Political Engineering and Public Cynicism

I knew we all had two ages, our actual age and our internal biological age.

What I didn't know is, I've likely lowered my biological age without even knowing it.

Here's the thing, because Americans eat so many processed foods and not enough fruits and veggies, many, perhaps most, are 10 plus years older on the inside than their actual age.

They're ticking time bombs.

A major university study suggests how to slow aging and diffuse that biological time bomb.

Participants slowed their aging by drinking Field of Greens.

That's all.

They didn't change their eating, drinking, or exercise, just field of greens.

When I started Field of Greens to replace my multivitamin, I was amazed.

After about two weeks, my energy improved.

I've been exercising more, and my overall wellness feels great.

Each fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was doctor selected for specific health benefits.

Cell health, heart, lungs, kidney metabolism, even healthy weight.

It's wonderful knowing Field of Greens can slow how quickly I'm aging.

And I encourage you to join me.

Swap your untested fruit, vegetable, or green drink for Field of Greens.

While there's time, check out the university study and get 20%

off when using promo code Victor at fieldofgreens.com.

That's fieldofgreens.com, promo code Victor.

And we'd like to thank Field of Greens for continuing to sponsor the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

I'm Jack Fowler, the host, the star namesake.

That is Victor Davis-Hanson, the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Waynamar Shabuski Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

Victor has an official website, The Blade of Perseus.

You should visit it.

The web address is victorhanson.com.

You should also be subscribing to it, and I'll tell you about that later in this episode.

Victor, there's always a torrent of topics we could take on, get your wisdom on, but one that is late breaking here, and we are recording on

Friday, the 29th of September, and this news just came out within the last two hours: is that

Dianne Feinstein, the

senator from California, some controversy of late, has passed away, and Gavin Newsom has to

nominate someone to fill that seat for the remainder of the term.

And there's some controversy with that already because he's making promises that that person has to be or will be a black woman.

We'll get your thoughts, Victor, on that, on the second Republican debate, on the new issue of Strategica, and maybe some other things.

But before we get to that, there are these very important messages.

Like you, when I bought my last pair of shoes, I looked for stylish comfort and beautiful engineering.

And that might make you think Italian, but if you're buying sheets, it should make you think bowl and branch.

The colors, the fabric, the design.

Bowl and branch sheets are made with long-lasting quality, offering extraordinary softness to start and getting softer and softer for years to come.

Bowl and branch sheets are made with the finest 100% organic cotton in a soft, breathable, durable weave.

Their products have a quality you can feel immediately and become even softer with every wash.

Plus, bowl and branch comes with a 30-night worry-free guarantee.

I've been sleeping like a baby in my bowl and branch sheets, which keep me cool on those hot summer nights, and they're the perfect place for sunrise and morning coffee.

So join me.

Feel the difference an extraordinary night's sleep can make with Bowl and Branch.

Get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at bowlandbranch.com slash Victor.

That's Bolin Branch.

B-O-L-L-A-N-D-B-R-A-N-C-H dot com

slash Victor to save 15% off and unlock free shipping.

Exclusions may apply and we'd like to thank Bolin Branch for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

At a time when Americans are more divided than ever, Connecting America is a place where everyone can gather and express their opinions with no disrespect.

And what better place than a Jersey diner to host this show?

Because where else but a diner can you find a buffet of opinions, ideas, and real connections?

Connecting America, a brand new national program that aims to truly connect everyday people and is dedicated to showcasing ideas and embracing civil conversation, will also include amazing ways to improve your fitness, health, and nutrition, revive your spiritual self, and give your home a makeover.

Connecting America streams live every weekday from 7 a.m.

to 9 a.m.

Eastern Time.

Our program is led by a group of award-winning journalists, including me, Jim Rosenfeld, plus Allison Camerata and Dave Briggs.

We'll also hear from America's psychologist Dr.

Jeff Gardier and former Fox News senior foreign affairs correspondent Amy Kellogg.

Join us wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back with the Victor Davis-Hansen Show.

Victor, I have to apologize first off.

I'm a little little under the weather, but

sick or not, it's always a great honor and pleasure to talk to you.

So Victor, Diane Weinstein has gone to her eternal reward and Gavin Newsom is playing the gender slash slash race.

game in immediate discussion of who will succeed her in that seat.

Your thoughts, Victor?

Well, on Diane Feinstein, I've followed her my entire career.

I mean,

she was this, you know, on the San Francisco County Board or City Council, and the Harvey Mount and

Moscone merge put her into a position at Mayor that she had not been able to fulfill.

And the point was,

there was a tragic opportunity.

She seized it.

She was very talented.

And the rest is history the last 40 years.

But I was kind of shocked that this is why I was shocked.

I was driving today to get $6.10

gasoline in California, diesel $6.70 at the pump.

And I was listening to the commentary, and it was very funny how Chuck Schumer was talking in his encomium and about how when she came into the Senate, there were conservative people that deprecated her femininity or the fact she was a woman, blah, blah, blah.

But the people who've been deprecating her or Chuck Schumer,

they want that vote.

And they knew that she's from a blue state, so she was expendable in a way if she's in a red state, she wouldn't have been because the governor, Gavin Newsom, would replace her.

So you had these centrifugal forces the last year

that were not subject, that somebody like Fetterman or Biden weren't even subject to.

And yet

there were the minority blocked that wanted her out so that they felt that a Senate seat now belongs to a black woman because Camela Harris was a black woman, and that's their seat, even though that's

three to five percent of the population.

Nonetheless, that was the precedent.

So they wanted her gone, and then Latinos wanted her gone because they thought they could have a candidate that might win.

And then the Democratic Party wanted her gone because they were afraid, you know, that she would be non compos mentes and wouldn't wouldn't resign, so then she would physically not be able to get into the Senate chamber, and they would lose that vote.

So those forces had surrounded her, and they didn't care that she was a

lioness of the Senate and all this stuff that

Schumer was telling us today.

He was one of the people that was trying to get rid of her.

And suddenly they got rid of her, but, you know, God got rid of her, so to speak.

And now they will get what they wanted a year ago.

They're going to get an appointee, and the appointee will be the incumbent for this election in about a year.

And

so,

Gavin Newsom is doing what Joe Biden did, and you think he would learn that when you announce in advance

the race and gender of your candidates, it cuts your selection by half by terms of gender.

And in California, it cuts it by 95%

in terms of race.

So, So you're making the argument

that

you can look at 2.5% of the demography of California and find a grayly great senator in a way that the 98% wouldn't offer.

That's what we're talking about.

And he's doing this for what?

The black vote in California?

No.

There is not very much black vote in California.

There's a white liberal vote and there is a Latino vote.

And he doesn't care about the Latino vote and the fact that, and there's a single woman professional San Diego to Berkeley corridor.

He doesn't care about that vote because he's not going to vote, he's not going to appoint Porter and he's not going to appoint our friend, Jack, Adam Schiff,

because they don't do anything nationally for him.

