Beyond Race and Social Movements

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Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

I'm Jack Fowler, the host, and Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayna Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

On the interwebs, he has an official home.

It's called the Blade of Perseus and its web address is victorhanson.com.

You should go visit that and I'll tell you why more in a little bit.

And also the happy home of this podcast on the internet is johnsolomonsjustthenews.com.

You should check that out.

This is a Victor's on vacation episode that we pre-recorded.

Victor's going away.

uh for a week but we don't want to leave our listeners uh songs victor so uh we're going to do a little bit of a shorter episode, three topics.

And the first topic, given some of the recent affirmative action rulings by the U.S.

Supreme Court, will be historically black colleges.

And we'll get Victor's thoughts on that, on a plethora of trans insanity.

And if we have time, the new movie that's out, The Sound of Freedom, with Jim Covezel being attacked by the left.

We'll do that right after these important messages.

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

You know, Victor, I'm going to ramble.

I know this will drive our listeners mad.

I don't have a clear thought on this or on anything, but you might.

But in the, you know, we have been, our nation has been struggling with affirmative action as a policy, particularly as it applies to higher ed.

Of course, it applies in many other ways in American society.

But the Supreme Court,

you know, gave a blow to affirmative action in its

recent

ruling against Harvard and University of North Carolina.

You know, Victor, and some of the reaction to that has been, oh, this is going to be drastic,

terrible, awful for

students of color, black American.

Where are they, you know, how are they going to get, et cetera, et cetera.

And it always

dawned on me, you know, there is this really significant network of black colleges, historical black colleges in America.

There's about 120 of them.

And I don't know, Victor, I just

don't know if you have any general thoughts about them, but

here we have race-based colleges, which I don't know

in conservative principle,

should we have them?

The fact is they're here, and many of them have been here for quite a while.

And they are institutions dedicated to help

black college students to get degrees and advanced degrees.

I have a feeling they're kind of treated shabbily.

And, you know, the great money bags that want to dump additional dough on Harvard and Yale to make their already ghastly endowments even bigger have an option, maybe make these

historical black colleges better institutions.

I think Donald Trump actually allocated some significant money to them through the federal budget.

But Victor, they're there.

I think in some way they expose the left.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Do you have any thoughts about this?

Well, the way that they navigate in this environment that is very different than their birth.

And remember, they emerge because

Black young people were not given a fair shake to get into superior white schools that had more resources.

So they kind of was a self-help idea.

And anybody who reads, you know, Booker T.

Washington up from slavery, it's brilliant.

Right.

And so everybody supported them.

And then as

blacks began in the civil rights movement to get parity and to be admitted to whites, then there was,

they had a falling off of some enrollment, obviously, because they were no longer the only game in town.

And now people have questioned the need need for them because not only were blacks given equal opportunity, but since 1964,

they were given preference into state schools.

So,

how did they function?

And they function in a very simple, reductionist way.

They never said that you had to be black to go to the school, even though most of them had anywhere from 95 to 100% blacks.

By that, I mean they were not racially exclusive.

So, to this day, you can say historically black colleges,

but if you're white and you want to go to Tuskegee, you can.

And so in their way of thinking, they violate no civil rights statutes.

Right.

But I think your concern is more with the emphasis on name.

I mean, we don't have something called Asian colleges, Latino colleges, white colleges.

And that's because

now I'm voicing what the left says.

The left says that's because of the unique circumstances of slavery and Jim Crow was not like the experience of other non-white peoples.

But I think those arguments become more and more tenuous.

So I think what would be good is if you have a Morgantown or whatever Morgan or Tuskegee or Howard University,

then they just sort of transmogrify into Howard University.

And they may have a predominantly black

majority, but they're not necessarily identified just with black people.

So I think that's their hope for survival, that they can become

not associated with race, is what I'm trying to say.

They have historical roots, but they don't have to be associated with race.

And if somebody said, well, that's our character, well, you could say

that was the character, religion was the character of Harvard.

It was a reason to be of Princeton and Yale.

