it comes to this issue. I think it’s unfair, incorrect, and misleading to say or imply that past administrations, Congresses, and the DoD have somehow ignored missile defense, and that the reason we don’t currently have a reliable “missile shield” is because no one cared enough to fund it.
Respectfully,
Whitney Hedges
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Whitney Hedges,
All of what you say—missile defense is expensive, often without surety of hitting the target, and embedded in opportunistic politics—has elements of truth. But in comparison to what?
For a variety of avoidable decisions, we are now on the eve of a North Korean nuclear-tipped missile capability of reaching the West Coast. I simply quoted in my essay past statements, whether Walter Mondale’s dismissal of missile defense as a “hoax,” or Clinton Defense Secretary Perry’s belief that it was not necessary to provide missile defense against a someday nuclear North Korea, or Barack Obama’s hot mic promise to Russian President Medvedev to be “flexible” on Eastern European missile defense agendas (cancelled by Obama)—if Putin would give him “space” during his reelection efforts in 2012.
Is your argument that those quotations are wrong? Or that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush likewise had no interest in pursuing missile defense?
Note that in my piece I did not suggest missile defense was ever a sure thing. But when faced with North Korea, and the specter of losing a U.S. city, all sorts of things that in the past were considered “problematic” become preferable to the alternatives.
A costly system that offers only a 60% likelihood of knocking down an incoming nuclear missile is preferable to nothing, and I confess also preferable to spending commensurate funds on further entitlements, which will be unnecessary if we are hit by enemy nuclear missiles.
Respectfully,
Victor Hanson
10/03/2017
From An Angry Reader:
Dear Mr. Hanson,
I’m a black Ivy-League educated liberal raised in NC and something in me snapped last week.
Have no fear, I’m still in the liberal camp, but it perturbs me greatly to see all the hoopla over Confederate memorials.
This is so not important on the list of what my community needs or wants. I dare say that this is not even the focus of the blacks of Black Lives Matter. It’s more white liberals looking for a convenient way to make them not racist. How dare they! Charleston was different. THAT CITY was looking to heal after a horrific event and the removal of statues there seemed justified. But let’s face it, a white liberal hates nothing more than to be called racist and after Trump’s crazy remarks last week, they were looking for an easy scapegoat.
I’m a progressive and want better education and health care for all, state-sponsored.
My cheeky idea of dangerous white nationalism is the playground of the PUBLiC school on Greenwich Avenue in NYC, where only white kids play at lunchtime. Imagine, in the most liberal of liberal cities, an all white elementary school.
Cheers,
Warner
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Not Really Angry Reader Warner,
You do not sound like a “black” liberal, but a thoughtful empiricist person for whom race is a second or tertiary consideration. Be careful, once the liberal facade cracks, like Humpty Dumpty it cannot be put back together again. You are on your way to the Enlightenment of judging the world in the manner you see and hear it.
I take it you object to liberal virtue signaling and prefer to judge actions, not rhetoric.
If so, I sympathize with you, because the liberal elite mindset is about symbolic, not real action. It is easy to decapitate statues, not so easy to be a DC grandee politician or reporter and put your children in the public schools rather than in private and often mostly exclusive academies, easy to be Mark Zuckerberg demagoguing a border fence, not so easy to leave his estates unwalled; easy to “celebrate diversity,” but apparently not so easy to prefer living with the “other” of less economic means. So yes, I get your point that kindred liberals are hypocritical.
But erasing the past was not the fault just of “white liberals.” Black liberals were at the forefront too; those calling for the poor USC mascot to be renamed were mostly African-American students. Perhaps the general explanation is that white privileged liberals, whose lives are mostly apartheid in nature, feel guilty, but not so guilty to live the lives they advocate for others. So to assuage guilt and to justify their continued privilege they blame distant, poorer whites for “white privilege” as if minorities at their workplace or at the university will deem them “correct whites” and leave them alone or even praise them.
In general, class is a far better bellwether in 2017. Privilege is predicated on opportunity: a black Ivy League professional has far more opportunities than does a white working-class tire changer in southern Ohio; just as an inner-city African-American lacks the chances of a white or Asian Google techie.
It is past time to forget statue smashing and race mongering and get back to judging people on the basis of character content.
Cheers,
Victor
09/29/2017
From An Angry Reader:
Dear Professor Hanson,
You are a hypocrite.
You endlessly, in your writings and talks, decry people who say ‘if it ain’t perfect it ain’t good’, and yet you constantly moan about Obama just because he ‘wasn’t perfect’ and did some crooked things. You, sir, are a hypocrite. You could at least admit that both parties stink and that all politicians are liars.
By the way, you need to stop moaning about how ‘the elite’ should do more ‘hands-on’ work (I will soon start calling you Victor ‘Hands-on’ to reflect your obsession). Have you ever thought that maybe nobody wants to do those grueling back-breaking jobs for a dollar an hour, and that maybe some people want to get away from that life? Do you really think Donald J Trump, your hero, ever did a single day of hard basically unpaid work like that? Who would want that life if they could get a decent wage—or better rich—without breaking their back? Do you really expect kids to aspire to be fruit-pickers when they could be lawyers earning 200k a year working 5 days a week? I call BS.
Maybe you’re right in principle, but nobody is as principled as you who could or would want to do that. Also, lots of people in inner cities want to do that kind of manual labor or farm-work, but have no access or ability to do it because unlike you they don’t have a farm of their own. How the h*ll can they do what you want them to do when they don’t even have the social mobility to have access to the countryside? Heck, most people struggle just to pay the rent in the inner cities nowadays; most people are slaves to the state. I would rather be a real slave than have the fake urban ‘freedom’ (i.e. prison) that modern scum politicians have created for us.
Dan Smith,
Miami
___________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Dan Smith,
Calm down; your anger clouds all reason. Most politicians, but not all, are liars. While I agree that both parties lie, at this particular juncture in American history, nevertheless the two parties are not morally equivalent.
Instead they represent vastly different world views: identity politics versus the melting pot; illegal massive immigration vs. legal, measured, diverse, and meritocratic immigration; more taxes and larger government vs. lower taxes and less government; a therapeutic foreign policy vs. deterrence; less defense spending vs. more of it; curbs on expression vs. free speech. The antitheses are really quite endless.
Obama did not grow the economy (sluggish and always less than 3%). His rhetoric divided the nation. The world abroad fell into chaos. The debt doubled. Taxes rose. Health care deductibles, premiums, and copays skyrocketed. Programs like cash for clunkers, “shovel-ready” jobs, or Solyndra-like subsidies were embarrassing. The border was left open. Eric Holder was cited for contempt by Congress. Corruption—at the IRS, Secret Service, GSA, VA, and EPA—was commonplace. Reporters had their communications tapped. Unmasking and leaking were normative. Need I go on? Obama was an iconic president—fine; but there was no record of accomplishment and a great deal of deliberate polarization.
Donald Trump is not my hero; did I write that? He is a corrective to the Obama years. Few others were willing to take up that role.
Stopping illegal immigration and pro-growth policies might give entry-level workers clout with their employers, and allow wages to rise. The proponent of open borders is the proponent of low wages. “Fruit pickers” could once again be summer job seekers and entry level employment that soon led to higher paying and more skilled work, especially if labor is not cheap and accessible through illegal immigration. I think my writings have supported the idea that muscular labor should be more highly rewarded.
Do you not see that the opponent of illegal immigration wishes wages to rise and inner-city youth to be in demand as workers?
In a full-employment economy, employers could not ignore inner city youths, but would work with them to reenter the work force. I don’t see at all the morality of importing a half-million foreign nationals to work when we have millions of Americans who are not employed and have dropped permanently out of the work force.
Finally, no one is a perpetual victim. We all face constant pressures and personal tragedies. Claiming always of a stacked deck and blaming others or cosmic forces in general guarantee personal failure.
I’d like to engage your questions, but there are few coherent inquiries here.
Victor Hanson
Selma
09/20/2017
From an Angry Reader:
Dear VDH,
I faithfully read and enjoy your many commentaries on current events. But surely, as a historian, you should realize that Dred Scott was rightly decided, as I thought even in my youth. Even my reliably left-leaning constitutional-law professor colleague, who was shocked by my condemnation of Wickard v. Filburn, agrees with me on this.
Christopher Boorse
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Sort of Angry Reader Christopher Boorse,
Your “left-leaning constitutional-law professor colleague” I fear is sorely mistaken. If one accepts the narrow, amoral proposition that humans can be enslaved, and that chattel slaves are thus mere property of their masters to hunt down as they please, and as, American native-born, they still do not have rights and constitutional protections of citizenship, then I suppose Chief Roger B. Taney’s decision was consistently logical.
But I do not accept any of those legal or moral assumptions, and so cannot accept that slavery can be either legal or moral, or that humans can become the mere property of other humans, or that those born in the United States to others born in the United States are not citizens with legal protections.
The Dred Scott ruling represented the legal gymnastics of an ethically bankrupt mind—and was seen as such within a few years. Taney could easily have overturned Southern-state statutes, by ruling that slavery was an innate denial of the protections offered by the Bill of Rights for those born in the United States, or a violation of the spirit of the Declaration of Independence or that in legal proceedings and punishment slavery violated the cruel and unusual punishment prohibition clause. But he did not and so rightly suffered history’s condemnation.
Victor Hanson
09/15/2017
From An Angry Reader:
Angry Reader Sam Davidson
Victor,
I enjoy reading your articles in the National Review. I never understood why this country has statues that honor people that took up arms against the United States. I do not think there are any statues honoring Lord Cornwallis, General Santa Ana, Ludendorf, Tojo, or Hitler. The Confederates were lucky President Johnson was a Southerner and every officer over the rank of captain wasn’t shot. In my opinion this isn’t about slavery or state’s rights, it is about treason.
Best Wishes,
Sam Davidson
________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Kinda Angry Reader Sam Davidson,
To answer you, question why are Confederate statues somewhat different from those of a few monsters you list?
1) Not all statues of Confederates are the same. Gen. James Longstreet’s career was different from that of Nathan Bedford Forrest or Jefferson Davis, to take one example; yet we lump them all together as equally culpable. Note Erwin Rommel fought for a bad cause but he did so in a way differently from Sepp Dietrich or Joachim Peiper or Otto Skorzeny, and is recognized as such in Germany today—in the manner that a Gen. Halder of OKH was working with the U.S. after the war on the theory he was different from Gen. Keitel of OKW who was hanged.
2) Most Confederates were born American citizens; so rightly or wrongly they were seen after the war as reprobates, but not foreign enemies, and thus to be forgiven as wayward Americans rather than killed as hostiles (but given even the very few death sentences at Nuremberg were mostly later commuted or reduced, your suggestion of shooting en masse thousands of Confederate officers seems a tad extreme?).
3) The statues often were allowed to remain as tokens of reconciliation; the fear during the waning Civil War (see Lincoln’s Second Inaugural), and after, was that the killing (eventually 620,000 dead) had been so tragic and brutal that the country could never reunite. Forgiving secessionists and recalibrating them as noble fighters for an amoral cause (slavery was sometimes forgotten and the Lost Cause was substituted) was seen as both magnanimous and advantageous. I note that empirically, not approvingly, necessarily.
4) In 1861, the North struggled to find a constitutional writ enabling it legally to coerce the South back into the Union, given that the Supreme Court would not find secession unconstitutional until after the war (1869), and the Constitution had no explicit clause about leaving the Union. So many in 1861 in the North were befuddled whether it was legal to depart peacefully, and, if so, how exactly was it done?
The Union argued, inter alia, that the individual states could not autonomously appropriate the responsibilities of the federal government (national defense, tariffs, etc.) as spelled out in the Constitution, but there was nothing explicit about what would happen if the states peacefully left the Union entirely since it was believed none ever would be so foolish.
So one way of forcing them back in was to declare that they could not appropriate federal property inside their boundaries (forts, arsenals, post offices, e.g., such as Fort Sumter.), which they did by force and which became one writ for forcible reunion.
So the answer whether Confederates were treasonous seems obvious on its merits, but not so obvious when the legality of secession is carefully examined in the context of 1861. In a larger sense, Lincoln knew that a North American continent with a variety of states, as in Europe, was a prescription for endless wars—as in Europe.
5) My complaint about statue smashing is twofold: one, it is often done by violence and street thuggery and thus illegal, and city officials panic and issue executive orders without ratifications of councils or plebiscites, and then also do it by night; and two, it is a distraction from real problems. Murder epidemics in the inner-city are cause for national concern in a way knocking off the head of Robert E. Lee or renaming the USC mascot is not. We always go after the irrelevant misdemeanor when we cannot address the existential felony, largely to virtue signal rather than to admit our weakness and timidity.
Best Wishes,
Victor Hanson
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
09/14/2017
From An Angry Reader:
Angry Reader Wes Bridgeman
Dear Mr. Hanson,
My father, Lt. Col. William Bridgeman (Retired), sent me the attached links and quotes that I would like to bring to your attention. This features the words of the figures themselves (Forrest and Lincoln), and I will let them speak for themselves.
Please consider a correction to your recent statements regarding Forrest, whereas he is factually innocent of “founding the KKK.” Forrest was actually a leader in civil rights, despite current dogma.
Thank you in advance,
Wes Bridgeman
________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Wes Bridgeman,
Forrest claimed that he had changed after the war (at a time when he was sick, bankrupt, and in need of commercial opportunities), but I address the issue at length in the chapter on Shiloh in Ripples of Battle; you might revisit that book and my section on Forrest and the Klan and I think you will find that he did in fact, at least stealthily, spearhead its origins.
Thank you,
Victor Hanson
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
09/13/2017
From An Angry Reader:
Angry Reader Rich Laughlin
Mr. Hanson, please try using sentences with less words. Most recently, I read one of your articles that had a sentence with 44 words. Other sentences in the same article were almost as bad. Really.
You are loosing me with those lengthy paragraphs that contain so many examples of organizations, groups, etc., etc. One or two would, in most cases, satisfy the message. And, I find I have to keep a dictionary nearby while reading some of your articles.
Less is good!
Rich Laughlin
________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Rich Laughlin,
Perhaps I should agree with your Callimachean advice: μέγα βιβλίον μέγα κακόν.
Sincerely,
Victor Hanson
(and I do not get paid by the word, so my verbiage would be unprofitable and unnecessary).
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
09/12/17
From An Angry Reader:
Angry Reader Bob McCarthy
For one who loves to cast aspersions on political incorrectness in the use of words, maybe you should ‘splain to your readers your use of the term “Mexifornia” in decrying the Mexican “takeover” of California, as racist a piece as I’ve ever read. I find it shameful that The Bee chooses to run your right-wing screeds every Sunday. Jim Boren once defended you to me for being “local” as in Selma, as if that gives you special cred. It certainly doesn’t.
________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Quite Angry Reader Bob McCarthy,
Why the unhinged anger?
I do not have to “splain” anything to you, given that you clearly have never read the book Mexifornia. It was a call for legal, measured, and diverse immigration, a return to the melting pot of integration, assimilation, and intermarriage, and an immigration solution that would allow those who broke the law but who are employed, have not committed a crime, and have lengthy U.S. residence to apply for a green card and legal residence in exchange for a national policy of enforcing existing immigration law—in other words, the policies embraced by Bill and Hillary Clinton in the 1990s. It championed a unifying multiracialism rather than a separatist multiculturalism. You have no idea of the origins of the word Mexifornia, which is not my own, but one borrowed from a preexisting and common Latino gang reference that was apparently meant to highlight ethnic tribalism.
If you find it “shameful” to read a screed, then simply do not. And I take it that your efforts to contact the editor of the Fresno Bee, who appreciates diverse views, are evidence that you seek to silence a dissenting voice that you find irritating or perhaps even hard to refute.
I do not seek “cred” as you allege by living in Selma, but rather simply stayed in the community in which I was raised. Yet I find it ironic that, both in my immediate family and in the town I live, I am likely to live a much more integrated and multiethnic existence than you do, who are so eager to call others “racist”—a cry-wolf word that has now lost much of its resonance, precisely because of the demagogic usage such as yours.
Again, calm down. I do not know the source of your quite unsteady bitterness and spite but I suggest you a get a grip on yourself to avoid writing any more embarrassing “screeds” like this one. Otherwise you will continue to sound like one of the proverbial retired territorial grouches who from his porch screams incoherence at young strollers who, he alleges, get too close to his manicured turf.
Sincerely,
Victor Davis Hanson
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
08/24/17
From An Angry Reader:
Angry Reader Southern Poverty Law Center:
“They keynote speaker for the event was Victor Davis Hanson, a Hoover Institute (sic) fellow and author of Mexifornia, a book that romanticizes the California of old, when whites were a large majority of the state’s population. Davis Hanson (sic) talked about how in parts of California, you can go 10 miles in another direction and it ‘looks like you’re in a different country.’ Hanson also attacked California’s Democrats, saying:
We don’t want assimilation so we’re going to give you as much amnesty, sanctuary states, sanctuary cities, we’ll do whatever we can so you can remain tribal in your outlook. Your tribal racial and ethnic identity is essential, not irrelevant to your character.
Hanson also expounded upon the reconquista conspiracy theory promoted by anti-immigrant activists. It stems from the ‘Plan Espiritual de Aztlan,’ a document produced by MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan) in the 1960s calling for Chicanos to reclaim land. It is not endorsed by any mainstream groups, but for nativists it serves as the genesis of a conspiracy theory claiming that Latinos want to take back American land for themselves.
Davis Hanson ended by saying, “The state is regressing into a Third-World country.” He also attacked undocumented immigrants, essentially claiming they are incapable of being law-abiding residents, stating, ‘When I came to the States, the first thing I did was break the law, so why would I follow the rules out of necessity now?’”
________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Southern Poverty Law Center,
A few preliminaries: Mexifornia, written nearly 15 years ago, was not a romance about “white” California, but a warning that if assimilation, intermarriage, and melting-pot integration continued to be caricatured and eroded, and if massive immigration continued to be illegal, non-diverse, and not based on ethnically blind meritocratic criteria, then one day California would be faced with ethnic polarization, given its various ethnic groups, large numbers of struggling newcomers without legality, English, or high school diplomas, and a state unable to meet its commitments to ensure first-rate public education, infrastructure, transportation, and safety for all its residents. I feel the book was prescient; if you disagree, find an argument instead of using the buzz word “white.”
You state that MEChA advocated “reclaiming” land for “Chicanos,” but then incoherently state that such a supposition is a “conspiracy theory claiming that Latinos want to take back American land for themselves.” Is it a fact or a “claim,” both or neither? And what are “mainstream groups,” given that MEChA for decades has had a sizable presence on most California and southwestern campuses and claims a number of prominent alumni.
When you write “essentially claiming” rather than quoting what I actually wrote in full, we know that “essentially” is a catalyst for more fiction to follow.
In general, I rarely have seen a puerile attack like this in which everything you have alleged is demonstrably false. Since there was an apparent video of my 30-minute speech on “Two Californias” (presented at a Los Angeles symposia on the crisis of California) about the inordinate wealth of the Pacific Coastal strip from La Jolla to Berkeley and the poverty of the state’s interior, you obviously choose not to quote from it accurately if much at all.
And it is easy to see why, since my argument did not serve your circular purposes of fabricating “hate” in turn to whip up hysterias in turn to raise money in turn to justify your comfortable existence in turn to fabricate more “hate.” In contrast, you found that reporting the truth—the lecture offered statistics on education, energy, health care, infrastructure, and taxes in suggesting that Californians are not receiving value for the inordinate taxes and regulations they endure, largely because of incompetent, one-party governance—would have been of utterly no value to your careerist and financial aims.
The lecture was not even on illegal immigration per se, but on the tripartite role of (a) Silicon Valley’s and coastal California’s vast wealth and (in the case of multibillion-dollar tech companies) corporate exemptions from traditional antitrust scrutiny, (b) the aggregate flight of nearly 4 million middle class Californians to no-tax or low-tax states, and (c) the aggregate effects of massive illegal immigration in which the traditional allegiance to melting pot assimilation, integration, and intermarriage has waned due to politics, sheer numbers, and illegality.
Let me detail your fabrications in the order you made them:
1) One truly can go 10 miles in one direction in California and see the radical change from affluence to dire poverty. And that abyss is, as I noted, because that 1/3 of all welfare recipients in the nation live in California, where 1/5 of the population lives below the poverty line, and a fourth of the residents were not born in the United States and in many cases do not have English facility or high school diplomas, critical in a competitive market economy.
I suggest the SPLC staff drive just 3 miles from Woodside or Atherton to Redwood City or East Palo Alto and see whether my assertion is flawed. The proposition rests, as I noted and you omitted, on the fact that California is both the wealthiest of states by a variety of measurements and also by some data the poorest. Or as I colloquially put it, California is a sort of weld of Massachusetts and Mississippi under single state governance.
I am writing this reply on an avenue in which there are numerous houses with inoperative trailers, shacks, and near lean-tos arranged around a single-family dwelling, compounds in which the poor live without proper zoning, in structures that do not meet building codes, and under conditions that would be empirically described as Third World.
Less than 4 miles away there are also 10,000 square-foot gated mansions. That dichotomy illustrates California culture, demography, and governance, in the medieval sense of two classes rather than the past three.
The contrast certainly does look like two different countries: again, in the sense that in the gated mansions English is spoken, there are all the accouterments of upward mobility, and gates keep others out; in the multifamily/trailer residences, Spanish only is spoken, residents are often here illegally, and poverty is endemic. The contrast reflects a vanishing middle class and a state politics designed to reward the connected hyper-wealthy and subsidize the poor and to ignore those in-between—which is why the latter may have fled in droves.
- Your next assertion is a flat-out untruth: “Hanson also attacked California’s Democrats, saying: We don’t want assimilation so we’re going to give you as much amnesty, sanctuary states, sanctuary cities, we’ll do whatever we can so you can remain tribal in your outlook. Your tribal racial and ethnic identity is essential, not irrelevant to your character.”
I did not say what you are alleging, but made it very clear that the quote was a reflection of the mentality of the Democratic elite and the La Raza activist leadership. A simpleton in journalism can fathom that the collective “we” is not the person “I, Victor Hanson” but refers to progressive groups, as I carefully noted, who are not eager to see assimilation, integration, and intermarriage proceed in rapid fashion. Such a development might result in a fully integrated immigrant society (in the fashion of the 19th-century and early 20th-century trajectory of Italian-Americans), one that would be less helpful to Democratic tribal politics. Even with the quote out of context anyone can see through your childish effort to suggest the quote reflects my own sentiments rather than my views of the operating principles of progressive identity politics activists.
- You allege: “Hanson also expounded upon the reconquistaconspiracy theory promoted by anti-immigrant activists. It stems from the “Plan Espiritual de Aztlan,” a document produced by MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan) in the 1960s calling for Chicanos to reclaim land. It is not endorsed by any mainstream groups, but for nativists it serves as the genesis of a conspiracy theory claiming that Latinos want to take back American land for themselves.”
In fact, I did not discuss in detail Mexican nationals or Mexican-Americans seeking to “take back” land, nor did I even go into detail about the racist heritage of MEChA, which is becoming an embarrassment only because its racist sloganeering (e.g., “a bronze state for a bronze people” “everything for the race, nothing for the others”) was so egregious that it has been airbrushed off MEChA sites. What I did say was that La Raza was and is a racialist term (“the Race” [sc. Latin radix] and deliberately employed to resonate racial chauvinism—illustrative of an unfortunate effort to divide and polarize groups.
I added and you omitted that the 1960s rebirth of the term in popular usage was similar to Franco’s and Mussolini’s political use of Raza/Razza (Franco wrote a novel Raza), as a way of copy-catting Hitler’s racist use of the German Volk to denote race as the key criterion of citizenship and definition of one’s “essence.” Apparently, the National Council of La Raza (a key element of the Democratic Party coalition) was recently embarrassed into agreement. After the election of Donald Trump, it suddenly has changed its name to UnidosUS from the former “the race”, and that is a laudable improvement. (Note what Cesar Chavez once said about the La Raza movement: “Today it’s anti-gringo, tomorrow it will be anti-Negro. We had a stupid guy who just wanted to play politics with the union, and he began to whip up La Raza against the white volunteers, and even had some of the farm workers and the pickets and the organizers hung up on la raza.”)
What do you mean when you write “nativist”? Someone who objects to racist terminology, and supports melting-pot integration and assimilation—in contrast to ethnic bigots like those in MEChA and La Raza groups who insist that their race defines their personas to the exclusion of others? What an Orwellian mindset, in which integration is defined as nativism.
You end your slander by more untruths: “Davis Hanson ended by saying, ‘The state is regressing into a Third-World country.’ He also attacked undocumented immigrants, essentially claiming they are incapable of being law-abiding residents, stating, ‘When I came to the States, the first thing I did was break the law, so why would I follow the rules out of necessity now?’”
Would you quote from the transcript of the speech? If you would, you will see that I ended with a call for unity, adding that there had to be more integration between poor and rich, and the restoration of a middle class, given that the state cannot do well when there is such an abyss between classes and a shortage of revenue to address long neglected infrastructure.
I did not attack undocumented immigrants, but said that the restoration of law (such as the end of illegal sanctuary cities and the enforcement of existing immigration statutes) is essential, yet would be difficult when millions of immigrants have not just entered the country illegally, but have done so as their first choice when arriving at a new homeland—a decision that the host de facto unfortunately overlooks or perhaps even rewards. When one breaks the laws without consequences, it insidiously erodes all laws and chaos is the inevitable result.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has been in the news recently as a recipient of millions of dollars of grants from large corporations and movie stars, so I am not denying that fictions like the present one are effective in more or less leveraging money through hysteria. Yet your methods are not justified by your ends; the former are reprehensible and the latter self-centered. A growing number of Americans are learning about your group and discovering that when it cannot uncover hate, it invents it—and finds the ensuing smears and slanders quite profitable, resulting ironically in short-term lucre, but in the long-term continued diminution of your reputation. For a fair account of the meeting and speech, see http://citizensjournal.us/afa-focuses-decline-ca/
Davis Hanson
From An Angry Reader:
Dear Prof. Hanson,
I read your analysis of Trump’s electoral prospects with some interest:
https://amgreatness.com/2017/08/14/anti-trump-bourbons-learning-forgetting-nothing-time-2020/
Since I’m a centrist Democrat, I will emulate your advice about Trump’s tweets – namely, I will ignore the barb-filled bromides you level against Democrats. (Which may greatly satisfy you and/or your audience emotionally, but add nothing to the persuasiveness of your argument.)