So he wants to appoint a black woman, not because of California politics.

He's done with California politics.

He's been reelected.

He doesn't care.

And so he doesn't care about the black constituency inside California.

And he knows that nationwide that white liberals who are fond of the chronic lying Adam Schiff and the chronically obnoxious Kathleen Porter, whatever her name is,

they are already there for a candidate.

But he's worried that the black community may be hemorrhaging at 20%.

So when he thinks he's going to run for president he's going to do what joe biden did he's going to say i appointed a black woman and he counts on the tribal sympathies of minority groups and they're going to say i don't really care who it is i just care about her color and if it's barbara lee it's not it's going to be camela harris redux

worse

or worse i mean that's a question i guess is the yeah because your point i think is well taken that the advantages

for the right of having Camela Harris is that she is a

total incompetent, and she's not really an ideologue.

She's just an opportunist.

Barbara Lee is an ideologue and far brighter than Camela Harris and driven onto the hard, hard left agenda.

And all of these people want to do to America what they did to California.

That's their whole point.

And if somebody's living in a very poor community with $16,000 to $17,000 in per capita income and you fill up

with a 21-gallon gas tank, it's $125,

or you go with a Eco-Diesel RA at 30 gallons for almost $7,

you're talking about $190

to fill up

and with food very high in California, but they don't care.

They could care less about that because they're very wealthy coastal people.

When you said he doesn't care, Newsom doesn't care about the Hispanic/slash Latino vote.

I find that a little

jarring looking at receiving California from this.

He doesn't need anything more from them.

They've done what he needed.

They elected him, they stopped the recall, they re-elected him.

So

he's done with them

statewide.

Okay.

Nationally, he's made some appointments uh that they liked in

um his cabinet and on boards and he feels that it's not going to make much difference one way or the other but the the black vote is key they're losing so they've written off some of you know they've written off 35 percent of the latino vote nationwide and feel they can still win as they did in 2000 but they cannot do that with the black vote they need about 85 percent of the black vote and they need

traditionally blacks turn out in greater numbers than Latino.

And in the states that matter, like Georgia or Michigan or Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, you know, the big cities, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh,

you know,

Madison, Milwaukee.

That's what they look at.

And they think that that vote will go their way at 90%

if Gavin can say that he's been a big champion of black women.

And we'll see.

But

it's the whole thing is based on this essential asymmetry that given the history of the United States, and Jim Crow's, and we're now into the

seventh decade of the civil rights movement, but my point is that they still feel that young generations of so-called white people that are about 65 to 70 percent of the population, they are somehow culpable.

And therefore, you can say in a blatantly racist fashion that I'm going to pick somebody on the basis of their color.

And that if you were to say,

I'm going to run for president and 70% of the electorate's white, so

I got to appoint a white male, that you would be, that would be the end of it.

And that's just the stated reality, and everybody assumes that.

It's okay to say that, just like it's okay to have a racially separate graduation, a racially separate dorm.

It's just institutionalized now.

And it's kind of like the, Jack, it's kind of like

when Newsom announces that, it's like the old Soviet Union and FABDA.

So what we've developed in this country is a schizophrenia that, and you can really see it on stories.

I was just examining this in a lot of the major online New York Times, Washington Post, but things like Breitbart, Daily Caller, Conservative 2.

And when you report a story and there's no picture or description of the suspect, everybody assumes that it's a minority suspect.

And that is reflected in the

comments.

Look at the New York Post, for example.

Even they do it.

But the thing is, just as the Prabda state narrative is so so dishonest, and the comments are really loud, that people are upset about it.

And it's kind of like living in Poland in 1965.

What they tell you and what you think are two different things.

Same thing with transgender.

I mean, you're all supposed to say, yes, it's Pride Day.

Yes, yes, yes.

And then

you privately say

Leah Thomas has no business as a

6.4 man competing, or my daughter at a locker room in a JC does not have to dress with a quote-unquote woman with male genitalia, or I'm not going to put my six-year-old, but you say that privately for the most part, and you don't get into the public realm.

Right.

And that's dangerous for society to have,

I don't know what you'd call it, but it's a schizophrenic.

It's two levels, it's two mindsets.

And it's true of global warming, it's true of Ukraine.

It's true of Fauci.

It's true of COVID.

It's true of all of these narratives.

And the narratives are false.

Russian, the collusion was false.

The Fauci narratives were false.

And this idea that

you can just pick somebody by race and it has no consequence is false.

It's racist.

But nobody says that, but they feel it.

And that is why there's so much anger.

And I don't know when people, when they start to meld or weld together, that is when the private collides with the public and it defeats the public narrative and it destroys it, then the system just collapses.

So that's what happened in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe circa 1989 to 91.

People were so cynical and they didn't believe the state anymore.

And

that group of people became the majority.

And then the state had no credibility or authenticity and it just collapsed.

And you're starting to see that a little bit with our corporate world target, Anheuser-Busch, the Oscars, the Tonys, the

NBA.

People are just sick of it.

But so far, they're just cynical.

And you can see that with the Trump trials and everything, that the left keeps going, oh, he's guilty.

But you look at the polls, the latest ABC Washington Post that had him 10 points ahead of Biden and the empathy given him, and it's because the public narrative has no authenticity, no groundness, no truth.

Everybody knows privately, if Donald Trump had said on January 7th, due to all this controversy, I am not going to run for president, but I'm going to help Republican candidates.

I will be an actor, but I am not going to run

for president.

He wouldn't be indicted today.

Everybody knows that.

This is all aimed at destroying his candidacy.

And yet, you can't really say that in a way.

If I said that, I'd get it.

People at the Hoover Institution would say, why are you promulgating

lies?

And I've had some colleagues during the,

with the Scott Atlas stuff, and they said, you know,

don't you know that masks work, Victor?

And don't you know that there's no evidence for the Wuhan lab?

And don't you know that you're going to get only the vaccination can can give you absolute immunity?

And there's no such thing really in this case of herd immunity.

Well, no, I don't know that.

But

that's what we do in this country now.

And it's not healthy because

the level of cynicism is such that

it's everybody, when I was listening to the hearings yesterday about the impeachment inquiry, it was the same thing.

All these Democrats say, there's no evidence.

And you think, where have you been?

That's the official narrative that good old Joe Biden was just calling for, but everybody knows that's false.

And there's money coming in.

They find bank drafts.

They find everything.

And yet, that's the narrative.

You know, Victor, another area I think people are feeling this anger, angst brewing

is with

the retail thievery going on.

I know you spoke about this with

Sammy and this insanity in Philadelphia, but there's also

a headline

from the Washington Examiner.

Retailers lost $112 billion in inventory in 2022.

And then our friend Douglas Murray has a great piece in today.

And again, we're the 29th of September in the New York Post column about this Lululemon.

and these stores with the policy just let it happen.

And don't you, I mean, I'm a shopper.

We're all shoppers.

