The Elite's Downfall and the Truckers' Uprising

When empires debase their currency, citizens who hold gold survive the transition.

That's not opinion, it's documented fact.

Trump's economic warning isn't speculation, it's pattern recognition.

The same signals that preceded every major currency crisis are flashing now.

Unsustainable debt, foreign nations dumping our bonds, and central banks hoarding gold.

But Trump's also revealing the solution.

The IRS strategy he's used for decades is available to every American.

It's how the wealthy preserve their fortunes when paper currencies fail.

American Alternative Assets has documented this strategy in their free 2025 wealth protection guide.

It shows exactly how to position yourself before the turbulence Trump's warning about arrives.

Call 888-615-8047 for your free guide.

That's 888-615-8047 or visit victorlovesgold.com.

The patterns are clear.

Make sure you're on the right side of them.

Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

I'm Jack Fowler, the host, and we are recording on Thursday, February 10th, in the year 2022.

The namesake and star of the show is Victor Davis-Hanson, who's the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow in History at the Hoover Institution.

And he's also the Wayne and Marsha Buskie Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

Victor writes a ton of stuff.

for American greatness.

We're going to talk about one of those essays right after the break.

He writes a lot of original content that's also found on victorhanson.com.

And we'll talk about that a little later in the show.

So, Victor, you have a really, really outstanding essay titled, Our Elite is No Elite at All.

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

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 Hansen Show.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Victor, I'd like to share just one passage from this essay.

It's published on American Greatness.

I would encourage our listeners to go there to read it.

I know you also carry it, Victor, on VictorHansen.com.

So here's the passage.

You write, the more we gained Silicon Valley billionaires, the more we moved into the world of 1984, merely substituting J.

Edgar Hoover's G-Men for woke, Sutanta, James Comey, Andrew McKay, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Kevin Kleinsmith, or legions of nerds with cancel buttons sitting in rows of computers, carols in Menlo Park, movers and shakers who operate Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, or GoFundMe, and we're going to talk about them a little later, are much more devoted to Soviet-style censorship than to the First Amendment.

They worry far more over profits rather than over the Uyghurs, and their creed is more McCarthyism than the Sermon on the Mount.

Victor, this is a great essay.

Would you tell us your thoughts about what you call, quote, the elite pantheon, end quote, and anything else you want to say about this essay?

Well, it was a topos in classical literature, especially Plato, but also Aristotle, that there was a natural elite.

And that's a good elite.

That means that everybody born into the world and all walks of life, there will be people, given that we're not born with either more natural talent or

with

greater character that they develop, but they will be our great generals, our great leaders, our great scientists.

But it won't be based on stamped at birth by lineage or etc.

But our society that feels it's not medieval does exactly that.

And that is If you get a stamp, a cattle brand from a particular school, we accept that that has nothing necessarily to do with knowledge.

And it trumps Jack your zip code.

I mean, there's people who are elites because they live in old sections of Newport, Rhode Island, or Palm Beach.

We know that there's elites because they're the fifth generation Vanderbilt.

We know there's elites because they're really wealthy.

But the real elite is this cultural elite.

And you have to be A, progressive, left-wing.

You have to go into one of these places and you have to have all of what I mentioned below.

Even Elon Musk, the world's richest man, is not part of the elite.

Donald Trump's not part of the elite.

They have the money, they do elite things, but they'll never be accepted because they've not been branded by those people.

And when you look at them, and I took some easy pot shots.

I mean, for a while, I remember the Kardashians are sometimes celebrity to be famous for, they feel they're elite.

Jeffrey Epstein was elite.

Remember the Harvard scholar, Jack, Jeffrey Toobin, the great law professor that exposed himself on his own.

I don't think that guy has ever tried a landmark case.

I don't think that he's ever written a seminal book on the law.

He's famous for talking, now he's famous for exposing himself.

But Epstein, at one time, he had Harvard University development eating out of his palm.

Or an MIT, too, I think.

Right.

Yeah.

And what, and I was thinking, the Kardashians are famous for their waspy, you know, exaggerated breast and rear end, but and then that those selfies, but nothing else.

And then when you look at who is in the elite and what our elite has done collectively, do we have something like the Hoover Dam?

Do we have the transcontinental highway system, intercontinental, interstate highway system?

Do we have another 10 shots to the moon, Mars?

California Aqueduct, it's aging.

Do we build a bigger aqueduct?

Do we build another 50 dams?

What is it?

Do we have a much higher labor participation rate than prior generations?

I'm just looking for some kind of rubric that shows that these people who come out of Harvard and Yale and Stanford have really taken this country to new heights.

Is it good that we owe $30 trillion?

We're running $2 trillion deficit.

Is that good?

Is it good that we set the record for $1.7 trillion in aggregate student debt?

Is it good that an F-22 or F-35 cost, I don't know, $150 million and up?

So, what has this generation done

that deserves their self-adulation and their name-dropping?

And these, you know, the Justin Trudeau's, when I was listening to him today, what he said about the trucker, what has that guy done?

I know his dad was famous, a famous Marxist, basically, but what has he ever done himself?

I guess he

performed in Justin performed in Blackface and he went to a BLM march, he said.

But this is exasperating because when I look at these people and I half my life is an academic fish that swims in their water, and I get away and then, you know, like I go to Stanford, I'm walking around the campus today

and a guy, you know, I start talking to and I'm walking back.

Another guy comes up.

