The Traditionalist: Calling Out the Elite
Join VDH and cohost Jack Fowler as they examine the matters of General Milley, nuclear pacts, border crisis, economic stagnation, and Minaj's message of COVID misinformation.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Listen and follow along
Transcript
I knew we all had two ages, our actual age and our internal biological age.
What I didn't know is, I've likely lowered my biological age without even knowing it.
Here's the thing, because Americans eat so many processed foods and not enough fruits and veggies, many, perhaps most, are 10 plus years older on the inside than their actual age.
They're ticking time bombs.
A major university study suggests how to slow aging and diffuse that biological time bomb.
Participants slowed their aging by drinking Field of Greens.
That's all.
They didn't change their eating, drinking, or exercise, just
field of greens.
When I started Field of Greens to replace my multivitamin, I was amazed.
After about two weeks, my energy improved.
I've been exercising more, and my overall wellness feels great.
Each fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was doctor selected for specific health benefits.
Cell health, heart, lungs, kidney metabolism, even healthy weight.
It's wonderful knowing Field of Greens can slow how quickly I'm aging.
And I encourage you to join me.
Swap your untested fruit, vegetable, or green drink for Field of Greens.
While there's time, check out the university study and get 20%
off when using promo code Victor at fieldofgreens.com.
That's fieldofgreens.com, promo code Victor.
And we'd like to thank Field of Greens for continuing to sponsor the Victor Davis Hanson Show.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen.
This is the Victor Davis-Hansen Show, the traditionalist.
We're recording on Friday, September 17th, 2021.
I'm Jack Fowler, the host.
I am the director of the Center for Civil Society at American Philanthropic.
The namesake of this show, and that is Victor Davis-Hansen.
He is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky.
Is it Busky, Victor?
Yes, it is.
But I've heard both.
I've heard both.
I've heard buskie and busky, so I'm not sure.
Okay.
Well, I apologize to the buskies if they prefer busky, and I've been saying it busk all along.
But at Hillsdale, where you just recently ended your
two-week annual gig of teaching there, we'll have more about your bio, Victor, later on in this episode.
Before we get into the first topic, which will be General Milley and his comments that he made today.
Again, we're recording on September 17th.
I want to encourage our listeners to visit victorhanson.com.
There is, as I've said before, a ton of original material there.
You can still read some of the original material without being a subscriber, but it behooves you to subscribe to the premium service, very affordable.
Victor has this ongoing series right now on the Historian's Corner that's extremely worthwhile.
anyway while you're at the website go to the right-hand column scroll down a little bit you'll see the link for the dying citizen how progressive elites tribalism and globalization are destroying the idea of america big book important book out the first week of october i believe october 5th but order it on amazon it'll show up at your house probably publication day.
I know there are actual hard copies of the book printed and circulating around to folks who are planning to review it and for other marketing purposes.
Anyway, Victor, let's begin briefly talking about General Milley and his comments today.
But first, there's 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 bullandbranch.com/slash Victor.
That's Bowl and 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, the traditionalist.
I know, Victor, that and one of the other podcasts under the umbrella of the show, that's the cultural list which you do with the great sammy wink that you did discuss at length um
the um allegations uh made in the forthcoming book the peril by bob woodward and robert costa that had uh claimed that general milley was discussing uh calling up the the the chinese red china to tell them don't worry uh with this trump crazy guy uh we'll warn you if you're attacked and other such things that smack of
treason.
So, I don't want to, we don't need to go over the same ground that you've discussed with Sammy on the culturalist.
But, Victor, do you have any quick thoughts today about the comments made today by General Milley that what he did was perfectly within his rights and the duties of his office?
And maybe also
some of the comments that Joe Biden made earlier this week, I think two days ago, where he said he was totally in support of General Milley.
That book by Costca or Woodward and Costa is called The Peril, and that's ironic because The Peril wasn't Donald Trump, it was the U.S.
military as embodied by General Milley.
And when he says he's perfectly in his rights, he's not.
He's not telling the truth.
Under the Act of 1947 and 1953, that was refined and focused and narrowed, and under Goldwater Nichols of 1986, that even narrowed the latitude of the chairman of the joint chiefs and the joint chiefs in total.
It's very clear, chairman of the joint chiefs does not have operational command.
He cannot get into a room of generals and tell them, this is the procedure, and you don't do something unless you contact me.
He cannot do that.
He cannot.
conduct foreign policy.
He cannot call up a foreign military and on his own freelance and tell them that I, the embodiment of the U.S.
military, will warn you if there is going to be, he can't do that.
If he can do that, then we don't have a constitutional republic.
He's had a coup.
He can't do that.
In fact, he should resign immediately if he's not court-martialed.
That's in violation of three statutes.
And that's, we're not even getting into the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 88, and all that about disparaging the commander-in-chief, but he does not have the legal right.
If Donald Trump wants to order a military operation, then he calls the Secretary of Defense and says, this is, we want to get rid of Solomani.
The Secretary of Defense then says, I will contact the relevant people in the field.
The Joint Chiefs at that point are not involved.
All they're involved in is they go to Donald Trump and say, earlier, if you want to take Solomani out, it is our considered collective opinion that this is bad, this is good, this is both.
