Fake News: Postmodernism By Another Name

victorhanson
by Victor Davis Hanson//Defining Ideas

After the election, Democrats could not explain the inexplicable defeat of Hillary Clinton, who would be, they thought, the shoo-in winner in November. Over the next three months until Inauguration Day, progressives floated a variety of explanations for the Trump win—none of them, though, mentioned that the Clinton campaign had proven uninspired, tactically inept, and never voiced a message designed to appeal to the working classes.

When a particular exegesis of defeat failed to catch on, it was mostly dropped—and then replaced by a new narrative. We were told that the Electoral College wrongly nullified the popular vote—and that electors had a duty to renege on their obligations to vote for their respective state’s presidential winner. Continue reading “Fake News: Postmodernism By Another Name” →

Prosperity Is Destiny

victorhanson
 By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

If the economy grows during Trump’s administration, his opposition will dwindle.

“Ten thousand cuts an awful lot of family ties.” — Pike Bishop in The Wild Bunch

When Ronald Reagan entered office in 1981 amid negative economic growth, roaring inflation, and high unemployment, his critics immediately grew emboldened and sought to ankle-bite him at every turn: Reagan purportedly had created homelessness all by himself; Reagan was on the verge of ensuring a “nuclear winter” and a “day after” desolation from a likely nuclear exchange, given his nihilistic tough stance against the Soviet Union.

After dismantling the air-traffic controllers’ union, Reagan had supposedly endangered the lives of plane passengers and ruined the idea of unionism itself, replacing it with “let them eat cake” indifference. Continue reading “Prosperity Is Destiny” →

Trump and the American Divide

victorhanson
How a lifelong New Yorker became tribune of the rustics and deplorables
By Victor Davis Hanson//City Journal

Winter 2017

At 7 AM in California’s rural Central Valley, not long before the recent presidential election, I stopped to talk with an elderly irrigator on the shared border alleyway of my farm. His face was a wrinkled latticework, his false teeth yellow. His truck smelled of cigarettes, its cab overflowing with flotsam and jetsam: butts, scribbled notes, drip-irrigation parts, and empty soda cans. He rolled down the window and muttered something about the plunging water-table level and whether a weak front would bring any rain. And then, this dinosaur put one finger up on the wheel as a salutation and drove off in a dust cloud.

Five hours later, and just 180 miles distant, I bought a coffee at a Starbucks on University Avenue in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley, the spawn of Stanford University. Two young men sat at the table next to me, tight “high-water” pants rising above their ankles, coat cuffs drawn up their forearms, and shirts buttoned all the way to the top, in retro-nerd style. Their voices were nasal, their conversation rapid-fire— politics, cars, houses, vacations, fashion, and restaurants all came up. They were speaking English, but of a very different kind from the irrigator’s, accentuating a sense of being on the move and upbeat about the booming reality surrounding them. Continue reading “Trump and the American Divide” →

It’s No Revelation That Intelligence Agencies Are Politicized

victorhanson
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
Trump is acknowledging a fact that recent history has repeatedly demonstrated.
Furor has arisen over President-elect Donald Trump’s charges that our intelligence agencies are politicized.
Spare us the outrage. For decades, directors of intelligence agencies have often quite inappropriately massaged their assessments to fit administration agendas.
Careerists at these agencies naturally want to continue working from one administration to the next in “the king is dead; long live the king!” style. So they make the necessary political adjustments, which are sometimes quite at odds with their own agency’s findings and to the detriment of national security. The result is often confusion — and misinformation passed off as authoritative intelligence.

After Barack Obama won the 2008 election, George W. Bush intelligence adviser John Brennan stayed on as Obama’s homeland-security adviser. He is currently the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Continue reading “It’s No Revelation That Intelligence Agencies Are Politicized” →