We don't have any proclivity to want to steal, but why are we the suckers in this all of a sudden?

We're paying, they're not.

And actually, now we're paying

the excessive costs created by this thievery that you retailers allow and won't fight back on.

And by your not fighting back on them, you're essentially funding these organized crime operations that are going to further

destroy society.

This isn't, this is

people taking to the streets, I think.

What would be the reaction of the average American to these news accounts that were on television and in

online news accounts that people

in the Harlem community are angry that the only target that they counted on to give them competitive prices is leaving?

And I was listening to some of them.

They say, well, they have things locked up.

Well, then you read the story and they were

the number of 911 calls that were not answered.

It was daily.

It was three or four, ten a day, hundreds of them.

And the security guards were not allowed to arrest.

So people were just looting that.

And then you think, well, did the community protest?

Did the community volunteer to make a chain around

the store?

Were they the eyes and ears that?

No.

And so when the target leaves, is everybody

sympathetic to target?

Yes.

And so that's

what's different, and you can't talk about it.

So I'll give you another example.

I've had affiliations with a number of colleges, and some of them still have me on the books, or they do the ones I do now.

And they have something called, as you know, Jack, the Cleary Act.

And it said because of a tragic murder, I think it was at Temple University, it may have been somewhere in Philadelphia, a young girl was killed, and there was a known rapist murder in the area.

Okay.

And the university did not apprise the students of the crime rate and the danger.

So they passed this, I think it was during the Clinton era, that each university within a particular radius or within their campus environs had to send out information

if there was a crime committed on campus with a description of the suspect.

So that the student body, the co-ed, the students could have some deterrence or they would have some knowledge to navigate around that area.

Okay.

Well, what happened after George Floyd,

they just arbitrarily nullified that law because when you get something, they always parade, or it's a confessional, really.

They say, according to the CLIRI Act, meaning we wouldn't want to do this otherwise.

And then they tell you that I think I got one today that said that a young woman in this part of campus was assaulted by a suspect, okay?

It tried to steal the bag on her shoulder.

And then when it said description, they said male.

And then it said appearance or physical appearance, it said unknown.

So my point is, if somebody's coming up to a woman and attacking her and she knows he's a male,

She's going to find out who he is.

He could give some description, but they won't do it.

And so what did people think when they read that?

They think if he looked like the beach boys, you'd have his picture up.

And so that creates cynicism is what I'm trying to say.

And when you see it in every aspect,

then people

get cynical.

And I was in the

I was in my hometown the other day doing some business, and one of the people whom I didn't know said to me, hey, I saw you on TV.

Can you tell me why all the commercials have black people in them?

And he was Hispanic.

And I said, no, you tell me.

And he said, I don't know what happened.

It was like everybody got their share.

They got the Latinos, they got the blacks, they got the whites, they got the Asian, but now they're 70% and it's all black.

Why?

And I said, I think it's a goodwill gesture after George Floyd to soothe racial relation.

And this guy said, it has nothing to do with it.

And so the point is that

it's kind of like Big Brother that socially engineers in the corporate, the academic world, and they have all of these elite agendas and they think they can do all these things, but they are not committed to the truth.

And that's their fatal weakness because they create a cynical, angry population and they lie, lie, lie, lie, lie.

When I heard that Representative Goldman the other day saying there's nothing here and you want to say, well, the Chinese Communist Affiliated Company just wired money to Joe's own residence.

And Devin Archer said they had no company without Hunter.

And Hunter just had an email this week that said, I'm not going to let anybody infringe on the Biden.

That's our name.

That's the essence of this business.

And then there's reports of $20, $30 million.

What do the Democratic people there think

earned

Hunter Biden all that money and

the family all that money.

What did they think when for two, three, four years, Joe Biden said, I had no knowledge of my son's business.

He didn't do anything wrong.

And then the narratives just disappear.

What did they think?

And so they're lying.

You're just supposed to assume that.

You know, it was like Lieutenant Colonel Vinman telling us during the first impeachment that

he couldn't tell us

if he'd ever talked to the whistleblower.

next question

was the whistleblower was he on the national security council and had i can't talk about that that would give you information

uh

does did you communicate with the i cannot tell you that that would and everybody knew that he it was just a joke that this era serum Eric Saramella knew Vinman and Vinman heard a call and he wanted to trump up something so he called somebody else kept his hands out of it they all three finagled with Adam Schiff, and everybody knew it.

But then the narrative said, how dare you talk about whistleblowers?

Even to this day, if you say the name,

you're supposedly ratting them out.

That's the public narrative.

But privately, we know that he was the one that

concocted this ridiculous first impeachment.

We were the one that knows that the left has nothing but contempt for whistleblowers, like the IRS whistleblowers.

They're outing them, they're making fun of them, they're defaming them.

So

I guess, and it's worldwide now, it's global.

And when you saw that,

I don't want to keep mentioning them, but Oliver Anthony's Richmond from Richmond, when he said they all want to control you

and they all want to know what you do, and you know that.

That had a worldwide resonance because

people were saying,

you know, don't try that in a small town.

There was this idea that these people are complete inveterate liars, and they just keep bombarding us with these narratives that we know are false.

So when Joe Biden had the, I couldn't believe it, when he had the January 6th, they had this memorial for five officers killed on January 6th.

And I said, wait a minute, these people did not die on January 6th.

They committed suicide in the ensuing months,

like a lot of people do.

We don't know the reasons.

And Officer Sicknick did not die from a violent act.

That's not true.

There was only one person with 100% certainty that was killed, and she was an unarmed woman who was lethally shot for the low-level felony or high misdemeanor

going into the Capitol that should have been locked, and it was through a broken window.

That was the reality.

And then the other day they were talking about insurrection, insurrection, insurrection, insurrection.

Even in Fox debate, Insurrection, insurrection, one of the moderators,

Calderon, I think.

I mean, there was no insurrection.

There was a buffoonish riot, but it wasn't an armed insurrection.

Nobody with a weapon was found in the Capitol.

It was deplorable.

It was wrong.

You don't go into it.

I would never go into a federal building that was locked.

Should have never done that.

I would have never pushed on a barrier with the police.

But

the idea that there weren't FBI informants there,

when Mr.

Rosenberg from

the New York Times, who want to pull us a reporting on

all of these things, said that

it was chock full of FBI informants when Ray said he wouldn't tell us, and when they wouldn't release videos, and when Mr.

Epps was given kid gloves treatment, I mean, everybody knows that.

Don't lie to us.

And we know the 120 days in May was 35

people killed and 1,500 officers attacked and injured.

The White House almost stormed, the White House grounds, church torched, precinct burned, federal courthouse attacked,

2 billion in damages, 120 days.

Egged on by people like Tamala Harris.

This won't stop.

It shouldn't stop.

It's going to go all the way to Election Day.

Oh, by the way, fact-checker, she didn't mean violence.

She just means no, no, no, no.