And then I come home and I've got this 150-year house and two guys are perched on the second floor of a chimney that's, and they're trying to dismantle a chimney on the second floor of a rotten roof.

This roof has not been changed in 150 years, and they are brave, they're competent.

So, I say to myself, well, a master roofer and the guy that's the contractor, I'll call him Chad,

he's a genius.

He took three old roofs in this old house, and he had a vision about how to tear off all the three under roofs and rebuild the joy and do everything and make it.

And then it's starting to look like it after eight days but my point i'm getting at is those are really definable skills but when i look at what's academia has become i look at my classics field when i was in it there were people like ad gom that wrote a monumental commentary on Thucydides, or there was Leslie Threat,

who wrote two volumes of a monumental grammar of Attic Inscriptions, or there was Donald Kagan, monumental four-volume history.

Except for a few people, Paul Ray at Hillsdale College has got six volume history.

But when I look at these artist, these little tiny, narrow little, you know, that the construction of gender and the cult of ascleptius and Asia might, this kind of stuff.

And I look at all these fields and there's no they're there this generation.

And yet they are the most self-referential and proud.

And when I look at Joe Biden, What has the guy done?

I mean, I'm thinking at 10%, that's what he's done.

He plagiarized.

Remember, he lied about his law.

He was a mediocre student.

He said he was in the top third.

It was a complete lie.

Right.

Bob Gates said he was wrong on every major foreign policy decision of the last 30 years, basically.

He was wrong.

He always votes for something.

He denies.

He does it.

What have these people done that make them elite?

That's what I'm curious about.

Maybe at Hollywood, I'm missing something.

Maybe these X-Men, Avengers, Superman, Captain, they're better than the best years of our lives, or they're better than Shane, or they're better than Casablanca.

But I don't think so.

Maybe these novelists, such as they are, they're better than Hemingway or Faulkner or Thomas Wolfe or Fitzgerald.

Is that what they are?

But let's see the beef.

There's nothing there.

And yet they're the most insipid, sanctimonious, and judgmental people in the world.

And Victor, there is a candy crush.

Don't forget about that.

But as you've talked about on other podcasts about california you know the one big

monumental thing that was going to be done maybe in the minds of jerry brown and others equivalent in concrete in its way to the great works that brought the water system throughout the state it was one of the greatest things done in the 20th century but this uh the train system from nowhere to nowhere no way way way no no you're making fun of you're making fun of madera and bakersfield And I want you to know, by the way, when I was growing up, Fresno's made fun of Bakersfield.

That was the Buck Owens, Oakey,

oil field.

And you know what?

If you look at GDP

of Bakersfield and you compare it to Fresno, it has been booming and it's booming, booming.

It's got oil.

The only place in California that really does on land, it's got all, it was the center of the almond boom.

It's become a commuter center to LA.

It's so much better managed than other valley towns.

But it did not need to be part of an $80 billion

train system.

It had a nice train, actually.

One of the things to remember about the high-speed rail is that within a few thousand yards, there's an Amtrak line.

And you can take it from Bakersfield.

Remember, the train never went over the ridge route into LA.

So you have to take a bus.

So you get off the track, the amtrack in bakersfield you take a bus but my point is you can take that bakersfield to sacramento line but the problem jack was there's only one track it's out here rural about five miles to my farm so when i go cross country i wait for it and i'll see this train sitting on the sidetrack waiting for the other train so for a fraction of the cost they had the right of way they could build a dual line it can get up to if they had two tracks it could get and they improved it it could get up to 70 or 80 miles an hour.

But instead, they had to go over because the high-speed rail cannot have the slight curvatures, it's got to have a different trajectory, apparently.

And now, they're just a decade of lawsuits.

They're destroying some of the most beautiful, pristine land that was a traditional floodplain of the Kings River.

These majestic oaks that you dare not touch.

They're cutting, they had to cut them down.

And what they did one thing that was smart, I give them credit.

Everywhere there was a major highway that they went across this 120-mile line, they did that first.

So they're building the overpass.

So you think, and then they have these big signs, high-speed rail coming thanks to your,

and then you'll notice that you go another 10 feet beyond the bridge.

They've never laid one foot of track, not one foot.

And it's up to $13, $14 billion.

And it's going to be over, some people say $100 billion, $200 billion.

And now it's, you know they their biggest activity that i see is that i drive to fresno four or five times a week is how quickly they sandblast the graffiti off of the gang because it's a great place for graffiti it's all over the freeway and they sure remove the graffiti a lot quick more quickly than they do build another part of high-speed rail yeah so laura logan came out here she did a great if you want fox nation and she and i went over there and she was she just couldn't believe it.

I mean, it was good to see an outsider's perspective.

And she would ask me these questions, not because she was being, you know, sarcastic, because she knew a lot about the project.

When she saw it, she said things like, but why?

And, but what was wrong with this other train?

And your freeways, Victor, your 99 is decrepit.

When we came down here, there was only two lanes on each side.

It's not even a six.

I said, yes.

For the amount of high-speed rail, we could have had six lanes 101 six lanes i-5 six lanes 99 but that was too easy and now we had more water on top of it yeah we have we and we could have built three or four reservoirs so it's it's a tragedy it's really i see that thing every day and i you want to weep well victor the trains aren't moving and in canada the trucks aren't moving so that protest i'd like us to hear from you about it so it was clearly ignited by the canadian government's harsh lockdown mask vaccine mandates.

Sad to say, it's bipartisan.

I think there are more than just two political parties in Canada, but it seems unanimous across the political spectrum support for these kind of lockdowns.