And believe me, they, for better or worse, they transcended religion because they're not there to train

American youth in Christianity anymore, as they were originally intended.

So all colleges evolve beyond their

foundational mission.

But I think that's my attitude is live and let be.

As long as they let people in that are not black, if they want to, even though

they kind of violate this principle of

proportional representation, and when you don't have proportional representation, we're told that it's because of disparate impact.

That whether you intended that or not is irrelevant.

If you don't reflect the demographics of the United States, then you are subject to court intervention.

So I suppose that somebody could say, well,

look at the NBA as 68% black, or the NFL is 74% black, or

Howard University is 85% black or something like that.

And that's not fair, but

I don't think that's going to be a serious thing.

The whole proportional representation, you know, I was just reading something about Major League Baseball is down to, I think it's 8% black.

And there's this big idea, is it racist?

But when you look at, there's not, there's only about, I think, 53% white.

And out of a demographic that's, depending on how you define it, 67 to 70%.

Nobody's saying whites are underrepresented and historically a white sport.

And yes, we're beyond the, we don't have a Willie Mays and a Hank Aaron and a Juan Merritt, the great stars of the major league, Roberto Clement, most of them the best players in the 70s and 80s, many of them were black, Bob Gibson, et cetera.

But it's because we have

we have a nation of about 11 to 12 percent Latino, but they're what?

They're about 45 percent of the major leagues.

and they're mostly foreign nationals in many cases.

So think of the absurdities we're saying.

Well, blacks are overrepresented in the NFL and the NBA, and that's fine at

sometimes five and six times their numbers in the demographic.

But if they're only half their numbers in the demographic, then there must be something wrong with major league baseball.

So we have to adjust by recruiting black people.

But whites, who are the obvious target of any affirmative action type of protocol are also underrepresented.

So then Latinos in baseball play the same role as what Asians do in college admissions.

You end up going

after another quote-unquote marginalized people.

And why do you do it?

Because they're too successful.

Because baseball has become the national pastime of Central and South America and the Caribbean.

And they excel at it culturally.

They put a lot of emphasis on it.

They're very good players.

And they would be, what, punished for their success?

And same thing with blacks and baseball, basketball.

I don't think that we should have an affirmative action program in basketball or football.

It's a pure meritocracy.

And I don't really care what the teams look like.

And I don't really care if there's, you know,

15% white people, and most of them are Europeans, it seems like, in the NBA, that's their problem.

If they want more white people in the NBA, then let them start teaching basketball in in first grade and emphasize it.

But it's not my job.

I don't think it's the listener's job to worry about the color of a particular team or whether one particular group is over or underrepresented.

And so I don't know.

I just think that we're going to eventually either survive as a multi-racial society with one culture or we're going to implode as a multicultural

bellum omnium contra omnis, a war, a Hobbes-in war of everybody against everybody.

Yeah, yeah.

So I don't like any identification.

I understand there's an exception with blacks because black colleges, but I would hope that some point Howard would assume the role of Williams or Kenyon or Oberlin.

Right.

Be incidental.

They wouldn't say the historical black.

It'd just be Howard.

And if it had more black students than most schools, who cares?

That's

so that's what we all wish, I think.

Yeah.

The left wouldn't, because the left has no appeal.

Their agenda doesn't appeal to anybody other than by crises and the crisis that they fixate on the most are racial crises that they gem out.

Well, the racial, you know,

the left money that is that

hasn't gone to help blacks would be, of course, I don't, I don't want to advocate, I think we already have

too much philanthropic money being thrown at.

higher education when it's a little late for a lot of people and when they need the help in the third grade and the second grade, and nobody's

no billionaire is going to get his jollies by having some PS school named after him, as opposed to the big honkin' dorm at

the Warren and Lois Smith School of.

Yeah.

But,

you know, there was an opportunity

in 2020

instead of all this money going to BLM and other, you know, bogus causes.

What about, what about historical black colleges?

Were they not something that

deserved attention?

And they never seem to have gotten the available.