So that's that's, I guess everybody,

as a culturator, we're kind of like Poles or Hungarians that live in a 1960s society.

Well,

Victor, we're going to maybe pick up on a thread there related to Biden.

But first,

I just need to take a minute, and I want to take a minute to welcome back a sponsor, relatively new sponsor to the Victor Davis-Hanson Show, and that's Factor.

With the busy fall season already in swing, you, dear listener, might be looking for wholesome, convenient meals for jam-packed days.

Well, Factor, America's number one ready-to-eat meal kit, can help you fuel up fast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with chef-prepared, dietician-approved, ready-to-eat meals delivered straight to your door.

So, for our listeners, for listeners of the Victor Davis-Hanson Show, Factor is going to give you 50% off.

Head to factormeals.com slash Victor50.

That's V-I-C-T-O-R, the number five and the number zero.

And use the code Victor50 to get 50% off.

That's code Victor50

at factormeals.com slash Victor50 to get 50% off.

And we thank our friends at Factor for sponsoring this episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Victor, just

want to pull a little thread here, and then maybe we can go on and get your thoughts about the second debate that happened, the Republican debate that happened the other day.

But I was thinking

with the congressional hearings and the revelations, you said between 20 and 30 million.

I see one report, you know, it's $24 million

that the Biden Inc., the Corleone family

has cashed in or taken in.

As you mentioned, some of those payments going directly to

Joe Biden's Delaware house i don't think people think a majority people think

uh that's implausible and we should no people should no one should be convicted on i can imagine he could do that but the media remember the media when the this you know the the steel report or the debunking of all this including say

the the story that donald trump had some golden shower moment with some hookers or wherever the hell in moscow absolutely no evidence of this but the But the many people immediately, well, I can believe it could have happened, though.

So therefore, we'll keep talking about that.

Here's something that everyone really could believe happened, probably did happen, that this guy and his family cashed in for 24 million.

But no, let's not talk about that.

It all goes in the memory hole because

we're way past Joe Biden saying during the debate, 51.

intelligence authorities have assured us that this is Russian disinformation, misinformation.

So nobody,

what happens with these narratives, they're just narratives.

They're passed off as a truth, but they're not true.

And so the narrative just disappears.

So all of a sudden, Anthony Blinken didn't really call Mike Morrell the CIA, and the CIA really didn't get 51 intelligence authorities.

And Jim Clapper and John Brennan didn't lie to the country that affected the first debate.

I guess the second debate,

our first debate, and it didn't affect the election.

And as a reward for their lying, they're appointed to a Homeland Security Advisory Board, even though both are admitted liars under oath to Congress.

Those are just narratives that just leave.

And people

it has something to do with technology, not just human nature.

There is the ability now, as Orwell predicted,

to blanket or saturate

your means of communication and information.

When you have Twitter working with the the old Twitter working with the FBI at $3 million a year to filter the news, or you have Facebook

doing the same, or you have Google rearranging

search results, or you have people tampering in what you can post as missing, you can't have the New York Post have access, or you can destroy

parlor

by not allowing it to have access to apps, then you can get these narratives can really resonate.

And there's not a lot you can do about it.

And that's, I mean, there is a conservative media, there's underground, all that stuff.

I get that.

But they have an enormous power.

And it's kind of embedded within social cultural rewards that you feel that you're good.

and you're acceptable and people want you on their team and you'll be promoted at work or you will be left alone.

Or it's kind of, as I said before, it's like buying an insurance policy.

And you buy into the Big Brothers, you know, Oceana, and then you're protected.

And then, if you have a little incident or something goes wrong, then it's not going to be career-ending.

Joe Biden, that was his genius.

He knew as long as he was good old Joe Biden, who was Mr.

Progressive, the Terra Reed story and everything.

So the narrative, we remember in the 2016 narrative was women must be believed.

And Camilla Harris said she believed terror.

And that narrative then disappears.

So,

you know, it's, I think we're all Winston's, and

we're all trying to think we're not crazy because these narratives pop up and then they, when they serve a purpose, and then they disappear.

So we all say, oh, yeah,

uh, Hunter's laptop, it was probably,

I guess, now, yeah,

it was Hunter's.

Oh, yeah, Trump didn't really pee in a hotel room.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of funny, the Wuhan labs right next to the virus and it was controlled by the PLA.

And

we have all the genes sequent.

We now all, yeah, of course it was Wuhan.

Yeah, Fauci,

yeah, he kind of talked a little bit crazy about the mask and the quarantines and

how great the

vaccines would keep us and downplayed her.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

And it just disappears.

Yeah.

Move on.

Let's move on.

Nothing to see here anymore.

We're going to have a new narrative for you.

And that's why people

don't believe anything anymore.

Yeah.

It's really scary to have a schizophrenic citizenry.

It really is.

Yeah.

Well,

we're going to get your views on the second debate.

And actually, maybe we should, after that, raise little Tony up again since he was secreted into CIA headquarters headlines from the other day.

But let's get your thoughts about the second debate right after these important messages.

So you just got back from summer vacation.

Maybe you might have even had to book two rooms because of your snoring.

Some vacation, huh?

Snoring can be an underlying cause of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and even memory loss.

Here is my advice.

If you want every night to be a true vacation, you need to get yourself Zipa.

That's happy Z spelled backwards.

Zipa is a doctor-designed mouthpiece that not only moves your jaw forward, but is also the only device with a patented tongue seat belt to keep your airways open and the snoring away.

The snoring can stop as soon as the first night.

Zipa was proven in a 600-patient clinical trial and sold over half a million units.

From now until the end of October, show your family you actually care by purchasing a limited edition Pink Zipa.

Not only will you save $10,

but Zipa is on a mission to raise $50,000 for breast cancer research and they will donate another $10,000 to the Susan G.

Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Go to zyppah.com and use the code PINK

or text Victor to 511-511.

Put your snoring on a permanent vacation and help a worthy cause with the snoring device we trust by visiting zyppah.com and use the code PINK or text Victor to 511-511.

Remember, Zipa is happy Z spelled backwards.

Text fees may apply, and we'd like to thank Zipa for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

If you're a homeowner, you need to listen to this.

In today's AI and cyber world, scammers are stealing your home titles, and your equity is the target.

Here's how it works: criminals forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, pay a small fee with your county, and just like that, your home title has has been transferred out of your name.

Then they take out loans using your equity and even sell your property, and you won't even know what's happened until you get a collection or foreclosure notice.

So, when was the last time you checked on your home title?

If your answer is never, you need to do something about it right now.

And that's why we've partnered with Home Title Lock so you can find out today if you're already a victim.

Go to hometitalock.com/slash victor to get a free title history report and a free trial of their million-dollar triple lock protection.

That's 24-7 monitoring of your title, urgent alerts to any changes, and if fraud does happen, they'll spend up to $1 million to fix it.

Please, please, don't be a victim.

Protect your equity today.