So we have this protest in response to these harsh mandates.

But I think, Victor, it's...

also gets into things you've talked about before that there's clearly a layering over here of a reigning class warfare where you have an elite, deplorable divide north of the 49th parallel, just like south of it.

So, I wonder what your thoughts about.

We've talked about the trucker situation before.

Talk about again, if you want, about what you might think of the underlying cultural things going on in Canada.

And then, also, Victor, this attempt by GoFundMe to essentially steal nearly $10 million

from the truckers given by

you know, normal Americans and to be given a planned parenthood and other, now, I know that's been halted by the efforts of some attorney generals, but just the gall of these Silicon Valley SOBs to do something like that.

So we have GoFundMe.

We have your thoughts on what's going on in Canada.

Would you share your thoughts, Victor?

You know, when I was driving home today for four hours, I was listening.

you know, I kind of scan and I was really surprised, Jack, at the hatred listening to these clips of Trudeau when he was lying that they're, you know, exactly as if Nazi and Confederate flags were ubiquitous or police cutting off firewood or fuel to them to keep warm.

And then you, God, I was listening for a second to, I guess it was the five Geraldo on there just spouting pure hatred of these truckers because they've disrupted.

I understand that, you know, there's millions of dollars of lost commerce when they occupy that bridge.

I've never advocated breaking the law, law, but for the left, civil disobedience was a cannon.

They never said a word when they, you know, when chop or chaz, whichever term we use for downtown Seattle, they thought that was great, that occupied territory.

So I thought when the truckers came, the left, whether in Canada or here, would say, you know, these are working class people.

They're kind of getting out of hand, but you know, they haven't destroyed $2 billion worth of killed 35 people,

you know, maimed 2,000, or I shouldn't say maimed, but injured over 2,000 police officers for 120 days.

And they never said a word about that.

In fact, they encouraged it.

And as we know from Kamala Harris's efforts to help Minnesota people get bailed out.

But there was this hatred and this venom.

And I guess it's because they don't hang around with truckers.

I grew up on this farm.

So

my first memory of working was six years old when the big semi came in and we loaded plum boxes on it.

Or when I worked in high school, I worked at a packing houses and we would, you know, load the truckers that came in and we talked to them.

And it's a lonely job.

I mean, the idea that these guys are, they're solo and they're driving all over the United States, crisscrossing and they're trying to get loads here and there.

And they're solitary figures.

The idea they have to be masked, they don't interact with the crowd.

And they're vital.

They're absolutely vital for the economy.

And so you would think they would be revered.

And, you know, we all complain that truckers go too fast on our crowded highways.

But, you know, I didn't drive a semi, but we had a large flatbed.

I mean, pretty large.

It carried eight ton and 20 foot bed.

And it was, I don't know, 1963.

It had a lot of gears.

It was very hard to drive.

But I would go teach and come home.

And then my job was because I wasn't there during the day farming.

I was teaching classics or writing in the library.

And then I had to take the nighttime load to a place called arosi so i would drive 30 miles with all this fruit and if you and it wasn't you know it was packed fruit looking going to the cold storage you make one bad turn you lose your whole day's work but my point is that if you're a trucker and you see people pull in front of you or cut in front of you and you've got this monstrous weight and truck and your livelihood right you get a whole different picture of the general public and then i would get in line you know because it would be late at night and you've got to get into the packed cold storage and you wanted to be first.

But there's some of the nice, I mean, we have this view of truckers as these renegades.

Actually, they're kind of the last American entrepreneurial, independent-minded person.

So I can't think of a worse group of people you would deprecate, alienate, given their value to the economy and the values that they're emblematic of of self-reliance, independence.

toughness.

And these guys are really tough.

I mean, and they're jack of all trades.

You know, I remember going over there once and the clutch was locked.

And I was under the hood, and this guy pulled up in a beautiful semi, jumped out, said, oh, yeah, that's a 65 Chevy.

I had no problem.

He ran onto the car.

And I mean, he literally fixed the clutch linkage right there.

I had my three-year-old son with me and a four-year-old.

He just said, who is that guy?

Is he a scientist?

Daddy, daddy, that's a scientist.

And so, I mean, I have a lot of respect for him, and I don't understand the demonization of them.

I can understand you can make the argument, let's talk and find out.

If you were Trudeau and you were a human rather than some kind of weird clone, whatever he is, he doesn't seem human to me, but he would sit down and say, look, they're solitary people.

They're not out in the public as much as most people.

The mask, I understand, but we've got to resolve this.

Let's sit down and talk.

And he would talk to them.

But instead, he just makes stuff up about them and and he six of police.

And

Biden, you know, this could have spread to the United States.

So it's something that you would think that Biden, and yet we're trying to help Trudeau.

I don't understand the venom.

I don't understand why.

Well, they're deplorables.

That's simple.

So, Victor, well, it's not that simple, but I do think what's going on in Canada is kind of a mirror of what was happening, not in 2020, but earlier.

Hillary and the deplorables and Obama attacking the gun owners of Pennsylvania.

But Victor, let's just move on here.

On the GoFundMe, I'll call it a scandal.

Do you have any thoughts about that?

You know, I'm a conservative, so I never, you know, I don't think in terms of, well, it's okay to shoplift because these guys on the very top skim off money.

But if somebody went in, I mean, that doesn't work anymore because we don't prosecute shoplifting and theft, but if we still did, we would have severe penalties for stealing several thousand dollars of merchandise.