Well,

the three women who founded BLM took the money, most of them.

Most of it.

And they don't want to talk about it because that's racist to suggest that it was a fraud.

But

if you do believe, if you disagree with me, just ask how many corporations are giving right now at the level they said was essential in 2021 or 2000.

I just 2020, I don't think any of them are because they have made a cost-to-benefit analysis that BLM was a shakedown operation and they're not going to be shaken down anymore.

Yeah.

Well,

well, Victor, we're going to move on to,

gosh,

a

stew of

just weird sex, gender, transsexual madness.

And we'll get to that right after

this important message.

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

You know, Victor,

I'm going to read out here.

There's five headlines or stories

we could spend hours on this topic.

The first one

from the Daily Mail headline: CDC Centers for Disease Control, advice says trans women can safely breastfeed babies and doesn't mention health risks.

So, this is a story about guys

who pumped themselves with chemicals to choose.

Trans women.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I got to get this down because I'm confused.

Yeah.

So, are you talking about women that were born with breast?

No.

and sophisticated milk ducts that then transitioned to males and got pregnant because they didn't have a sex change by somebody with the phallus?

Are you talking about men with no breast and male genitalia that transitioned to women got implants, and then they're going to breastfeed through implants or through hormonal implants and through hormonal changes?

Is it possible that they can develop a comparable milk duct system?

I didn't know that.

Well, that's what that's what they're trying to do.

That's just one headline, Victor, of the absurdity that's.

Sorry, I interrupt you.

Give me more.

Okay, the second, well, this, we've heard this new transsexual guy with a Johnson has been, is now Miss Netherlands, and he's going to go to the Miss Universe

contest representing the Netherlands, which is funny for the nether regions, Land.

Then there's a headline, again, from the Daily Mail.

This has to do with verbiage and artists.

Wait a minute.

I think you, but I have to interrupt you.

I think

it's your show.

Politically incorrect, because I understood it.

The word is not breastfeed.

It's chest feed.

Chest feed.

Chest feed.

Don't privilege breastfeed.

I'm sorry about that.

Forgive me, Father, for I've sinned.

So the Daily Mail has a headline: now health professionals are urged to call, I'm sorry to say this vaginas.

I mean, it's a technical term, urged to call them, quote, bonus holes, end quote, to avoid offending patients.

I don't know what the hell to say anymore.

Now is another headline from the Daily Mail.

Tampon Company boss criticized for labeling women

menstruators.

And then the last thing,

this is from a Microsoft headline.

Transgender woman with beard

is now a lesbian.

Is it transphobic if lesbians refuse to date a trans woman?

So if you're a real bona fide lesbian, you know, born that way.

Well, if they're going to make these specifications, then, and they're the ones that are categorizing everybody by their genitalia, then they better tell us you should, you should create new terms.

They should call it trans A or trans B.

Trans A means that you still retain your biological

genitalia and you adopt the clothing or the dress or maybe the hormones of a a different sex, but your genitalia remained the same.

You didn't choose to be castrated, for example.

And then transgender B would be fully transsexual.

And that makes a big difference, it seems to me.

But where we're going with all this is

we're really, when you think about it, I think the only person, is it J.K.

Roland,

Roland, the Harry Potter author, and she's

Bernadette Dorn, or is that who?

there's a lot of feminists in the UK are making the argument that this is very anti-feminist.

It seems to me that it is.

Why would any woman want to refer to her private parts as a whole of any sort?

It's an obscene term, asshole.

It's just a horrible term to use when there's a whole variety of

clerical and even slang terms that were preferable to that.

And then

this idea that all these companies are going to cater to feminine products that they're going to

market for men are when we saw the target genitalia cod pieces.

What I don't understand, if the transgender movement wants to say that we are unique individuals that suffer from gender dysphoria and we had to correct in our teens or in later life, well, then why not have a separate transgendered Olympics, three sexes?

I have no problem with that.

