VDH's Blade of Perseus

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? Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →

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.
Continue reading →

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

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 PA

Victor 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