So what they basically did was they decided in their infinite wisdom that the truckers were evil and they were doing something far more egregious than BLM and Antifa were

because they never stopped any of these Gold Fund help people that were arrested or something or connected or injured with the BLM Antifa people.

So I don't know what the logic they use other than they're leftists and so they hate people who are conservative.

And they view the contruckers as more than not conservative.

So they take the money and they say, We've decided, according to our formula, that you can't use our platform.

So we've decided to give it to charities.

And then notice how the position started to rapidly erode.

Then charities that you pick, and

but then you, if you want your money, you have to write us back.

And then, well, we'll refund your money if we have your information.

And I think they'll end up having to give it all back because it's theft.

It's absolute theft by an elite group of people who have no concept of the working classes.

And they're arrogant.

All those people are.

You know,

I was driving down El Camino Real today.

When I get near those places, I eat by myself.

My wife stays here.

I drive over there.

I ate a restaurant, the heart of Silicon Valley, very meagre little chicken dish and a salad, $77, Jack.

And I just sat there.

I always sit by myself.

I never go out to dinner with my colleagues.

I don't, you know, I'm just there for a period.

I was just listening to these people, what they talk about.

These are very left-wing people.

And all I could hear at dinner last night was money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money.

And cars, cars, cars, Tesla, BMW, BMN.

It was all about them.

And so.

There's something we're missing in this national dialogue about this bike coastal elite.

A lot of their politics have have some form of penance or the idea that they have to have a facade because deep down they know that they're very self-centered, selfish people.

And they don't have any empathy for the muscular classes that create their existence.

So

not only no empathy, but disdain.

Yeah, I mean, you know, my mom used to tell me, we didn't have any money, but I would come home from school and I would say, Mrs.

Wilson spanked three people and we had to write our names on the paddle that hangs up above her class.

And if we, she threatened that Mr.

Kagle, the principal, was going to do this.

Okay.

And my mom said, teachers are some of the most noble people, Victor.

They make $6,000 a year.

That's what they're paying them.

And your father was a teacher and now he's part-time and part-time administrator and part-time farmer.

And your family is full of teachers.

These are noble.

I don't believe that anymore, but I do believe that about truckers.

They didn't do what teachers did, Jack.

They didn't say to themselves, we are not going to be exposed.

So all those kids go home.

And believe me, the truckers, when they do go to the docks or they have to go to people, they get more exposed than kids in a classroom because kids are not going to be as infectious as the people that they occasionally have to meet.

But they didn't just say, you know what, get your own food.

Oh, your refrigerator went out.

I'm not going to deliver it.

Screw you.

Oh, your electricity's out.

They need a transformer over there in Seattle.

I'm not going to drive all all night to get it there so you can wake up with power in the morning.

Oh,

your car broke down and you need some parts.

Well, I happen to be driving to a Napoleon.

I'll just pull by the side of the road and just sleep at, you know, sleep for a couple.

They didn't do that.

Right.

Right.

And they get no credit for it.

Well, you know, I mentioned before my late father-in-law was a truck driver.

Yeah, the being away from your family for a week and sleeping in the cab of your own truck.

I mean,

this is a lifestyle that very few people are up for.

There's a tremendous amount of bureaucratic paperwork that had to put up with, but it's what made America work.

It's what makes Americans able to eat and go about their lifestyle and to have disdain for truckers is an amazing thing.

Well, Victor, we've got a couple of things we've got to talk about.

One of them is going to be about a situation at George Washington University and a woke college president.

We're going to talk about that right after this important message.

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.

We'll 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 Camerada 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 Hanson Show.

I want to remind our listeners that Victor's website is victorhanson.com.

There is a lot of original material published there.

You can't read it anywhere else.

For example, today, even though today's the 10th of February, I'm sure people are listening to this well after Valentine's Day, even.

But part one of a series Victor's writing, The Wages of Woke Ignorance, you're not going to be able to read it anywhere else.

And to read it, you have to subscribe.

Just test drive the website, plunk over five bucks, and you will experience greatness.

50 bucks a year.

That's Victor Hanson, S-O-N.

That's the Swedish way to say it, VictorHanson.com.

Did I get that right, Victor?

Yes, Swedes are always danes with their brains blown out.

Okay.

So the president of George Washington University, which is in the District of Columbia, his name is Mark Wrighton, and he sort of fell on his fainting couch last week, Victor, because there were some Chinese students, and I don't remember the name of the organization they belong belong to.

It is an organization like the Confucius Institutes that they have.

It's funded by the Red Chinese government.

It's kind of a fifth column as far as I'm concerned.

But these students complained about posters that have been put up on the GW campus.

I think you've seen them.

I think they're really well done.

And they are pictures of various Olympic sports.

For example, there's a biathlon athlete, and that's the cross-country skiing and shooting, and the images of the biathlon athlete shooting a Uyghur.

And there are a number of these kinds of portrayals of the sports into the oppression by the communist government.

So the students complained.

And of course, the president of the college immediately went to bananas and said this was racist, played the race card, of course.

He demanded their removal.

And then came out that the artist, the actual artist who drew these posters, his name is, I think it's Batiukau.

I'm not, I'm sure it is the worst pronunciation of that guy's name ever, but it's B-A-D-I-U-C-A-O.

If you're on Twitter and you type that, you're going to find him.

He was born in China.

He is a refugee from China, a human rights refugee, and he lives in Australia.

And he counterattacked this.