That's home, titlelock.com/slash victor.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson show.

Victor's website, The Blade of Perseus.

The web address is victorhanson.com.

Go there.

When you do, you will find plentiful things.

The links to Victor's essays and syndicated columns at American Greatness, the archives of this podcast, links to Victor's other, some of his other appearances, his ultra articles.

Those are the pieces he writes exclusively for the Blade of Perseus, two or three a week.

You can read them if you subscribe.

If you don't subscribe, you can't read them.

If you're a fan of Victor, you want to read them.

So subscribe.

Five bucks gets you in the door, discounted at $50 for the full year.

Do subscribe and sign up also for the

email that goes out weekly that alerts one of Victor's writings and other things.

By the way, at the Blade of Perseus, you'll find the link just up within the last two weeks for Victor's forthcoming book out next May, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation.

You can pre-order it at Amazon.

Speaking of

places to find Victor, the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club is not affiliated officially, but quite friendly.

And that's on Facebook,

VDH's Morning Cup.

You can also find that on Facebook and on Twitter, or now known as X.

Victor's handle is at VD Hansen.

And by the way, Victor has been writing a lot of original stuff.

He's tweeting or Xing.

I don't know what you would call it anymore

kind of aggressively lately and great stuff.

So

if you're on Twitter and not following Victor, do it.

Victor,

yeah, the second debate.

The second Republican debate happened a few days ago.

Your thoughts of any, was there anything consequential about this?

Who was there and who wasn't there?

And who should we see no more on a debate stage, baby?

Yeah, halfway through, I sent a tweet out,

and I didn't know what the general reaction was, but I was really disappointed.

First of all, about the moderators, and I really like Dana Perino.

I don't know what she was trying to do, but

why after we knew what Candy Crawley had done?

in that 2012 debate to interfere on behalf of one.

So when DeSantis gave his speech about his military career and his service in a war zone and tried to make the point that no president had such comparable

experiences since George H.W.

Bush, I guess, in 1988, i.e., a president who had been in war, she interjected, well, don't forget

Nikki Haley's husband.

And I thought, wait a minute, that's not your job, Dana, to editorialize and to give an edge to one.

You're not supposed to comment.

If I was on a debate and somebody said,

I'm the only lawyer on this stage, and I was debating them, would Dana Pereira say, wait a minute, Victor's mom was a judge?

What the hell would that mean?

So what?

And then at the end of the debate, why would you say to the candidates,

imagine you're in survivor and you have to vote to kick kick somebody off the island, which DeSantis, to his credit, just smacked down.

And then you had this, is it her name, Calderon from Univision?

And they brought her on.

And so that I guess she said before the debate that voices would be heard,

but all of her comments were Latino this and Latino this and black this and black this.

Why couldn't she just for one moment transcend her superficial appearance and be given some

avenues that talk about Ukraine or to press people on COVID.

But she didn't.

It was all about Latino this, Latino this, black this, black this.

And it was very left-wing.

And so,

and then I like Stuart Varney a lot, but I didn't, he,

why did he ask this question, Jack?

He said,

I think it was to Tim Scott.

Well, Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers.

Would you fire

the United Army workers?

I'm saying, what?

what?

Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers as federal employees that had given a written pledge as part of their contractual obligations not to strike.

The United Auto Workers work for private corporations.

And whether they strike or not is a business between the UAW and GM or Ford.

And it has nothing to do with the federal government.

The comparison was just completely

wrong.

And so, and I could go on.

And then, when you looked at the candidates, I thought, look,

why isn't, I like Mr.

Byrne, but why is he here?

He's not, I like Tim Scott.

I really do.

I've met him.

He's a really wonderful person.

But he's polling 2%.

He's got a lot of money behind him.

But so far, he has not been able to translate his inspirational personal story, which he reminds us is very engaging, into a systematic program.

He's very good answering it.

And Chris Christie is very glib.

He's a kind of a human torpedo.

He can take out Haley.

He can take out.

It was kind of weird.

He didn't attack DeSantis, but

he's polling 2%.

And then

I like

Mike Pence.

I've always liked Mike Pence.

I'm baffled by the new 2.0 Mike Pence on the debate stage, who seems to do three things, Jack.

He gets grouchy and he interrupts and he's kind of rude.

And B, he references January 6th, January 6th, January 6th, January 6,

and he references faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, Christianity, da-da-da-da-da.

And he's polling 2%.

So if you want the voters, the Republican primary voters, to learn something about candidates other than Trump, then you would have DeSantis, Haley, and

Ramaswamy in the next debate.

And maybe

they could talk about MAGA because Haley is not a MAGA person.

And then maybe DeSantis could debate her on Ukraine.

She could debate him on tariffs.

They could debate each other at the border.

And that would be valuable.

And then the subtext would be:

yes, Donald Trump is winning, but these insane people on the left are trying to tie him up.

And I mean that literally.

They think

that they can put him at Mar-Lago under house arrest or gag orders or jail.

And every time we say that they're insane, they wouldn't dare do this to an ex-president or to the leading Republican candidate, they do it.

The weakest of all the cases was Letita James.

And yet she's on her way to winning.

And so what we're watching is

left-wing prosecutors weaponizing the law, going before in big cities,

primarily minority grand juries and juries.

with primary Obama-appointed judges, with Donald Trump barking at the moon, how unfair unfair it is.

And by the way, I would have had a mental and physical breakdown by now.

I don't know how he does it.

So I'm very empathetic for him barking at the moon.

But nevertheless, the more outraged he gets when he says that Comcast

NBC MS should not be on the air, or that Millie committed treason, which is arguable that he did, but why go the next little bit and say, and in the past that deserved execution, or why attack the judge?

Because what's happening is the more

unfairly he is treated, the angrier he gets, the more he lashes out, the more the left-wing judge, prosecutor, juries are convinced that they're going to punish him

for no other reasons to be downright mean and to serve the larger purposes of their democratic masters,

you know,

colleagues,

associates in this progressive project.

So what I'm getting at is if you had a debate and you had

Haley debating DeSantis, just to take two, on the future of the Republican Party and then Donald Trump, you would have a candidate in case Donald Trump is in jail.

I know people say he can vote for Jay, or you would have Trump then saying,

well, my legal problems and the fact that these two are getting a lot of attention will necessitate me to get back in the debate.

And that would be wonderful to have all three of them there.

But

now with six, seven, eight people on the stage, with a vast majority of them having no chance to be president, with bickering and screaming and yelling, and then moderators who A, can't break up the crosstalk, don't follow up the question,

have no methodology that's, you know, who gets to speak first.

So I guess DeSantis was in the middle because he's got the most money and the most popular support.

So he should have had the first question, the most attention.

He didn't.

And I don't get that.

And so I thought it was an ungodly disaster, which to me, I shouldn't say to me, but I think it begs the question, Jack, if Ms.

McDonald and the RNC

are putting on these amateurish debates, what are they doing about voting integrity?