But to expropriate from women, whether it's taking their sports or labeling, getting into the territory that is the domain of women and saying, we, the transgendered community, insist that you now call a vagina a particular type of hole.

That's not their prerogative to do that.

Because

they themselves admit that they're biologically changed.

They change their biology.

And they can call it a construct all they want, but it requires some intervention with hormones and surgery that most people don't undergo because they're naturally born into the sex at which psychologically or their brain chemistry is wired to.

But my point is, it always seems to be addressed at women.

And I don't quite understand that, that it's kind of a misogynist thing.

And

is the Netherlands so short of womanhood?

I mean, I've been to the Netherlands six or seven times.

The one thing that's striking, the women are beautiful.

You should have seen the runner-up, who was a real woman.

I mean, I'm sorry if I may express a view.

And the dude who won was just like, what the, that's a dude.

Every time I go to some of the best-looking people in the world and they're beautiful, why would you not just have a transgender beauty contest?

And that would what we would do.

And it's not prejudicial.

You can just say we're going to have a special category like the Special Olympics.

I'm not suggesting that it's a handicap or anything.

It's just different.

And why would you

try to

impinge on biological women's domain?

And get very, it seems to be directed at women, is what I'm trying to say, more so than

you don't have a lot of women who transition.

into men that are winning sports contests, right?

Even to the degree they compete.

Or Victor, women

who are going into men's locker rooms and trying to embarrass them, which is 100% on the other side.

Doesn't that tell you something?

That tells you that it's not complete transition, that there's some innate biological difference between a woman that transitions to a man than a man that transitions to a woman.

Whether

they can talk about constructing muscularity all they want, but a woman who says that even if she's she's had implantation of genitals and a phallus or penis, and even if she's had her breast removed, she's not going to be on average competitive with a male-born biological male.

It's just not going to happen in a way that's just the opposite when a man transitions to a woman.

And so, why not just,

it seems to be impinging on women more is what I'm trying to say.

And you don't see weightlifters that are, you don't see many women that transition to our bodybuilding contests, maybe a few, but it's very rare to see

women go into, whether it's beauty or sports or any of these typically male domains, at least to the degree that men who transition try to go in and dominate women's sports or beauty contests.

You just don't see.

I just don't see it as much.

And that tells me there's vestigial biological determinants that we don't want to talk about.

And this transgender thing is, like every movement in America, it always, the natural trajectory is excess.

And, you know,

it was the left that told us, remember, Hillary Clinton couldn't open her mouth without talking about the children, the children, the children, the children.

And now the children are being exposed to simulated sex acts in some drag shows, and we're not caring.

And we're even talking about different words for pedestrian or pedophilia we feel that those are hurtful so it's yeah i think in this these flags they have now with the ugliest flags in america but one of these stripes in it represents what used to be nambla you know

man boy not nambla it was it yeah man boy lovers

north american man boy love association yeah

yeah and it was basically a

an institutionalized pedophilia Yeah, is this part of the greater?

They call it pederistry, but it was pedophilia.

There is a difference.

Pederistry is supposedly the male attraction to boys that have reached puberty rather than pre-puberty, but it's still against the law.

Should be.

And they resent that deeply, a lot of people in that movement.

But the transgender movement.

It seems to me that it's anti-homosexual in many ways, but it's clearly anti-feminist in women.

Yeah, my former colleague at National Review, Madeline Currence, has written a lot about this, but some of these

you would think crudely, okay, well, their allies are,

you know, the gay movement will be an ally,

but it's not, because like this headline I read.

Okay, you're,

I'm a lesbian, right?

And you want me, you're a dude, but you're saying you're

you're saying you're a lesbian and I'm I'm supposed to love you.

And if I don't, I'm a homophobe, a racist, or whatever.

What the?

This isn't.

Also, defining when you have these people that go into beauty shows are the character who pulled up his shirt at the White House and exposed his artificially implanted breast, right?

Whether hormonally or through surgery,

they're trying to redefine the feminine mystique.

The feminine mystique, what made women beautiful, were

usually a woman's shoulders did not have the breadth of her

rear end.