That said, I was the only one of my liberal friends who believed that Trump had a real shot. That might arise from my extensive experience as a volunteer for my party in a deep red state. (Indiana, which we local Democrats affectionately refer to as the “Northernmost Southern State.” Remember what JFK said about DC? Here, we are blessed with northern winters and southern culture.).
I am most certainly not saying that Trump is doomed. However I think your analysis, while insightful, is missing a number of critical factors. My bottom line is that Trump has essentially no margin for error. He has to pick up one or more voters for every voter he loses.
You get credit for observing that Trump’s support is probably little diminished since election day. However you fail to note that there is a very small slice of his voters who are definitely gone: these are the disenchanted Democrats who either voted against Clinton, or who felt that Trump was on the side of the “little guy” against the “Wall Street elites.” Will economic growth (such as it may be), trade tweaks, or massive deportations keep them? Not unless their own personal situation improves. And it’s unlikely that it will if they live in the “forgotten America:” the only sector that appears to be benefiting is mining and minerals, and this is probably not enough to compensate for the collapse of retail.
You imply that minority voters are going to ignore Trump’s tweets and dog whistles to the same extent as white voters due to economic growth (speculative) among other things. Perhaps, although if we continue to see these racially-tinged episodes such as what happened recently in Virginia, the African Americans who stayed home in some of these urban areas like Detroit, Philly and Milwaukee might not do so again. They are also going to notice some changes at DOJ, such as the return to more severe sentencing policies and increased enforcement of marijuana laws (which African Americans rightly see as a cudgel).
Asian-Americans like myself are not impressed by Trump’s push to restrict legal immigration. We remember the Chinese Exclusion Act, and are not as easily influenced by economic growth (such as it may be), since we are already better off than the population as a whole. We also skew Democratic as you know, and are just as influenced by Trump’s exploitation of ethnic animus for political purposes as other voters of color.
Latinos and Chicanos might like some of Trump’s policies on illegal immigration, and might also be influenced by whatever economic growth he achieves, but Trump’s ambiguous stance on DACA, his battle against sanctuary cities, and his objective of making immigration enforcement more unpredictable are sewing a great deal of fear into their communities. Ironically, Trump is actually deporting fewer people than Obama, but he is unlikely to make that argument. And as far as restricting legal immigration goes, that’s not likely to play well with these voters.
Everyone who will now fail to get a raise because of DOL’s rejection of Obama’s rule that changes the minimum salary for “managerial” workers (who will not get overtime) is going to notice it.
GLBTQ voters, while a small share of the population, are not going to forget Trump’s tweet about transgendered members of the military. This group is obviously particularly sensitive to such things and unlikely to dismiss it as another example of Trump’s “erratic” tweeting behavior. Those of us who are heterosexual may not notice this, but Trump’s tweet represents the first step backwards after decades of progress. It’s a bit like a synagogue being burned down: trust me, Jews notice such things. (Mormons probably think likewise, it comes from the perspective of being a historically despised minority.)
Speaking of being a historically despised minority, I don’t have to say anything about Muslim voters, do I? Some may have neglected to show up last year because they thought Trump couldn’t win. Won’t happen in 2020. And BTW there are a lot of Muslims in Michigan.
There will be 15 million potential new millennial voters in 2020. Broadly speaking, they skew more liberal and more Democratic in their preferences than the population as a whole, and are much more concerned about the “hoax” of climate change. At the same time, Trump’s core age demographic of senior citizens will represent a smaller segment of the voting population, as older boomers and “silent generation” voters die off. The rural areas that are seeing alarmingly high rates of premature deaths among whites will be most severely affected.
You do make a good point about the possibility of new voters from Trump’s core demographics, especially rural white Evangelicals. Many of these voters believe that Trump is a “blessing” from God, and may even regard him as part of a new “Holy Quaternity,” or at the very least share the “Flight 93” concerns of Anton (i.e. America is being overrun by un-Godly and un-white people to the point where the foundational culture of the nation is at stake – you know, like the Irish and Italians were threatening it back in the nineteenth century). White Evangelicals already vote at much higher rates than the general population, and skew Republican by a 5-to-1 or greater margin. If Trump is re-elected, this asymmetry will have to become even more extreme.
I’ll close by making one final point about the Democratic party. No screed penned by you or anyone else is going to change the fact that Democrats are likely to put their chips down on health care, which is an issue that affects everyone. The chances of Trump and Republicans in Congress working with Democrats to remedy defects in the ACA seem remote at best. The American health care system is going to continue to deteriorate, and Republicans will have little to offer here except blame and deflection.
So here’s the bottom line. Trump has the devotion of rural white Evangelicals plus other elderly white voters to count on, and there is always the possibility that their already-stratospheric turnout rates can be pushed even higher. He may stand to gain from economic growth (although this might not help him much in the parts of the country where he’s strongest). But at the same time, he has no margin for error, he is not broadening his base, Clinton’s not going to be on the ballot, and there are a lot of demographic groups which might be more inclined to turn out against him next time.
I agree with you that no one should be counting their chickens here. But your presentation (minus the mean-spirited nature of the invective) fails to acknowledge the entire panoply of potential factors.
—raj
———————————————————
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Raj,
Your letter is long so I cannot answer it in detail. When you allege “barb-filled bromides” and “mean-spirited nature of the invective” you must give examples to have any credence.
I have always said in a 50/50 country that Trump has no margin of error; my argument was instead that forecasts of his demise are premature given that the formula that won him the election of 2016 so far has not disappeared.
His chances hinge on the economy continuing to improve, rallying his base, curbing his erratic and extraneous editorialization, and appealing to minority and women voters to increase his respectable prior margins (in Republican terms).
But your exegesis leaves out a point I made; Trump will be running against somebody and he or she may be even worse a candidate than Hillary. As I wrote, look at recent DNC heads—Perez, Ellison, Wasserman-Schultz, Brazile; they are either unhinged, profane, or mired in ethical scandal. The Democratic Party is also at war with itself, in the fashion of 1972 when McGovern ensured a Nixon victory. Never underestimate the stupidity of either party to nominate a candidate that cannot win (McGovern, Dole, Mondale, etc.).
When activists go after Lincoln busts, or demand the end of the Jefferson Memorial, they do Trump an enormous favor. The country was rightly repelled by Nazi and Confederate regale in North Carolina, but also by the now serial leftwing violence on campuses and the sort of assassinations that we saw at Fort Hood, and Dallas, and shootings against the House leadership in DC. As I also wrote, some of Trump’s policies that are caricatured—ending illegal immigration, bringing back jobs, a muscular foreign policy, and lowering taxes—appeal to all people regardless of their ethnic identifications.
Your analysis is marred by psychodramas. Returning legal immigration to a meritocratic, legal, and diverse enterprise at levels common of 15 years ago of 500,000 a year (we are at record levels of foreign born currently in the U.S. in a manner that has not been typical of our long history) is hardly exclusionary. Why the exaggerations, given the U.S. is the most welcoming of all nations to immigrants and will continue to be, albeit in legal fashion?
Obamacare, passed without a single Republican vote and with serial mistruth about the inviolability of doctors and plans, is going broke on its own. Trump did not create that monster.
And why the patronizing caricatures of Trump’s so-called white evangelical voters? You sound like those who slurred them as clingers, deplorables, and irredeemables. Past groups did not arrive illegally. And the melting pot not the salad bowl was the model.
Trump’s base rallied to Trump not on the basis of race (most of his primary challengers and Hillary were white), but because his campaign appealed to those dispossessed by globalization and caricatured (as is your wont as well) as ignorant. When Obama was elected, were you worried he appealed to racial solidarity (remember his faux-inner city patois, though not as clumsy as Hillary’s), and therefore achieved record bloc voting at unprecedented rates? I think his “get in their faces,” “punish our enemies,” “bring a gun to a knife fight,” etc. were all intended to rally his base. Racial polarization was part of the Obama electoral plan and it worked well for him twice, although disastrously for his party that lost most state offices, Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court.
Democrats’ problem, as I wrote, was that Obama’s base was not transferrable to Hillary, given that some of it was based on racial fides, but his downside (polarizing the white working class by associations with the like of anti-Semites and racists like Rev. Wright or Al Sharpton) was.
—vic
08/22/17
From An Angry Reader:
I have heard your act numerous times, mostly on the John Bachelor show, and I find it tiresome.
You really need to spend more time on your “idyllic” farm and not venture out into reality.
Times change, places change, and people change, but you will not change or cause change.
I am a California native, born in San Francisco and raised in Los Altos, so I have seen, firsthand,
the decline in California and especially the Bay Area during my 66 years.
I cannot argue with many of your observations, but much of what you say is not unique to
California.
The opioid crisis is but a symptom of a much larger national problem.
That problem being that many capable, working age persons have given up on working and are
merely leading lives of ignorant dissipation at increasing rates.
They have fundamentally given up on life and are just marking time until their sad lives end.
The worst part of this death spiral is that there is no end or improvement in sight.
No government leaders can come up with a solution to this problem.
The U.S. is headed down the road to second class status in the World and there appears no
solution or national will to reverse things.
Nothing said by you and your ilk will change this. The toothpaste has simply left the tube.
Maybe you would do better to adopt my philosophy.
That is that I grew up during a golden time in both California and the Bay Area and that no one can
take my fond memories away from me.
Let the newcomers squabble over the crumbs while I am looking beyond California and what it has become.
They will never know what you and I know having grown up in one of the best areas on Earth.
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Kevin Curtin,
You need to define what you mean by “you and your ilk.” And if you find “it tiresome,” there is no penalty in turning the channel. Otherwise, I find your angry reader note not so angry, but somewhat incoherent. Is your criticism that I fault present leadership, suggest changes, and lament the trajectory of California downward—when I should just accept it and lament the consequences?
In a nutshell, massive amounts of unprecedented wealth in a few coastal enclaves—the result of globalization and high-tech Silicon Valley—and epidemic interior poverty (the result of massive illegal immigration and flight of the middle classes out of state) have created two states that are ungovernable as one.
Otherwise, I agree we can retreat to the monastery of the mind to remember a lost California that once worked.
Victor Davis Hanson
08/21/17
From An Angry Reader:
If you publish my letter on your website, it may best be placed in the “Angry Reader” category. I only agree with you 10 percent of the time, but I’m not angry. You are one of the two or three best conservative commentators, in my view.
Three questions and one observation:
1) Who is the currently serving U.S. Representative, Senator or Governor that you most admire?
2) Who is the left-wing writer or commentator that you most respect? (The lefty VDH, if you will.)
3) The most negative word I’ve seen you use to describe the current President is “uncouth”. So, what level of uncouthness would disqualify a man from this office? In other words, if his policies meet your approval, is it “anything goes” for you, in terms of a candidate or office-holder’s personal behavior?
Observation: I’ve noticed that when one of your readers criticizes DJT, you acknowledge the complaint, then quickly pivot to a “Dems/progs are worse” argument. Valid or not, this line of reasoning lends some of your writings a certain repetitive nature, verging on boring.
Thanks from one who wishes to remain anonymous.
_________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Anonymous Angry Reader,
Ten percent agreement is better than none. Here are your answers:
1) I admire freshman Senator Tom Cotton and Rep. Devin Nunes.
2) Hmmm—left wing commentator? In terms of traditional Democrats, I think it would be Joel Kotkin and Walter Russell Mead.
3) What uncouth behavior would separate Trump’s message from Trump the messenger to such a degree that I would withdraw support? Perhaps if Trump 1) had sexual relations in the Oval Office bathroom with a young female intern assigned to him, and then lied about it and smeared her; or 2) I learned that Trump approved the sale of 20% of U.S. uranium holdings to Russian interests while in office, even as his wife got huge honoraria from the Russians and his foundation suddenly found itself showered with gifts. If he invites a rapper into the White House whose ankle bracelet goes off, I’ll give him a pass.
Citing an Obama parallel is not the logical fallacy known as “tu quoque” (you too) for two reasons: I do not rely on “Obama (etc.) did worse without media worry” alone, but only employ it to show the uneven current press coverage and the bias inherent in their reporting (80% negative according to the Shorenstein Center)—along with empirical arguments that have nothing to do with comparative culpability.
Well, I have been writing columns since 2001, often more than three a week. So the aggregate is now approaching some 2,500 or more, so some repetition is natural?
Anonymous
08/10/17
From An Angry Reader:
To: Prof. Victor Davis Hanson
At the end of your interview with Scott Simon on 8 July 2017 I heard this: “And look how they took a good man like George Bush and turned him into a monster”. It caught my attention.
One of the few things I agree with Donald J Trump about is what he had to say on the campaign trail about George W Bush, his administration, 911, and the Iraq war. I don’t think I need to remind you but: The Bush Administration was informed repeatedly by the outgoing Clinton administration that Osama Bin Laden was determined to attack the US on its own soil. So the Bush Administration failed to act on the real intelligence it had. Donald J Trump said as much. Donald J Trump thought that the George W Bush and his Administration lied to congress and the American people about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He said so. Now I don’t believe this is true because Trump said so, I believe it because I used the same straight up news reporting to come to my conclusions Trump did. Reporting by people with years of credibility at major news organizations brought me the following:
- The ‘Yellowcake from Nigeria’ paper is a phony. With real yellowcake, billions of dollars, the right people, and a couple of years perhaps you have a deliverable weapon.
- Iraq had been under embargo since the first Gulf war. They didn’t even have GPS for their troops in the desert, much less centrifuges, aluminum tubes, or a way to get a nuclear weapon to the US.
- Hans Blixt and his team had found all but nothing that suggested a current WMD program. No program.
- Secretary of State Powell’s presentation at the United Nations was unconvincing. If the Bush Administration had something real to show let the public see it.
- All assertions of great danger to the public in the press were coming from the Bush and Blair administrations or parrots in Commons, Congress and the Right wing press.
- Real reporters have ways of getting information out of places like Iraq under Saddam Hussein There was silence. No intelligence is intelligence too.
- Finally an ‘intelligence estimate’ (which is all they had), is an estimate. Not a ‘slam dunk’.
On the basis of the above I believed there was little chance Iraq had wmd’s. There is no Bill Maher or Steven Colbert or any one like them leading to my conclusion that the Bush and Blair Administrations lied. If George W Bush’s reputation suffers from this so be it. I have in laws who still think of George W Bush as a “lovely Christian man” I don’t. I think “monster” is not as accurate as war criminal. He’s a war criminal along with Cheney and Rumsfeld et al. who supported this lie. My opinion of George W Bush is not based on Left wing comics and commentators and I don’t need to use foul or abusive language. I’m as angry as those who do. So no weapons of mass destruction. Plenty of lies and death. America should face up to this. I hoped to hear more when Trump brought it up. All I heard was the sound of pearls being clutched Left and Right. Let’s not let something so wrong happen again. We would be living in a different world if the SCOTUS cared about who won Florida in 2000.
Have a nice day.
Reuel Kenyon
______________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Reuel Kenyon,
Bill Clinton is not a good source for bin Laden on any matter; his appeasement after terrorist attacks emboldened bin Laden, and he turned down an offer from Middle Eastern nations to arrest bin Laden and extradite him to the U.S.
All these issues have been adjudicated. Bush did not “lie” but relied on the intelligence of the era—from the CIA (“slam dunk”), NSA, and DIA, and from foreign intelligence services such as those in Jordan and Egypt that warned us that our troops would come under missile chemical attack while mustering in Kuwait (was that an international conspiracy, one that prompted tens of thousands of chemical mask protection kits to be issued to our troops?).
But more importantly, did you ever read the joint Congressional authorizations of October 2002 for the war—the official and legal basis for undertaking the war?
There were some 23 writs; only 3-4 concerned WMD. Most cited genocide, violation of UN accords, destruction of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs, the Clinton era liberation act, bounties for suicide bombers on the West Bank, harboring of terrorist killers from the first World Trade Center attack and other operations, attempts to kill George H.W. Bush, violations of no-fly-zones and 1991 accords, etc.
They were passed with sizable Democratic support—with stirring speeches from Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. Biden later suggested a stable Iraq was perhaps the Obama administration’s “greatest achievement,” a characterization echoed by Obama when he prematurely pulled out peace-keepers from a stable Iraq in late 2011—ensuring the chaos that followed.
Your angry letter is a calcified relic of 2006-7 and the hysteria of the Michael Moore/Cindy Sheehan era. In the words of progressives—time to Move On.
Have a nice day,
Victor Hanson
08/07/17
From An Angry Reader:
Often, as in debates with flat Earth proponents, global warming denier, the mentally ill, or the Vatican persecution of Galileo, it is quite simply ludicrous to champion “fair and balanced” coverage, validating both sides’ integrity. What one needs is a fire alarm. When the Mooch’s head rolls, you will make an excellent apologist replacement. Enjoy the Emperor’s new clothes.
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Matt Dross,
The key to letter-writing is coherence. Yours, sadly, is abjectly incoherent. So you equate skepticism over whether carbon releases have radically heated the planet in a way unknown during past radical fluctuations in climate, and are now reaching lethal levels demanding that governments radically curb the use of heat-releasing appliances and machines—with mental illness?
If you knew a tiny bit of history, you would find yourself in creepy company with those who rejected fair and balanced debate, given the certainty of their theories, and of course, with those whose sanctimoniousness demanded any means necessary (in your case the end of disinterested coverage) to achieve supposedly noble ends.
How the demise of the “Mooch” has anything to do with this question, only you apparently know.
Sincerely,
VDH
07/24/17
From An Angry Reader:
You need some serious help.
Robert Millsap
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Robert Millsap,
In some sense, you are right. I have an acre yard that I tend myself and often could use some quite serious help in mowing, pruning, weeding, and hauling.
Sincerely Victor Hanson
07/14/17
From An Angry Reader:
You either drank the cool aid or got a handsome check in the mail. Nonetheless, your argument doesn’t hold water. Not when I talk to people in southwest Virginia whose wells were contaminated by fracking. And throw in the illegal discharge of the brine water back into local streams. A resident showed me the pipe he says the company (look it up) uses in the wee hours of the morning.
The push back to the eventual end to fossil fuels is to be expected, but the end will come. That is something to bank on.
Mike Harton
Midlothian, VA
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Mike Harton,
It is never wise to begin a refutation with an ad hominem attack, a de facto admission of a weak argument.
Fracking is not a zero sum game of evil versus good, as I wrote.
You simply do not appreciate the role of cheaply produced U.S. energy in relation to geostrategic, military, and economic challenges, as natural gas and affordable petroleum can bridge the fossil fuels gap until competitive so-called “green” energy is available.
For each of your anecdotes, I could add and trump you one: the Mexican-American poor in my environs who cannot afford $4 a gallon gas to get 40 miles to work, but now save $1,000 a year due to crashing gas prices, or the enlisted military who feel relieved that the Middle East and its assorted quagmires are not vital any longer for U.S. energy needs, or the business people who believe cheaper natural-gas generated electricity will lure back high-paying jobs from Asia and Europe in energy-intensive industries.
We live in a tragic world of 51% advantage always being preferable to 49%. Only the adolescent mind argues that a choice must be perfect to be good. The alternatives to fossil fuel production for now are more Solyndra-like subsidized boondoggles, or the green mandates that spike kilowatt rates and force California’s Central Valley poor to sit in Target and Wal-Mart to cool off, given their inability to afford to run air conditioners in 110 degree heat.
Fossil fuels may well disappear in a few decades; in the meantime, if we can produce our own fuel it will immeasurably aid our middle and poor classes, while giving us latitudes in foreign policy not seen since the 1940s.
By the way, I have never taken payment from anyone to massage a particular point of view nor have used mind-altering drugs. To suggest those who disagree with you do that is what the psycho-babble industry calls ‘projection’.
Finally, as I write, some members of Congress are investigating various green anti-fracking groups for allegedly receiving “a handsome check” from Putin’s oil interests (that have been nearly wrecked by US frackers) to stop fracking and thereby restore billions of lost foreign exchange to the now anemic Russian economy. Should I accuse you—without evidence—of predicating your anti-fracking stance on Russian money? To do so would be as absurd as what you suggest.
Victor Hanson
Selma, CA
07/13/17
From an Angry Reader:
Hello Dr. Hanson,
While it’s hard to argue with “be happy day by day”, our current form of capitalism – which Hoover seems to endorse – makes that near impossible.
Over the last 30 years, Friedman’s nutty idea of maximizing shareholder value as the only responsibility a corporation has, followed by Jack Welch’s popularizing of that nutty idea (which he later regretted) killed the middle and working class.
And CEO’s are paid not Drucker’s 20x average wages but 335x. Hoover’s free market stance seems ok with all that.
We need a different form of capitalism for your column to make sense.
Best,
D Davidson
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader D Davidson,
Thank you for your note. As I look around the word at the plight of the poor—Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Mexico, Russia—I do not see capitalism as the common denominator of poverty, but rather communism, socialism, statism, and crony capitalism of a sort. Globalization did untold damage to the red-state interior, in that it helped weaken the idea of a nation of common values and citizens and made the global market the final arbiter of social policy.
Are you a Trump voter, given that your letter seems to echo the concerns, for example, as voiced by Steven Bannon at the Vatican not long ago, who called for an enlightened form of capitalism and an end to transnational elite governance? I really do not care what CEOs or the rich make—most like the Google team, Facebook people, Warren Buffet, and Gates, Inc. are leftist billionaires—as long as the middle classes and poor have good jobs, fairly priced housing and the hope that life will be better for their children. That is no longer the case, largely because an elite has decided that overregulation, utopian environmentalism, and creeping statism is good for everyone else but themselves who have the means to navigate around the consequences of their own ideologies.
We need to promote cheap energy, manufacturing jobs, vocational education, and begin to honor professions like farming, mining, timber, and construction rather than relegate them to caricatures and ossified entertainment (e.g., Ax-men, ice truckers, tuna boaters, etc.) on cable reality TV.
I have found among the rich somewhat of a difference between those who ‘made it’ farming, ranching, building, manufacturing, etc. vs. those who made it even more so through speculation, banking and insurance. The former often seems more real in some sense. As you can see I have a prejudice against the metrosexual Pajama Boy elite who profess one way and live quite another, although I confess it is often stereotyped and unfair.
Sincerely,
V Hanson
07/10/17
From an Angry Reader:
Mr. Hanson,
You seem intent on defining progressives as people who loathe Donald Trump, as clearly defined group who have a unified strategy of driving him out of office.
The tactic of defining—and dismissing—all progressives with a broad brush is a convenient way to give Trump supporters a clearly defined enemy to hate. That style of rhetoric has more in common with Rush Limbaugh than a respected academician. It is also the type of divisive and overwrought discourse (from both sides) that we are currently awash in.
I am a progressive, which to my mind describes what I am for, not against.
I do deeply regret that, though fairly elected, Donald Trump is our president, but that is unrelated progressivism or conservatism. Even if I were apolitical I would find President Trump deeply lacking in so many non-ideological ways. He is thin-skinned, untruthful and doesn’t seem to grasp the import of his position and seems to lack the character and intellect for the presidency.
I agree that he is being relentlessly attacked from many quarters (not just progressives), but his detractors do not need a strategy to bring him down. The media does not need to constantly vilify him to destroy his credibility. Simply observing his behavior, listening what he says and reading his tweets is sufficient to irreparably damage his presidency. He will likely bring down his own presidency with very little outside help.
Respectfully,
Glenn Shellhouse
Colorado Springs, CO
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Glenn Shellhouse,
Trump is certainly flawed as you point out. But his agenda is far preferable to the Obama-Clinton trajectory. And we have had pretty creepy presidents in the past. So far Trump is not seducing and bedding 20-something interns as did JFK routinely, or as Bill Clinton frolicked with an unpaid intern of 22 (and then lied about it to the nation and under oath in a deposition). He has not tried to pack the Supreme Court as did FDR, or report book profits as capital gains to escape income taxes, as did Ike. We must in part see Trump’s excesses in a context of past presidencies. I thought de facto suspending federal immigration law was revolutionary and harmful to the state.
Trump is the first president who has neither political nor military service, so obviously the landscape is very different, and of course Trump’s style is over-the-top and often ad hominem. All regrettable. But with Obama the venom was directed at entire groups (“punish our enemies”, “get in their faces”, “take a gun to a knife fight”, the clingers, the “lazy” Americans, etc.).
07/07/17
From an Angry Reader:
Reply from Victor Davis Hanson:
07/06/17
From An Angry Reader:
In your recent article you are off base, friend. Every day that passes proves Trump to be unfit in so many ways.
I figure a Trump believer to be either embarrassingly uninformed or purely hypocritical, willing to push a conservative agenda regardless of flag bearer. No doubt you are the latter…
If conservatism was more about fairness instead of protecting the wealth of the very rich, I might even go for that. Minus the current “leader”, of course.
Stop defending him; you clearly are too intelligent to believe he is worthy.
Bill Sellars
Reply from Victor Davis Hanson:
Dear Angry Reader Bill Sellars,
Is “friend” sarcastic? I don’t recall ever meeting a Bill Sellars. Congratulations, you met one of the angry reader criteria: ad hominem (“you are the latter….”) but are to be commended for omitting the usual exclamation marks, capital letters, and profanity.
In the fashion of Barack Obama’s “clingers” and Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” and “irredeemables,” in your contempt, you are writing off half the country who voted for Trump. I have a number of friends and family members who voted for Hillary, and never resorted to the sort of ad hominem that you and the Left routinely embrace.