Right.

Same managerial style that we're going to see in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.

In other words, they're going to talk a great game, but right now, in those key states, there's going to be 70 or 75%

mail-in ballots with no ability to authenticate them and no commiserate balanced response from the republicans this is our friend can't stop it can't they say for every male and ballot you do we're going to do two but if they can't do a debate i don't think they're going to be able to do that either

yeah our our mutual friend cleeda mitchell who's cares deeply about this says there are you know there's about 20 counties where

This is where it's going to be decided.

And this should really, besides the border and the insane person we have in the White House or at his home in Delaware on weekends or most days of the week,

this is the fundamental thing to be focusing on.

And you're right, doesn't seem to be much evidence of it.

Maybe there is.

I hope there is.

I don't know what's going on because

no one has been more outspoken about the need to authenticate and have fair elections than Cleta Mitchell, and no one has been more persecuted.

I mean, they went out, the January 6th 6th Committee went after her.

Fannie Willis went after her.

Her law firm went after her.

And for what?

For suggesting that there were voting ballot irregularities in the 2020 election?

I think a lot of people think there was.

And the point or that when you go from 30%

voting absentee to 70% and the error rate goes down by a magnitude of eight or 10, then obviously there's going to be ballots that were cast that would not have been accepted in prior elections.

But the way they treated her and the lack of support she got suggests that nobody else wants to do what she's doing.

Because the left, this is a thing where the left is so paranoid, and you can see it strikes close to home.

The left is basically in their private councils saying this.

Give up on winning 51%

of these stupid Americans.

We're going to have an open border, and we're going to get eight to 10 million new constituency before they catch on to what we're doing.

And you may think it's sloppy and it's illegal, but the fact is 10 years, you're going to be patting us on the back because we're going to have a whole new Democratic Party, and we may flip Texas finally.

That's what they're saying.

And they're saying you may think these zero-net green initiatives, but we will get to what we want.

And we don't give a damn about the lives that are shattered.

Like today, I saw people filling up at $6.40, $30, 50 cents, depending on their blend they chose.

They don't care.

And

this Democratic Party is pretty serious.

And they're saying, we're going to change the voting laws.

And we don't care because we don't have a message that appeals to 51% of the people.

And we control the institutions.

And even that is not enough.

We've got to change the way that people actually vote.

And we've got to make it basically, if you are sitting on American soil, if you're two feet on American soil, whether you're registered, whether you're a citizen, whether you're a founder, it doesn't matter.

You're going to vote one way or the other.

And we're going to vote a particular way.

And so

that's what this revolution is about.

Well,

the Senate bill, Senate Bill No.

1, under the control, Senate control of Chuck Schumer, it's about election.

When,

oh my gosh, why can't I remember her name from San Francisco?

The former Miss Nancy Pelosi, same thing when she was in control of the House, the HR number one was this election stuff.

They're telling us

lately this is their priority and yet it doesn't seem to be

the thing is that

the Republicans are traditionalist, and they feel that the Marcus of Queensbury rules operate.

So they don't go after process.

They say, these are the rules.

That's one sideline.

This is the other sideline.

We play football within the sidelines.

And these are the goal polls.

The Democrats don't.

The left doesn't.

They feel the goal polls can be moved or put back depending on whether they have a strong or weak kicker.

If they have a broken field runner that needs room, then

the margins of

the sidelines expand.

If they have an up-the-middle, you know, run guy that can plow through, they contract.

And that's how they operate.

And so everything is negotiable.

A nine-person Supreme Court, negotiable.

Two new states, negotiable.

Filibuster, negotiable.

Electoral college, negotiable.

Southern border, negotiable, foundational date of the United States negotiable.

And then we just sort of said, wow, I guess that's the new rules.

And we don't understand what they are true revolutionaries.

And there is no consistency.

If tomorrow,

Joe, we get four

conservative justices to quit and we get, they need four liberals, and they get packed, they will say, you know, the worst thing in the world is having to consider a 15-person court.

Or if tomorrow

they go into the minority and in 2024, it's 60-40 Republican, they're going to say,

they're not going to say the filibuster was Jim Crow.

They're going to say it's an essential building block of democracy is the Senate filibuster.

Everybody knows that.

If the blue wall comes back, and they lose the popular vote and you can't crack that blue wall and they win on the electoral, they'll say an electoral college is essential to constitutional government that's just the way revolutionaries are we don't get it we do not get it and uh my daughter

you think that bob dole in 96

or you would have thought that george w bush in 2000 or you would have thought that

John McCain in 2008 or Bitt Romney in 2012 would have caught on,

but they didn't.

They all lost the popular vote.

They didn't understand what the left was doing.

Well, Victor,

let's conclude the show after these messages with some thoughts about, once again, Fauci,

who we just raised earlier,

trying to

influence the CIA and its analysis of the COVID origins.

And we'll get your thoughts on that.

And a really interesting comment from one of our listeners right after this final important message.

Flu season is here, and COVID cases are still climbing across the country.

When people start getting sick, medications disappear fast.

And that's why we trust All Family Pharmacy.

They help you prepare before it's too late.

Right now, they've dropped prices on ivermectin and mabenzazole mabenzazole by 25%.

Plus, you can save an extra 10% with the code VICTR10.

You'll also get 10% off antibiotics, antivirals, hydroxychloroquine, and more of the medications you actually want on hand.

Whether you're fighting off a cold, protecting your family from flu season, or staying ready in case COVID makes its way into your home, having a few months' supply brings peace of mind and control.

They work with licensed doctors who review your order online, write the prescriptions, and ship your meds straight to your door.

Go to allfamilypharmacy.com/slash Victor and use the code Victor10 today.

If you're like me, you have a lot of product on your bathroom counter.

Well, I have found the secret serum.

And it's vibrant Super C serum.

The ingredients in this one bottle can replace your day creams, eye creams, night creams, neck creams, wrinkle creams, and even dark spot reducers.

Made in the USA with the highest quality ingredients, including vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, vitamin B5, and vitamin E, Super C Serum delivers noticeable results.

Simplify your skincare routine, get a healthier complexion, and minimize wrinkles and aged spots with Vibriance.

I just began using Super C Serum last week and I love it.

My skin feels so much better, soft, moist, and fresh.

And by the way, it smells beautiful like the orange blossoms outside my kitchen door give it a try and you'll love it too and if you don't find it better than your current skincare routine you'll get a full refund go to vibrance.com slash victor to save up to 37% off and free shipping that's vibrance v i b r i a n c e vibrance.com slash victor and we'd like to thank vibrance for sponsoring the victor davis hansen Show.

I'm back with the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

Again, I apologize for my,

I've had so many calls that are so bothersome and painful.

Oh, well, you really suffered, Victor.

I'm just being a big fat weedie here.

But

yeah, the New York Post headline from the other day, Fauci

secretly went to CIA headquarters to quote unquote influence COVID-19 origins probe, House Republican alleges.