And usually it was a wasp, that was the ideal in beauty.

And you can talk about aesthetics that have been printed into our brain.

The Greeks talked about it, why particular shapes were considered more feminine than other particular shapes.

But in classical,

I mean, there's variations, and I understand that during the Renaissance or the period, people were Rubinesque, and during the Victorian, it was wasp-like.

And there was all these fads about and during the Twiggy it was sort of man-like.

I get that.

But ultimately

the transgender movement is saying that we're going to redefine what feminine beauty is because a man, a biologically born man is going to have shoulders that are bigger in most cases than his hips.

And they're going to have other physical jaw and everything that are not feminine, unless they're just radical, radical surgeries.

So my point is that you're going to judge every woman.

And I'm not saying this is a male impose.

When you have a bikini contest, women accentuate certain things that they feel makes them more sexy, or excuse me, sexier.

And it's not just the male expectation.

Women understand that.

And so all of a sudden, you're going to give a prize to a person that can't compete.

with an innately woman's physique, right?

No matter how much hormones or surgery, you're stuck with the muscular skeletal system that you're born with.

And then you're supposed to

give that person the first prize on terms of beauty.

Well, beauty, according to what I understand about these pageantry, it doesn't stop at the neck because these institutions have swim scoot contests and dress conference, and they try to expose the

female physique.

And I'm telling you, a man just doesn't have it if he's born.

Maybe he can doctor and surgery and all that, but it's not going to be the same, especially when he gets to that level of competition where some of the women that are almost all of the finalists in these major beauty are absolutely stunning.

They're perfect specimens of femininity.

They're sort of like the

classical

ideal and they come right out of Renaissance, right out of paintings or classical Greek statues and the idea that that's going to be the pinnacle of femininity, at least sexuality or something.

I'm not talking about all the other aspects of education and learning that supposedly are computed into the pageant.

I'm just talking about the swimsuit area and the dress area.

And you're going to artificially say that a male is just as beautiful, a biological male, even though they're never going to be able to approximate that.

Just, it's bizarre.

And I think ultimately, when you think through it, it's kind of demeaning to women.

Yeah.

Most of it is.

And we don't have to expound on this anymore, but like Dylan Mulvey, like, this is, okay, I'm a woman, he says.

And then

why,

why are there caricatures of women that come out of that?

Why this play acting, as opposed to just saying, you know what, I'm a woman and I'm just going to be what I am.

If he was

gay.

And he did that imperson, that Paul Lind impersonation kind of thing, that voice remember Paul Lind.

Yeah.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

When you did that overtly overtly gay we didn't really know what it was in those days because we just thought it was weird likable but gays resented that because they thought that that was a caricature of you know the droopy hand and all that stuff yeah sissy boy

yeah so why would you

why would you emulate that phoniness to caricature women i guess women don't talk like mulvaney they don't i know a lot of women i've got daughters I've married.

Mother.

I mean, they don't talk like

he does.

They don't.

And yet he thinks that.

Well, I hate to say I'm glad they're pushing it too far

because I'm not.

I wish they weren't pushing it at all, but the excesses here, I think, are just going to have

great repercussions for.

I think it's already happened.

I think women are finally waking up and they're saying, you know, this is impinging on all all of our

hard-won efforts of equality in sports and

everything.

And we have nothing against transgenderism,

but

if it is different than male and female, it's not a complete transition because of biology and nature and DNA.

And therefore, maybe we could have an equal third sex.

of competition.

That would be, I think, it'd get just as much attention.

But nobody wants wants to do that.

They want to get right into the face of people and say, accept 100% of my agenda.

And if you're only going to accept 99, then you're a homophobe.

Right.

People of America don't like that.

Yeah.

Genuflecht, you must silence is

silence is violence.

You have to, you have to accept, not tolerate, you have to accept.

Well, Victor, we're going to talk about one more

topic today.

You'll get your views on one more topic, and and that's

this new movie, Sound of Freedom, that stars Jim Kviesel.