No candidate runs solo, but always against someone else. Hillary on every issue—higher taxes, more regulation, restrictions on gas and oil development, open borders, identity politics—was, to paraphrase Obama, on the wrong side of history. She was enmeshed in scandals, shamelessly breaking the law with a private server, destroying documents, trafficking in classified documents. The Wikileaks trove revealed the depths of corruption between her campaign and the sycophantic media. She and her husband had created a net worth of over $200 million, largely by leveraging her political career and offices to earn huge speaking fees, and donations to the foundation, which they manipulated as a source of free travel for themselves and sinecures for their hangers-on. Hillary is “very rich”, and her trajectory started at the beginning of Bill’s Arkansas career, when she leveraged her husband’s governorship to manipulate the cattle futures’ market, earning $100,000 on a $1,000 investment, at odds of over a billion to one.
The “very rich” are mostly liberals. Try looking at counties by per capita income and then look how they voted in the last three elections: your “very rich” are very liberal, largely because they have the capital and income to exempt themselves from the logical consequences of their own ideology. A case in point is socialist Bernie Sanders—with a million-dollar-income, three tony homes, and a wife under investigation for improperly arranging a sweet-heart loan (and she was instrumental in evicting the disabled from the new campus she purchased on her road to bankrupting her college). Why are Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street predominately progressives?
Conservatism is about three things: 1) respect for past traditions and customs and emphases on family, religion, and communities, 2) a growing market economy in which free market capitalism creates wealth that enriches everyone—in which one tolerates some inequality because the vast majority is not poor, rather than one being impoverished like everyone else (cf. Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, 3) a deterrent foreign policy that believes peace is a dividend of bad people being afraid of the consequences of their natural desire to try something stupid against stronger better people.
The Republican Party is mostly a middle class and upper-middle class party; the Democratic Party is now the domain of the subsidized lower middle classes and poor, and the hyper-rich. It despises the middle class for lacking the romance of the distant poor and the middle classes for their supposedly crass and tasteless culture.
Stop stereotyping: you may be too smart to mouth such ossified liberal talking points.
Vic Hanson
06/28/18
From A Not So Angry Reader:
Dr. Hanson:
I am a frequent listener to the Classicist. After listening to the episode “A Cold Civil War?” I had a few questions. I do not intend this to be inflammatory, I simply do not want to make assumptions about your beliefs. First, do you believe that approximately three million illegal votes were cast in the 2016 presidential election? Second, do you believe that President Obama was born an American citizen?
In the show, you mentioned the varicosity of much of the discourse present today. I say this not in an attempt change your opinions but rather to provide perspective on the root cause. Much of this stems from different world views. Just as you would be outraged by the oppression an ethnic minority because of their ethnicity. Many people today do not see homosexuality as a choice and therefore see discrimination against them in the same vein as discrimination based on ethnicity. This lens feels applicable to many issues facing society today.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
John
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Not So Angry Reader John Vincent
Thank you for your reasoned and subtle critique (and without capital letters, obscenity, exclamation points, dots, and ad hominem invective). I shall answer the questions in the order you asked them:
- I do not know how many illegal voters cast ballots in 2016, but I believe it may have been a considerable number. Neither Trump nor his critics have ever systematically investigated the controversy. The state of California issues over 800,000 driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, and claims that they are separated from citizen licenses that provide an automatic avenue to voting. I wonder. Nearly two million ballots were issues to deceased voters. The voting rolls are not systematically updated and audited. So yes, I believe improper voting occurs all the time; can you explain how in 2012, 59 voting divisions in Philadelphia recorded zero Romney votes. I find that statistically improbable.
- I believe that Obama was born a U.S. citizen. But I think rumors grew from the fact that he seems not to have objected later when his publisher issued a publicity booklet claiming that he was born in Kenya, an untruth which Obama might have not objected to given its multicultural resonance. As one who has provided publishers with book bios and audited the published version on over 24 different occasions, I find the excuse that the author was unaware of the publisher’s mistaken bio ludicrous.
- I believe in most cases homosexuality is an inherited trait and biologically determined, though culture and fashion can affect the identity of a small minority who may not feel either consistently female or male. In that sense, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation I think is abjectly wrong and illegal. But that said, I don’t think the current gay political movement is always fueled any longer by a desire to ensure civil rights to homosexuals (that goal has largely been achieved), but rather aims at punishing some, who in private and sometimes for religious reasons, do not feel homosexuality is an inherited trait, but rather a failure of ethics. All Americans are entitled to their private opinions and if they follow the law they should not be forced to conform to a particular world view. I would fight for the rights of a homosexual to be protected under the Constitution and likewise the rights of free expression of the critic of homosexuality who feels that it is a sin. I hope both those views are shared by both gays and non-gays.
Sincerely,
Victor
06/26/17
From an Angry Reader:
Dr. Hanson,
Years ago, especially right after 9 / 11, I enjoyed your essays on NRO. One piece I especially liked was your column, in late 2001, titled (if memory serves), “I’m Glad We’re Not Fighting Us.”
Pardon my brusqueness, but what the hell has happened to you?
You’ve turned into a babbling, incoherent “Trumpkin,” in my view.
Look…President Trump may well turn out to be the worst President in US history. The “word on the street” here in DC is that he might resign by the end of the year. Don’t believe me? Google “Sarah Palin 2009” or check out FiveThirtyEight’s recent article on Vice President Mike Pence.
C’mon, dude…get your intellectual “mojo” back and get off this bizarre Trump idolatry.
You’re way better than that.
Take care,
Daniel Weir
Washington, DC
—————————————————–
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Daniel Weir,
Thank you for your angry reader post.
I do not think anything happened to me.
In summer 2016 we were confronted with two candidates. One was more conservative than the other and far more likely to make conservative executive branch and judicial appointments; the other was committed to a four-year extension of the eight years that had seen the debt double, GDP never rise to 3%, zero interest rates, a foreign policy in shambles (Iran deal, Libya bombing, failed reset with Putin, needless withdrawal of peacekeepers from Iraq, ISIS, Chinese aggressions, etc.), and identity politics and racial and ethnic tensions at an all-time high. The result was that the Democrats under Obama lost 1,100 elections, and now are a minority in the state legislatures and governorships, the House, the Senate, and hold neither the presidency nor the Supreme Court.
To quote yourself, “what the hell happened with you” not to see what Obama did to your party? Do you think Pajama Boys, Black Lives Matter, foul-mouthed politicians, a Tom Perez, Kathy Griffin, and Steven Colbert, Occupy Wall Street, and storming campuses are really going to convince those in Flint and Youngstown that Democrats are for the working classes? Those with nasal accents in Silicon Valley and Dupont Circle should not be running a national party, whatever their wealth and connections.
Hillary Clinton, running on her loathing of the “deplorables” and “irredeemables,” and facing a spate of scandals (email server, Clinton Foundation quid pro quos, sweet-heart speaking deals, etc.) assumed she could xerox Barack Obama’s identity politics blueprint; she could not and lost (in the logic of identity politics, she may have been a pandering progressive, but she was still a 69-year-old white woman).
What is hard to understand about that? And given FiveThirtyEight’s record in predicting a sure-thing Trump loss in 2016, why would I believe them or the majority of polls that assured us that Hillary’s “blue wall” was not in danger?
The chances of a Trump resignation are zero; the Republicans have won four straight House special elections. And the Trump agenda on energy production, conservative appointments, restoration of deterrence abroad, deregulation, and immigration reform move ahead. If he gets Obamacare and tax reform, he will be difficult to beat in 2020, should he run.
Again, “pardon my brusqueness [Daniel] but what the hell has happened to you”: after 9/11 you seemed to have been empirical; now you seem to be a captive of your emotions and groupthink.
You are better than that.
Take care,
Victor Hanson
Selma, CA
06/06/17
From an Angry Reader:
Dear Mr Hanson
I am an independent who voted for John McCain as a write in
Your op ed entitled Regime Change by Any Other Name is disappointing.
POTUS has been involved in more demonstrable falsehoods than any President since Nixon
He undermines the warnings that President Regan gave us on Russia
How dare you compare him to Reagan and his foreign policy, Trump is a clueless neophyte.
He attempted to delegitimize our Intelligence agencies when they reported that Russia attempted to influence the election in his favor , and called them Nazis
He accused his predecessor of a criminal act and previously of not being born in the US with no evidence
It appears that he obstructed justice , we shall find out . At worst he sold out his country.
We who watched him in the NY area for decades know he is a con man , a cheat, and a lawbreaker as well as a womanizer.
Everyone is against him ? Why do you think that is? Does a true leader heighten the divisions in our country or attempt to unite all of us?
Regime change? The Constitution provides for just that contingency.
I regret that we could not have McCain for President.
I regret that so called Evangelicals supported this morally bankrupt person for President.
I regret that so called Conservatives carry water for this fake in exchange for a Supreme Court Justice , at any cost.
Shame on you sir
Sincerely
J. Dubniczki
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear J. Dubniczki,
Please calm down and take a breath! Life is far too short to scream it away.
Neither you nor I know whether Trump “has been involved in more demonstrable falsehoods since Nixon.” Have you calibrated and collated them? Obama was forced to admit that his once truthful memoir was largely an impressionistic myth. Do you remember “if you like your doctor, you can…,” etc.? And the commentaries of those such as Ben Rhodes and Jonathan Gruber who chuckled about the endemic deceptions they engaged in?
How has Trump undermined Regan (sic)? Aside from the fact that the Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union, and aside from the additional fact Reagan once proposed de facto a negotiated nuclear disarmament with the Soviets, what evidence do you have that Trump is pro-Russian in deed? Did he dismantle missile defense in eastern Europe, or snooze while Crimea was swallowed up, or do nothing after Russian cyber-attacks, or lecture Romney about his anti-Russian obsessions, or promise to be “flexible” with Putin if he would cool it during the election? Again, please cite an example. Did Trump lift sanctions against the Russians? Did he slash our defense budget? Did he ignore the threat of North Korea?
Also, please produce the Trump quote on the “Nazis.” Again, what you assert is pure emotion and not reasoned analysis. Intelligence agencies likely spied illegally on Americans, unmasked identities, and leaked them to the press—all that predated Trump. Collusion charges are being investigated; the head of the National Intelligence Agency and CIA have both admitted they saw no evidence of Russian-Trump collusion. We await the verdict of Mr. Mueller.
Of course, Trump is crude and uncouth; I wrote extensively about these character flaws during the nomination process, including his wacky birthism. But that conspiracy theory in part was fueled by Obama himself, who, for example, stated on his own book bio promo jacket that he was born in Kenya, not because he was, but because it sounded multiculturally hip and useful in selling his two-cultures fabulist memoir—in the fashion that Barry Soetero did not resonate like Barack Obama. Trump humiliated himself in taking the bait and conflating Obama’s manufactured sense of identity with some sort of proof that he was Kenyan.
Once an imperfect Trump was the only alternative to a more imperfect Hillary Clinton, a 51% conservative agenda was preferable to a radically progressive one. Ninety-two percent of Republicans tended to agree and knew Trump was an flawed messenger for an otherwise welcomed message on many issues.
It is quite shameful to say “he sold out his country” when no investigation has found, after 6 months of intensive research, any evidence that Trump did so, and certainly not on the scale of the Clintons, who in tandem green-lighted a vast sale of 20% of North American uranium to Russian fronts for donations to the Clinton Foundation and Bill’s lucrative speaking fees. Are you aware of that dubious behavior?
“Everyone is against” him is the sort of groupthink boilerplate that characterizes your entire puerile vent. “Regime change” does not refer to constitutional remedies for high crimes and misdemeanors but in popular parlance denotes forced overthrow of a leader, in the fashion of Madonna’s “blow up the White House” reference or the various tropes of assassination/beheading chic we see in the popular media.
I do not end with “shame on you, sir,” but rather feel for you, given you have become enslaved to your emotions and hate. Embitterment is a poor remedy for the tragedies that we all deal with in an imperfect world. I sincerely hope you find a cure for your malady, though it won’t be found in transferring your general frustrations to the election of Donald Trump.
Get well soon, sir,
Sincerely,
Victor Hanson
06/05/17
From an Angry Reader:
From: Goofomatic
Dear Sir,
You may be a “classicist” and historian but you are clearly not a logician. Your reductive, simplistic polarizing nonsense may appeal to those disaffected and disenchanted by change but to others, like me, it reeks of divisive, defeatist drivel. Globalization is merely the hobgoblin you need in order to justify your rambling lament for “the good old days”. I have read numerous op-ed pieces written by you and they are consistent in their litany on complaints and completely devoid of proposed solutions, or even ideas for improving whatever you’re complaining about.
What alternative course do you propose? Are you just looking to vent? Your failure to grasp the complexities and impact of technological change, the geo political economic realities of today is staggering.
Signed,
A thinking person
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Anonymous “Thinking Person,”
Your final grand epithet is your own, but sadly not supported by the content of your letter which reveals little thinking—aside from the fact that anonymity often hides a lack of self-confidence and reveals timidity. For someone who is “thinking,” you sure do not supply any concrete examples, but instead plenty of misinformation. In my piece, I wrote exactly what you wished to read, but apparently missed: globalization is paradoxical in allowing those from the Amazon basin to the Czech countryside to have material opportunities undreamed of in the past while also eroding traditional networks of communities and towns.
How perfectly you conform to the now typical “angry reader” profile (ad hominem, streams of repetitive adjectives (“reductive, simplistic, polarizing, nonsense [do you ever come up for air?]), all without evidence and specificity. I congratulate you that you did not resort to capital letters and obscenity.
I am not disenchanted by change per se, but seek to chronicle its paradoxes and contradictions as globalization makes us all materially wealthier, but also more isolated and often unhappy (Facebook is great in connecting the world, even as it isolates us from neighbors next door). My job as an op-ed writer is to chronicle contemporary phenomena and to make readers question the received wisdom of popular culture, not necessarily to offer wonkish solutions or political programs, although often I do suggest possible remedies for problems of illegal immigration and education, to take two examples.
I have traveled a great deal and read widely on technological change from antiquity (do you know anything about the first globalization during the Hellenistic and Roman eras and their effects on local communities?) to the modern age, and have tried to live a traditional life on a farm in an impoverished area of rural California while working at a cosmopolitan Stanford at the heart of Silicon Valley.
Do you seek to live both sides of the globalist equation, or are you venting because my constructive criticism of a globalized elite comes too close to your home? Certainly, your angry letter would resonate if you had defiantly identified yourself, described your expertise on globalization, and offered reasoned criticism—instead of rather meekly hiding behind a pseudonym and a pompous one at that. Your email ID was “Goofomatic”: the one accurate adjective of your entire incoherent rant.
Signed,
Thinking Person,
Victor Hanson
05/24/17
From an Angry Reader:
Mr. Hanson,
Normally, I would find a credentialed resume such as yours quite impressive and interesting, however, the deluded and incredulous nonsense I witnessed you spouting on FOX News with Tucker Carlson, that Russian involvement with the Trump campaign exists only as a ‘trumped up’ Dem Big Lie to destroy a narcissistic buffoon unqualified for the office to which he conned his way into, exhibits your resume to be a sham. It’s not that I disagree with you–it’s because you’re so overtly full of it and only serving to make a bad situation facing the country worse.
Seriously, Mr. Hanson, you have got to be on crack and shilling BS for FOX to support your habit. You clearly have no shame and no conscience, but certainly no shortage of ego to be disseminating that crap. You’re no educator, you’re an entertainer and a poor one at that when doing your act for anyone benefitting of intelligence and a discerning eye and ear for bullshit.
Sincerely,
Ivan Appelrouth
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Ivan Appelrouth,
You fulfill most of the criteria for a diagnosis of Trump Derangement Syndrome—and so much so that you seem on the verge of some sort of emotional episode.
Personal invective/ad hominem? Check (e.g., “your resume to be a sham”; “full of it”; “on crack”; “no shame and no conscience”).
Hysterical capital letters? Check (e.g., “BS”).
Potty words? Check (e.g., “crap”; “bullshit”).
Absolute absence of argument, evidence, references? Check—not a single fact-based objection or any evidence at all to prove your rant.
If you were a serious critic, you would demonstrate how I was incorrect in asserting that the Steele dossier originated with Never Trump Republicans and was picked up by the Clinton campaign, then turned over to the FBI, leaked—and then only to be thoroughly discredited; that reset was a Clinton-Obama offspring; that Clinton-Obama foreign policy enabled Putin, from annexing borderlands to committing cyber-attacks; that after six months of constant media attacks and government investigations no one has found any evidence that Trump colluded with the Putin government to ensure the Clinton campaign lost; that the supposed Russian involvement, even if proven true, did not influence the final the outcome of the election (e.g., forcing Hillary to skip Wisconsin, or to call a quarter of the country deplorables and irredeemables, or to campaign in Georgia and Arizona rather than blue wall states, or to forgo critical polling in the last weeks, etc.); and that the Obama administration’s intelligence appointees surveilled the Trump campaign people, unmasked identities, and leaked that information illegally to the press.
So “seriously,” Mr. Appelrouth, you must define what are the precise crimes that Trump is to be charged with, show evidence or likelihood that he committed them, and then establish that they are singular grounds for impeachment. In way of comparison, even promising to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on a hot mic to be flexible after an election with Vladimir Putin, allowing North American uranium holdings to fall into Russian-interest hands, or striking secret deals whose ancillary agreements that only surface post facto, etc. are not grounds for impeachment.
I appreciate the compliments on the curriculum vitae.
Sincerely,
Victor Hanson
05/19/17
From an Angry Reader:
DR HANSON.
TRUMP TRAITOR IS A RUSSIAN SPY.
I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING HIM IN JAIL WITH THE ENTIRE ADMINISTRATION.
THE TRUMP JOKE PRESIDENCY IS GOING DOWN IN FLAMES.
TRUMP FIRED COMEY TO CONCEAL HIS RUSSIAN CONNECTIONS.
DEMOCRATS WILL BE IN POWER FOR 30 YEARS AFTER THE TRUMP DEBACLE.
-HEIN
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear “HEIN”
There are three characteristics that identify writers suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome: the use of all capital letters in their writing (and sometimes as well repeated hyphenation marks), the resort to profanity, and the use of unsupported hyperbole. I congratulate you on suffering from only two of the three symptoms.
What is the aim of capital letters? And what makes you think Trump, who is no fan of Obama-era reset, is a spy for the Soviet Union? Did he approve sales of 20% of the U.S. uranium reserves to Russia, or receive huge speaking fees in Russia, while his wife was U.S. Secretary of State? Did he promise on a hot mic to a Russian official to be more “flexible” with Putin after he was elected? Please substantiate.
Trump fired Comey because he was a publicity hound and intellectually disingenuous; Hillary would have fired him on day one of her presidency.
After 2008 amid the Obama victory craze, James Carville (40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation) predicted a 40-year Democratic regnum; instead Obama within eight years had lost his party the vast majority of state legislatures and governorships, as well as the Senate and House, Presidency, and the Supreme Court.
I doubt any party will have a 30-year continuum of power.
For all your zeal, you never adduce any proof to support your charges of treason. Why not?
-HAN
05/05/17
From an Angry Reader:
Mr. Hanson,
I don’t know anything about Stanley Baldwin, but I’ll assume your description of him is accurate. In that case, you have to stretch quite a bit to make Obama into Baldwin. For instance:
You call Baldwin a pacifist. Obama is decidedly not a pacifist. He is a Niebuhrian realist who was willing to bomb and assassinate. Just because he was given the Nobel Peace Prize and preferred diplomacy over the use of violence does not make him a pacifist or appeaser.
You claim that Obama, like Baldwin, seems “to believe that war breaks out only because of misunderstandings” that “can be remedied through more talk and concessions,” and that Obama was opposed to strategic deterrence. Is this not a simplistic and one-sided view of Obama’s actions? He readily acknowledged the evil of organizations such as ISIS and sought the most effective ways to neutralize them—not only through “soft power” that appeals to hearts and minds, but also through military alliances, training local fighters, and through a much stepped-up program of drone warfare.
You fault Obama for Iran taking 10 US sailors into custody, but you fail to mention that the sailors were in Iranian territorial waters, were therefore legally apprehended by Iran, and that Obama’s calm approach got them released quickly.
You fault Obama for the uranium enrichment agreement with Iran despite the fact that the majority of strategists have hailed this as a great success; that most analysts believe that trying to bomb Iran out of a nuclear program would not have worked and would have led to far more dangerous problems.
You claim that when Assad “called Obama’s bluff” about the red line of using chemical weapons, that Obama “did nothing other than call … Putin to beg Assad to stop killing civilians with chemical weapons.” That’s not my memory of events. My memory is that the US was on the very brink of war with Assad when, during a news conference, Secretary of State Kerry was asked if there was anything that could prevent the beginning of US bombing. Kerry replied that Syria would have to immediately destroy all of its chemical weapons—something Kerry didn’t believe Syria would do. It was at that moment that Russia offered to destroy all of Syria’s chemical weapons. Obama, on balance, decided that was a better option than widening a destabilizing war with an uncertain outcome. Trump’s recent correct decision to bomb a Syrian airfield because of Syria’s recent use of chemical weapons was made possible by Obama’s red-line stance. Syria clearly violated the agreement, and Russia was exposed as a fraudulent actor.
North Korea building more and better missiles (and nuclear bombs) was not due to Obama’s policies. On the contrary, that was due to the blundering of Bush. Bill Clinton was in the process of a negotiated settlement with North Korea to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but the Bush administration then torpedoed those efforts and instead threatened North Korea. There is no military solution to North Korea arming itself with nuclear weapons short of exposing South Korea and the North Korean population to mass nuclear carnage. North Korea will continue to pursue nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles as long as it feels threatened. If you have found some other magical solution, I’d like to hear it.
I’m not saying Obama made every right decision in Syria or elsewhere. He almost certainly did not. It may be he was too hesitant to use force in some situations. But that is a far cry from the blanket assertions you make in your column. And time may vindicate him rather than fault him. It may be that his complex strategy of diplomacy and military action was about as good as we could have done under the circumstances. In any case, I urge you to be more accurate, knowledgeable, and nuanced about the uses of diplomacy.
Ryan Ahlgrim
Richmond, VA
____________________________
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Ryan Ahlgrim,
When I listed various attributes of Stanley Baldwin’s agenda, I ended with “Obama, the Nobel peace laureate and former president, resembles Baldwin.” And then I listed the areas of commonality, and most certainly did not include Baldwin’s pacifism as an Obama trait. Did you really read the column?
But that said, Obama’s targeted assassinations via drones and bombing of Libya had nothing to do with maintaining deterrence, which was largely lost after slashing the defense budget, appeasing Iran, letting ISIS, Syria, and North Korea fester, and offering various apologies and morally equivalent rationalizations to our increasingly bellicose enemies.
I suggest, Ryan, that it is not in your argument’s interest to invoke “ISIS”—given that Obama wrote the growing terrorist cabal off as a “jayvee” organization, and allowed it to sprout in Iraq and thrive in Syria, by foolishly pulling all U.S. peacekeepers out of a largely quiet Iraq in December 2011. No need to elaborate on Obama’s Syria policies or his “redline”; the genocide speaks for itself. One can read Ben Rhodes’s interview about an “echo chamber” and a “know nothing” media that was easily manipulated for a taste of how foreign policy was conducted. I don’t think the foreign policy of Ben Rhodes, John Kerry, and Susan Rice (as opposed to that of Jim Mattis and H.R. McMaster) was anything but extremely dangerous.
With all due respect, your assertion that Obama’s false redline empowered Trump’s bombing of a Syrian airfield is unhinged. Obama, John Kerry, and Susan Rice bragged that all chemical weapons were destroyed and that there were none left in Syria—as if they had any way of knowing, at best, and, at worse, must have known that assertion was untrue. Such statements were no more accurate than were Benghazi’s being caused by a video-maker, or Bowe Bergdahl being a POW who served with honor and distinction as alleged by Susan Rice.
Obama’s redline not only eroded U.S. deterrence (giving confidence to rogue states like North Korea and Iran to call our bluff), and led to hundreds of thousands of civilian dead in Syria, but also ushered in Russia’s return to the Middle East after a near half-century hiatus.
Ditto North Korea where you display the same historical ignorance. Bill Clinton bragged that his “settlement” would shortly lead to the dismantling of all North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Nothing of the sort happened.
During the Bush term, it became clear that North Korea had stealthily used Clinton’s naiveté to rush toward nuclearization; Bush did not threaten North Korea with force, but rather suggested that if it were to continue its trajectory, its behavior might lead to the nuclearization of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.
North Korea does not starve its own people and build nukes because it feels “threatened” but because it has hit on a two-decade long winning strategy of getting a few nuclear weapons, acting deranged, and demanding bribe money—and it has worked brilliantly in winning attention, cash, and influence for an otherwise failed and genocidal state.
The 10 sailors, incompetently led, amateurish, and poorly trained, were experiencing mechanical problems in their tiny flotilla, were unfamiliar with the environs of Farsi Island, and wandered into the waters off an Iranian island in the middle of the Persian Gulf. What followed was a propaganda coup, as they were blindfolded, told to put their hands up, humiliated, video-taped and interviewed. The incident was emblematic that the Obama Defense Department was not on full alert in the Persian Gulf, that the Iranians assumed that the U.S. would not demand that the sailors be immediately released, and that Iran saw no downside to an iconic act of humiliation—part of their larger publicity offensive during the tragic Iranian negotiations, whose full details were hidden by the Obama administration and are only now leaking out.
Given recently released information about secret side-agreements and concessions in the Iran Deal, the 2016-2017 aggressiveness of North Korea, the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and Putin’s post-reset assertiveness, I don’t think it is wise to praise Obama’s foreign policy. And I stand by my obvious and unoriginal statement that Obama appeased enemies, and made the world a less safe place, especially for his own country.
Lead from behind foreign policy was, in fact, like Stanley Baldwin’s (read up on the well-meaning naïf), who left office self-satisfied after ensuring the world would blow up under the watch of his successor Neville Chamberlain.
In any case, I urge you to be more accurate, knowledgeable, and nuanced about the nature of deterrence and European history of the 1930s.
Victor Hanson
Selma, California
05/01/17
From an Angry Reader:
Mr. Hanson,
Did you volunteer or were you drafted (like so many of us) to fight in Vietnam? Did you know “we” lost that war to those so called “commies” and now those “commies” make Trump brand shirts and ties?
