{"id":10969,"date":"2018-02-14T16:44:13","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T00:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=10969"},"modified":"2018-02-14T16:45:37","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T00:45:37","slug":"02-08-18-angry-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/02-08-18-angry-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"02\/08\/18 Angry Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"

From An Angry Reader:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Rajdeep Kandola<\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013
\nDear Angry Reader Rajdeep Kandola,<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cUnhinged\u201d? \u201cPrescient” is a better adjective for my summations of Obama\u2019s 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\u2014again, all to warp an election and then to undermine a new presidency. \u201cUnhinged\u201d is apt for those not bothered by that\u2014and far more to come.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cgod\u201d by the press, often on the basis of his pants\u2019 crease or tingling-inspired fits. The question is not whether I have criticized Trump, but rather have you been bothered by Obama\u2019s jokes about the Special Olympics, or his boast to \u201cget in their faces\u201d and to \u201cpunish our enemies\u201d? 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s can-do business experience and conservative agenda outweighed his pathologies (in the way Lincoln overlooked Grant\u2019s embarrassing drinking on the job given his ability to win battles, or, to liberal insiders, JFK\u2019s 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 \u201ccorpsmen,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Victor Hanson<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2QV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11650,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-02-05-2019\/","url_meta":{"origin":10969,"position":0},"title":"Angry Reader 02-05-2019","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 5, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"From An Angry Reader: You, sir, are a traitor, To call the FBI and the representatives of the United States \"Bolsheviks\" when the POTUS you seek to defend consistently lies about contacts with GRU officials; whose chief strategist Stephen Bannon claimed to be a Leninist because he was advocating the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10079,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/10079-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":10969,"position":1},"title":"04\/10\/17 From an Angry Reader:\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 10, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"04\/10\/17 From an Angry Reader: Mr. Hanson \u2013 In your truly myopic article about the Russian\/Trump connections you point out the Democrats\u2019 contacts with Russians but you fail to make an apples and apples comparison. You don\u2019t mention BUSINESS and MONEY. You don\u2019t mention Trump making $50 million on a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12220,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-02-28-20\/","url_meta":{"origin":10969,"position":2},"title":"Angry Reader 02-28-20","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 28, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2019s bookmark from my browser. And there is no case for Trump any more than there was a case\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10661,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/10661-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":10969,"position":3},"title":"From An Angry Reader: Dear\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From An Angry Reader: Dear Daniel Longo 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\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10180,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/from-an-angry-reader\/","url_meta":{"origin":10969,"position":4},"title":"From an Angry Reader","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"DR HANSON. \u00a0TRUMP 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. \u00a0-HEIN\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11757,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-04-03-2019\/","url_meta":{"origin":10969,"position":5},"title":"Angry Reader 04-03-2019","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"From An Angry Reader: Well, a quick scan of your website revealed you actually have a whole section dedicated to \u201cAngry Reader\u201d 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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10969"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10973,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10969\/revisions\/10973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}