And it's

about

based on a true story about some guy who's fighting sex trafficking, which is a very real thing.

But because this seems to appeal to

religious people,

Kadwiesel is a conservative actor.

This is now something being vilified

on the left.

And we're going to talk about that right after this final important message.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson show.

Victor, I forget, you know, I'm getting old here.

I don't know that I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast about your website, but I don't think I'll have to make a quick pitch.

Hey, folks,

go to victorhanson.com, the blade of Perseus, sign up.

You can, by the way, you can sign up just to get a newsletter to there, but you want to subscribe too.

It's five bucks to get in the door, $50 for a year.

Why would you pay that?

Because Victor writes a tremendous amount of original content that's exclusive to that website.

Yeah, you can read his syndicated columns there.

You can read his American Greatness pieces.

You can find links to his various appearances, but you won't be able to read

the

ultra articles.

So I calculate two or so books a year's worth of content come at you that way.

And if you're a fan of Victor's writing, and you've got to be,

then you should be subscribing.

So please do that.

Blade of Perseus, VictorHanson.com is the web address.

For me, very quickly, I write a free weekly email newsletter.

It comes out every Friday.

It's called Civil Thoughts.

I write it for the Center for Civil Society at Anvil, where we are determined to strengthen civil society.

I give 14.

I should stop saying 12, 13, 14.

There's always 14.

I give 14 excerpts of articles I've come across in the previous week.

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And

I have some

wild angry readers posted, and I got one coming up that's kind of crazy, but those are always

on the website.

I gave it 10.

He hit every single angry reader button.

He used the capital letters.

He had the misspelled words.

He had the scatology.

He had the ad hominem.

He had the F word, the S-H-I-T word.

He had the exclamation points, you know, the major words, everything.

So I said, you know, this is a work of art.

You need a 10 on this.

You've had, I know there's been less of these done

in more recent times.

And that's because you've been a madman writing books.

And I know you've just, you've finished writing what will be your next book, which may be your last book, but you may have more time to do that.

But you've accumulated a lot of angry reader

letters over the years, and

your dissection of them is always terrific.

But

that's one of the features at VictorHanson.com, folks.

Yeah,

and I don't post the ones that come personally to me when people get my email.

Those are

every once in a while, it gets beyond funny because it's, you know, if I ever see you, that kind of stuff.

But I don't like to mention that because a lot of, as you know, pundits will say, oh, I'm always under attack.

People are threatening me.

I'm so brave.

i don't mean that at all i just

there's a lot of wackos out there and all of us not just me or you but our listeners deal with them every day so but the social media is something about the uh veneer of and being anonymous you know what i mean it emboldens people like that's one thing i learned growing up in pretty tough schools that

somebody want you wanted to make fun of someone or attack someone, you had to do it face to face and there was always consequences.

And

that was a cost-benefit analysis that you had to make an instant calculation whether you're going to be humiliated, beat up, et cetera, if you pursued that line of invective.

But not with this stuff.

I get stuff, you know, no, they don't even, they hide their email or they have that little fake cartoon face on their posting,

you know, by a URP set.

And it's just no argument.

If they just say, you misspelled a word or you got this wrong, it's almost never that.

It's pure hatred.

Back in the day at National Review, where we let anyone comment on articles, and some, you'd have to have a moderated, because there was just vileness in there.

And then you thought, okay, you know what?

For those people, we'll allow those people who pay

for what was called NR Plus, you know, online access.

And we'll weed out all the cranks.

Well, you know what?

It doesn't weed out all the cranks because some cranks, you're right about the anonymity, but there's many ways you can still have a cloak of anonymity and be a paid subscriber to a site and then feel even, I think, in some cases, more empowered to be a jerk.

But

that's the world we

do live in.

Speaking of jerks, Victor,

there's a reviewer for Miles Clee at Rolling Stone, and he's reviewed this movie, The Sound of Freedom.

And I know there was another attack on this movie by

The Guardian.

And here's just a little slice of

the review.