victorhanson

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. Continue reading →

Putin, Obama — and Trump

victorhanson
by Victor Davis Hanson//National Review
Let’s hope that the era of ‘lead from behind’ and violated red lines is over.
For eight years, the Obama administration misjudged Vladimir Putin’s Russia, as it misjudged most of the Middle East, China, and the rest of the world as well. Obama got wise to Russia only when Putin imperiled not just U.S. strategic interests and government records but also supposedly went so far as to tamper with sacrosanct Democratic-party secrets, thereby endangering the legacy of Barack Obama.
Putin was probably bewildered by Obama’s media-driven and belated concern, given that the Russians, like the Chinese, had in the past hacked U.S. government documents that were far more sensitive than the information it may have mined and leaked in 2016 — and they received nothing but an occasional Obama “cut it out” whine. Neurotic passive-aggression doesn’t merely bother the Russians; it apparently incites and emboldens them.
Obama’s strange approach to Putin since 2009 apparently has run something like the following. Putin surely was understandably angry with the U.S. under the cowboy imperialist George W. Bush, according to the logic of the “reset.” After all, Obama by 2009 was criticizing Bush more than he was Putin for the supposed ills of the world. But Barack Obama was not quite an American nationalist who sought to advance U.S. interests.
Instead, he posed as a new sort of soft-power moralistic politician — not seen since Jimmy Carter — far more interested in rectifying the supposed damage rather than the continuing good that his country has done. If Putin by 2008 was angry at Bush for his belated pushback over Georgia, at least he was not as miffed at Bush as Obama himself was.
Reset-button policy then started with the implicit agreement that Russia and the Obama administration both had legitimate grievances against a prior U.S. president — a bizarre experience for even an old hand like Putin. (Putin probably thought that the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq were a disaster not on ethical or even strategic grounds but because the U.S. had purportedly let the country devolve into something like what Chechnya was before Putin’s iron grip.)

Continue reading “Putin, Obama — and Trump” →

Hate-Crime Legislation Is a Good Idea That Went Bad

victorhanson
by Victor Davis Hanson//National Review
The labeling of hate crimes has become so politicized and ill-defined that the entire concept is unworkable.
Last week in Chicago, a white special-needs teenager was held captive by four black youths. The victim was bound, gagged, tortured, forced to drink toilet water, partially scalped, and subject to racially and politically motivated verbal abuse. The perpetrators streamed portions of their violent savagery on Facebook.
After the victim escaped from his assailants and was found on the streets by a police officer, a Chicago police commander initially said he was unsure whether the attack constituted a hate crime — as if that distinction might calibrate the crime’s viciousness.
President Obama was likewise initially hesitant to label this cruelty as a racially motivated hate crime — which was odd given the president’s prior readiness to jump into and editorialize about racially charged cases such as those of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Trayvon Martin.
Yet it is hard to imagine what additional outrages the Chicago youths might have had to commit to warrant hate-crime status. After public outcry, Chicago prosecutors — along with Obama — confirmed that the attack did indeed, in their opinion, qualify as a “hate crime.”
Many in the media still sought to downplay that classification.

Continue reading “Hate-Crime Legislation Is a Good Idea That Went Bad” →

victorhanson

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. Continue reading →

victorhanson

01/12/16

From an Angry Reader:

Dear Mr Hanson:

I would like to comment on your Room for Debate in the Daily Southtown regarding treatment of Israel. Where does the Prime Minister of Israel, with a population of 8 million, get off slamming President Obama of the United States with a population of 325 million, accusing President Obama of a “shameful” ambush at the United Nations over West Bank settlements? Netanyahu’s comments came after the United States allowed the U.N. Security Council to condemn Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

As an American taxpayer, I would like to remind Mr. Netanyahu that $3 billion in direct foreign assistance from American taxpayers goes to Israel each year. This is 20% of the United States Foreign Aid Budget to a nation populated with only 8 million people. Mr. Netanyahu and Israel have ridden the American gravy train long enough. Many Americans take umbrage with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s flagrant disrespect of the elected President of 325 million Americans.

 Sincerely,

Jerry Lawler

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader Jerry Lawler,

Thank your for your angry reader note, which is civil and serious.

First, the unfortunate Obama-Netanyahu feud was started by the U.S. Obama’s aides were on record (anonymously of course) declaring that the war veteran Netanyahu was a “coward” and a “Chickensh*t.” This was a coordinated effort to hammer Israel early on, from the Gaza/Turkish flotilla incident to the settlements to the outreach to Iran and radicals such as Hamas. Obama in his open mic (a bad habit of his: cf. his Putin reference) comment to President Sarkozy of France trashed Netanyahu and reportedly has walked out of meetings with the Israeli leader and kept him waiting for others. Continue reading →

The Trump Rumors

victorhanson

“The Corner”

by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

The breaking intelligence disclosures about Trump are so bizarre and self-contradictory that it seems wise not to speculate about anything until the entire story is properly sourced, especially since the documents were for-hire hit-pieces and have been peddled around for some time, are not in a style comparable with intelligence reports, contain likely impossible scenarios (certain people in places that they have never been). And given the strange role of Senators John McCain and Charles Schumer, the one supposedly passing on to the FBI the contracted report, the other recently warning Trump that intelligence agencies have ways to get even with their critics, we should all wait at least 24 hours before fueling speculations.
Continue reading “The Trump Rumors” →