Also, are you willing to pay for increased US military involvement throughout the world with more tax cuts as the US did in the never ending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Cutting spending for meals on wheels, planned parenthood, health insurance benefits for Americans, clean air and water, might not be enough to pay for all your munitions or even meet payroll for a lowly paid non drafted military. At least US tax dollars paid for our napalm in Vietnam. What are you willing to sacrifice in Syria, Iran, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. etc. etc. to “make America great again?” Perhaps your own life or limbs again?
Perhaps reading a little more George Santayana might help balance your thirst for blood. And perhaps a “proportionate” bombing of an air base before warning Russia and Assad before time might actually be actually a bit more equal in “proportions” to scare your enemies. And as a veteran and historian try to remember how many bombs, and napalm, and bullets, and killings of the enemy and our own troops it took in that classic military loss. Revenge may be sweet but it doesn’t always go as planned, even for those willing to pay for the effort with massive tax cuts. As a historian, that is one thing you should know by now.
Happy Easter.
Sincerely,
Jimmy Gorman
Chicago Tribune Subscriber
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Jimmy Gorman,
I registered for the draft the day that I was eligible, and received a lottery number in 1972 at a time when the draft then shortly ended and less than 25,000 Americans were left in Vietnam at year’s end—and when U.S. combat operations on the ground were largely over in Vietnam.
Do you eat food? If so, would you be competent and morally qualified to comment on food policy, given the likelihood that you have never farmed or shared the life of a farmer, and have no first-hand experience with tractor work, peach pruning, or fertilization—or the work of others that brings your food to your table? I also did not live in ancient Greece and therefore should not write about the Peloponnesian War? I cannot adjudicate the success or failure of a past ruptured appendix operation because I am not a surgeon?
We did not lose to North Vietnam, but achieved a settlement that was set up by a peace agreement between the two countries in 1973. The aftermath of Watergate and the serial cut-offs of all U.S. military aid to the South Vietnamese government encouraged North Vietnam to resume the war, and it did so successfully—sort of as if Eisenhower had cut all U.S. aid to South Korea in the election year 1956 and withdrawn U.S. peacekeepers. Do you think South Korea would exist today?
Vietnam is opening its economy, but otherwise it is a Stalinist country; the millions who were jailed, executed, or fled as boat people might not share your rosy scenarios or jest. I opposed the bombing in Libya. I suggested that Obama was foolish to have set a redline in Syria that he never intended to honor and would empower the Assad government to kill even more innocents. I criticized judge/jury/executioner drone assassination missions (which Obama joked about at a White House Correspondence Dinner). Do you read or just rant?
You must know, of course, that current defense spending is near historic postwar lows as a percentage of the budget, and that entitlements and social spending are at record highs. Go back and check the ratios between social expenditures as a percentage of the federal budget versus defense spending in 1950 and then compare those ratios to today’s figures. And you must know that Obama doubled the debt in the largest spending spree in U.S. history, despite raising taxes and earning record revenues. Yet he never achieved 3% economic growth unlike both Bush and Clinton. Do you think those massive outlays since 2009 made the U.S. safer, the inner-city more tranquil, or the “blue wall” rust-belt states more prosperous?
Have you really read George Santayana other than to pull out his tired, one-trick pony quote on learning from history? I suggest you try reading his collected lectures on aesthetics published as The Sense of Beauty and then once you get through them, write how inspired you were about its argument and aims. (Incidentally, the widely quoted “only the dead have seen the end of war,” which is usually and wrongly attributed to Thucydides, was Santayana’s Soliloquies in England).
I was waiting for the leftist ad hominem attack and of course it appeared with the slur “thirst for blood.”
Deterrence keeps the peace; appeasement starts wars and gets people killed. I have written repeatedly that war never goes as anticipated, that it is often more costly than expected, and that those who urge it often bail when it becomes controversial. Had “war monger” Winston Churchill been prime minister in 1936 instead of the appeaser Stanley Baldwin there was a far greater chance that millions would not have subsequently perished as victims of the Third Reich.
The usefulness of military history is in trying to keep the current peace (unless you think oncologists like tumors or seismologists enjoy earthquakes), and in remembering that the tragic lessons from the past are predictable: military readiness in a consensual society deters aggressors and keeps the calm; disarmament or appeasement encourages belligerents to try something stupid.
As a self-described historian of some sort, that is one thing you should know by now.
Happy Post-Easter.
Sincerely,
Vic Hanson
Chicago Tribune syndicated columnist
04/25/17
From an Angry Reader:
Dear Continually Angry Reader Steve Faddy
Hey Vic,
I understand you are a historian, but please write a timely piece, maybe touching on the brilliant incoherence of the foreign policy of the Mad King Don. Obama is no longer the President. Write something relevant to the present populace instead of another pedantic vitriolic anti-Obama rant. That piece may even be apt. Seriously you can do better, I suspect you are relatively intelligent. I have even read your books. Thanks. Your friend, Steve
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Hey Steve,
Sometimes unpredictability is far more effective in a leader than scripted impotence. Obama is no longer president, yes—but his legacy of appeasement with Iran, North Korea, and Russia, as well as the messes in Syria, Libya, and Iraq remain. Even his supporters now say that they wish he had honored his redline in Syria, which might have deterred Assad from gassing additional children.
I follow the following formula: I do not mention Obama for four columns, and on the fifth may if his legacy is in the news. He is fading from the national conscious, but we still are stuck with a doubling of the debt, the ACA, and a world at the brink.
Thanks. Your friend, Victor
04/24/17
From an Angry Reader:
Mr. Hanson,
As a registered Republican, I am disgusted with the behavior of President Trump and always surprised with the support he receives from people who appear to be well educated knowledgeable, and intelligent.
I would give your written opinion more credit if you did not position yourself so far to the Republican right. Certainly every president inherits the responsibility to address the current problems of the United States and world politics and it’s effects on the US. One of Obama’s first, was the financial crisis caused by wide spread banking fraud allowed by Pres. Bush. When the American sailors were taken into custody by Iran, they had trespassed (lost or not) into Iranian waters, and diplomatic efforts, under Obama resulted in their release. Obama was an eloquent speaker and displayed strong family values, something the Republican party use to tout as very important but now with Trump fathering children from three different women and bragging about sexually grouping women at the age of 59 years old, the Republican’s stay quiet on this character flaw. Russian and China may have launched cyberattacks on us, however Trump cheered Russian on, to continue those attacks during his election.
My hope is our government has enough protections in place, so that we can control Trump’s “kneejerk,” and “loud mouth,” twitter reactions to avoid an unnecessary war and if war is required, we are in the best position to win that war.
Nina Jacobs
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Nina Jacobs,
Where to begin?
The “banking fraud” of 2008 was caused by lax standards, mandated during Clinton-era “reforms” at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which led to vast sums loaned for subprime mortgages to unqualified buyers—a result also of Wall Street/banking greed, Clinton appointees enriching themselves, and identity/progressive politics.
American sailors were taken on the high seas. They were videoed, humiliated, and manhandled because the Iranian government wished to remind the world that the Obama administration, in search of a legacy, would put up with almost any humiliation to achieve a deal. Do you really believe they would try the same thing today?
Yes, Obama was mellifluent, but he was often clueless (he could not pronounce corpsmen, thought the Maldives were the PC name for the Falklands, and often as a candidate and as president resorted to tribal provocations (“get in their faces,” “take a gun to a knife fight,” “punish our enemies,” “typical white person,” “clingers,” etc.). He could be as crude as Trump, though refined his crudity with a more sober and judicious veneer.
Trump is a flawed individual, but he is hardly the near-sadistic womanizer as was JFK. Nor has he used coercion to force himself on women as did Bill Clinton on numerous occasions—still a feminist hero. I did read in the autobiographical Dreams From My Father and from other biographies, how Barack Obama habitually used “blow” and decided at one point not to date “white” women any longer. You are familiar with the racist, anti-Semitic, and crude career of his personal pastor of two decades, the right Rev. Wright. Duces sunt homines, non di.
So I conclude that many of our presidents and presidential candidates (cf. Gore was the alleged “sex poodle,” or so accused by a purported victim of his sexual aggression) were often problematic. The most sterling of candidates was probably Mitt Romney, a fine and decent man who was nevertheless reduced by the Left in 2012 to a sexist, racist, vulture capitalist.
I make a small prediction, Ms. Jacobs: When the present lengthy review is finished, the story will not be Trump’s purported collusion with Vladimir Putin, but rather the lengths to which the Obama administration went to reverse-target political opponents and to leak monitored conversations illegally to the public—an Obama administration trait of abusing constitutional rights unfortunately not confined to Trump alone, but apparent earlier also with the Holder/AP, Lois Lerner/IRS, and Brennan/Senate computer scandals.
Finally, the only thing riskier than restoring deterrence is losing it in the first place. We were headed for a war in 2016, precisely because Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China all believed that the U.S. was receding and that they would fill the void on the world stage, often in reckless fashion and in a manner threatening to our interests and allies.
Sincerely,
Victor Davis Hanson
04/19/17
From an Angry Reader:
You used to be my favorite columnist, in fact the only one I read. But it seems you’ve recently become overly mesmerized with Trumpism and the resulting anti Obamaism. I wish you’d returned to objective history.
Doug Waltner
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Sort of Angry Reader Doug Waltner,You should read more than one columnist; I certainly do.
If you followed my columns from last year, you will remember that I had often criticized “Trumpism,” which is not directly tied to “anti-Obamism.” But by June 2016, when considering likely appointments to the Supreme Court, State, Defense, Homeland Security, and National Security Advisor, as well as issues such illegal immigration, taxes, health care, and spending, I felt there was no comparison between what Trump might do versus what Hillary Clinton most certainly would do. I think the first 100 days bears that out, namely that Trump is the more conservative candidate. I also thought he was likely to win the election, after listening to various working class people tell me that they were going to vote for the first time and for Trump.
As far as Obama, I don’t believe his reset with Russia, doubling the national debt, slashing defense, opening the border, dividing the country by identity politics, the Syrian and Libyan policies, abandoning Iraq, or the Iran deal worked out all that well; would you not agree?
As far as returning to “objective history,” I published the Savior Generals in 2013. It takes about 4 years—if at the same time one continues to write three columns a week and fulfill duties at one’s job—to write a serious history. The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won (Basic Books) appears on October 1, 2017. The manuscript is 250,000 words, and the book will be about 700 pages, so I have, in fact, each day until late in the evening been working on “objective history.”
Sincerely,
Victor Davis Hanson
04/10/17
From an Angry Reader:
Mr. Hanson –
In your truly myopic article about the Russian/Trump connections you point out the Democrats’ contacts with Russians but you fail to make an apples and apples comparison. You don’t mention BUSINESS and MONEY. You don’t mention Trump making $50 million on a house worth much less in FL from the Russians. You don’t mention Trump’s bashing of everyone else on the planet but Putin. You don’t mention that most every person in this White House has contact with Russians, and I mean everyone… his son-in-law, his daughter, Everyone! The list is endless – Do some homework and start with Christopher Steele’s dossier. Most everything on there is turning out to be true. The traitors in the White House will be totally exposed soon and The of us Americans will say “we told you so.”
Patrick Chaney
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Patrick Chaney,
I think your conspiracy theory (“traitors in the White House”) is a bit out of date, given the recent Trump strike against Russian interests in Syria, and Russian media assaults on the Trump administration.
In contrast, Barack Obama and Susan Rice assured us that a supposedly trustworthy Putin had ensured the end of Syrian WMD. So far Trump has not had an Obama open mic moment assuring the Russians that he will be flexible after the next election.
Once again you illustrate the hyperbolic style of the unhinged Left with the boilerplate scare capital letters and general hysteria and exaggeration. Take your statement “You don’t mention that most every person in this White House has contact with Russians, and I mean everyone…” Do you mean National Security Advisor McMaster and Defense Secretary Mattis? And you have evidence that Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon are profiteering with the Russians? Who are on your “endless list”? Who is everyone? Press Secretary Spicer?
James Clapper, the Obama appointee as Director of National Intelligence who was angling for an appointment with the Clinton administration, is on record that there was no collusion between Trump and the Russians; is he too included in your “Everyone!”?
So far no one has produced evidence of direct collusion between Trump and the Russians; your notion of “turning out to be true” will most likely be relevant to documents in the hands of the intelligence committees revealing efforts by Susan Rice and others to unmask American citizens who were monitored by the Obama administration on the pretext of surveilling foreign leaders and diplomats.
In what way was Bill Clinton speaking in Russia and Ukraine, or large donations to the Clinton Foundation from Russian businessmen, or Hillary Clinton’s green-lighting of the North American uranium deal not about “BUSINESS and MONEY”? Do you think the same Russian interests who hired Bill to speak or gave lavishly to the Foundation are doing so now, when the Clintons are politically finished and have no quids to offer for their once lucrative quos?
Why is no one hiring Bill Clinton to speak in a way they most certainly did just a few months ago?
Sincerely, Victor Hanson
03/29/17
From an Angry Reader:
Do you mean educated people who worked hard to better themselves? Let’s all just stay in the old steel mill towns and coal mining towns gripping about how unfair the world is to us. You know, the good old days when blacks knew their place and we didn’t have no Mexicans around. You are right I guess they were ready for a Trump and the left was unprepared but it does not make them correct. Carol Hoyt, Big Lake Ak. And Las Vegas Nv.
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Carol Hoyt,
How you managed to cram such a stream of confusion into just four sentences is in a way impressive.
Sentence one: I did not conflate elites with educated people, but rather with a subset of urban, powerful people in politics, academia, the media, and entertainment who exercise influence and power without any discernible display of competence. These are not neurosurgeons or engineers but the architects of $20 trillion in debt, stereotyped and dull Hollywood movies, and inaccurate and undependable news accounts of the Dan Rather/Brian Williams sort.
Sentence two: Those who voted for Trump were not just people “in the old steel mill towns and coal mining towns” but half the country that felt the progressive project under Obama had bankrupted the treasury, left the world in a terrible state abroad, divided the nation along racial lines, and stalled the economy (first in over 80 years not to achieve 3% economic growth) in a way not seen since the Hoover administration. Incidentally, I’ve been to Appalachia and steel mill towns and discovered that those who have been the losers of globalization complain a lot less about their tragedies than do the winners of globalization their psychodramas and neuroses.
Sentence three: On no evidence you equate the working classes with racism. Is the sarcastic “we didn’t have no Mexicans around” an attempt to mimic what you think is the patois of the poor white working classes? You are no more effective in envisioning how the supposed poor speak than was an equally condescending Hillary Clinton in all her myriad fake accents and mannerisms.
Sentence four: My column was a political observation of why Trump, against all odds and predictions, won, and why such a victory might have been anticipated had anyone turned off pundits and ignored conventional wisdom.
Whether “they” are correct (I take it you mean the white working classes who abandoned the Democratic Party for Trump), depends entirely on Trump, not what I or you say. If he achieves 3% economic growth, reforms the tax code and regulations, address the ACA, ups the labor non-participation rate, then, yes, his supporters were “correct”; if he doesn’t do any of that, then they were either misled or asked the impossible. We shall soon find out.
Victor Hanson, Huntington Lake, Ca. And Stanford, Ca.
03/27/17
From an Angry Reader:
Victor,
As a fine historian (but poor political scientist) you know quite well that Andrew Jackson was a national hero with a distinguished military career. The Donald is a former casino owner and reality TV show star. It is a long stretch to compare them. Further, a column replete with disjointed and frankly random comments about California infrastructure and Obama, while cryptically arguing against a mysterious and undefinable elite, would surely earn you poor marks. Stunned they published that dribble. You wrote “A War Like No Other”—I expect much better. In any event, and more importantly, the real issues facing America are the undermining of Pax Americana—our world, our institutions, and created for our benefit. These are being threatened by a reckless President who fails to understand that he destroying the West from within (unless, and even more disturbingly, he does). That is the geopolitical column that needs to be written. I hope you do. Thanks in advance. Steve
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Angry Reader Steve Fardy
Steve,
Do you understand how proper adjectives like “Jacksonian” work?
To say Trump is Freudian would not mean his life mirror imaged Sigmund Freud, any more than to describe one as Churchillian or Reaganesque demands perfect correlations. Trump is an outsider like Jackson; and also like him, Trump appeals to working-classes aggrieved at a political class, largely on issues of economic and cultural nationalism. All that is Jacksonian, whatever the disconnect between the actual lives of Trump and Jackson. Trump did not kill someone in a duel, commit bigamy, implement the Trail of Tears, or dare the Chief Justice to enforce his ruling—does that disconnect with Jackson bother you as well?
What earns you poor marks is an inability to cite specifics in your criticism rather than the boilerplate “random comments” or “cryptically arguing,” as well of course your reliance on the progressive ad hominem boilerplate (e.g., “Stunned they published that dribble”).
The status of California infrastructure is a matter of record; check Forbes or other business periodicals’ rating of California freeways and roads, and you will find them at the bottom of state rankings—despite the state’s astronomical taxes. The same is true of school test scores: among the highest taxes of the states, and among the bottom tier in terms of public schools. Please refute that assertion. Do you dispute the idea that “experts” (aka “elites”) in education, politics, and social policy gave us that disconnect of near record tax rates and lousy infrastructure, schools, and quality of life.
Again, is it ignorance or intellectual laziness that stops you from providing one concrete example to illustrate what you mean by “undermine Pax Americana”?
Has the U.S. under Trump in 70 days become estranged from the Gulf States and Israel? Has Trump cut a deal with Iran by bypassing the Senate through creating a media “echo chamber”? Did he bomb Libya without congressional approval? Did he reset with Russia that ended up with annexations of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine? Did he sit back and watch 500,000 die in Syria? Did Trump leave our southern border wide-open? Did he craft a new “lead from behind” foreign policy? Ask traditional allies like Egypt, Israel, Japan, South Korea, or Canada what their views of Pax America were like the last eight years. Has Trump set faux deadlines, step-over, and redlines?
All that is a letter that needs to be written. I hope you do. Thanks in advance. Victor
03/24/17
From an Angry Reader:
Russia’s political hierarchy and official press greeted Trump’s Inauguration with unreserved glee. An old order had crumbled and, with it, an impediment to Putin’s ambitions. “In 1917, armed supporters of Lenin stormed the Winter Palace and arrested capitalist ministers and overthrew the social political order,” the lead article in the daily Moskovski Komsomolets read. “On January 20, 2017, nobody in Washington planned to storm Congress or the White House and hang prominent members of the old regime from lampposts, but the feeling of the American political élite, especially the liberal part of it, is not different from that of the Russian bourgeoisie one hundred years ago.” Sound familiar? Why not check out the March issue The New Yorker article on Trump-Putin-and-the New Cold War. You may live in the cocooned atmosphere of CA? (I’m assuming from your position at Stanford University), but you oversimplify the matter. Take for instance where I live in a tiny hamlet in NE Texas—listed recently in a state medical guide as the “unhealthiest region of Texas.” My town of approx. 25,000 is 9th out of the 10 most crime-ridden areas of Texas. Texarkana, another city within the NE region of Texas, came in 4th, I believe. I’m surrounded by the white uneducated male and guilt-tripped white uneducated female- with hopefully a few more brain cells than teeth in their head, who repeatedly and loyally vote against themselves in GOP primaries election after election. They deny themselves access to health care, vote in public education budget cuts, (along with the public school teachers who can’t seem to connect the dots to why their work is not rewarded with better pay), and vote in tax breaks for the “elite” corporate/oil and gas CEO’s- while fracking and other forms of pollution wreak havoc across Texas. Just a few examples of how stupid it was for the Rust Belt states to go the way “of Texas.” Rest assured, they cannot afford health care for their chronic medical conditions, but repeatedly vote against it for fear of “socialism.” Why? Long-standing, systemic racial bias that is played out in gerrymandering and voter ID laws, and lack of basic education. So, I doubt sir the general voting population of my state could pronounce “Elitism” much less understand or take the time to pick up a newspaper and read about it. You give them far too much credit, and given the current whoopla over the current administration and its obvious entanglement with Russia, they will gleefully support Trump choosing to remain blind to the bitter end—an end I fear we’re all about to face.
Sherry Scott MD
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Sort of Angry Reader Sherry Scott, MD
You letter is sadly full of inaccuracies. Please get your facts straight before ranting.
1) Russia is currently not happy with the Trump administration, which is far more likely than Obama to pump oil, beef up defenses, and be tougher in the international arena. Russian reset—you forget?—was an Obama phenomenon. It started in Geneva in 2009 with Hillary’s red reset button; it was most famously summarized by President Obama’s hot mic promise to Medvedev that he would be more “flexible” with “Vladimir” after the 2012 reelection, and ended only when Russian hackers supposedly turned over Hillary Clinton’s emails to WikiLeaks. The Trump national security team of Mattis/McMaster/Tillerson shows no desire of continuing Obama reset that resulted in Russian occupations of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. It was again Hillary, remember, who cut deals with the Russians on uranium, Bill who enriched himself with Russian speaking fees, Podesta who was heavily invested in Russian stocks, and the Obama administration who used the Russian pretext to monitor the Trump campaign, and then illegally leak the transcripts of that surveillance.
2) I read The New Yorker and it is not disinterested, but like The New Republic is now a partisan organ and often unreliable.
3) I live in the 2nd poorest county in rural California, at ground zero of illegal immigration. I put my children in the public schools and live in the farmhouse I grew up in. I don’t need professional lectures about a “cocooned atmosphere.” Nor do I have contempt for the poor and uneducated, who live side-by-side on our avenue as you do for your own community.
4) Your arrogant stereotypes about Texans (e.g., they “could not pronounce ‘Elitism’; cannot understand the content of newspapers, and have few teeth in their heads) could easily lead to their own stereotypes about smug professionals, whose education and income unjustifiably lend a sense of moral superiority over others deemed deficient in one’s own perceived advantages. Given your puerile views about Trump/Russia, and venom about an entire class of people, I don’t see anything in your letter that suggests your own professional degree “M.D.” has led to much wisdom, much less grounds for feelings of superiority.
Victor Hanson, Ph.D.
03/22/17
From an Angry Reader:
This was written with the notion that we can have a mutual exchange of ideas.
Thanks,
Tom:
Victor Davis Hanson (sic) commentary (I assume it is Dr. Hanson) is very quiet and unassuming along with his Rodney King, “Why can’t we just get along,” attitude coupled with, ” everybody’s opinion is valid,” is simply irksome at best. Many people Dr. Hanson have varied skills and have worked in several job capacities. You assume that the people in the cities are trying to impose their values on the rest of the country and you are correct, we are.
There are some things worth fighting for, worth striving for, and worth dying for–at least our fore bearers (sic) believed as much. Dr. Hanson shows the same kind of disrespect he commenting (sic) on rather than the tolerance that he supposedly espouses.
Dr. Hanson Stanford has an International Relations department (sic) no? This a (sic) discipline for which Trump and his team seem to have so little respect. Do you not believe in the proponents of feminism, nor a woman’s right to her own body? What about freedom of speech, the free press, and accountability? Do you know what Clinton and President Trump value? When you know that it is not unlike knowing the difference between engine oil and hydraulic fluid.
Tom Claxton, Teacher
Leask, Saskatchewan, Canada
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Tom Claxton,
Dear Tom Claxton,
I assume that you are a teacher, but your letter is almost incomprehensible; was there something wrong with your electronic submission? Words and punctuation marks seem left out to the point that your meaning is almost impossible to fathom.
Otherwise, you fulfill all the requisites to make our Angry Reader posting: ad hominem attacks; no argument or examples to support your charges; and sarcasm and snark.
Thank you for at least admitting that “people in the cities are trying to impose their values on the rest of the country and you are correct, we are.” I think that would include everything from our $20 trillion in national debt to anemic economic growth to our third-world infrastructure.
When you say “there are some things worth fighting for, worth striving for, and worth dying for—at least our fore bearers (sic) believed as much” could you at least list them?
But to do so would suggest that you believe “things” like freedom (?), liberty (?) and security (?) were only the concerns of the city? Second, for most of the history of the United States and certainly through the early twentieth century, the majority of Americans were either rural or lived in small towns and cities, so “the rest of the country” was largely a story of being on the front lines in the nation’s wars. To read the correspondence of the Founders (Jefferson especially) is largely to read paeans to the countryside and farming and warnings about the dangers of urbanization and its culture for free and consensual government.
Where to start when you finally mention some details to respond to? What does Stanford’s International Relations Department have to do with the essay in question? Do you really believe that the proverbial academic “best and brightest” have an impressive record in foreign policy?
I define feminism as women being accorded equal rights to men under the law, and enjoying equal relations culturally, economically, and socially in a tolerant society—and thus “feminism” could be expressed in a number of ways and examples, from my maternal grandmother (one of 12 children who grew up on the frontier and kept an entire family together during the Depression on a farm, raised children and died at 93, or my mother who was a Stanford Law graduate and one of the first women on the California state appeals court.) Each sought a very different pathway; both were feminists in being powerful women who demanded and obtained equal rights and consideration. I don’t know exactly what their views were on abortions, but they did not equate the issue with feminism or with control of their own bodies, given the concerns of a living fetus, whose early viability in the womb is not subject to debate and whose future and safety are of interest to society at large.
Your simile of hydraulic fluid and engine oil is incoherent, fatal to any such metaphorical abstraction. Your initial sentence is a grammatical mess that makes comprehension almost impossible.
Are you suggesting in your reference to free speech and a free press that President Trump is now monitoring the correspondence of Associated Press reporters, tapping the communications of reporter James Rosen, sending memoranda to colleges to suspend due process in matters of alleged sexual assault on campus, allowing the IRS to go after political enemies and to leak tax returns, or jailing a video maker on false allegations that he caused a riot in Benghazi? Or do you mean he has set up a secret email server to communicate White House business without an electronic record, or that he has deleted his communications?
Sadly for all your passion, you never once actually say what are the values that city people are trying to impose on others. To take recent issues: is it transgendered restrooms? Cessation of investment and maintenance of rural infrastructure? NAFTA? TPP? Impressive cultural accomplishment such as the work of Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé or Madonna?
