Who Is Our Military’s Enemy?
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
The U.S. military has now turned its wrath inward on Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
The new secretary of defense relayed his “revulsion” for Carlson’s questioning the role of women in combat—a position that had been the military’s centuries-long orthodoxy until about seven years ago.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby even compared Carlson to the Communist Chinese military: “What we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host, or the Chinese military.”
The now-cocky Department of Defense website further boasted, “Press Secretary Smites Fox Host.”
So what was the biblically “smitten” Carlson’s crime?
He objected to the military’s fixation on race and gender in high-profile appointments—and questioned whether standards were relaxed to permit women in combat units.
Who Is Our Military’s Enemy?
The U.S. military has now turned its wrath inward on Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
The new secretary of defense relayed his “revulsion” for Carlson’s questioning the role of women in combat—a position that had been the military’s centuries-long orthodoxy until about seven years ago.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby even compared Carlson to the Communist Chinese military: “What we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host, or the Chinese military.”
Texas Cage Match
VDH Podcast
VDH talks about the border, the left and Biden’s first national address in his most recent podcast.
Victor Davis Hanson on the Crisis at the Border, the Liberal Elite’s “Abstract Empathy,” and What He Loves About America
Dr. Victor Davis Hanson‘s appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show. His conversation with Megyn about immigration, Biden’s administration and what we can expect in the next four years, as well as the overall political landscape today was both captivating and thoughtful.
Strategika #71: China and the Pandemic
Domestic Disorder and International Credibility
Please read a new essay by my colleague, Mark Moyar in Strategika.
George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020 at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer triggered allegations that his fate exposed a much broader problem of racism in American law enforcement and American society more generally. As this interpretation spread across old and new media, protests and riots erupted across the urban landscape, spearheaded by the movement Black Lives Matter.
Deterrence, Riots, and Education
Please read a new essay by my colleague, Edward N Luttwak in Strategika.
Deterrence is a tricky business because it all occurs in the minds of adversaries, forming fears that inhibit action. In 1977, while working in South Korea in a last-minute attempt to find quick ways of improving the country’s remarkably retrograde ground forces (President Jimmy Carter wanted to withdraw U.S. troops quickly, as Presidential Review Memorandum #13 prescribed), I kept wondering why North Korea had made no attempt to exploit the Fall of Saigon opportunity of April 30, 1975.
America’s Protests and the CCP’s Dogma of Inevitability
Please read a new essay by my colleagues, Miles Maochun Yu in Strategika.
America’s violent protests in the summer of 2020 have impacted how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) re-calculates the geopolitical power balance and strategic risk of a head-on confrontation between it and the presumably weakened United States, and enlivened the communist government’s ideological impulses against the international capitalist system.
The Legends of Our Fall
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
Many politicians at one point or another live by lies—if they can get away with them.
Our supposed sentinels, the media—self-defined as independent, cynical, and skeptical journalists—are supposed to separate political fictions from truth.
Legends As Facts
Of course, sometimes they used to do that—if only selectively. There were Communist sympathizers in the Roosevelt Administration and holdovers in the 1950s deep state. But the Red Peril was not always what the demagogic Joe McCarthy claimed when shaking his lengthy, indiscriminate “lists” of “commie” names and crimes.
Week in Review
This week’s articles and interviews by VDH are collected here.
The Progressive Imaginarium
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
“T-Bone” lives in the progressive Imaginarium.
Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) conjured him up as his fake pal from the ’hood. The “Bone” would now and then materialize to prep the yuppie Booker on his street cred.
“T” was the umbilical cord of authenticity with the underprivileged black community for Booker—the vegetarian, Rhodes scholar, Stanford- and Yale-educated, privileged child of two IBM executives.
“Corn-pop” also resides in the Imaginarium. Good ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton occasionally would summon the “Pop.” Supposedly he was one tough, African American, razor-wielding gangster that the youthful Mighty Joe Biden won over.
But first, as a lifeguard of an inner-city swimming pool, defiant, and armed with his own 6-feet of chain, Joe told us he taught Pop the meaning of obedience.
In his impromptu séances, Joe has conjured up lots of Imaginarium denizens. Along with Corn Pop, there was the anonymous bully—son of a donut shop owner—whose head Joe slammed down on the counter. The felony? The brute had insulted his sister and the Biden family name.
Hitting Woke Herd Immunity?
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
Two recent polls suggest wokism is beginning to recede on a variety of fronts, from less trust in Black Lives Matter and more confidence in the police, to suspicion that the Capitol “insurrection” account is being used to unfairly suppress political expression while Antifa, increasingly, is seen as a terrorist organization whose violence has been ignored improperly by authorities.
There are tens of millions of Americans who either have been stung, or turned off, by McCarthyite wokeness (and thus have anti-wokeness antibodies). More have been vaccinated from its latest virulent strains by their own values of judging people as individuals, not as racial or gender collectives. So lots of Americans have developed peremptory defenses against it. The result is that daily there are ever-fewer who are susceptible to the woke pandemic. And it will thus begin to fade out—even as the virus desperately seeks to mutate and go after more institutions.
Peak wokeness is nearing also because if it continued in its present incarnation, then the United States as we know would cease to exist—in the sense that 1692-93 Salem or 1793-94 Paris could not have continued apace without destroying society. Woke leftism exists to destroy and tear down, not to unite and build. It is not designed to play down and heal racial differences, but to accentuate and capitalize on them.