I'm going to read two things here.

Caviesel, this is Jim Covezel, who many people probably know best from The Passion of the Christ.

Best known for being tortured.

Oh, here it is.

Best known for being tortured to death in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, has become a prominent figure on the conspiracist right, giving speeches and interviews in which he hints at an underground holy war between

patriots and a sinister legion of evildoers who are harvesting the blood of children.

It's straight up QAnon stuff, right down to his use of catchphrases like

the storm is upon us.

Now, let me just read the end of this, one of the end pieces of this review, and I'll shut up, Victor.

You comment.

Oh, by the way, also, I saw a flip in the channels yesterday or the other day, CNN had somebody on.

Same, they all talk off the, they have the same freaking note.

They get the same memo, but the same QAnon attacks on this movie.

This one, CNN.

Anyway, this review by Miles Clee at Rolling Stone ended.

Sound of Freedom lives up to that anticipation.

It's a stomach-turning experience,

fetishizing the torture of its child victim and lingering lingering over lush preludes to their sexual abuse.

At times I had the uncomfortable sense that I might be arrested myself just for sitting through it.

Nonetheless, the mostly white-haired audience around me

relied on to guess,

moan and pity, mutter condom, blah, blah, blah.

This is dogna shut, but this is typical.

Gosh, can I like a movie that those people like?

Anyway, Victor, it's...

The subtext of that is they made it for what, 15 million bucks?

And in the first five days, it's made 40 million since they're politically correct.

They're politically correct.

Indie, whatever it is, five, Dial of Destiny, they probably spent 100 million and they haven't made as much.

And

this thing has not been out as much.

And it's going to make.

Far less theaters also.

Yes.

Half the theater.

It's going to make a lot more money.

It's going to be a lot.

It's kind of redukes of top gun maverick all over.

They make a movie that appeals to

broad values, traditions, concerns.

The American people, if it's well-crafted, it's got good dialogue, good characterization, good acting, people want to go see it.

And the left can't stand that because it's not the use

of a film for their particular agenda.

Everything has to be for a particular agenda.

It's not arts for art's sake.

It's art for political sake.

And that's how they view all art forms.

Ultimately, it's a Soviet idea that all literature, whether it's Professor Kendi's books, are banning particular books.

And I'm not talking about for children as they falsely accuse the right of wanting to ban books.

They want to ban books that are sexually explicit for people under age, but not the left.

They want to ban, you know, Thomas Wolfe or

Hemingway.

And so my point is, anything that cannot be useful is not art, useful for a political trajectory.

And that's, I think everybody should realize that.

That is innate to leftism, whether it's during the Spanish Civil War or it's the socialism we see in Europe or it's the hardcore Soviet or it's this weird bastardization of the Democratic Party that it's a Jacobin party.

It's the idea that their agenda is contrary to human nature.

People like private property.

They like friendly competition.

They believe that there's a human basis or a divine basis to law, that people are born innately to know that theft is wrong.

It's not constructed.

They understand sovereignty and borders.

And the left,

nobody wants what they have to offer.

So what do they have to do?

They've got to warp and manipulate.

and dominate and monopolize the flow of information and regimentation.

That's the story of them from the very beginning.

And this party right now is a hardcore leftist party with no public support.

And the only reason it is even in power is because they took an old decrepit politician who wasn't very likable named Joe Biden.

They put him in a basement and they said we were in a national emergency and we're going to, in many states now, vote 70%.

absentee ballot and he's not going to campaign and all the media, you mentioned the words, they use, you know, they have those talking points.

They send all the pundits to use, use this word, use this word.

And they were going to get them elected.

That's how they operate.

But they are terrified of popular entertainment, popular books, movies that appeal to broad consensus.

And that's what this movie does.

And that's what Pop Gun did.

And they don't like it.

And that's why they get snarly and have to say that the people in the audience have white hair and da da da da da, anything but talk about whether the acting was good or bad or the characterization of the dialogue.