I appreciate your outreach, e.g., “This was written with the notion that we can have a mutual exchange of ideas.” But for that to happen, as a teacher, you know that you must first express your ideas coherently and in detail rather than merely offer generalities, with no specificity or examples, but replete with sarcasm.
Sincerely,
Victor Davis Hanson
03/21/17
From an Angry Reader:
Sorry so many of the stars disagree with your politics, but it is an alternative fact to state that the envelope mixup was the fault of dense celebrities. The PWC representative, who handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty, along with his PWC associate in the wings, the only other person who knew the correct winner but did not immediately stop the proceedings to remedy the matter, were at fault. PWC did accept responsibility. Not something those on the right ever dream of doing. Much easier to blame everything on lefties.
Melinda Valencia
Glastonbury CT
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Melinda Valencia,
I did not blame the disaster on “lefties.” My point was that everyone involved in the Academy Awards, from the actors and directors/producers to the managers of the ceremony itself seemed to focus on politics (http://ew.com/tv/2017/02/26/oscars-trump/), and in such excessive fashion that they forgot that their first duty was to produce a professional awards ceremony—part of the essay’s larger theme that when we cannot manage the basics we resort to pontificating about the abstract.
I don’t know what “the right” has to do with an Oscars’ ceremony. In the future, if Hollywood and its auxiliaries will focus on the procedures and protocols and less on virtue signaling to their audiences about contemporary politics, there will be less chance of a monumental and embarrassing flub. After all, it is not difficult to select a winner, type the name on a piece of paper, put it into an envelope, and hand to a presenter. High schools do it all the time without causing mayhem on the stage.
Sincerely, Victor Davis Hanson
03/20/17
From an Angry Reader:
After reading your discombobulated thoughts on Academy Awards, Mayor Bloomberg, et al., I now know why newspapers have traditionally been used as toilet tissue.
M. Buendia
Breinigsville PAVictor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader M. Buendia,
Are such angry letters mass produced in some central clearing house? No argument: CHECK; typical personal smear: CHECK; incoherence: CHECK.
All I needed from you is a simple refutation that 1) the Academy Awards were not Trump Bashing and did prove incompetent in not being able to identify the best picture awardee; 2) that Mayor Bloomberg talked of utopian solutions but could not remove snow from city streets promptly after a blizzard. Instead, your argument is that the newspaper is rightly used as toilet paper, but in your case not until you (firstly I assume) read it.
Sincerely,
Victor Davis Hanson
03/17/17
From an Angry Reader:
Mr. Hanson. Don’t know what Acadamy awards you were watching but my husband and I watched the whole show. There was no bashing of Mr Trump at all during the entire show. Jimmy Kimmel did some jokes but light weight. So please we are tired of all the lies ..
Thank you
HALLIE BOSETTI
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Hallie Bosetti,
As I have noted in the past, there are typical characteristics of all angry progressive letters: 1) an inability simply to tell the truth and chronic distortion; 2) a resort to ad hominem attacks without argumentation; and 3) an inability to write coherently.
You do not disappoint.
1) In fact, I watched some of the Oscars and you are quite wrong that “there was no bashing of Mr. Trump at all during the entire show.”
Below I quote the synopsis from Entertainment Weekly, a standard, nonpartisan journal that covers Hollywood.
Read carefully please their account of the Academy Awards (http://ew.com/tv/2017/02/26/oscars-trump/) Here is a sampling following their headline “Oscars Attack Trump: Celebs Unleashed on Hollywood’s big night“
The first salvo against Donald Trump was fired only a few minutes into the Oscars — and then they just kept on coming. In what might be an unprecedented numbers of jokes, allusions, and sincere articulations inspired by a single person during an awards telecast, Hollywood’s most luminous tackled Trump and his policies during the the 89th annual Academy Awards. From host Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue, to the acceptance speeches, to those blue ribbons on tuxedo lapels, there were direct and indirect references to the 45th president throughout the ceremony.
2) Why do you resort to attacks like “we are tired of all the lies” in lieu of an argument? Such desperation only undermines your modest efforts.
3) Academy is not spelled Acadamy.
Sincerely,
Victor Davis Hanson
03/14/17
From an Angry Reader:
Read your column on immigration published in the 2/24/2017 Morning Call (Lehigh Valley, PA) and was wondering – you seemed to indicate that falsification of government affidavits should be grounds for deportation. Since it appears that Melanie Trump was employed in violation of her visa in the mid 1990’s, and lied about it on her naturalization application, would you support deporting her, or do you favor a different standard for the rich?
Thomas Schreiber
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Thomas Schreiber,
I am not aware that news accounts of Ms. Trump’s immigration status of years past were any more accurate than were charges that she worked for an escort service—smears that led to an ongoing lawsuit against the Daily Mail.
No one has successfully accused Ms. Trump of entering the US illegally or committing document falsification—as you insinuate.
Rather the election-cycle rumors were that she entered the US on a tourist visa (and and subsequently resided on a work visa and then a green card) and worked before her work visa was processed.
In contrast, she insists she was scouting job opportunities while on a tourist visa and subsequently went to work only when she obtained a work visa and then a green card.
The dispute involves a 7-week period in the transition between a tourist and a work visa. The AP story did not substantiate your accusations, given that it is based on anonymous sources that supposedly provided ledgers dating back more than 20 years ago—and which remained unnamed. The accusations appeared, of course, just days before the November election.
In sum, Ms. Trump’s has not been accused of falsification of documents; and there is as yet no evidence that she jumped the gun by 7 weeks by working rather than just investigating work before the transition to her work visa. To compare this charge with falsification of documents or filing false affidavits is ridiculous. And Melania Knauss was not “rich” when she entered the United States two decades ago as you also falsely allege.
If you remain worried about equality under the law, I suggest reexamining Hillary Clinton’s exemption after destroying email, illegally using a private server for State Department business, and granting concessions to large donors to the Clinton Foundation; they are better examples of the rich receiving preferential treatment than rumors about one Melanie Knauss working rather than interviewing for work a few weeks before her legal work visa was finalized.
Sincerely, Victor Hanson
03/13/17
From and Angry Reader:
Dear Professor Hanson,
Evidently you are a supporter of Donald Trump. If I read your essay on this subject correctly, you seem to be implying that, unlike the false elitism of the Washington Beltway, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley, we should look to the real basis of brilliance and repute in a “demonstrable record of moral and intellectual excellence.”
Do you seriously mean to say that Donald Trump’s life has such a “demonstrable record”? A man who cavalierly treats women as objects for his sexual pleasure and lies at the drop of a hat we are to believe is a man of high moral character? Or one who has trouble constructing a sentence using a vocabulary of more than 100 words (everything is just “fantastic”) demonstrates intellectual excellence?
The problem with Trump is not so much his policies, about which reasonable people may disagree, but his character flaws. As David Brook recently commented, Trump is “ripe to be played” by foreign leaders like Putin who are smarter and more wily than he is. But Trump has such a fragile ego that he is likely to react to being played in his typically childish, immature way by lashing out at everyone and anyone he thinks is disrespecting him. He never takes responsibility for anything, always blaming others for his own mistakes, and he does not know how to accept and deal with criticism in a rational way. He also suffers from what, as you classicists know, the Greeks called hubris. And you know what hubris leads to: tragedy.
Let’s just hope that the tragedy ends up being his personally and not ours collectively. With such a man having access to the nuclear trigger, we should all be hoping that we somehow manage to survive these next four years without a tragedy of monumental proportions.
Sincerely,
Sanford G. Thatcher’P.S. I attach a short bio so that you know my background.
—
Sanford G. Thatcher
Frisco, TX 75034-5514
https://scholarsphere.psu.edu“If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.”-John Ruskin (1865)
“The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.”-Walter Bagehot (1853)
“Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.”-Ambrose Bierce (1906)
—————————————————–Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Sanford Thatcher,
There is no need to attach your biography in our new age of populism; the persuasiveness of your argument should stand or fall by what you have written rather than the authority of your CV.
As you know, I certainly did not equate Trump with proof of non-elite moral excellence; rather I explained his election through the widespread anger at political and media elites that was aired through his populist candidacy.
I voted for Donald Trump when there was a binary between his agenda and that of Hillary Clinton.
There is some truth in what you have written about Trump’s rhetorical crudity and his past behavior, but, of course, the Clintons were a virtual crime syndicate—she using her office to leverage cash for the Foundation (a sinecure for unemployable Team Clinton politicos between campaigns) and Bill’s speaking career. Of course, when she lost and is now permanently out of federal office, she can do no connivers any good and so the money dried up and the Foundation is reeling—proof of sorts that the entire operation was a pay-for-play enterprise of the sort that earns most people an indictment.
Actually hubris is a result of Koros (instability and excess resulting from power and wealth) that leads to leads to Hubris (overweening arrogance) to Ate (madness and self-inflicted destruction) and ends in Nemesis (divine and fated retribution), which is all the stuff of tragedy, given that the sequence is usually associated initially with people of talent and good intentions.
All this may certainly apply to Trump’s earlier business implosions, and it fits Bill Clinton perfectly, and Obama may end up the same way.
My point is that in 2016 the choice was not between two characters as much as two agendas: I preferred a foreign policy of deterrence backed by military strength as a better way of preventing wars and interventions, an end to doubling the debt, zero interest rates, and record low GDP growth, a stop to illegal immigration and racial polarization, a restoration of the health care system, and efforts at tax and regulatory reform to restart the economy, as well as renewed energy production—all as a mechanism to help the so-called forgotten man, the middle classes who were the losers under globalization.
I saw far greater hope that Trump might enact such an agenda, and no hope that Hillary Clinton would.
As far as character flaws, pick your poison. His I thought were mostly rhetorical (as you note with your unease about his limited vocabulary) and in the private sphere; hers were concrete and at the public expense, from her cattle futures fraud, to her Wikileaks scandals to the Clinton foundation criminality to her callousness and lying about Benghazi. Hillary as you know is a serial liar, from the mundane (her landing in the Balkans under sniper fire) to the existential (lying to the families of the Benghazi dead).
You might have noted that we survived Bill Clinton committing sex acts in the Oval Office bathroom with a subordinate intern less than half his age (the sort of thing that gets a professor fired summarily), and then lying about it under oath, resulting in his disbarment—the sort of crudity I think you are implying disqualifies one for high office?
Obama, remember, tapped the communications of AP reporters, monitored the communications of James Rosen of Fox News, droned US citizens, bombed Libya without congressional approval, granted amnesties of the sort that he had once warned were unconstitutional, lied about the ACA, and simply chose not to enforce various federal laws he found at odds with his progressive agenda.
If you are arguing that Trump is a Frankenstein monster, then the Dr. Frankenstein creator is surely Barack Obama whose executive orders, partisan rhetoric, nullification of federal laws, and abject ruination of the Democratic Party at the state, congressional, and presidential level all empowered Trump.
So far job growth and the stock market are up; Trump’s appointments in the national security sphere are centrist and heralded. His selections from the business and military fields are a welcome change from the tired retreads from academia and government. And his illegal immigration initiatives and energy agendas are overdue.
As far as hubris, self-reflect: in the last 90 days liberal commentators and pundits have variously called for Trump’s murder, his immediate removal for health reasons, his impeachment, and his resignation.
His phone calls to foreign leaders and communications have been illegally tapped (and so note that the media is now backing away from their Russian collusion charges that proved so far groundless, as they worry more that intelligence agencies’ tapping and the leaking may be exposed as the felonious acts they were); his wife has been accused falsely of prostitution and immigration fraud. Trump himself has been falsely accused (in print) of urophilia and suffering from neurosyphilis.
One New York Times columnist has begged the IRS to commit a felony and send him the Trump tax returns; another compared his election to the mass deaths of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Is not all that indicative of classical madness that will surely lead to an accounting? Trump, the supposed buffoon, polls higher in the public’s estimation of veracity than does the highbrow media).
On the larger topic of the “elite,” I think we could say that those in Bakersfield or Des Moines did not give us record debt, serial corruption in the IRS, VA, GSA, or EPA, and a world in free fall abroad. Here in California the best and brightest managed to deliver the highest basket of income, sales, and gas taxes in the nation resulting in infrastructure and schools rated near the very bottom in state-to-state comparisons. The Orville dam is a metaphor of elite indifference to existential problems while it pursued transgendered restrooms and bobcat health.
Sincerely,
Victor Davis Hanson
03/10/17
From an Angry Reader:
Mr. Hansen –
In this commentary, you appear to be engaging in sophistry. In other words, you appear to be decisively imparting falsehoods. First you fabricate a definition of the “American elite” comprised exclusively of progressives. Then you fabricate a reality where the mainstream press disseminates lies, where college campuses lack diversity and muzzle free speech and where progressives have fallen down in addressing the problems of the inner cities. Finally you fabricate an argument that the so-called elite have “titles, brands and buzz” but no “demonstrable knowledge or proven character”. This is a perfect example of deflection and psychological projection. You have, wittingly or not, described your populist hero Donald Trump, a man with “brands and buzz”, who disseminates lies, impugns minorities, muzzles the press, cares little about the inner cities and clearly lacks knowledge or character.
– Allan Cooper
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Allan Cooper
One of the themes of the Angry Reader column is the predictable use by Leftists such as yourself of personal invective (“sophistry”, “falsehoods”, “fabricate”, etc.) along with intellectual laziness.
Take your allegation that I wrote that elites are “comprised exclusively of progressives”.
How does that assertion square with my allusion in the column on elites to “many in the Republican Party as well” or to the “Bush or Clinton families”. Are the Bushes and the Republican Party progressives?
So it is hard to take you seriously when the first allegation you make is demonstrably false.
And it sadly it is all downhill from there:
1) Are you arguing for intellectual diversity on campus? I think the recent Middlebury and Berkeley violence highlights my suggestion that there is little intellectual tolerance on campus.
2) Are you suggesting that the media is not progressive? JournoList, Wikileaks, and the epidemic of fake news from Rathergate and Brian Williams to the MLK bust allegation or Trump’s supposed romps in a Moscow hotel room substantiate the unreliability of the press, which by all polls and its own admission is overwhelming liberal.
3) You doubt the nature of life in the inner city or its governance? The inner cities are in crisis; most have had Democratic mayors and councils for the last thirty years and more; again are you contending that fact?
Donald Trump is not “my populist hero”; can you find any indication that I wrote that?
More to the point: what Trump says and what he actually does are two different things. I will find him guilty of “muzzling the press” when his Justice Department hounds journalists of the Associated Press or taps the communications of a reporter in the fashion of Obama’s treatment of James Rosen, or expands the reach of the NSA and the dissemination of its intelligence or depends on fawning press coverage to advance his agenda in the fashion of the “god”, “smartest president ever” and leg-tingling Barack Obama.
There are various ways of defining knowledge and character.
Trump is, of course, a flawed individual like many of us; but his failings are transparent, quite unlike those of Barack Obama, to take one example (Hillary Clinton is another).
With Trump, what you see is what you get. With Obama and his subordinates we were given constant utopian platitudes about hope and change, but experienced quite different dangerous deeds: expansions of NSA electronic surveillance, lying under oath by Eric Holder and James Clapper, the warping of the IRS, scandals in the VA, GSA, Secret Service, EPA, etc., nullifications of federal law by executive order non-enforcement, the jailing of a video maker on the false narrative of culpability for Benghazi (about which lies were promulgated by Susan Rice), the “echo chamber” manipulation of the “know nothing” press, assassinations abroad of US citizens, bombing Libya without congressional consent, the likely illegal monitoring and leaking of communications of the Trump campaign (as reported by the NY Times, Washington Post, and BBC), constant mellifluous untruth (you can keep your doctor and health plan, the president will not by fiat grant amnesties, the mythologies of the Cairo Speech), and often bizarre references to foreign leaders (from the open mic promise to be more flexible with Putin but only after the election to the gratuitous insults of Netanyahu [“coward”, “chickenshit”]). I learned in farming early on that the loud and uncouth are easier to deal with than the glib and shifty-eyed; the former may assault you senses, but the latter your person and livelihood.
So I think you need to redefine the boundaries of wisdom; they are not just calibrated by “57 states”- and “corps-men”-like Columbia and Harvard degrees.
Surviving the Manhattan real estate cauldron may take more savvy and cunning than the sorts of identity-politics navigation in colleges and liberal circles as outlined in Dreams From My Father. I have spent most of my adult life in two pursuits: academia, often in the circle of those with impressive graduate degrees, and farming with those sometimes without high school diplomas.
I saw little difference among the two groups in terms of ethics, saw the less articulate often more direct and transparent, and could never quite tell which group was the smarter, although what I heard in the faculty lounge and academic senate was a few rings down on the intelligence scale from what I heard and saw when talking to well drillers, pump installers, and tractor mechanics.
Sincerely,
Victor Davis HansOn (Swedish not Danish)
02/24/17
From an Angry Reader:
You are most definitely wrong, California could go it alone. They are after all the sixth largest economy in the world. If secession is in their future the US Federal government would be more likely to fall into chaos than California. We need them more than they need us. As for your comparison between post Civil War South Carolina and California you again miss the mark. California is not a defeated state divided along the lines of different human types. They get along together just fine. The comparison you make is a better fit to the new White House. White billionaires take over America. Private academies, are you playing with me? These are the future under the new White house. California’s crumbling infrastructure would be a thing of the past if they seceded. You my friend and I would pay for it when we go to the grocery store. If you think produce from Mexico and South America will fill this gap your wakeup to reality will be monumental.
I live in New Mexico. Like California, a closer look reveals we are both minority majority states. Unlike California we are highly dependent on the feds. Still rich or poor we all get along. I’m poor by fed standards but I could still move to California and live in my own house on my own land. Your world is one of needing the very best, living on or near the sea or some big lake, having tons of belongings. Like the people who now rule America. Is that your idea of righteous?
Your take on our current state of affairs is what will bring America down. And that should be were your focus is. You have a following that could make a difference. Speak out against discordant bunk. I love this country more than I can put into words. I actually went to Vietnam and represented my country. Oh I had bone spurs in my feet, still do. But real Americans would never use this as a cop out to service. There is no greater honor than service to ones country. The difference is believing you can make a difference or help yourself to a bigger piece of the pie.
Keep writing sir, and I’ll keep reading. I may not like all of what you say, but I have an open door policy. If it’s good for all Americans, I’m all in.
Regards, Julian Schuetz.
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Julian Schuetz,
I’m a bit confused about the incoherent directions of your letter, but here is an attempt to sort them out.
California cannot go it alone. The federal government owns vast amounts of state property. The state has 1/3 of the nation’s welfare recipients; 1/5 of Californians lives in poverty, and 1/4 were not born in the U.S. Its health and social welfare costs for the poor, the unemployed, and immigrants have become staggering, as well as its education and penal expenses. You can perhaps sort out the paradox of sky-high income, sales, and gas taxes, combined with Mississippi-like roads and test scores. I cannot.
So, yes, California’s investments in infrastructure have been diminished due to the costs of social welfare, pensions, and entitlements. As far as the billionaires go, look at the top 10 in the world, they are almost all leftwing grandees, and of the top 50 many reside in the Silicon Valley. As a general rule, the richer or poorer one becomes, the more likely he is to become progressive; lack the elite romance for the distant poor and the supposed high culture of the elite, and thus are often neglected.
Charter schools are not private academies, but an attempt to allow poor people to choose schools that might differ from the status quo without having to pay private academy tuition. If California seceded, it would have more infrastructure challenges—given that it needs $100 billion in federal help to restore crumbling roads, dams, and bridges, and would more likely spend even less on infrastructure maintenance and more on high-speed rail, climate change, etc. We have wasted a valuable wet year, by previously cancelling all dam construction that would have captured the likely 20 million acre feet or so of certain lost runoff. Boutique environmentalism would only increase with secession.
The rest of your letter is unhinged, so I cannot reply.
A note though: I don’t have lots of “belongings” but drive only mid-level Hondas and live in a 140 old house on which I do my own repairs most of the time, mow my own law, and keep up my own garden. My farm outside of Selma is neither by a lake nor a sea. I think you are well-meaning, but do not let emotion erode logic; and strive for clarity of thought in lieu of unfocused passion.
Sincerely, VDH
02/23/17
From an Angry Reader:
Prof. Hanson:
First, as an aggressive moderate, I believe any talk of California secession is simply a waste of time and idiotic. But saying “California” supports secession is equally absurd. One third of the population reflects nothing close to a majority, not to mention the small poll sampling, and it does not compare to Virginia in 1860, where fewer than 2,000 people voted for Lincoln (as a historian, I’m sure you know Lincoln wasn’t even on the ballot in South Carolina). This secessionist garbage is not close to getting on the ballot yet, but, of course, if there is sufficient funding, anything can hit the ballot.
Further, as I live in Silicon Valley (and I am aware you are at the Hoover Institution), the majority here do not believe that these tech companies are “a world unto their own.” Quite the opposite, they believe that they are part of the world, with a powerful global view that great companies throughout our history have held. My office sits between Oracle and Electronic Arts, and, frankly, I find the population of these organizations essentially the same as those who populated the Engineering Quad at my college 35-40 years ago.
More locally, I live in Redwood City, and to say it is “mostly poor” is abundantly absurd. Go to downtown Redwood City for dinner. Before, drive through Redwood Shores and anywhere west of El Camino. I’ve had people knock on the door of my 3+2 home and offer to pay me over $1.3 million in cash for it without even coming in the door. Yes, there are some lower income areas, but even the majority of those are safe and filled with good, hard-working people.
Finally, please do not compare any state in this country to a Confederate state. Texas’s secessionist movement would have been a more comparable example, but still not even close. Nothing now compares to those troubled times, even with our current divisions. As the namesake of a Sergeant in the Union Army who was at Appomattox and saw his dead brother go by on a stretcher three days before the signing of the surrender of Lee’s forces, let me say these comparisons are apples to bullets.
Wardell Loveland
Redwood City
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Somewhat Angry Reader Wardell Loveland,
First, I did not write that all of California supports secession, but was careful to qualify with terms such as “Calexit supporters” or “some California officials” and “liberal California,” at least enough so to note that the entire state does not advocate such nonsense. Unfortunately, you never refute my arguments, which reviewed all sorts of neo-Confederate ideas from federal nullification to sanctuary cities to Calexit to a King Cotton like economy. Incidentally, even “one third” of California represents 13 million people, a number which would make it the fifth largest state in the union.
“A world unto their own” refers to Big Tech’s public progressive facade and its private embrace of outsourcing, offshoring, and, yes, a “global view” that I am not sure is either what companies quite held in the past or is of reassurance to Americans in this age of borderless globalization, in which it is hard to calibrate sometimes what exactly are multinational affinities. When programmers in Silicon Valley currently cannot afford housing it makes no sense for tech companies to lobby for greater numbers of immigrant computer people. That is certainly a “global view” but to many it reflects a “world unto their own” blinkered self-absorption.
In any case, such worries resonated in the last election and perhaps explain the implosion of the Democratic base by those who felt globalization was a problem not the solution and benefitted inordinately global elites, particularly those in high tech, law, finance, and government at the perceived expense of the hinterland.
Comparing the poverty of Redwood City to nearby tony Atherton is not “absurd” but true. Of course, gentrification spikes housing prices as those forced out of Menlo Park seek enclaves in Redwood City and East Palo Alto, but to walk through much of Redwood City is not the same experience as doing the same a few miles away in Menlo Park and Palo Alto and you of course must know that. The per capita income of Atherton, referenced in the essay, is about $144,000; that of Woodside is $125,000. Compare that to next-door Redwood City at $42,000. That seems to substantiate my point in a way your anecdotes sadly do not.
You seem confused about the nature of poverty when you state of areas of Redwood City that “even the majority of those are safe and filled with good, hard-working people” as if that proves that they are not poor in comparison to those living a few thousand yards away. Being poor and hard-working as well as good are not antithetical concepts as you seem to imply. My larger point again was that like the Old South, California is a society of two rather than three classes, with a ruling elite that seems to prefer a lifestyle and culture not conducive to the prosperity of a middle class, especially in terms of affordable highways, good highways, and competitive schools.
Your letter fails for two reasons. One, you fail to note that I early on noted the differences between a modern state and the Old South (“Of course, this is 2017, not 1860, and California is super-liberal, not an antebellum slave-owning society.”); two, you did not refute any of my points about infrastructure (written before the Oroville dam catastrophe), the state’s high taxes and poor services, the effect of boutique environmentalism upon the working classes, and the strange paradox a high basket of taxes combined with the nation’s near last infrastructure and schools.
I am a great, great grandson of a Union soldier from Missouri and my own uncle and namesake died on Okinawa with the 6th Marine Division, so I do not need lectures about family lineages. The point of the essay was not to caricature California, but to warn of the dangers of nullifying federal laws, talking of secession, withholding federal revenues, and gravitating to an antebellum culture of a small class on top with a service class on the bottom. We know where that eventually leads.
Sincerely, Victor Davis Hanson
02/22/17
From an Angry Reader:
VDH,
Read your piece LA Times this a.m., then another in National Review.
Big, sweeping rhetorical claims and attendant slamming- mostly about progressives trajectory. Your type of policy wonk rap is common and toothless. Evidence specific? Not.
Easy to see why you’re just a fellow.
DeToqueville…read his work recently?CRD
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader CRD,
I would like to offer you a coherent reply but your Angry Reader rant is unfortunately childish.
Please cite in detail “rhetorical claims” and “slamming,” rather than just emoting. What is “wonk rap”? You ask for something called “evidence specific” but supply none. What is “not.” I don’t know what “just a fellow” means? I have read Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution; he is quite good on the impracticality of the Left and the dangerous extremism posed by radical democracy and impractical ranters and zealots.