And then, so then the college president withered.

He's caught in the middle here, right?

I'm not crying for him.

But so, Victor, look, you can talk about this incident if you want, but I find this Mark Wrighton, the president of George Washington University, to truly be a representative of the mindset of the ways of the higher education aristocracy.

Do you share that opinion?

In spades.

Yeah.

I mean, you can write a boilerplate letter of a college president that shoots from the hip, tweets, does whatever to ingratiate himself with his students and faculty.

Remember, every college president, once he gets there, he has been obsequious as a chairman of a department, dean, assistant provost,

the holy grail is being a college president.

But once you're there, it's like being on the back of a tiger.

So they understand they have three four constituencies.

They have the students that they have to placate who are all left wing.

And they'll come in your office in a moment.

These are the guys that, you know, when you went to high school and

these are the guys that everybody stole their lunch money from.

You know what I mean?

I was in a pretty rough school, and they would go to kind of these guys and they'd go up and say, You're going to give me your lunch money today.

And they never fought back.

So they're kind of nerds themselves, and they were always yes men.

And that's how you make it in that system.

And then they have the faculty.

The faculty are nuts.

These are the insane asylum people that are running the asylum.

And then you have the donor class.

And the key is the donors are, if not conservative, traditional, normal people.

And then you have the general public and the press.

And so most college presidents think this way, Jack.

Shoot from the hip, placate the students first and the faculty.

So what the guy does is, oh, anti-Chinese, I'll play the race card.

That's what the students want.

And the faculty knows that we're charging a lot.

We're charging premium rates.

There are no scholarships for Chinese students.

They pay the top dollar, if not a premium.

So there you are, 360,000 of them.

They're a big foreign exchange earner.

The Confucius says they're all over campuses.

They bring in money.

There's research that are joint projects.

A lot of the donors have Chinese.

So don't offend the Chinese as far as the faculty and the students.

Now, some of the donors are conservative and they don't like that.

So you don't really tell them and you hope it, and you do not want the media because the public will find out that you're insane and you're running an insane asylum rather than a university.

So what happened in the evolution of that story, it went from students to faculty, and then the donor kind of got embarrassed that gives money and then the public thinks.

And it just.

reminds us of two things that are going on in the United States that did not go on during the Cold War when we had an existential enemy with 7,000 nukes, the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union was not able as communists to infiltrate the elite.

They got spies, Kim Philby and Britain, and we had a lot of spies here in the United States, the Rosenbergs, but they did not infiltrate the entire corporate world, the investment world, the media world with so much money.

That's what the Middle East did in the 70s.

And a lot of people in the first Bush administration, for example, they became multi-millionaires with investing Saudi money and petrol dollars.

But what happened is that it's everywhere.

There's so much money coming out of that 1.45 billion, 0.5 billion person country.

And so the first thing is these are our money makers.

So we're going to virtue signal, but we're never going to criticize them.

And boy, if it's Stephen Kerr, remember him, the coach in the NBA or LeBron?

Over the lifetime, I think LeBron's contract with Nike is about a billion dollars.

And the NBA is just dropping like a rock as far as domestic audience, but it's growing and it's franchising in China.

So everybody is in on this.

Mike Bloomberg, Bill Gates, everybody's, I don't know how we're going to disconnect from China.

Trump thought he could do it, but Trump was just completely freaked out about how insidious were the Chinese relationships, university, you know, media.

So Hollywood, you can't, remember that story where Hollywood was deliberately for particular types of films, not having dark-skinned African-American actors because they're racist Chinese audiences objected.

And then the second thing, it makes it easier, Jack.

So if they just did that,

then people would say to the president, write, well, you've sold out to the Chinese.

So they have to have a woke cover of Venira, and the cover is racism.

These are not white people.

These are not Russian Orthodox tattooed villains of Hollywood movies with shaved heads and broken teeth and bad accents, big muscles that are killed.

These are people who are marginalized people, i.e., the whole 1.5 billion person country.

You remember the Obama communications?

It was Anita Dunn

that said that one of her heroes was Mao.

That was during the Obama administration.

She said that she told that class, I'm a communications man and Mao.

So the left has this nostalgia for communism and it uses, and China manipulates them brilliantly but because they're quote unquote not white then you're not able to criticize them for the menace that they pose to free societies and between that it's hard to get through with them and it was easier with Russia because they were just you know they didn't have any money they were broke and they were white and they were crude but this is this is very different at so many levels it's very difficult to criticize the Chinese and they know it and the most racist country right now i think institutionalized racist is china whether after covid they were they were kind of yankeing remember uh some african black right out of mcdonald's remember that right and as i said they they tell hollywood no chinese movies are going to be no chinese outlets are going to pick up these movies if we see too many black people so And yet they're considered victims of American racism.

That's brilliant to pull that off.

There's a former congressman, Frank Wolfe.

He was from Northern Virginia and a good man.

He was very much into human rights.

And in the last year or two, we've been in touch on a few things.

Actually, his grandson has been very active in movements to get colleges to kill these Confucius institutes.

But anyway, Wolf was saying to me, he was encouraging me to write a piece, and I wish I had the time to do it, but about how many former congressmen are on the payroll in one way or another as lobbyists for China.

And the counterpoint was that back in the day, there was no way a former congressman, a former senator was a lobbyist for Russia or any of the communist nations.

And now it's fair game.

It's acceptable.

And it's acceptable because we're just talking from the Chinese end, but I know a lot of corporate people.