And yet the funny thing is when you look at these movies that are coming out now, they look like Soviet productions where somebody is forced to say something about, oh, you're a colonialist or you're an imperialist or, oh,

this character is transient.

That's what they do.

It's not, it's not.

Anytime you have literature or art, and it's not for art or literature's sake, but it's for a cheap political agenda.

People can spot it and they don't want it.

It goes back to the Athenian stage.

I mean, when Aristophanes ridiculed people who he thought were psychophants,

fellow poets, and anybody who just mouthed a public, I mean, that was what's wrong with Seneca.

He was a great moralist, but he was basically writing.

And even Virgil, who is probably the greatest poet in the Latin language, suffered from the idea that people thought his great work, and I don't think it was, but the charge against him was it was a poem designed to sanctify Augustus.

And

it was the use of literature for a political purpose.

It doesn't mean that literature doesn't have political purposes, but its primary purpose is political, then it's not appealing.

And

that's what they never get.

It's so dreary to be a leftist.

They're dreary people.

It's so tiresome to hear this and you got to do this and you got to do that.

You have to say this, this, this.

You can't like that person, this person.

You've got to hold a grudge against that person.

You got to boycott this.

You got to do that.

And

what a bunch of dreary people.

You know, we interesting some point, Victor, we should think this out for another time when you're on vacation about the books that have been

literature that has been

culturally or politically transformative, like maybe be like Uncle Tom's Cabin or

some books that have

changed the dynamics of

the current society.

But that's for another day, another time.

Well,

Victor, I appreciate

the wisdom you shared today.

I apologize for my babbling to our listeners.

I hope where you...

I hope my voice held up.

I have a cold and I sound like I'm...

What do I sound like?

I sound like I'm

fine.

Okay, I can't tell.

You know what, though?

I didn't bring it up on these podcasts.

The regular podcast we recorded, but we've, and you talked about your, the trip to Hillsdale, the Hillsdale College cruise.

While

you were gone,

America had one of its peak boutique

airline travel

crises for three or four days.

And I'm glad you were gone because hadn't you not been gone somehow or other, I know you would have been caught up in that.

Yeah, I mean, everything he has the on Midas touch.

Everything he touches turns the dross.

He's just totally incompetent.

And he's in your face and he's the worst transportation.

And that says a lot because that position is often given to functionaries, but he's not even a functionary.

He doesn't, he doesn't, he's out talking about the racial history of clover leafs when people can't fly.

You know, he can't, he doesn't have a clue how to fix anything.

you know, he's got to talk about his sexuality or sexuality or this particular group or this history of race, anything other than I'm transportation and our airline industry is in shambles, and here's what I'm going to do to fix it.

No, you can't do that, Pete, because you don't have the ability.

But I went to, I am a road scholar, I am educated, I speak eight languages.

Who gives a blank blank?

You can't do the job.

I did a bicycle rag in

South Bend when he was mayor.

I think that's was his

guy that

you get any guy on the road that's a 30-year veteran of long-haul trucking and put him in there and do a much better job.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

Gosh.

Well, okay.

I got one thing to read here at the end, Victor.

That's a comment that someone kindly put up on iTunes slash

Apple, where you can rate the show zero to five stars.

Practically everyone gives Victor five stars.

Thanks to those who do that.

Thanks for those who leave comments.

Also, those who leave comments on Victor's website.

I know Victor reads them all.

And thanks, no matter what platform you listen on.

But anyway,

we have one comment here from Fremont titled National Treasure.

Professor,

you are a national treasure.

Your observations are insightful, your wit mordant, and your patriotism unimpeachable.

I wish that we had a million more of you.

May God continue to richly bless you and your efforts to reignite the love of this greatest nation in history, Fremont.

Awfully nice, and I think I second emotion.

Victor, thank you for all the wisdom you shared today.

Thanks, folks, for listening.

Have a great vacation wherever you're going, Victor.

You'll tell us later when you get back.

And folks, we'll be back again with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Thanks and bye-bye.

Thank you, everybody, for listening.

See you soon.