Sincerely, VDH
02/21/17
From an Angry Reader:
Victor David Hanson’s latest rant, “Obama left the president with monstrous mess (2/17),” is in its unmitigated slam at our “last president” not the least bit surprising, both in its orientation as well as in its patent bias. While it’s a fool’s errand to try to defend much of Obama’s efforts in foreign affairs, the notion that the present mess is Obama’s work alone is absurd. It is widely recognized that the work of a dud named Bush, in his less than honest war making policies had a good bit to do with today’s mess. Indeed, Hanson recognizes as much, but waits till his very last sentence (contrary to the title) to do so. In the meantime, should Victor tire of Obama bashing, he might do a column on the domestic economy under O. While it would be foolish to suggest that all’s super well on the domestic front, it is the case that Obama inherited a serious recession with an unemployment rate reaching 10% shortly after his inauguration, and which to today is significantly below 5 percent. Alas, in keeping with his obvious right wing bias, I’m sure that Hanson will soon join Trump himself in claiming credit for the present state of the domestic economy. Alas, it’s the blatant bias of folks like Hanson that helps create the deep hostility in so much of our politics. Sad.
As ever, and in not surprising contempt, David E. Kaun
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader David E. Kaun,
Much of what you write is not just emotional ranting, but simply factually incorrect (Davis not David) and logically incoherent (e.g., much of Obama’s efforts in foreign affairs are not defensible, but the present mess is not his alone). When Obama entered office in January 2008, Iraq was quiet—so much so that Vice President Joe Biden termed it the administration’s likely greatest achievement and Obama boasted that he was leaving behind a “stable” and self-reliant” Iraq. Thus the administration apparently felt the nascent consensual government in Iraq was not the source but the antidote to Middle East instability—which magnified by the abrupt 2011 Obama pullout, the destruction of Libya, the fake redlines in Syria, the promotion of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the rise of “jayvee” ISIS, the “daylight” between Israel and the US, the failed “special relationship” with Turkey, the invitation to Putin to reinsert Russia into the Middle East, the Iran deal, and on and on.
I have written on Obama and the economy: sadly, he is the first president since Herbert Hoover not to achieve 3% per annum GDP growth; he doubled the debt to $20 trillion in just eight years, and left a near record labor non-participation rate. The recession he inherited from George W. Bush ended in June 2009, suggesting that had he not enacted his agenda, the economy would likely have naturally recovered and robustly in a way it did not for the next eight years.
I don’t think Trump or anyone wishes to “claim credit” for the present economy: despite near record deficits, near zero-interest rates, and massive new federal spending, the economy was never primed—largely because of new regulations, the ACA health mandates, higher taxes, and constant “you didn’t build that” attacks on private enterprise. I assume that explains why the Democratic “blue wall” crumbled in 2016 due to dissatisfaction among Democrats with the status quo.
Trump will either fail or succeed, but we will have to wait at least 4 years for the verdict. If Trump is culpable, I will write just that.
Again, the letter’s venom (“contempt”) is once again thematic of the leftist inability to debate without slurs. Very sad.
Sincerely, VDH
02/03/17
From an Angry Reader:
Re: Fake News: Postmodernism By Another Name
While I thought the article was well written and cited several good specific examples. I find is a bit disingenuous that only the progressive movement is called out. Perhaps it would be worth mentioning the “Swift Boat” stories that were promulgated against John Kerry. The concept of fake news is used by both sides of the political spectrum for the purpose of “flash blinding” the masses in the middle to move them to be more in line with the agenda of the author of the false narrative. A story is created to convince the general audience that there is an “outrage” that must be addressed. One of the more recent was of a Muslim Arab immigrant who had four wives and 24 children living on welfare that amounted to more than $300,000 in cash per year. Now we have shut down immigration. If that was the goal of the “fake news”, to confuse the issue by fostering “outrage”, it seems to have worked.
I agree with the point that “fake” news is also just poor journalism in many cases. But, I find the right is up to their ass in the BS, too. The supposed candid “video tape” of Planned Parenthood that turned out to be “lie”, because it was selectively edited to misrepresent the actual discussion, is an example. I don’t accept that this behavior is right or ethical from either side. But, it appears you have adopted a “well our shit doesn’t stink” approach in the article so we won’t talk about it. Sorry to say it, but in fact it does stink. My solution is to be skeptical of all news and especially anything that is intended to foment “outrage” in the readers/viewers. I felt pretty certain that your article was treading close to that “rage against the progressive media” and not really observant of the whole problem. The creators of this BS are seldom called on it from either side. With a wink they just go back and start working on the next false narrative. Back in the sixties they said “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” Today we can update that to, “Don’t trust anyone.”
Fake news is designed to target a specific audience. Its goal is emotionalism and not about presenting objective facts. Your argument is that this is “acceptable” to the progressives. But, they hate it when is happens to them. So I don’t believe that they actually swallow the whole postmodernist meme you have described. Just like the right, when it is to their advantage they play around with the facts to “emotionalize” the issue and try to bury any objective rational discussion.
Stay the course, no compromise. — Karl Rove
Rick Barrett
Reply from Victor Davis Hanson:
Dear Angry Reader Rick Barrett,
I don’t think you really read the article.
I mentioned that all politicians spin and distort, as is the nature of politics since the Athenian ekklêsia. But the media has a particular and partisan propensity to highlight “hands up, don’t shoot”-like fake news to advance the progressive media on the postmodern notion that the exalted ends justify any means necessary.
Your “Swift Boat” example I think makes my case; it is the bookend to the 2004 fake memos that Dan Rather peddled about George Bush’s supposed AWOL episode. The media promulgated Rather’s clearly false story; in contrast, it attacked the Swift Boaters, whose charges ranged from challenging Kerry’s recollections of his war service, his congressional testimony, and charges of American atrocities. While both attacks on the two presidential candidates were clearly political, the media promulgated one, but not the other, although the Swift Boaters had at least offered a few legitimate queries in a way not true of the clearly forged Bush documents.
The Planned Parenthood stealth tape was selectively edited, but no one has denied the general charge of organ trafficking caught on tape.
Faking narratives is as old as the Greeks (read Demosthenes), but what is different is that the mostly liberal media, by and large, choose far more often to traffic in stories like the Duke rape case, the Tawana Brawley hoax, “white Hispanic” George Zimmerman and his edited 911 tape, “mattress girl,” or the Virginia fake rape charge—on the notion that these mythologies are advancing social justice and therefore acquire a sort of truth regardless of facts, or lack of same.
And I further pointed out that the media’s fake narratives are the natural dividend of 30 years of academic postmodernist thought that insisted facts were mere narratives and had to be deconstructed on the basis of race, class, and gender privilege to assess their validity.
I don’t think the Left “hates” fake news at all or it would have cried foul about the Duke or Virginia cases; the mainstream media rarely concocts stories that advance conservative causes, so Leftists have little to be angry about other than an occasional outlier story that morphs into a crisis of “fake news.” In our world, Trump’s versions of “if you like your health plan, you can keep it” distortions become “fake news!”; a Time reporter’s false story of a missing Martin Luther King bust from the Oval Office is picked up and spreads because it “proves” that Trump has a racist agenda and that “fact” is deemed a good thing.
To sum up:
1) All politicians, as I wrote, spin and distort. So do all media outlets on occasion for political purposes.
2) But the great majority of the most common fake news involves race, class, and gender issues and are passed off as true because they are felt by the media to advance a higher truth that is not predicated on facts or data.
3) And such narratives gain traction because our universities have long taught that truth is a fiction and narratives are branded true or false depending on their currency of power—and thus the Left needs to invest in stories that advance social justice, even if the facts, as ascertained by arbitrary and privileged methods, do not support such narratives.
Two final points: why does the Left always resort to profanity? Your talk of excrement (“sh*t”) offers no enhancement to your argument.
And why do you (quis custodiet ipsos custodes?) peddle in fake news with falsehoods like. “Now we have shut down immigration”? How does a temporary ban on arrivals from seven war-torn countries of the Middle East and environs, affecting less than 1% of all immigrants, constitute “shutting down immigration.” Is that really true or a fake narrative that becomes “true” because its ends are deemed noble: demonizing Trump and his supporters as xenophobes.
Sincerely,
VDH
02/02/17
From an Angry Reader:
Dear Victor:
I have long been a reader of your essays. I am befuddled by your steady defense – or at least by your stayed hand of criticism – of Donald Trump.
I sense – and share – your glee about the comeuppance that the Democrats received in this past election.
But the rotted and soulless character of Donald Trump concerns me far, far more than any feelings of schadenfreude I feel about the Democrats. His degree of intellectual incuriosity is alarming.
Your kid-glove approach to Trump (especially when those gloves are actually petting him) is surprising and disappointing.
Thanks.
Loren
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry (Sort of) Reader Loren Thacker,
Donald Trump was not my favorite in the primaries; but once he was likely to win the nomination (April 2016), I simply went to his website and collated his positions with Hillary Clinton’s on sanctuary cities, illegal immigration, defense, foreign policy, taxes, regulation, energy development, the EPA, the 2nd Amendment, the wall, school choice, and a host of other issues. The comparison supported my suspicions that he was more conservative and would not lose the Supreme Court for a generation to progressive massaging of the law, which was inevitable under Hillary Clinton. I think his appointments, Supreme Court pick, and executive orders have supported that belief that he is far more conservative than Hillary Clinton’s agendas. Oh, I came to another conclusion: I initially thought Trump might be the only nominee who would lose to Hillary Clinton; soon, however, I began to believe that he might be the only one who could beat her, given he was the first Republican to campaign in the Lee Atwater-style of 1988 and actually fought back against the WikiLeaks nexus of the media and Democratic Party.
As for his sometimes reckless tweets and outbursts, I calibrated three variables:
1) Were they any different from past presidents’? In fact, they were—but not to a degree that I thought his behavior endangered the republic. For all his antics at rallies, he did not yet say “punish our enemies” or urge his supporters to take a gun to a knife fight or to get in “their faces.” His silliness was similar to Joe Biden’s (“put you all in chains,” or his belief that FDR went on TV to the nation in 1929). Yes, I wish Trump was more sober and judicious, but then again we have had very unsober presidents and vice presidents in the past (LBJ showed the nation his surgery scars and reportedly exposed himself during a meeting). FDR carried on an affair while president. No need to mention JFK’s nocturnal romps. So far Trump is not using the Oval Office bathroom for trysts with subordinate interns. Much of Trump’s oafishness is media created and reflects a bit of class disdain. We all need, however, to watch every president and call out crudity when it occurs. (I am still not happy with the strained explanations of his jerky movements as not an affront to a disabled person.)
2) Did the media play a role in the demonization of Trump? I think it did. In the last few weeks we were told falsely that his lawyer went to Prague to cut a deal with the Russians, that he removed the bust of Martin Luther King from the Oval Office, and that he engaged in sexual debaucheries in Moscow—all absolutely not true. Who would trust the media after all that?
So much of the hysteria is driven by a furious media that was not so furious when Obama signed executive orders circumventing the law or the Clintons ran a veritable shake-down operation (where is it now?) at the Clinton Foundation. Not wanting to take refugees from Australia that had sent back to sea arriving migrants and had them deposited them in camps in nearby islands is not exactly an extreme position (by liberal standards, Australia is the illiberal actor, not Trump).
3) Do Trump’s episodic outbursts threaten his agendas? I don’t know, but the media will ensure that they will, if he is not more circumspect. So far he is by design creating chaos and has befuddled his opponents, but I think in the long run he must limit his exposure to gratuitous attacks by curbing his tweets—and I have written just that in the past. Trump’s agenda is fine; his pushback against an unhinged Left and biased media is healthy, but he must economize his outbursts given that the strategy of his opponents is to nick him daily in hopes of an aggregate bleed. We have four more years and he needs to conserve his strength and stamina and not get sidelined with spats with Merle Streep or Arnold at the Apprentice.
Remember, Obama was the revolution that sought to remake the country; the reaction to it is pushing the country back to the center—which appears now revolutionary. Trump’s stances on energy development, immigration, and foreign policy are not that much different from Bill Clinton’s or George H.W. Bush’s. They seem revolutionary because again he is correcting a revolution. Who had ever dreamed in 1995 of a sanctuary city, emulating the nullification policies of the Old Confederacy?
I appreciate your concern.Sincerely,
Victor Davis Hanson
01/19/17
From An Angry Reader:
The Angry Blogger
How to Be a Good Classicist Under a Bad Emperor,”
by Donna Zuckerberg, Silicon Valley-based Classics scholar, Editor of Eidolon, November 21, 2016
A specter is haunting the Internet — the specter of the “alt-right.” The forces of white supremacy and toxic masculinity, fueled by a sense of entitlement dwarfed only by their inflated estimation of their own intelligence, have entered into an unholy alliance to remove feminism, political correctness, and multiculturalism from America. And on November 8th, 2016, after enduring years of mockery, months of being told that the arc of the moral universe would never let it win, the Alt-Right scored its first significant political victory: the election of Donald Trump to the highest office of the most powerful country in the world.
Who are these people? They are part of a group of a few hundred thousand men who have “swallowed the red pill” and belong to a few allied online movements: not just the Alt-Right, but also men’s rights activists, the manosphere, and GamerGate. At times these groups seem more clearly defined by what they oppose than what they support, but they’ve also mobilized to fight for men’s rights in a “gynocentric” society, harass women on Twitter, and redefine Pepe the Frog. They are younger than the typical conservative establishment, white, and male. They are antisemitic, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic. Some are self-described Neo-Nazis.
They also love the classics.
This is at once surprising — most classicists I know consider themselves politically liberal — and not, because when we’re truly honest, we see that for many the study of Classics is the study of one elite white man after another. The same texts that are for us sources of beauty and brutality, subjects of commentary and critique, are for these men (and they really are almost exclusively men) proof of the intellectual and cultural superiority of white maleness.
The Alt-Right is hungry to learn more about the ancient world. It believes that the classics are integral to education. It is utterly convinced that classical antiquity is relevant to the world we live in today, a comfort to classicists who have spent decades worrying that the field may be sliding into irrelevance in the eyes of the public.
The next four years are going to be a very difficult time for many people. But if we’re not careful, it could be a dangerously easy time for those who study ancient Greece and Rome. Classics, supported by the worst men on the Internet, could experience a renaissance and be propelled to a position of ultimate prestige within the humanities during the Trump administration, as it was in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Classics made great again.
This is my call to arms for all classicists. No matter how white and male Classics once was, we are not that anymore. In spite of the numerous obstacles that remain, our field is now more diverse than ever, and that is something to be proud of.
These men are positioning themselves as the defenders of Western Civilization. Classicists, when you see this rhetoric, fight back. We must not allow the Alt-Right to define what Classics will mean in Trump’s America.
Just how interested is the Alt-Right in Classics? On the one hand, it is very interested in the cultural capital of antiquity. An article published yesterday in the New York Times shows how freely they use classical references — “crossing the Rubicon,” “ascending to Olympus.” On the other, the movement appears to have little interest in understanding the ancient world in any way other than the most superficial one.
I know about this interest from personal experience — that is, from Twitter trolls and comments on Eidolon articles. (In a sublime manifestation of Red Pill iconography, one troll’s Facebook cover photo was a Photoshopped image from the Matrix with Hitler, not Neo, stopping a wall of bullets.) But rather than discuss anecdotes from my own experience, I’m going to share their declarations.
Steve Bannon, former Breitbart News executive chairman and newly appointed Chief Strategist to President-Elect Donald Trump, told Mother Jones this August that Breitbart is “the platform for the alt-right.” In recent weeks, Breitbart editors have backtracked on that claim, and they now argue that their site has only one piece of explicitly Alt-Right content: “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right” by Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos (who, incidentally, was using the Twitter handle “@nero” when he was banned from the platform this summer). In that article, they write that the preservation of Western Culture is of monumental importance to the audiences for Alt-Right content:
[A]ttempts to scrub western history of its great figures are particularly galling to the alt-right, who in addition to the preservation of western culture, care deeply about heroes and heroic virtues. This follows decades in which left-wingers on campus sought to remove the study of “dead white males” from the focus of western history and literature curricula… to a natural conservative, such cultural vandalism may just be their highest priority.
Yiannopoulos — whose most recent work on Breitbart includes “How To Make Women Happy: Uninvent The Washing Machine And The Pill” — is drawing on a recurring theme in Red Pill Classics: these men will defend antiquity against the ravaging hordes of liberal activist students attempting to scrub the canon of all triggering material. In his book Thirty Seven, a manosphere writer who goes by the name Quintus Curtius imagines a dystopian world where feminists have rewritten the canon and erased the classics (143–4):
One can even imagine a future where classical knowledge will be driven underground, purged from schools, or bowdlerized, as not being in tune with modern feminism and political correctness. The degradation of humanistic learning has come as a direct result of the feminization of American society. We cannot permit this to happen. The commissars of modern culture don’t want you to know too much about history, or about how things were like in previous eras.
Predictably, Quintus Curtius has an extremely limited understanding of “how things were like in previous eras.” His stated goal is “to remind readers of the glories of leadership, character, and masculine virtue that can change their lives” — so of course, his understanding of antiquity is of a world inhabited by only a few extremely elite men. He has no sense of or interest in social history, cultural history, women, slaves, children, and broad historical trends. The ancient world is reduced to a textbook model for leadership, character, and masculine virtue.
Unfortunately, I have met a few professional classicists who would prefer that the entire discipline embraced the model Quintus Curtius espouses for “classical knowledge.” Victor Davis Hanson explicitly trumpeted the same views in Who Killed Homer: “This new, ultrasensitive curriculum and its appendages — diversity training, journal writing, gender and racial sensitivity, multiculturalism, situational ethics, personal growth and self-indulgence, and the politics of commitment — ran directly counter to Greek wisdom” (118). For all that he is beloved by the Right, most classicists have little time for VDH these days — but many nevertheless agree, quietly, that as a field we’ve lost something in our increasing focus on race, class and gender in the ancient world. Our field is still, in many ways, in thrall to the Great Men model of history. And others may disagree, but still feel that Daryush “Roosh V” Valizadeh has a point when he writes of the moral vacuum that would exist without an understanding of historical precedent in his article “What is a Social Justice Warrior (SJW)?” …
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Blogger Donna Zuckerberg,
I have never heard either of Eidolon or of you until this was sent to me. So excuse the tardy reply.
I took the liberty of excerpting a relevant portion from your longer and rather monotonous rambling. Is your self-identification as a “Silicon Valley-based Classics scholar” to remind us that you may well be the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the third or so richest man in the United States? While I have criticized him in print on occasions—exclusively for disparaging the need to enforce immigration laws and specifically the construction of a fence/wall at the southern border, while also seeking to fence in, or otherwise use his security details and capital to privilege his own residences with various borders, walls, or guards—nonetheless, I have no personal animus toward him or you, and admire anyone who can provide a useful product for the enjoyment and advantage of over a billion consumers.
If you are indeed related, I hope you can apply some of those boundless resources to promoting classics—first—and professionally—to advocate for freshly minted PhDs and help them find jobs that offer financial sustenance and some dignity without the humiliations of poverty and exploitation that so often are the wages of young classics scholars in part-time and lecturer positions, and second—and more broadly—to introduce the teaching of Greek and Latin to non-traditional communities, minorities, impoverished whites, the underclass, and the middle classes in general.
You talk breezily of being on the classics barricades in “Trump’s America” and seem to suggest an interest in promoting classics. A more pressing worry then might be why did so many who were destitute and without avenues of upward mobility vote for a multi-billionaire New York grandee? If you could ponder that incongruity, I think you might get closer to the central problem of an unsustainable contemporary classics—namely that people such as yourself (fairly or not) do not resonate with the less fortunate, who do not share your privilege and see elite classicists (admittedly, perhaps unfairly) as reflective of dilettantism. They are the logical constituents of any project to expand classics. I wish you well if that is your interest.
I spent over two decades of my life, teaching 8 to 10 semester classes per year, trying at CSU, Fresno to introduce Greek and Latin to those without opportunities or much hope of upward mobility; we were not in “thrall to the Great Men model of history,” but rather to improving the linguistic, grammatical, and composition skills of first-generation college students as part of a larger appreciation of the beauty and power of Latin and Greek. And yet again I confess we were also pragmatists, with idealist hopes of preparing mostly poor, white, Hispanic, and Southeast Asian students to compete in the wider world with those who had had the benefits of traditional education that so often only capital and influence can ensure. I think we called that in Who Killed Homer? “academic populism,” an admittedly failed attempt to redirect the field towards undergraduate teaching and broadening the scope of research to ensure it was accessible to non-traditional audiences.
So why not lobby for or indeed fund a position or two in Latin instruction at Cal State Bakersfield or at Turlock or Merced? I am sure with good teaching and empathy toward non-traditional students, the investment would help the field in a more cost-effective manner than in regurgitating tired and redundant race/class/gender angsts of a tiny elite. I think the effort would surprise you and pay real dividends.
As for your more specific cast-off criticisms. I am included in your strange rant against something called the “alt-Right”—a term that has no real meaning other to conjure up all sorts of race/class/gender bogeymen. It seems to me analogous to something the Right calls the “alt-Left,” a purported motley group of social justice warriors of the Michael Moore stamp. Such labels on either side mean nothing. I live in the same house where I was born, in the poorest section of California where the minority population elsewhere is the vast majority here. I put all my children in the public schools, have an extended multiracial family, and farmed and worked side by side with people for over thirty years who never finished high school. The idea that I would be associated with a racially exclusive group or wish to exclude groups in my research is absurd and little more than Silicon Valley or faculty lounge talk.
More to the point, it is obvious you have never read at all Who Killed Homer? We discussed at length the unusual Hellenic focus on women, from the Antigone to Sappho to powerful females in Euripides’ plays and the morally superior heroines that inhabit classical literature from Homer to Plutarch. We discussed at length poverty, slavery, and the so-called Other, but not from the position of cheap 20-century elite disdain that indicts an ancient, rural, and impoverished people for not living up to our sophisticated standards of probity some 2,400 years later. Tragedy, not melodrama, is the proper mindset to explore the contradictions of the classical world.
Your cookie-cutter take on the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s is, I must confess, puerile. Deconstruction, Foucault, Derrida, Black Athena, the gender obsession movement—all that prevailed and is now, as we predicted, the status quo—with disastrous results for undergraduate enrollments. It is surely not some edgy dangerous way of looking at the world—as young PhD students accept when they chart the parameters of their own careers. The outsider, the revolutionary, the insurrectionist is the young scholar without a job or tenure who dares to see universal liberal and positive truths in the classical achievement and hopes to become a superb Greek 1A teacher and is not shy of voicing those aspirations. I fear for those who try, because their futures are nonexistent in the field and as back-up they do not have access to the privileges which you and many in Silicon Valley enjoy.
To take one example, Camille Paglia nearly thirty years ago made headlines not because she was some sort of right-wing traditionalist, but because as a Leftist feminist, she saw a disturbing new sort of classicist, who, ignorant of what she thought were the great works of the past—Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, etc.—were narrowly trained and often poorly so, and were utterly careerist (“Junk-bond” traders and salesmen, she called them), whose jargon-ridden, opaquely written work brought few real insights to oppression and victimology, but served in cult-like fashion to launch careers that valued conferences, release time, grants, and esoterica at the expense of teaching an increasingly poorly educated generation the value, tragedy, paradoxes, and exceptional beauty of classical literature. You can read an account of the crisis in classics in the recent survey by Prof. Eric Alder who is often critical of Who Killed Homer?, but in disinterested fashion lays out the arguments of the book as he sees them in explaining why it often evoked such furor in the field.
Your essay is also quite sloppy: “Victor Davis Hanson explicitly trumpeted the same views in Who Killed Homer?”. Where to begin with such nonsense? First, Victor Davis Hanson co-authored Who Killed Homer? with John Heath. I did not write anything myself; it was a 50/50 effort. Why did you single out one author and not another, if not to find some easy contemporary political resonance?
We did just the opposite from your notion that we were ignoring cultural history, women, slaves, and broad historical trends. Instead by intent we focused upon them, noting both bias, oppression, and prejudice among the Greeks and Romans, but also the irony, tragedy, and paradoxes of Greek liberal values that clashed with traditional and often rural inspired norms—suggesting that the plight of women, slaves, and the underclass was under discussion in classical culture in a way not true of the wider Mediterranean, or in fact anywhere else at that time (or at any time later). Well over two decades ago in The Other Greeks I wrote of the culture of the agrarian mesoi and their creation of the polis, often in the context of class and slavery; that book had nothing to do with the “Great Man” platitudes you refer to. I wrote a novel, The End of Sparta, whose two heroes are a slave and a young woman, who are the moral superiors of all the men in the book, a fictional account of Epaminondas’s liberation of the Messenian helots. Reciting boilerplate phobias without nuance or context is virtue-signaling at best, at worse a window into an impoverished mind.
Unfortunately, you cannot seem to get things right even when offering a cast-off line about my career: “For all that he is beloved by the Right, most classicists have little time for VDH these days .” I am not “beloved” by the “Right;” I often have as many detractors there as among the Left. And I don’t believe classicists ever had any “time” for me, so I am confused about your qualifier “these days.”
All “these days” have been about the same.
Sincerely,
Victor Davis Hanson, San Joaquin-Valley-based Classics scholar
01/17/16
From an Angry Reader:
Hey Vic.
You seem like a smart enough guy, but this silly piece was a waste of space, just a mashup of this-and-that criticisms with seemingly nothing coherent to tie it all together, other than your apparent involvement. I’m surprised you would expand so much time and energy on this kind of angry, seemingly unattributed rant. Maybe you wanted to feed your loyal base of readers? Do you suspect that they got a little erect fantasizing that this was all real?
Yes, Selma (the “Raisin Capital Of The World”) is technically a part of California, and of course the reality of our fine state is different for those of us who live on the coast than for those who live in that swath of yes-it’s-also-California that lies east of I-5. You wrote so many words, and yet you have identified nothing new or particularly informative.
Who was your source of your crime stats? PPIC? Did you refer to the attached? If so, context would be helpful. Like when PPIC noted that, “While historically low, California’s violent crime rate saw an uptick in 2015”. Of course this helps to paint a fuller picture than you did, but maybe that wasn’t your objective.
The entire middle of your piece – ramblings about waste water, plastic bags, bike thieves, the DMV (?!?!) – perhaps your stories are true, and perhaps they were just fiction conjured up to substantiate your narrative. As you know, in today’s political environment where ‘fact’ is a fungible concept possibly devised by some amorphous liberal elite, a good story is often what the uninformed masses (e.g. Trump voters, possibly your friends and neighbors) really want.