And when they try to defend their Chinese portfolios and how that affects their political observations and commentaries, they say something like, well,

you know, it's good to get away from Europe or Asia.

We have to be more sensitive to Asian concerns, or we have a bad history of, you know, the use of Chinese labor in California.

So they play that violin of victimization just brilliantly.

And it's just a mass for just absolute obscene profiting.

And it's against our interest.

And then the other element is, of course, Jack, then

this locomotive called Donald Trump pulls into the station, just blows it apart.

He just comes in.

He doesn't stop.

He just goes into the China-American station in 2016 and says, they're crooked.

They're asymmetrical.

They steal our copyrights.

They infringe on our patents.

They dump cheap currency.

basically de facto tariffs.

They run up huge surpluses.

They confiscate American business.

There's nothing good about them.

And everybody said, well, if Trump hates the the Chinese, then we like the Chinese because we hate Trump.

And then when the virus came along, everybody knew it was from the get-go.

Anybody that had a brain knew it was an engineered gain of function virus that escaped from the Wuhan lab.

They were saying, this is Trump's conspiracy.

They were racist to call it the Chinese virus.

They were.

And they played this.

And it's very scary because, as I said, I had some experience.

I think I said that in an earlier podcast where what was her name?

Fang Fang?

Eric Swalwells.

Yes.

Yeah,

she was attached to California.

And she, right.

I wrote a very critical thing of China.

And she called up, and I don't know if it was a consul.

She was actually attached to the consul.

She said she was.

So we believed her.

But there was something about her voice.

And, you know, she came up to my office at the Hoover Tower.

And I had, luckily, I...

I thought, this is kind of weird.

It's 5.30.

I just happened to be there late working.

And she said, I want to correct you on your bad ideas and your support for the criminal government in Tokyo.

And I said, oh, I'm really busy.

No, no, please.

And then she came up and I had my assistant there.

We had the door open.

She comes in with an elaborate tea set.

And I said, I can't take the gift.

I'm sorry.

And then she says, she had this skin-tight jeans with boots up to her knees with a revealing t-shirt with, I don't think, an undergomer under it, with sunglasses tucked in her V-neck.

And this valley girl accent.

It's like, hey, man.

It's like, hey, you know, I went to Cal State.

I think she says something like, I went to Cal State Hayward or something, man.

You got it all wrong, man.

You're a loser.

You're a loser.

I know every.

And so.

She called you a loser, really?

Yeah, she was kind of funny.

I was getting tired.

She goes, I'll tell you what, man, we'll go over to Sundance.

It's a kind of an old restaurant.

I'll come in.

We'll talk turkey.

I said, no, no, no, no, no.

And then I had somebody there with me.

And

then she got angry.

And Christine fang by the way that's her name yeah

well it started off it goes by fang fang i'm getting a little ahead of my story very quickly because in the very beginning it was kind of i don't want to emulate that would be insensitive but she had a chinese that you were kind of wrong you're kind of wrong you're kind of wrong about

you're kind of wrong about your politics that was kind of the thing and i was very sympathetic but as i started to disagree she dropped that accent and had not just an american accent, but an American.

And then she started kind of being insulting.

And then finally, I said, you know, this has been 15 minutes.

I got to go.

And she goes, okay, stop.

Stop.

Got to ask you a question, man.

I said, okay, we don't get it.

Oh, every leader protects his own country.

But we go into Japanese airspace, we fly over.

you know, Korea, and you do nothing, nothing.

I said, well, you should talk to President Obama.

She goes, no, no, you're Mr.

You think you're Mr.

Military Australia.

You tell me why.

And I said, you tell me, I guess it's called lack of deterrence, or we don't want to confront you.

I guess we feel that our overwhelming military power would fizzle because of your spiritual superiority.

Is that it?

She said, no, no, you know what you're doing.

It's a trap.

And she kind of made a little bear trap with her hands.

You're going to kind of let us go in, man.

You're going to let us go in two miles.

And then you don't come out like Bush did and push us back and then three and then four.

And pretty soon we're gonna get caught 10 miles into Japanese space, and then you'd have a bear trap and embarrass us.

I said, If you want to believe that, I think that's the greatest thing in the world.

You're right, Barack Obama is going to trap you and embarrass you, so don't go into American airspace.

And that was my thing, and I forgot all about it.

And then, when Eric Swallow is his name, Swalwell, Swalwell, right?

Yes, the person who passed gas on the air, he did quite.

Yes, I just say it quite abundantly.

Yes, but anyway, i got a call from my assistant and we were talking and we think that is the person that we met

and then we thought well that couldn't be that was way back in 2014 but i think she left the country in something like 2015 so it probably was her victor you

you meet i met a lot

i have met a lot of remarkable people by accident not by yeah

okay uh i mean from gore vidal in your living, in your dining room as a kid having dinner at Martin Luther King.

Yeah, Martin Luther King.

Yeah.

William Lewis Leakey.

We've got a little time left, and we're going to talk about Afghanistan right after this important message.

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 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 home titlelock.com/slash Victor to get a free title history report and a free trial of their million-dollar triple arc 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.

Hey, folks, we're back with the Victor Davis-Hanson Show again.

We're recording on Thursday, February 10th.

I'm assuming that between when we record and when you're listening now, Valentine's Day will have happened.

So I hope everyone had a lovely, lovely and loving day.

For me, Jack Fowler, I am the director of the Center for Civil Society at American Philanthropic.