And this is Representative Brad Wenstrup from Ohio, the head of the House Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus Pandemic.

He revealed what he called quote unquote concerning information obtained by his panel in a letter sent to the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, arguing that it quote lends credence to heightened concerns about the promotion of a false COVID-19 origins narrative by multiple federal government agencies.

The information provided suggests that Dr.

Fauci was escorted into the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters without a record of entry and participated in the analysis to influence the agency's review, Weinstrup said.

Our goal is to ensure the scientific investigative process regarding the origins of COVID-19 was fair, impartial, and free of alternative influence.

End quote.

Victor,

I will say, a little surprised.

I would have thought Fauci and the CIA were already on the same team in one regard.

Maybe not.

But your thoughts as we close out this, today's show on our favorite little Fauci is a very,

he's suffering nemesis because of his hubris.

And he's 80, or maybe he's 81.

And Dr.

Fauci, I'd like to, unfortunately, this is the truth.

From now on, all of the news about you is going to be negative because the administrative narrative probed estate cannot control your narratives anymore because there's a fundamental truth.

The fundamental truth was

that when gain of function research was outlawed, you, for a variety of reasons, whether in partnership with the CIA or on your own or with Francis Collins or the CD, I don't know.

But you routed money through Peter Dasick at Echo Health to use surrogates at the Wuhan Biology Lab to create gain of function viral research.

Maybe you did it so our intelligence agency would have an eye on what was going on.

Maybe you did it so you felt that it would help vaccinations.

Maybe you did it for a good cause.

I don't know.

But it was a way of circumventing U.S.

law.

And that lab, for all of your denials, for all of your pangolin narratives, for all of your bat stuff,

that lab was almost certainly the source of the COVID leak.

And your emails with Francis Collins, redacted though they are, show that.

And your career after February or January or March of 2020 was largely to ensure that we do not find that out.

More importantly, you wanted to make the narrative that this thing came from a bat, so all of your attention would be about how to combat it, but you didn't know how to combat it because very few people did.

So you would tell us to wear one mask.

And then you wouldn't say that's not right.

They don't work, so you don't have to wear one.

Then you'd say wear two.

And then you would say that lockdowns, and then partial lockdowns.

You made everything up as you went along, which is permissible because nobody knew what to do.

But you never went back and corrected what you did.

And you became more and more full of yourself.

And you were a narcissist, and you started to show us your office with pictures of you and bobble toys of you.

And you gravitated to MSNBC and CNN.

And you felt it was kind of ironic that this thing was blowing up the Trump administration.

And you did all of this.

okay.

But the fundamental truth was you were on a pile of $50 billion in health grants, and you had enormous influence to affect things like the Lancet investigation.

You could do internal investigations, and you used your influence and your clout to advance a narrative that you knew was false.

You knew it was false, that A, the United States was involved in subsidizing some type of research or giving expertise to some type of research or sending instrumentation to some type of something.

And that type of research turned out to have killed a million Americans.

And that's going to be your legacy.

And the more you deny it and you use the clout of your office to affect medical opinion or to punish

enemies and to reward friends so that you are protected, the more you go before Rand Paul and under O Say there was no

the more your reputation is going to be diminished.

And there's nothing you can do about it.

And from now on, each day, your reputation is going to diminish because you are not capable of having a press conference and just saying, I've now looked at all the evidence and it was a mistake to have any relationship whatsoever with the Wuhan lab, which to me is likely the source of this COVID leak.

And I apologize for not alarming and warning Americans about that.

And as far as my conflicted evidence goes about masking and social distancing and the efficacies of the vaccination, it was a very

tumultuous time.

At times, I lost my perspective and my disinterested position as a federal health official, and I apologize.

That's the only thing he could do, and he's not going to do it.

Remember, he's science.

He is the science.

I am the science.

And he has, by bragging that he's the science and associating himself with science, I think he's,

well, maybe rightly,

the poster boy for mistrust of science because he abused it himself.

And as we found out, Victor,

I think what he did has inspired a few other brave souls to go out there and show how many scientific studies now are kind of polluted with BS trying to reach out to the people.

I think

they're going to have to go back and

rewrite thousands of articles that came out in a flurry from people who felt that the more that they championed the Fauci Collins position, the more they would get favorable treatment from the CDC or the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Just a fact.

And they have a lot of things to account for.

They went out of their way to destroy some of the great public health experts, Jay Bhattacharya and John Iannides, Martin Kullendorf, Scott Atlas.

They went out and destroyed their reputations.

And they have a lot to answer for.

And I think the left can't save them.

Fauci thinks the left can, all of the institutional support, all of the bicoastal culture, all the awards he gives them.

But it's not going to work.

The truth will finally, the Prabhupada won't work anymore for him.

And he's going to end up a very sad, tragic figure.

And I'm not saying he didn't, he probably had a good career.

I disagreed with him going way back to things he kept pivoting on on the HIV stuff.

But

boy, the way he handled this epidemic and the lies and the misinformation that came out of his office is just reprehensible.

And I think he's going to pay a big price for it.

Donald Trump knew that.

And Donald Trump, I think, made a fatal error.

I can understand why he did it.

He felt that Fauci was the science, not that he believed he was the science in real terms, but he was the science incorporated.

And he was tied up in the liberal hate machine.

And if he fired Fauci,

then he would get a level of invective that would be not sustainable during the COVID problem.

I have a different view that had he fired him and been defiant and got him out of the equation very early, he would have been able to survive that firing.

Instead, he kept him.

He even gave him an award.

And I think that was his advisors gave Trump the wrong advice on that.

Yeah.

Back on

Pence,

we talked about earlier in this episode.

He was the head of this whole COVID effort,

not ostensibly, but by name.

But I wonder if that at some point, his culpability in

the wisdom of Fauci or his failure, sins of omission related to calling out Fauci at the time should be revisited on him.

Not that he has any chance of becoming president himself.

Yeah, I think if they had just told the truth, if they had just said,

These are mRNA vaccinations.

We haven't tested them the way we should have tested them, but we don't have enough time.

They're a little different.

They're not quite vaccinations as you defined that in the past.

They're more of a little bit of genetic engineering where we're going to trick the immune system into creating spike proteins and flood your system.

And

we think that people who are elderly and at the most risk of COVID should take these.

But younger people, well, probably we wouldn't want to subject us to this untested vaccination.

And then if they had just said,

this is a very controversial thing to do if we shut down the schools, because we know from research, if a person eight, nine, ten loses two years of their education, they don't quite make it up.

And especially disabled people, special needs people, it'll be a disaster.

So we're going to be very careful and turn this over to local jurisdictions.

There will be no national recommendation because we don't know.

And the same thing about the lockdown, but it's not what they did.

They kept bombarding us with Moderna's 96%

effective stopping infectiousness and being infected with no side effects whatsoever.

And Pfizer's 94%.

And everybody has to have two, or we're going to kick you out of the military.