Lots of trash littering the roads in your area? Stop and pick it up. A little extra exercise is never a bad thing.
And your comment about U-Haul is doubly incorrect: more trailers are coming in than out; and the rate was decidedly negative in 02/03, when so many were willing to leave this natural paradise. Can I assume that you will update your story and note the corrections?
Grass Valley is hip? Do you really believe that? Maybe as compared to Selma (never been there, but I rarely drive the 99, unless I miss the turnoff as I’m driving up I-5 from LA), but it isn’t ‘hip’ to those of us who know better.
Regarding your struggles sending and receiving actual terrestrial mail, I didn’t realize that people still practice that ancient art. I don’t relate to your experience, but it’s apparently something that is irksome to you folk. For that, I’m truly sorry.
As for your closing quip – “Most of the most strident Californians who decry Trump’s various proposed walls insist on them for their own residences” – is this in reference to something specific (like facts, for example), or just something that sounded witty when you worked it up in your head?
Kevin Saavedra
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Hey, Dear Angry, Sarcastic Reader Kev Saavedra,
Unfortunately your letter does not suggest that you are a smart guy at all, but rather apparently saw yourself in the essay and grew quite emotional that the mirror image captured an undeniable reality, one that apparently bothered you in its all-too-true accuracy. In fact, of all the angry letters I have received (thousands over the years, including the obscene, the death threat sort, the bombastic promises to “get” me, the monotonous obscenities, the self-referential, the demands of the angry to be heard, to meet, to talk, etc.) yours is the most smug and banal, reminding us all that ignorance and arrogance remain a sad combination.
The Romans had a phrase res ipsa loquitur; before it became a legal term under Roman law, it meant literally “the thing speaks for itself.” So does your own self-revealing and inadvertently self-confessional letter.
You write to challenge my portrait of a dysfunctional California, one of a premodern interior and a smug postmodern coastal strip, which acts in an elitist fashion and whose grandees are never subject to the consequences of their own ideologies.
And yet your very tone and sarcasm (e.g., “Raisin Capital of the World,” “technically in California,” “yes-it’s-also-California that lies east of I-5,” “Maybe as compared to Selma,” “Regarding your struggles sending and receiving actual terrestrial mail, I didn’t realize that people still practice that ancient art”) speaks for itself and proves my case: I suggested that a coastal elite is arrogant, out of touch, and never subject to the consequences of their abstract utopian dreams. You do not refute that portrait, but instead confirm that stereotype with your self-incriminating snarky “the uninformed masses” and “Trump voters, possibly your friends and neighbors.”
Kevin, is there some sort of central casting enclave where your sorts emerge to play out the roles of self-important coastal wannabes?
A theme of the Angry Reader section is that Leftists like yourself always express their angst through smears and obscenity. But how does bathroom talk like “a little erect” add to your argument?
I think in fact I describe a world that is a world away from enclaves on the California coast. When was the last time you discovered a corpse on your property or an occasional pit bull or Queensland heeler dumped in your alleyway with a rope around its neck, and its innards torn apart from dog fighting?
I refer to all sorts of statistics; the California Police Chiefs regularly weigh in on the crime spike we are currently experiencing; cf. their latest announcement on a dramatic rise. Do you really wish to cite statistics that 2015 saw a decrease in crime? Please do. What do you think the percentage of accidents is in LA County that are categorized as hit-and-run?
All my “stories” are not “stories” but banalities that everyone experiences in rural California between I-5 and the Sierra. I selected the mild examples from a few days of normality. If it is not someone dumping solvents in your vineyard, it is another person dumping his daily canteen wastewater. I get letters often from Californians to the effect “Ah that’s nothing, you should see the washing machine and frig dumped on my driveway.”
When you say “Lots of trash littering the roads in your area? Stop and pick it up. A little extra exercise is never a bad thing,” you reveal your idiocy. We all pick up trash daily, but sometimes we are talking tons of it—literally. See below the picture of what ended up in my cousin’s vine row, everything from solvents to broken fluorescent tubes. It took a huge flatbed several trips to dispose of what we could. The thousands of shards of broken glass are still in the soil.
How does one “stop and pick up” a dead cow or a huge rotten pit bull or fifty used diapers scattered throughout a vine row? Have your tried? Often the polluters simply act as unlawful garbage collectors from rural and illegal trailers and shacks, and then dump their day’s loads in orchards and vineyards—all quite profitable. You need to get a life and explore the world that you seem to think ends at I-5.
Have you gone to a U-haul trailer renter dealer lately? Obviously not. Try comparing one-way rates to Texas versus back to California, and your ignorance will become manifest if you are not laughed out of the dealership. Have you turned on your tap water to find it empty—given that the copper wire to the submersible pump was yanked out the night before?
The Wall Street Journal reported 100,000 fewer Californians came into our state than left last year—a staggering statistic given that mostly the arrivals are poorer and the departing are middle and upper class—so much that we are down to about 170,000 taxpayers (out of 40 million residents) who pay well over 50% all income tax revenue. Why would Californians leave paradise and seek out desolate landscapes if not for the fact that we are wrecking paradise and making the antithesis more inviting to millions?
As for as “terrestrial mail,” I supposed the coast has come up with a way to virtually mail a package? Yes, I still mail books and packages and to special friends still write out longhand personal letters, in what used to be called “cursive,” as well as mail tax estimate payments to the U.S. IRS by U.S. mail. Does Amazon now email shoes or fax tools or text chain saws; I’ve bought all three lately from Amazon, and for some reason they all were mailed to me via “terrestrial mail.” Please advise the readership how such deliveries avoid terrestrial mailing.
Yes, Grass Valley is a wonderful foothill community, but it is not Dunlap or Prather but something more attuned to Saratoga or St. Helena.
As for walls: do you wish specificity?
OK: Barack Obama has caricatured the need for a border wall: yet he is just adding one to his compound in D.C. that is a vintage mansion that never had such an enclosure. (See Hillary’s estate from Google Earth). Mayor Villaraigosa considered “the wall” superfluous; yet as mayor he was the first to build one around the official LA mayoral residence—to the consternation of his neighbors. Mark Zuckerberg, a loud opponent of strict border enforcement and walls on the border, is currently in three controversies: one, over objections he is walling off much of his property in Hawaii; two, complaints arise over his security details in San Francisco that seem to monopolize parking and reflect his sense of entitlement (and reliance on strict enforcement of what he thinks are necessary laws); and in Palo Alto he is still fighting the city for seeking to bypass city ordinances about lot/home size that discourage estates and apply to all others except apparently himself. The list is really endless. Perhaps spend an afternoon on the PCH in Malibu. Start at Pepperdine University and head west to scan the homes of the Hollywood and entertainment elite who are all adamantly against border fencing. Two realities arise: one, almost all the estates are enclosed or walled; two, the laborers who are working in their liberal gardens and kitchens are all from Mexico or Central America.
In conclusion, your letter has value; it reminds us that the coastal mindset is always more clueless and sanctimonious than most of us in the interior imagined. I enclose past photos of the sort of things that pile up around our homes and roads in the Central Valley along with my pump ruined with assorted damage—all for a gang banger’s $60 in copper wire.
Sincerely, Vic Hanson
From An Angry Reader:
Victor
Your gloating and myopic column pillorying President Obama’s foreign policy legacy was simple minded and juvenile. Why write something so stupidly one sided?????
When Obama came into office we were losing 100 service people per month in a stupid war and as he leaves office, this number is down to one or two. This is a great result and legacy.
He worked with Iraqi leaders to build an Army capable of retaking Mosul … and also improved cooperation between the different militias there. You didn’t mention this.
Real experts on Iran are touting the multi-lateral agreement closing down Iran’s ability to produce nuclear material and weapons….they say this agreement will give legitimacy to a country that simply wants to be a player in the middle east and whose impact result in greater stability in this area.
Under Obama we have not committed troops in the Syrian conflict …. one so complex and far from our national interest that this merits praise.
He has also been allowing the CIA to conduct covert operations to stabilize Ukraine and punish the Russians for Crimea.
Why be so unnecessarily one sided that you come off as just another right-wing ass?
John G. Schuiteman, Ph.D.
Ashland, VA 23005
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Schuiteman,
It is angry letters like yours that seem to sow dissension since you are, I fear, at times intellectually dishonest.
I never wrote or implied the description “simple minded” or “juvenile”; Obama certainly has a vision and sought to implement it—one gleaned from his memoirs, his past associations, his apology tour, his Cairo speech, his various interviews, and his actions.
I was not “gloating” or “myopic” but rather factual in describing an Obama legacy—reset with Putin, abrupt withdrawal in late 2011 from a quiet Iraq, the Libya/Benghazi violence, the Iran deal, the Syrian calamity, estrangement from Israel, outreach to Cuba—that even in the eyes of many Democratic observers has not worked, at least from the view of enhancing global and U.S. security. But from Obama’s standpoint of scaling down U.S. influence, it has been a smashing success.
You are not factual in your letter. Obama came into office on January 2009; the fatality rate in Iraq that month was 16 deaths—not “100.” By December of 2009 it was 3 a month—less than the monthly accident rate in the U.S. military. No wonder Biden (who flipped on the war and, when a presidential candidate, opposed it) suddenly called the quiet in Iraq possibly the administration’s “greatest achievement.” By December 2010, 1 soldier had died that month, and when Obama finished pulling out in December 2011 (as he praised Iraq’s stability) it was 0 deaths. That decision was perhaps analogous to a hypothetical Eisenhower in late 1955 up for reelection like Obama, promising to get out of the Korean War that he did not “start,” and therefore yanking all U.S. troops out by election day 1956 from a relatively quiet Korea. What would Seoul look like today—something akin to Mosul or Baghdad?
Again, when Obama pulled all U.S. troops out there were 0 fatalities in December 2011. That ensuing vacuum resurrected radical Sunni Islamic terrorists under the new ISIS imprimatur, brought in Iran, collapsed Iraq, was a catalyst of the destruction of Syria, and 500,000 dead—and promoted now a steady reinsertion of U.S. troops.
Are you now bragging that, after yanking all troops out of a quiet Iraq as a good thing, it was a better thing that he put some back in to stabilize a now violent Iraq?
You become completely myopic when you write that Iran “simply wants to be a player in the middle east (sic) and whose impact result (sic) in greater stability in this area.”
Iran has little actual need for a nuclear program, given its vast fossil fuels reserves, but a great need if it wishes to acquire a bomb and to spread its influence throughout the region and expand its Shiite/Iranian/Assad/Hezbollah arc. If the deal is not overturned, a rich and influential Iran will set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, if it has not already. If the deal was transparent, why did we send cash at night on a pallet to the Iranians? Has their anti-Western rhetoric or action scaled down after the agreement? Are they working for peace in Syria? Reaching out to Israel? Praising Obama for his compromise? Respecting ships in the Gulf?
Iran’s terrorism has been evident worldwide. There is no stability “in this area.” Obama’s Iran deal has had one good result: it created a new alliance between moderate Sunni regimes, such as Jordan, Egypt, and some Gulf states, and Israel, whose mutual fears of a nuclear Iran and the American-sponsored deal have brought them together.
Yes, we did not commit troops into Syria nor send aid to an ephemeral anti-Assad, anti-ISIS opposition, but we did threaten military action if WMDs were used (Obama’s “redline”); when they were used and we did nothing, we all but invited the Russians in for the first time since they were expelled by the Egyptians over 40 years ago. Our failure to provide aid to non-ISIS groups, or to create sanctuaries for refugees in the Syrian hinterland helped spur mass death and mass migrations to Europe —which may well be the straw that breaks the back of the European Union.
I would not bring up “punishments” for Ukraine and Crimea, which I do not think registered much with Putin. Obama’s own supporters have criticized his strange passive-aggressive reset with Putin, in which after empowering him (the silly plastic reset button, cancelling missile defense with the Poles and Czechs, trashing Bush’s readjustment to Putin over Ossetia, the open mic post-election promises to be “flexible,” the pass given years of Russian cyber attacks, the attack on Romney’s warning about Putin, etc.), Obama then ridiculed Putin in puerile fashion (class cut up, into macho displays for domestic consumption). Sadly talking trash and carrying a twig is a bad combination; yet we see just that mixture again with his most recent threats to China over stealing a drone, and his promises to hit back at Putin’s alleged cyber crimes. I fear they both will either laugh or cry at our braggadocio.
Obama has set a precedent: you can with impunity swallow whole countries, build artificial island bases, take U.S. ships or drones, hack government agencies, but don’t ever be even accused of hacking in a manner that in theory could hurt a liberal candidate—this for Obama is tantamount to a cause for war.
Victor D. Hanson, Ph.D.
Selma CA 93662
From an Angry Reader:
Re: Obama’s initiatives
What a horrible president and yet, 57% approval rating! Wow! How is that possible! I think he did quite well considering that Republicans vowed on the first day not to work with him and never did!
Connie Knapp
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Connie Knapp,
Irony noted.
Obama, I think as of this weekend had a 53% approval according to the realclearpolitics.com average. But in just a year, yes, he has jumped 10 points. Why?
No one quite knows, but I will suggest 5 reasons:
1) Obama understood that he was unpopular in the flesh and popular in the abstract. So when the primaries started in early 2016 he simply disengaged and we rarely saw or heard him much, as two unpopular candidates, Trump and Clinton, by mid-summer were sliming each other and driving their approval ratings down and in contrast and by default the absent Obama’s up. Seeing Obama wave from the links is one thing, having him lecture that “you didn’t build that” or “punish our enemies” is another.
2) He is now a lame duck, and again the reality of a soon to be gone Obama made him popular in a way that an eight-year long tenure of Obama left him unpopular. The popularity of houseguests rises in the hours of their departure.
3) He has bailed on offering the hard medicine to treat the $10 trillion in additional debt he ran up, or to deal with the implosion of Syria, Iraq, and Libya on his watch, or his failed Russian reset, or the looming disaster of Obamacare. Instead his attitude is more or less “stuff happens” as he exits the door to a lucrative post-presidency, and welcomes others to deal with de facto zero interest rates, sluggish growth, record labor non-particiaption, crises in racial relations, etc. It is easy to lose deterrence, but dangerous and hard to regain it—as we shall soon see.
4) The media has sanctified Obama in the manner it has demonized Trump.
5) We do not yet know what the ultimate approval rating of Obama will be; it may stay strong or gyrate. Truman left with 25% approval and yet his administration is now considered a success.
As for your assertion, “I think he did quite well considering that Republicans vowed on the first day not to work with him and never did!”, it was irrelevant what the Republicans said or thought, because Obama entered office with both the House and a super-majority in the Senate.
He rammed budgets and Obamacare through without a single Republican vote. When Obama lost the House and his supermajority in the Senate, Harry Reid simply adopted the nuclear option and ended most filibusters (to the regret now of Democrats).
When he lost the Senate as well, Obama turned to “pen and phone” executive orders and simply ignored Constitutional give and take and bypassed the Congress (amnesties, non-immigration enforcement, EPA fiats, picking and choosing which part of Obamacare he enforced, etc.)—again to the chagrin of Democrats who now fear that Trump might do what Obama did with executive orders.
We forget the alphabet scandals of the last eight years: Lois Lerner and IRS, the NSA mess, the GSA boondoggles, the horrific record at the VA, the crazy EPA director and her fake email persona and the EPA’s unconstitutional fiats, the Wikileaks/Hillary emails/Clinton Foundation pay for play at the State Department, the abrupt departure of Hilda Solis at Labor, the strange career and departure of Petraeus at the CIA, the Sibelius firing at HHS after the surreal startup of Obamacare, and on and on and on.
Obama entered with record good will, both houses of Congress, an upswing in the states, and a likely chance to alter the Supreme Court; he leaves with the strongest Republican position in 100 years, from governorships and state legislatures to the Congress and presidency. The Supreme Court could soon tilt 6-3 or 7-2.
Such was the epitaph to “hope and change”—the greatest gift to the Republican Party in a century.
Sincerely, VDH
From an Angry Reader:
I love the Angry Reader section of your website, particularly your responses. I want to be an Angry Reader and see what you have to say about my valid, thoughtful points so here goes.
How can anyone support Donald Trump (I call him DT because he gives me the dt’s, heh, heh)???
He’s a racist. Look at his cabinet appointments. All white people except token minority Cho and she’s not even Black, Hispanic or Muslim. Carson doesn’t count because he’s an UNCLE TOM.
He’s a masoginist (or whatever it is) because he hates women. Look at his cabinet appointments. All men except token woman Cho. She’s a professional token having been one in a previous REPUBLICIAN ADMINISTRATION a few years ago.
He disrespects the Main Stream Media by using his tweets to go around them and get directly to the PEOPLE. This must be a violation of the 1st Amendment, at a minimum it’s certainly in POOR TASTE!!!
He’s not fit to be President because Obama and Clinton both said so. The New York Times too, I think.
Finally, f{^>\**¥+€ you and the horse you ride on and all other Castro lovers too!!!
I rest my case and await your smarty pants response.
Anonymous
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Really Angry Anonymous Reader,
I think your letter is satire and not serious. But in fairness I’ll answer nonetheless. Even satire has to have some originality; your “DT”/“racist” tropes are not even remotely funny. The shouting capital letters resemble most of the style of our angry readers, so you are either likewise deluded or a bad satirist.
What does “count” mean? Does one count as a minority if he fits some liberal ideology, usually established by an elite whose life does not even remotely match his rhetoric? I was trying to figure out the etymology of your neologism masoginist, but I plead I cannot think up any remote roots other than Greek mastos (breast) or Latin massa (lump) that would give me a clue. Sorry on that.
What is a Republician? Analogous to a conservative physician?
So you are a Trump supporter after all in your (poor) satire about tweeting and the 1st Amendment? Is that confirmed with your digs at Obama and Clinton and The New York Times? And maybe even further confirmed with the obscenity and “Castro lovers”?
I don’t offer “smarty pants” responses to angry readers, but try to take them seriously, more seriously I think than they deserve.
Bottom line: if you are serious, the angry reader letter rates a D-. If you are a Trump supporter, the satire earns a C-. If you are disturbed, then I forgive and pray for your recovery.
Sincerely, VDH
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
From an Angry Reader:
Hello Mr Hanson. I read your articles on Townhall.com and have a question on something you wrote in Enemies Of Language. In your article you refer to Nazi Germany as having been “right wing.” This is a question that I have been wanting to pose so many times when reading articles or viewing documentaries on TV. What was it about Nazi government policies in Germany that made it “right wing” rather than left? It seems to me that Nazism was a politically left ideology due to big government control of everything such as industry, one party rule, censorship, anti religion, etc. What are the things you believe made it right wing?
Rick Bush
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Not So Angry Reader Rick Bush,
Thank you for your reasoned inquiry. I addressed some of this in a prior response to a genuinely angry reader.
National Socialism was an odd hybrid, reflecting both the adjective National and the noun Socialism. In Hitler’s view, socialism in the German context meant more or less what it implied: anti-capitalist screeds, lots of entitlements and government services, infrastructure building, deals for like-sounding corrupt cronies, and government supervised education, recreation, environmentalism, and employment.
But Nazi economics were not so all-inclusive socialist as communism, given that crony capitalists were given concessions to profit and promises from Hitler et al. that they would be free of union strikes and popular pushback. Average Germans for the large part kept their property. There were no confiscations of private wealth on a mass scale other than the nightmarish hounding of Jews and political opponents—unlike the Soviet Union that collectivized almost everything (of course with exceptions for a privileged elite).
But the key was again “National.” Unlike communism and prior universal socialism, Nazism had no claim on universalism: it never sought to unite the workers of the world or to create a socialist global utopia.
Rather, it unapologetically believed that Germans, as Aryans, were a superior race. Like the nationalist and socialist ancient Spartans, there would be mandated privileged equality among most Germans, but based on cruel exploitation of a vast cast of inferiors below.
If socialism is a crackpot dream that the workers of the world will unite across race and geography against universal capitalist exploiters, unhinged National Socialism meant that pure Germans would advance a Third Reich, promoting arms, patriotism, bizarre mythologies about a past supposedly untainted from the very beginning by decadent Romanism, puffed-up fantastical Nordic religion, and a national creed of patriotic, well-armed, and mostly superior people who would naturally excel over lesser others if united by an anti-democratic single tyrant.
In short, I think Hitler and his predecessors were somewhat accurate in calling this hybrid movement of socialism at home and nationalism abroad Nationalsozialismus, and so we are mostly right in calling Nazism, as outsiders in World War II, who had to deal with its foreign policy, as “right-wing,” at least in comparison to Stalin’s left-wing version of mass extermination.
To be pedantic I might have instead better have referred to right-left wing Nazi Germany and a left-right wing Soviet Union, given that the latter was likewise unfree, highly patriotic, militaristic, and followed the cult of a caudillo—along with being a share-the-poverty and hating capitalism dictatorship. Stalin once admired Hitler and vice versa; they saw each other as somewhat similar, especially their shared barbaric means to an end. The difference perhaps ultimately was one of relative degree: Hitler to his enemies was more right-wing, dictatorial and militaristic than socialist, and Stalin was more ruthlessly communist than other right-wing autocrats.
—Victor Davis Hanson
From an Angry Reader:
The new kind of Republican party is part 1930’s Nazi and 1950’s Dixiecrat.
Raye Harper
——————————
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Raye Harper,
Since you assert rather than argue or explain, it is hard to fathom what you are getting at. But in the spirit of the Angry Reader, I’ll give it a shot.
There is a reason why etymology is a valuable pursuit. Seek the root meaning of words and thereby learn. Our English word Nazism derives as an English transliterated abbreviation for the German Nationalsozialismus (“National Socialism”)—Hitler’s effort to combine fanatical nationalism with socialist and anti-capitalist principles.
Take also your “Dixiecrat” (which incidentally was a one-time phenomenon of the election of 1948, and did not reappear as you suggest in the “1950s.”) Note the suffix “-crat” (Greek, kratos, “power/rule”). It was so named in 1948 because it was a derivative of the Democratic Party. It was not called the Dixiepublicans because it had no similarities to the Republican Party.
Ironically, Dixiecrats’ official name (“The States’ Rights Democratic Party”) reflected and championed the idea of federal nullification (in this case school integration), which had been the source of the 1828 (in this case tariffs) and 1860 (in this case slavery) secessionist fervors. How odd, then, that 300 liberal jurisdictions currently are now “Sanctuary Cities” (perhaps better described as “Nullification Cities”) that defy federal immigration in the neo-Confederate spirit. Ask yourself which party, in the spirit of the Dixiecrats, is more likely to excuse race-base segregation, where on-campus “theme houses” or “safe spaces” with impunity discriminate on the basis of superficial appearance. Who is more tolerant of the idea of La Raza (“the Race”), a noun whose pedigree is found in Franco’s fascist Spain and Mussolini’s (as Razza) fascist Italy—Democrats or Republicans?
Is there any need to ask further where the impetus of contemporary anti-Semitism originates? Just walk on any contemporary campus, and visit the free-speech area. Being Jewish and pro-Israel is far more likely to incur left-wing anti-Semites than old-fashioned right-wing ones.
In sum, I don’t see how the present pro-capitalist, pro-federalist, pro-Israel Republican Party can derive from either a foreign imported socialism or an indigenous states’ rights Democratic Party.
Finally, most readers are aware of your insidious liberal trope. In 1980 Reagan was called a Nazi. When he left office, newly-elected George H.W. Bush was the next extremist and suddenly the Left nostalgically called Reagan moderate, given that he was out of power. In 2000 George W. Bush was the new Nazi, and his father reinvented as a moderate in comparison. By 2016 a “new” Republican Party under Trump is now supposedly Nazi-like and W. is now seen as sober and judicious. So the playbook is transparent: assassinate the character of your present adversary by claiming he is an extremist by the standard of his predecessors, whom you of course smeared when they were in power as well.
Bottom line: a lot of incoherence in your short sentence.
Sincerely,
VDH
From an Angry Reader:
She WON the popular vote!!!!!
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Suzanne Williams,
I got your point without the capital letters and the five exclamation marks.
As a general rule the resort to exclamation is a reflection of an absence of argument. Let words speak for themselves—and in your case fail on their own merits.
The Founders created an Electoral College for a reason: to avoid the sort of fickle demagoguery that characterized ancient Athenian democracy and that turns up in chilling scenes in Thucydides and Xenophon, and was thus in depth critiqued by Aristotle and Plato. We follow more instead Roman Republicanism that sought to provide reflection to the pulses of the people before they translated into instant political change. A few additional points:
1) Would you have written this sentence had the opposite occurred: that is, suggesting that Hillary was somehow an illegitimate president because Trump won the popular vote?
2) Do you think that candidates would campaign quite differently had the rules been different? Do you not think that both candidates otherwise might have skipped more sparsely populated swing states to focus on population density? Who knows that outcome?
3) You seem somewhat in a state of denial. The Trump victory was remarkable in ways well beyond his substantial victory in the Electoral College:
- a) I cannot remember a candidate in modern memory who was bitterly opposed by those in his own party. Trump won despite a dearth of party endorsements, with the hostility of conservative media (Weekly Standard, National Review, many at The Wall Street Journal). The #NeverTrump people shook the Republican Party in a way Bernie Sanders did not the Democratic Party.
- b) Trump was outspent at somewhere between 3-1 to 2-1 by Hillary: he had few bundlers; his campaign team was much less experienced; he had no ground game in traditional terms; far fewer ads; no real celebrity rallies; etc. Yet he blew up the “blue wall.” Why was that?
- c) The media hated Trump in a way the Left have never quite matched before. Read WikiLeaks and you can see that both reporters and opinion writers were checking in first with Podesta, Inc. The entire media was corrupt and sought to shape the election by collusion with Hillary and yet all for naught? Why?
4) Unfortunately, Trump was not a fluke: A 2016 red/blue county by county map of the U.S. shows a geographical sea of red (85% of the territory of the U.S.) In sum, Barack Obama destroyed the Democratic Party in just 8 years: Senate lost; House lost; state legislatures and governorships lost (just 6 states have combined Democratic legislatures and governors); 1,000 elected Democrats have lost their offices since Obama took power; the Supreme Court will be conservative at a likely 6-3 or even 7-2 margin for a generation.