If you're interested in strengthening civil society, visit our website, centerforcivilsociety.com, and also visit civilthoughts.com.

Sign up for the newsletter.

I write it.

It's harmless and it's free.

And you might even find some informative links to great writings there.

And Victorhanson.com, again, is where you can subscribe for Victor's exclusive content.

So, Victor, I saw a piece on the the daily mail and it's about afghanistan and well the insanity that happened there last year so victor here's the headline commander in charge of kabul evacuation slams the white house and jill biden jill biden

for being a quote distraction during the chaos he claims high profile pestering for special favors to get allies out slowed military down in the piece so this is a story about Rear Admiral Peter Vaselli, V-A-S-E-L-Y.

And in the article, it talks about he claims he had very limited bandwidth during these crucial days in Afghanistan and Kabul.

I kind of think the bandwidth is self-inflicted, limited bandwidth.

Victor, I'd like to get your thoughts, of course, on these, you know, covering tracks, blaming people, finger pointing, however you want to call it.

But also, you know, something that we've talked about in the past reminds us, of course, the debacle that happened there.

And General Vicelli is still a general, I guess.

He didn't resign after the fact.

He didn't resign while the bandwidth, the limited bandwidth was being put in place that was surely going to lead to the madness that ensued.

No general has resigned.

No admiral has resigned.

None were ever fired over this debacle.

And it's a half a year ago.

Victor, what are your thoughts about this finger pointing and how America or how the Biden administration is perceiving what happened in Afghanistan back in August?

Well, as a certified Senate, could I just make an observation today for the first time in the real clear politics aggregate?

And if you look at the polls that usually appear for that average, the majority of them are left-wing.

Joe Biden didn't make 40% approval, 39.5% or something.

Right.

But do you think it's mysterious, Jack, that

he

didn't come out immediately when Joe Biden even was up to 55%?

And then right after this

debacle, he started going down 52, 49, 48.

But he didn't really come out.

And now he's coming out.

But why is he coming out now?

And I think the reason is, is that Joe Biden is one of the most unpopular presidents in his beginning of his second year we've ever seen.

So he feels that if he comes out now and his, you know, his career is ending too, he's got a narrative.

But this is the same guy, as I remember, that was telling us last August

as part of the narrative that they were working with the Taliban.

Remember that?

That was kind of the background briefing that the Taliban were willing to work with us to get a slow, steady, organized withdrawal.

And remember, General Milley kind of said, you know, it's not bad.

So in other words, I know that right after the disaster by September, September, Joe Biden was saying, they never told me I wouldn't have done it.

And then they were saying off the record, yeah, we told him.

But that was later, after post facto, right before they were both in conjunction telling us that Afghanistan was stable.

They were bragging that unlike the Trump administration, that they had developed sophisticated ties with the Taliban to facilitate a gradual new phase of our relationship.

And now Joe Biden is so unpopular that now they're coming out of the woodwork and said, you know what?

I am not going to have my reputation die for that SOB.

He's a loser.

And people are probably, he's either not going to get reelected, he's not going to finish his term.

And I want the world to know.

And so it's expected of these guys.

And then the other point you make is:

does anybody get fired?

You know, contrary to popular opinion, we didn't fire a lot of generals in World War II, but we did reassign them or we sent them back for training.

You know, the head of the B-29, General Hansel, we sent him back.

And Patton, I think, sent one or two two-star home, maybe not General Wood, he sent home.

But we had Lloyd Freidenhall.

Now, that guy was a disaster in North Africa, just a total disaster.

He got people killed, Kaiserine Pass.

And, you know, we sent him back to train people.

He kept ranked.

So we don't do that.

We're not like Abraham Lincoln, you know, who went through seven generals before he found Grant and Sherman.

Right.

But I wish they would do that and they don't.

And, you know, at one point, I think I wrote a column in the middle of the Iraq fiasco.

That was when, remember Tommy Franks?

Right.

And then we had that brilliant, was it General Sanchez that replaced Tommy Franks that was even less capable?

And I won't even go into the rest of them, but we find, you know, David Petraeus did a good job.

But the point was, I think, can't somebody just say, Mr.

President, I will defeat the enemy.

Or if they cannot say that, can somebody say, the enemy is incapable of being defeated?

We cannot defeat the enemy under the rules of engagement.

I want to tell you that.

But they don't.

What they do is they say, okay, yep, you want to go and you want to get out of Afghanistan.

You bet your, right.

You bet your bottom dollar, I'll get you out of Afghanistan.

And then they go over there and they say to each other, oh my God, this is insane.

We can't just pull out.

We've got to do this gradually.

No, you got to be out by September 11th.

The president wants a 20 anniversary 9-11 parade, glorifying him as the guy who got us out finally of Afghanistan.

We don't have much time.

And so they said, okay.

And they said, this is going to be a screw up.

And nobody goes back and tells them or resigns or says, and then it's a screw up.

And then they sit there and think, oh, my God, he's the president.

You can't, he commandeers the media.

He's got the intention.

Who am I?

And then they start looking at him.

Hmm.

He's not very popular.

He's really not very popular.

He's really, really this week not very popular.

So I'm going to come out.

And they did it with Trump.

When Trump was 45%,

they shut up.

But after those riots, then Millie got on his hind legs.

You remember in July of 2020?

And it was an election year.

And he knew he'd be canonized by the left.

So he said that Trump, he lied about that too, when he said that

he had erred by having a photo out because that was improper and that he disagreed with federalizing troops.