But we're going to let in anybody from a foreign country who wants to walk across the border.

So it was a disaster.

And it was really

an illustration that we treat non-citizens better than our own people because we really demonized some of the best people in the U.S.

military.

And I have a lot of close friends that

just chose not to get the vaccination.

And people really got angry at them.

It was almost as if they were unpatriotic or disloyal.

They were going to kill people.

And that was, I just couldn't figure that out.

And I don't know, as someone who got the two Modernas and then got COVID three times, one for 18 months of long COVID.

I'm still not convinced that

the Moderna vaccinations, in my case, were all that safe.

I had a terrible reaction after the second shot.

I was in bed for about a week.

It was worse actually than the first time I got COVID.

And I think certain people were susceptible that had immune challenges, but we don't even talk about that.

And

the final jury, I'll just end on this, Jack.

If you're not honest with the American people

and you just call people who ask

legitimate

questions that they're election denialers, are they vaccination deniers, are they cracks, then you're going to lose public trust in this particular case?

If you look at the number of people who are getting the first booster, second booster, third booster, fourth, it's just steadily downhill.

And that's sad because if they came out honestly and told us, these are the the number of people who had this particular vaccine booster and these are the side effects and these are the numbers here and this is the cost of benefit and this is the upside versus the down, they don't do any of that.

It's just what Herodotus said in the war that when the Ionians came to Sparta and they explained they wanted their help and somebody said, help?

You guys, you want us to go all the way over the Aegean?

Are you nuts?

And then when they went in front of 30,000 Athenians and they said, we need help.

Yes!

On to Ionia.

And his point was it's easier to

whip up hysteria with 30,000 people than it is with oligarchs.

Not that he was for oligarchy, but that's one of the great challenges of democracy, democratic culture, to stop.

It's kind of like a gas.

If you like that and you get that democratic hysteria, and you saw it after George Floyd and the woke, all of a sudden, Stanford University was hiring hundreds of,

well, dozens of diversity, equity, inclusion people.

And all of a sudden,

me too, we woke up one day and almost everybody was gone.

Harrison Keillor and everybody was crazy.

It was like a run-out of banks.

It was.

It was just like, and that is how democracies can get into those hysterias.

Right.

And they destroy people who say, you know, hold on a minute, just stop.

Right.

You're the enemy when you do that.

Russian collusion is another one, as we talked about.

Well, Victor, let's end with

a letter, an email I got and shared with you.

And it's really long, and I'm not going to read the whole thing.

One of them

part of this email poses a question.

It's from Dan, not going to give his last name, but it's

your favorite Minnesota iron worker.

This is the last paragraph, but then I'm going to read that first and then get to the proceeding.

And he concludes this long email, which I share with you.

He writes, keep up the amazing work, you two.

I have no criticisms to level at you.

Thanks, Dan.

You're very unique in that regard about me.

Still listening while welding walking joists and beams and other activities on the jobs that are surrounded by diesel machines.

So we can build hospitals to provide terrified libs with their vaccines and gender transitions.

He's a pretty funny guy.

But here's what he wrote

elsewhere in this email.

Excuse me, folks.

I love when you bring up the music associated with certain groups of people, usually the stoner Marxist hippies of the 60s or today's woke pop country listeners.

Where do you suppose the me's, and he's talking about himself, of the world fall in?

And by that, I mean the lifelong heavy metal, Patera, Slayer, Metallica, loving, tattooed conservatives.

Do you suppose that's the new wave of working middle-class construction workers who now have a let's go Brandon sticker on 80% of their hard hats?

If you've never listened to Metallica's and Justice for All, do so.

The entire album is a

spot.

I think mid-spot-on, narration of the last three years.

I believe James Hetfield was reading Orwell at the time.

And talk about a time when metal was all about eight minutes long, minute plus long instrumental intros, three blinding solos throughout the song, and lyrics that actually talked about deeper things.

Victor, I have to admit, I've never, I'm not a heavy metal guy, never was.

I actually,

I thought Dan here is a really smart guy, good writer.

I might go back and find this album and listen to it.

But

my only confession is is i don't i've never listened to heavy metal i wish i from what he said it's it's interesting but i really appreciate his letter it's very nice yeah we get a lot of we get a lot of really wonderful letters from people i get yeah i mean i feel really bad i i get i don't know 50 or 60 a week at my office and then i get

four or five a day at my personal

snail mail and then I get you know a couple hundred a day at my email and then we get the same amount or more at the author at the website.

So we put them all together, there's just no way I can answer them.

Yeah.

But I do try to read them.

It's tough being Victor Davis Hanson.

No, I don't mean that.

I'm just when I used to write people, I get angry if they didn't write back.

Yeah, yeah.

And

well,

I'll let you know of all the turmoil that you go through, Victor.

And I wrote Victor this the other day.

My mother, my dear mother, who's 90 and

with dementia, but Fox is on.

And

she saw you, I guess, on Jesse Waters

the other night.

And you reminded her of her father at a younger age.

And

my sister told me she's so happy now when she sees you on Fox because it just makes her think of her dad.

So you're serving, you don't know the ways, Victor, the many, many ways you are pleasing people out there.

And your fandom

is really widespread.

Hey, Victor, you've been terrific today.

Great wisdom shared.

I thank you for that.

Thank you for our listeners.

And some of you who write me, very few, obviously, but still,

telling me that you've signed up for Civil Thoughts.

That's the free weekly email I write for the Center for Civil Society at Anfil.

Go to civilthoughts.com, sign up.

Again, it's free and a dozen plus recommended readings.

I think you will enjoy it.

Thanks, those who do that.

Thanks to those who write in comments.

Thank you, Victor.

And we will be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis-Hansen Show.

Bye-bye.

Thank you, everybody, for listening.

I knew we all had two ages, our actual age and our internal biological age.

What I didn't know is I've likely lowered my biological age without even knowing it.

Here's the thing.

Because Americans eat so many processed foods and not enough fruits and veggies, many, perhaps most, are 10 plus years older on the inside than their actual age.

They're ticking time bombs.

A major university study suggests how to slow aging and diffuse that biological time bomb.

Participants slowed their aging by drinking field of greens.

That's all.

They didn't change their eating, drinking, or exercise, just field of greens.

When I started field of greens to replace my multivitamin, multivitamin, I was amazed.

After about two weeks, my energy improved.

I've been exercising more, and my overall wellness feels great.

Each fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was doctor selected for specific health benefits.

Cell health, heart, lungs, kidney, metabolism, even healthy weight.

It's wonderful knowing Field of Greens can slow how quickly I'm aging.

And I encourage you to join me.

Swap your untested fruit, vegetable, or green drink for Field of Greens.

While there's time, check out the university study and get 20%

off when using promo code Victor at fieldofgreens.com.

That's fieldofgreens.com promo code Victor.

And we'd like to thank Field of Greens for continuing to sponsor the Victor Davis Hansen Show.