It would be wiser to look forward and be introspective: what are liberals doing that is destroying the Democratic Party at state and federal levels? The answers will be more helpful to you rather than suggesting that the U.S. Constitution is at fault.
Sincerely,
VDH
From an Angry Reader:
To Victor Hanson:
f**k all y’all motherf**king f**kers unlubed with a f**king broom handle, you elitist motherf**king uniparty pieces of sh*t.
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Anonymous Foul Reader who mailed from 4m6sm1+2ewjjnl72o2x0@guerrillamail.com,
Even though in cowardly fashion you did not print your name, you did offer a more unique form of profanity than I received from most of your persuasion this election.
No matter, here are five stylistic suggestions, since your letter is otherwise unanswerable.
1) Variatio: the Romans were right that variety in word selection avoids monotony. Your repetition of the f-word does not achieve emphasis, despite your efforts to use the verb, adjective, and noun forms. Ten minutes with Quintilian or Cicero’s rhetoric works would do wonders for your style (easily found in translation on Amazon).
2) Why does the Left so often mix sexual profanity and violence? Your vocabulary is a window into a dark soul. I suggest it is a bad mixture, so pick either sexual violence or profanity, but not both. To suggest is to create, to be ornate is to destroy.
3) What exactly is a “uniparty”? Who belongs to “one-party?” Strive for clarity of thought.
4) What exactly is “elitist?” I thought the charge against Trump supporters was that they were yahoos, not elitists; Red-state Americans voted against elitism. Again, seek some sort of consistency in your ideology; otherwise it is mere street thug vocabulary and adolescent swearing.
5) I’m 63 and have never written a single anonymous letter in my life or used a pseudonym—and have never suffered for it. Try signing your angry letters. At least that way you own your crudity.
Sincerely,
VDH
Comment from an Angry Reader:
I’m sure it was fun exercising your giant brain, but my surprise and I imagine most “liberals” was that enough Americans were willing to vote for what appears to be a sociopath.
He disqualified himself for me when he openly espoused physical violence against those who disagree with you. Basically the root principle justifying fascism—when the entity being disagreed with is the state.
No matter what the real Trump turns out to be—even the greatest president that ever was—anyone who voted for him is no better than a Nazi.
Don’t bother to answer, I don’t give a shit what your rationalization is, or indeed the rationalization of anyone who equates Clinton and Trump as two equally bad choices.
Richard Waddle
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Richard Waddle,
Are you referring to Trump’s intemperate remarks to protestors disrupting his rallies? I thought that unwise, but we learn post facto that such use of disruption was paid for by operatives in pay of the Democratic National Committee, and the architect of the project was a frequent visitor to the Obama White House. Did that fact, given it was actual, not verbal, disqualify Clinton from being the President, not to mention the current president of the United States?
I would like to have replied to your charge of “fascism,” but you realize that your formulation here is utterly incoherent. What exactly does your half-thought mean: “Basically the root principle justifying fascism—when the entity being disagreed with is the state.” Hieroglyphics or English?
I was wondering when the Nazi charge would come, and was surprised that you held off until half your rant was finished. How exactly is voting for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton—roughly half the country did the same—synonymous with starting World War II and exterminating 6 million in death camps?
And again, you are seriously confused: the statement “No matter what the real Trump turns out to be—even the greatest president that ever was—anyone who voted for him is no better than a Nazi” is internally inconsistent. A president greater than Washington, Lincoln, or Roosevelt obviously is antithetical to Nazism. For example, do you mean to imply that a president who might be greater than the man who warred against and defeated Nazism is a Nazi?
And why so emotional?
Passion without self-control only leaves you confused and adolescent-like. Take you exclamation, “Don’t bother to answer, I don’t give a shit what your rationalization is, or indeed the rationalization of anyone who equates Clinton and Trump as two equally bad choices.”
So you took the trouble to write, but do not wish an answer?
Was the point of this incoherence just to rant rather than to take anti-anxiety medications or to visit a campus safe space lamentation center to pet puppies and play with toys? Note that I never “rationalized” my vote as something equating Clinton and Trump as “two equally bad choices.” They are not. Clinton was worse. Her crimes occurred as a public servant, undermining the idea of equality under the law. Tragically, the Clinton Foundation was run as a veritable crime syndicate that used the cloak of charity to enrich the Clinton family. In contrast, Trump’s excesses were as a private citizen and more rhetorical than factual: what Clinton did is a matter of record; what Trump might do is a matter of conjecture.
After the Nazi smear, I was waiting for the other requisite leftwing trope of obscenity, but again was surprised “sh*t” came so late in your diatribe.
You confirm the old adage the Left loves humanity in the abstract, but does not like people in concrete; in your case, that works out in decrying supposed violence in theory, but in the fact of your writing revealing yourself to be both crude and violent minded to the degree you were occasionally coherent. Quite sad, but also disturbing.
Sincerely, VDH
The Angry Phone-caller
“Are you Mr. Hanson? F**k you! F**k Trump!”
Dear (anonymous) Angry Phone-caller,
I did not get a chance to say a word in answer to either your question or exclamations.
But I’m always amazed about the ingenuity of people who can find one’s cell phone number—from retailers to ad men to lost souls like yourself. But seriously, what is it about Donald Trump that drove you to such obscenity—and to such cowardice, since under the guise of a phone call, you waited until I answered, only to shout obscenities and hang up?
Really, I would have taken a minute or two to discuss your “issues”—a venom that we see is acting out in riots and demonstrations (and in blue cities of blue states of all places, rather than out at Ground Zero of Trumpland on the Interstates of Appalachia or southern Ohio), and, more passively, on campuses like my own at Stanford, where adults are reduced to teary infants in need of grief counseling (did such a thing happen in 2008 or 2012 for traumatized conservatives in need of psychological mentoring to assuage their trauma?). Is passive-aggressive cowardice integral to anti-Trump outbursts—ambush obscenity, breaking windows in Liberal Land but not Bismarck or Boise, pouting rather than proud defiance?
In my defense, I don’t think I have ever in some 63 years shouted (even anonymously and by distant phone) “F**k you” to someone, unless when provoked I was prepared to fight. In the Central Valley such epithets are synonymous with fisticuffs and so I never employed them unless I was ready for blows or worse. But how strange the Left is today: it habitually uses the F-word, but also in cowardly fashion seeks shelter in psycho-dramatic counseling. What is the message of the F-word, Jacksonian anger or a weepy retreat to the fetal position, a roaring lion or a teary mouse?
As far as “F**k Trump,” I could only ascertain your gender by your voice (male), not your class, status, ethnicities, race, or religion, so I am not sure in our nation of victims what exactly Trump has done to you or your tribe.
So far he has not said anything like “typical white person,” or told his rallies “to get in their faces” or “to bring a gun to a knife fight.” Did he rouse his supporters against you, on orders “to punish our enemies”? Did he call Latinos “needy” or make fun of the first names of African-Americans or relegate Catholics to little more than medieval nuts?
Did he stereotype blacks as clean or normal speaking as a Joe Biden or Harry Reid? Did he refer to “white Americans” as did Hillary in 2008? Or perhaps you are furious because you think he likes Justice Ginsburg, who quipped once that the right of abortion was at least leading to the aborting of the right sort of babies (e.g., poor and inner city denizens).
Trump has not talked of “them Jews” in the manner of Obama’s spiritual advisor Rev. Wright, or Hillary’s often close political ally Al Sharpton who ranted once about “homos.”
So what is your beef—his economic plan will turn a prosperous Democratic managed inner city into a right-wing moonscape of joblessness? His health care plan will have such high deductibles, premiums, and copays that it will be virtual insurance that never much can be used? That fracking and horizontal drilling will drive gas prices too low? That “the wall” will force lawbreakers here illegally back to their countries of origins without the perpetual right to continue hit and run driving?
Such mystery when a caller shouts eight words only to hang up.
Sincerely,
VDH
Comment from an Angry Reader:
COULD THESE REALLY BE YOUR WORDS?
“When Trump shoots off his blunderbuss, is it always proof of laziness and ignorance, or is it sometimes generally aimed in the right direction to prompt anxiety and eventual necessary reconsideration?”
ITS IGNORANCE AND YOU KNOW IT. HAS HE ONCE DESCRIBED DETAILS OF HOW IS GOING TO ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING CONSERVATIVE??
“The Clinton Foundation is like no other president-sponsored nonprofit enterprise in recent memory.”
AT LEAST THE MONEY GOES TO CHARITY
YOUR MAN TRUMP SPENDS IT ON HIS PORTRAIT
Larry A. Feig, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Developmental, Molecular and Chemical Biology
Department of Neuroscience
Tufts University School of Medicine
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Larry Feig,
Beware of using all capital letters; usually they seek to create emphases otherwise lacking in an argument. I read both Clinton’s and Trump’s agendas posted on their websites. Progressives should vote for Clinton, conservatives Trump. On the major issues—debt, taxes, regulation, health care, national security, abortion, climate change, fossil fuels, illegal immigration, etc.—their respective positions are entirely antithetical. One can argue their respective characters do not warrant support, or their flip-flops make both insincere. Perhaps. But their official positions as we head toward Election Day are clear and clearly at odds.
VDH
Comment from an Angry Reader:
You’re a civil guy, and it is appreciated. It would be a waste of time, however, for us to engage in colloquy. I can only hope that you are not spared the results of your short-sightedness, and cheerleading for Donald Trump—the word is apt, despite your ‘preference’ in the primaries—that perhaps someone you love takes a bullet along with the countless Mexicans and Muslims who will suffer at his hands along with many of the rest of us. Then, you may be able to feel something like Kipling felt when his own son died in wartime.
—Kurt Lipschutz
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Kurt Lipschutz,
I have answered your earlier angry letter, but confess that you are not a civil person. As I wrote, I am not a cheerleader for Donald Trump, but concluded that in a world of bad and worse choices Trump is less toxic than is Clinton and the assorted Clinton scandals that come with her. Enforcing border security and ensuring immigration is legal, diverse, and meritocratic is reasonable—despite your macabre suggestions.
You know nothing about the circumstances of Kipling’s remorse over the death of his son in WWI, which is likely because either he had helped his son’s own efforts to lift a medical deferment to serve, or he was angry that the British Army had had plenty of warning of the need to prepare for a looming war with Germany and did not field or lead a suitable army worthy of its soldiers’ sacrifices. And you reach a real low when you suggest that someone close to me should die to convince me to agree with your own particular political positions. Anyone who has a lost a child would find your ill wishes for the murder of one of my loved ones pathological and beneath contempt.
VDH
Comment from a Reader:
Dear Sir,
Maybe if Trump wins, you can be one of his pet intellectuals, whom he will despise and humiliate.
Sincerely,
Kurt Lipschutz
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Lipschutz,
I voted against Trump in the primaries and am on record that he was not among the 5-10 candidates I would have preferred instead in the primaries. As a conservative, I believe his agenda is far preferable to Hillary’s progressivism, and so prefer him over yet another 4 years of uninterrupted Obamism.
I live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and am happy to commute to work at the Hoover Institution 3,000 miles away from Washington. I have never worked in politics and avoid Washington and New York as much as possible. I do not consult with campaigns, do not donate to candidates, do not sign presidential campaign endorsement petitions, am not married to a politico, and have no relatives involved in politics. My only official federal service was in 2007-8 to serve as a board member of the American Battlefield Monuments Commission (the position is unpaid) that oversees the management of cemeteries of our war dead overseas. In all cases, I visited military cemeteries abroad at my own expense.
To follow your curiosity, I suggest instead that you ask other people in the field of opinion journalism whether the same is true. Or inquire of those in opinion journalism who are Hillary supporters and NeverTrumpers specifically whether they are White House visitors, donate to campaigns, off the record consult with candidates, or are related to or married to campaign operatives, media networkers, or politicians. If you need further direction, consult the Podesta trove to calibrate the level of obsequiousness from Washington and New York journalists and editorialists, who either are self-described “hacks” or vowed to run their work past Clinton auditors before publication.
I don’t know whether Trump despises those who fawn over him; but again, I suggest you turn your attention to fact rather than speculation, specifically to intellectuals and journalists who worship Obama, from the Nobel Laureate judges who gave him an unearned award to the Washington toady press corps whom he humiliates daily. Out of politeness I won’t mention all the intellectual grandees who claimed Obama was a “god,” said his pressed pants presaged his greatness, felt tingles in their legs when he spoke, and swore that he was the smartest man to ever enter the presidency—and ask them whether they would say such embarrassing things again.
Sincerely, Victor Davis Hanson
Comment from a Reader:
Donald Trump’s campaign statements have consisted of proposals including, but not limited to:
Violation of the NATO treaty by threatening to withhold assistance from allies based on alleged financial discrepancies;
Ordering the US Military to commit first-degree murder of non-combatant civilians (“take out the families” of suspected terrorists) — a war crime in violation of the Geneva Conventions;
Commandeering private and public property in Iraq; specifically, the seizure of their oil fields, pumping equipment, and crude oil — in other words, “pillaging” of conquered territory, which is another war crime in violation of the Geneva Conventions;
Violation of Amendment One of the Constitution (freedom of the press) – specifically, threatening prosecution against journalists who publish information with which he disagrees;
Violation of Amendment One (freedom of religion) – specifically, requiring Muslim-Americans to carry identification cards listing their religion;
Violation of Amendments Five and Six – specifically, trying American Citizens via Military Commissions at Guantanamo, Cuba detention facility;
Utilizing the Justice Department as a tool of personal vengeance, including the unprecedented and reprehensible threat to jail his opponent if he should be elected.
The above conduct, were Trump to be elected and follow through on these proposals, would comprise a minimum of seven separate, actionable offenses, including Violation of International Law; Breach of Ratified Treaty; Defying the US Constitution; and Abuse of Presidential Power.
This list does not even touch on his not-illegal but nonetheless shocking displays of racism; his slightly oblique (but certainly successful) exhortations to violence at several of his campaign rallies; and his boasting of, and history of, sexual predation upon women.
A person who votes for a candidate whose campaign rhetoric indicates willingness, even eagerness, to break the law is either insane, hopelessly uneducated, or willingly complicit in the crimes. I’d say that multiple-choice array gives a pretty good clue as to where you stand.
I have long restrained myself from using the “F” word when it comes to a number of the farther-right politicians and commentators in this country, figuring that reasonable minds can disagree.
No more. Not this time. Not with this candidate, and not when you write something like this:
“… if he were to win, he might usher in the most conservative Congress, presidency, and Supreme Court in nearly a century.”
Knock off the feeble attempts at subterfuge. You don’t mean “conservative,” and we both know it.
You are a fascist. And drowning people in would-be-Buckley word avalanches of self-justification, and hiding behind a variety of fake palliatives like economic arguments does not hide that.
You have no scruples whatsoever to back such a man.
I suggest you consider writing your future columns under the pen name of Philippe Pétain.
Sincerely,
Tom Edwards
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Tom Edwards:
It is always enjoyable to read an unprincipled and emotional leftist rant that suggests the moral high ground as the requisite excuse for descending into the swamp of calling someone a fascist.
I have many disagreements with both Hillary supporters and NeverTrump Republicans—and Trump himself, but I don’t question their motives: if you prefer a liberal agenda, then by all means vote for Hillary and swallow her criminality; if you find Trump too vulgar and inexperienced, then simply do not vote for him. Neither is a fascist position. Nor is voting for him the lesser of two evils.
The adolescent angry reader is incapable of such disinterested views.
He also engages in projection (in the order he presented his “charges”):
Freedom of religion: Trump was quite wrong in his initial statement to ban entry from the war-torn Middle East on the basis of religion (although Christian Middle Easterners are less likely to be ISIS operatives); he was certainly correct, however, to use locale as a criterion (curtail all immigration for everyone from Syria, Libya, Iraq, etc. until we can properly vet applicants). On the topic of religious liberty, remember how the Obama administration sought to force the Catholic “Little Sisters of the Poor” to include a contraceptive clause in their health care plans contrary to their religious beliefs? The Podesta trove, likewise, reminds us how the Left sought to undermine the Catholic Church which it wrote off as medieval. Trump has not predicated relief for the dying (re: Haiti) on a contractor’s past contributions to the Clinton Foundation. He has not horse-traded with the FBI, hoping to have documents reclassified in exchange for space at US embassies abroad.
On murder: Hillary Clinton (“I don’t recall…”) as Secretary of State according to more than one witness pondered the possibility of droning ( = assassinating) Julian Assange—but only when his Wikileaks project was damaging her own campaign. Barack Obama, remember, joked about droning possible suitors of his daughter. Funny stuff, blowing up someone from above?
On the 1st Amendment: a video maker was jailed by the Obama administration on the trumped up charge of inciting a riot abroad (proven false); AP reporters had their communications tapped by Eric Holder’s Justice Department. It is now apparently banal (Politico’s Glenn Thrush: “Because I have become a hack I will send u the whole section that pertains to u”) for journalists to send their stories first to the Clinton campaign to have them approved or for an operative to leak debate questions to the preferred candidate. “Equal Protection Under the Law” has become satire when one compares the criminal prosecutions of high-ranking military officers for leaking sensitive documents, after the Hillary immunity for doing far more damage.
Violation of American citizens’ rights: I think droning an American citizen is a bit harsher than interrogating one at Guantanamo. As far as citizens’ rights, the abuse under Lois Lerner at the IRS was aimed at denying US citizens’ their free speech rights.
Personal vengeance? Does the author remember the bullying tactics of press coordination with the White House of JournoList? The jailing of Dinesh D’Souza? Nakoula Basselely Nakoula?
The author is incapable of comparing the agendas of the candidates and making comparisons (in this particular election) between their positions on the issues; instead we resort to the subjunctive mood to worry what Trump might do when we know what Clinton has done.
As far as the other boilerplate: Trump campaign rallies? Maybe I missed the story of the resignation of Trump goons (frequent White House visitors?) who confessed to trying to stage riot and violence at Clinton rallies? I deplore racist language, but remember unfortunately the president’s “typical white person,” and Hillary’s 2008 appeal to “white Americans,” and the Harry Reid/Joe Biden discourse about “clean” blacks without “negro” accents.
The law? This administration had broken the law with executive orders nullifying current immigration statutes, by allowing 300 entities to declare themselves “sanctuaries” immune from ICE jurisdiction, or to reorder creditors in bankruptcy laws; but that is minor in comparison to subverting the government email system, ranking times for personal appointments by payoffs, or divvying up federal contracts on the basis of donations.
In sum, the author believes like Hillary Clinton that half of those with whom he disagrees are “deplorables,” and it is just such sanctimoniousness that leads to the sort of constitutional abuse witnessed during the last 8 years and throughout the Wikileaks trove. “Knock off the subterfuge:” you are not liberal-minded, merely confused, sadly uniformed—and strangely quite emotional as well.
I feel quite sorry for you. I mean that sincerely as well.
—VDH
Comment from a Reader:
“But even before the latest revelations from an eleven-year-old Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump crudely talked about women”
TRUMP DID NOT TALK CRUDELY ABOUT WOMEN ON THIS TAPE- HE TALKED ABOUT HIS RIGHT AS A CELEBRITY TO SEXUALLY ASSAULT WOMEN!!!
YOUR CONFLATING THE TWO IS UNBELIEVABLE. IF YOU HAVE A DAUGHTER ASK HER IF SHE KNOWS THE DIFFERENCE.
IN DOING SO YOU ENABLE MEN OUT THERE TO DO WHAT HE BRAGS ABOUT. HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THIS?
OH YEH, BEING A REPUBLICAN IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ENCOURAGING MEN TO SEXUALLY ASSAULT WOMEN. SEE HOW YOU FEEL IF YOU, YOUR DAUGHTER OR SISTER IS GRABBED BY THE GENITALIA AND SOMEONE SAYS WELL TRUMP SAYS ITS OK.
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Dear Angry Reader Feig,
Spare me the bottled, adolescent capital-letter piety. The choice for now is between a repulsive-speaking Trump, the blowhard, and Clinton, who, to keep on your topic of sexual assault, chortled over her ability to get a child rapist off with a light sentence (a real, not a rhetorical victim), and who habitually denigrated women who were sexually assaulted by her husband, and whose campaign is being aided on stump by both Al Gore (the “crazed sex poodle” accused of sexual assault in a motel room) and her husband, who was disbarred due to lying about just one of his serial sexual assaults.
Both are flawed candidates, but the election hinges on which of their respective agendas are more likely to lead to greater security, legality and prosperity for most Americans. In that 51/49% world, Trump’s hypothetical agenda is preferable to Clinton’s actual.
Given your sanctimonious sermonizing, ‘how can you not see this’? Hillary Clinton reportedly dreamed of “droning” Julian Assange. In other words, the Secretary of States envisioned assassinating a figure she found dangerous to her campaign. If that is not morally repugnant enough for you, how dare you vote for someone who felt adjudicating contracts for Haitian relief depended on cash contributions (trafficking in lives for money)? I could go on, but you get the contrast from the hypothetical reprehensible in the subjunctive versus the actual past reprehensible in the indicative.
I find your moral blinkers “unbelievable”.
I do not habitually, as your wont, impugn the motives of those like you who will vote for a serial liar, extortionist, criminal, and hypocrite, given I assume that they feel her flaws do not detract enough from her progressive agenda which they favor; so, given the wart on your nose, do not slight the pimple on someone else’s cheek. Finally, what makes you think I am a registered Republican?
I would indeed warn my daughter about a probable sexual grabber like Donald Trump—but especially a sexual assaulter like Al Gore, and a rapist like Bill Clinton—and in particular a legal and emotional enabler of rape like Hillary Clinton.
VDH
Selma resident
Comment from a Reader:
Maybe you can become his campaign manager now. That is, if you can get him to sit still long enough for you to explain to him who Bull Halsey is.
Comment from a Reader:
Dear Mr. Hanson;
I left the Republican Party soon after watching eight years of ineffective “leadership” by Mitch McConnell, John Bohner, and now Paul Ryan. But the tipping point came when Trump was nominated for president. I cannot belong to a political party that would nominate an ignoramus and blowhard who has no interest in America other than how it can enrich him.
Trump has the mentality of a not-very-bright 8 year old. I am sad to witness people like Dennis Prager, Bill Bennett, Ann Coulter, you, and many others I formerly respected who are now in thrall to the unsophisticated and ignorant Trump.
The GOP is finished. Conservatives and those who love and respect our Constitution must form a new organization to push back against institutional Leftism. Trump is the last person we need to lead that movement.
John Nernoff
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
The use of the adjectival phrase “in thrall” has no support in anything I wrote about Trump, my least favorite of the 16 primary alternatives, and reflects poorly on both the reasoning and character of the Angry Reader. Unfortunately, I live in the real world of 51/49% in which there are usually bad and worse choices. In that context, the specter of a 8-year Clinton continuum to Obama’s two terms is truly frightening. I suggest Mr. Nernoff review the latest Wikileaks trove and then collate it with prior hacked Clinton emails and Foundation business. “Unsophisticated and Ignorant” Hillary certainly is not. But I might prefer in our Manichean world of 2016 unsophistication to unconstitutional criminality and inveterate lying. If you seek monuments to why Hillary should not reach the White House, simply look around you from the carcass of the Middle East to a soon to be nuclear Iran to war drums from North Korea to Moscow—all a topping to a wrecked health care system, $11 trillion in new debt, and the corruption of once hallowed institutions from the IRS to the FBI. There is a 51% great likelihood that a president Trump would bring in far more conservatives than would Hillary Clinton; sometimes that is all we get.
Comment on: Is Trump Admiral Bull Halsey of Captain Queeg?
October 4, 2016
So—you tuned in hoping to see “Bull” Halsey? I suppose that was a reasonable expectation if the following propositions were true:
1. “Bull” Halsey was a draft dodger.
2. “Bull” Halsey was a cheat.
- “Bull” Halsey was a four-flusher.
- “Bull” Halsey was an ignoramus.
- “Bull” Halsey got his information from “the shows.”
I could go on—in fact, I could go on and on and on—but I hope you get the point. It’s that I’ve never seen this amount of self-delusion in one place at one time before. The mere act of instituting that comparison means your judgment ranks at zero, now and forever.
Adios—
Bob Acker
Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:
Mr. Acker,
I wrote in the column that conservatives—not myself as you write—probably tuned into to see Trump as a Bull Halsey-like character, not as Captain Queeg of The Caine Mutiny. You do not understand the craft of allusion, metaphor, or simile. I suggested that Trump supporters probably thought he would come out in the first debate in speech and candor as aggressive and tough, in the manner that Admiral William “Bull” Halsey often employed tough rhetoric in World War II. Instead, I suggested that Trump’s confused debate performance reminded one of the neurotic fictional character Captain Queeg of the classic movie The Caine Mutiny, who melted down in courtroom rants about the trivial.
You strangely object to that narrow comparison because you seem to think that the life Trump has lived does not match the heroism of Halsey. True, but my limited comparison was to the impulsive Halsey’s combative language, not inclusive relative morality. According to your simplistic logic, Trump commensurately also could not be compared to the neurotic Queeg because Queeg never existed—he was first a fictional and later a cinematic character. So I am also not allowed to note the comparison between Trump and Queeg because it would be unfair to the non-person Queeg: the phantom of literature and film whose made-up life might not have been akin to Trump, the “four-flusher”?
The arrogance and puerility of your angry letter (“It’s that I’ve never seen this amount of self-delusion in one place at one time before. The mere act of instituting that comparison means your judgment ranks at zero, now and forever.”) only add to your utter confusion about comparisons to limited rhetorical characteristics of real and fictional characters.
Finally, if I were to say on occasion that Mitt Romney was Kennedyesque, in some of his better rhetorical moments, would the blinkered Acker then object that the comparison between the morally upright Romney and the dissolute and often abhorrent sexual practices of John F. Kennedy made the narrow rhetorical allusion unfair to Romney?
In sum, the angry letter is utterly incoherent, reminding us that ignorance and arrogance are a lethal combination.
VDH