And they never federalized troops.

They never called the people in.

The inspector general of the Homeland Security found out.

that that was improper.

And if you had, you know, it wasn't like Colin Powell during the Rodney King riots where he wrote a note to George H.W.

Bush and said, when you want to go clean that Rodney King rioting mess, you just tell me I got 5,000 Marines that are ready to go.

And they sent them right into the street.

And I don't think Colin Powell, who severely criticized Trump on a false report that he had done something like that, when he himself had volunteered and did use troops, I don't think that that reflected very well on him.

So I guess what I'm getting at, Jack, in a very clumsy fashion is I'm really worried about the military.

You and I, I know I beat that dead horse to death, but when you get a

poll, the last one I saw was 45% of Americans express confidence in their military.

And that is shocking because it's usually around 75 to 85%.

But when you actually look at how the polls are conducted or broken down, you see that they have a great deal of confidence in their privates.

in their corporals and the fighting capabilities of their special forces, SEALs, sergeants, rangers, 101st or born.

It's when you start talking about officers and not captains, not majors, not lieutenant colonels, not colonels, but one, two, three, four stars.

At that point, something's gone terribly wrong.

It's the analogous to the Comey, Brennan, Mueller, McCabe, Lois Lerner, Loretta Lynch, that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Fauci.

Fauci, too.

Fauciization of the military.

Well, hey.

We cannot have a podcast and not mention little Tony.

Let me, let me, Victor, if you know what, let me close the show on that point with a comment left by someone at iTunes.

And as ever, we are deeply appreciative that people listen to the podcast.

Some listen on Stitcher and Google Play and on the website of Just the News, which carries the Victor Davis-Hansen show.

Folks that listen at iTunes and download via iTunes, thank you.

And thanks for those who leave ratings.

And thanks for those also who go above and beyond and leave comments.

We read them all.

And here's one.

Sort of on point to what Victor was just talking about.

It's titled Immense Gratitude and Respect for Dr.

Hansen.

And it's by someone who signs

her name as I Love Spinach.

So it could be Popeye.

I can only say thank you.

Thank you, Dr.

Hansen, for your podcast.

As a recent enlisted military retiree, I saw firsthand the politics, the bureaucracy, and the rot trickling down from the upper echelons and how it affects the troops.

When Dr.

Hansen speaks about current and historical military matters, I'm able to put myself in the situation and learn so much.

Dr.

Hansen is an intellectual elite, yet he's so humble.

I feel like he speaks to and for the average citizen, the young enlisted, the top academics, the highest commission ranks alike.

About eight months ago, I stumbled upon his podcast, and now I look forward to every episode.

Like he was saying to Ms.

Sammy Wink on a recent episode, he arms his listeners with historical knowledge and context on current events so that we make informed decisions in the future.

Even in these precarious times, his words both give me hope and let me know that I am not alone in my observations.

I also really enjoy hearing his childhood stories.

and learning about the classics.

I think, thank you.

I love spinach.

And I think that comment speaks for a lot of people.

So on that note,

I appreciate that.

you know i ended up in a meeting today jack and i had to beat traffic to get home and do this and i was running out of a meeting all the way over to my apartment to get in my truck and get home and a guy rode by on a bicycle and he said

i saw you and i think i know you were on tucker last night and something and something anyway he wanted to talk and i said well you know i got to get to my truck or i'll get in stuck in traffic but just drive your bike along with me and what he said was exactly exactly what that guy said.

He says, you know, we feel all alone.

These people, and he looked around the camp, these people are insane.

Do you know that, Mr.

Hansen?

I said, Yes, I do.

And he said, These communities, these people in Silicon Valley are dangerous.

I said, Yes, I know that.

And he said, We're all alone.

I said, You're not all alone.

We're not.

You're not all alone.

There's people who are getting very, very angry, whether it's the smash and grab or the carjacking or the looting with this snicker on their face or the lies from the media hiding the truth or this administration or the border or gasoline or inflation, they're angry and you're not alone.

And we've got to find a way to save this country because we inherited a wonderful country from people who are maybe better than ourselves, likely.

And all they asked for us was they didn't say, you know, they just said, don't screw it up.

Just take what we gave you and make it a little better for your children.

And each time we do that, and we took it and consumed our seed corn.

And it's just, it's really depressing.

And I don't want to, you know, I'm 68.

I don't want to die with this idea that we failed.

And so I think all of us,

all of us, you know, each according to our station, we got to stick together.

And you're not alone.

Remember that.

And that reader

be reassured that we're trying to do a very small bit, but everybody does a bit that we're not even aware of.

And I think that we're going to be overwhelming in the next election.

We are.

We are.

There's no doubt about it.

The wind will be.

You're talking about inherited.

The wind's going to be inherited in November.

Don't lose confidence.

Get angry.

Be defiant.

Remember what Patton said.

He quoted Deton.

Audas

tour journey doss.

Audacity, always audacity.

More audacity.

Tourjour la dos.

Well, Victor, I hope you're not.

involved in audacity on Monday, Valentine's Day.

I hope you and the great Mrs.

Hansen, the lovely lady, I hope you both have a wonderful Valentine's Day.

Mrs.

Fabio and I will.

It's actually going to be our 36th wedding anniversary.

Congratulations.

Yeah, yeah.

Congratulations.

Yeah, she's cleared out purgatory on a daily basis living with me.

So

thanks again, Victor, for all your wisdom you shared.

Thanks, folks, for listening.

We'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hanson Show.