You make the decision, but we have to advise you of the military ramifications, deterrence, strategic ramifications of that decision.
At that point, their role is over with.
And then he makes the decision based on their advice that he can take in part or not at all or in total.
And then he issues the order and then the chain of command kicks in.
The Joint Chiefs, General Milley, is not in the chain of command.
And yet, everything he said
that he's done was in the chain of command in the sense of disrupting the chain of command.
He said he got into a room of generals and told them what would be the procedure for nuclear weapons protocol.
That's his procedure.
That's not anybody else's.
He has no right to go tell a Chinese official that he has characterized the United States government as messy and there's a crisis and he will tell them if we're going to attack.
What he essentially did, Jack, is he told the Chinese government that we don't know what we're doing and it's chaos over here.
And the Chinese, and that hurt us.
That lowered our concurrence.
And we know that because China has done nothing but probe our weaknesses vis-a-vis Taiwan.
And they have a feeling that we're not in control and that there are people in the U.S.
military that are not following the laws of the U.S.
military.
And then finally, Jack, how did this all come to light?
Is it because Trailblazing investigative journalists Costa and Woodward find out and they press Millie and they said, Did you do this?
No.
It's Millie or they,
in a pleasant conversation, wanted to give credit to the theme of the book, The Peril, Donald Trump.
So Millie volunteered, thinking, I'm going to be an iconic hero.
Once people understand how I broke the law for a higher law as I saw it, they're going to lavish me with accolades.
In fact, that's what's happening on the network news and MSNBC and what have you.
So it's it's a black day in the history of civilian military relations.
Do you remember, Victor, once upon a time, liberals made movies like Seven Days in May, a Burt Lancaster,
a Kirk Douglas movie about a general usurping the president's powers or attempt to.
And now, yeah, the cheerleading for General Milley is from
the left media is
kind of sickening, more than sickening.
Victor, let's talk about a few other issues.
We'll stay on military matters.
We'll talk about the U.S., U.K., Australia.
Let's call it a pact to push back against China with submarines.
We're also going to talk about the border crisis later in the podcast, the infamous gala, gala at the Met in New York, where AOC famously wore
attacks the rich dress unmasked while everyone else was masked.
And then I'm going to ask you this about Nicki Minaj.
You can punt if you don't want to, but I know
you were in studio the other day with Tucker Carlson on his show, and it was a big topic that day.
And I think you might have some cultural thoughts on that.
But let's go to Australia, where the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia.
I created some nuclear submarine pact.
It essentially means that the United States will technology will be used, nuclear technology to build submarines for Australia.
This has upset the EU greatly because the French were going to build subs of some sort.
But,
you know, that internal,
well, that's not an internal, that is external.
But anyway, I'd like your thoughts on is this a good thing that has happened, this pact,
is it good?
But are there consequences to it with our relations with Europe?
Well, it's a good thing and it's an ironic thing.
And what I mean by that is that Australia is isolated.
it's analogous to its position in 1939 and 40 and early 41 in other words it's a western country with a continental nation parameter and it has a very small population and it's right next to 1.4 billion people in terms of relative distance and it's rich in every imaginable natural resource that china is very eager to leverage
And they are not able, because of their population, not their spirit or their competency.
They're very competent, very spirited as we've known through a number of wars we fought alongside the Aussies, but they don't have the material wherewithal to stand up to China.
So if you're going to give them submarines, they have to be the best in the world.
And
France's submarines were not the best in the world.
They need a nuclear-powered submarine that can go for weeks under the oceans with a ballistic missile capability.
For now, conventional.
So that was a good idea.
But the irony is that the way that Joe Biden did it, he didn't call Macron apparently up and say, you know, let's consult about this, or maybe you can sell them one or two, something.
This is what he accused, they accused Donald Trump of doing.
Joe Biden
was supposed to be the adult in the room, was going to be the healer.
And the result is that Donald Trump made them pay $100 billion more in defense appropriations.
And they hated him for making them more military readily.
Joe Biden, after the Afghan disaster, where he left 8,000 NATO troops in the dark without any worry at all how they were going to get out, how their people were going to get out, now doesn't consult and does that.
So
it's highly eronic.
Victor, let's talk about the border.
The border crisis is a crisis.
It has been a crisis for months.
It's clearly been off the, you know, well, other crises have knocked it off
the main news, but I think even though if there were another crises, the media, our liberal media in America would not be drawing attention to it.
That said,
this week, there's some reports that Haitians, thousands and thousands of Haitians are crossing the border over the Rio Grande.
Remember, Cubans could not come.
If Cubans are in two months ago when
there were protests in Cuba, we were not going to let Cubans in, but Haitians can come in and anyone else can come in right now over the southern border.
It isn't even a border anymore.
But, Victor, just like you're, of course, by the way, at the same time, we are bringing in 60,000
Afghanis to relocate into America.
Many of them have not been vetted.
Your thoughts, Victor, on what is
as this crisis grows, your thoughts on it?
And if you had any particular thoughts about Kamala Harris, who I thought was supposed to be
in charge of this and
putting it, keeping it under control.
I haven't seen a peep about her on anything, including the border crisis.
So your general thoughts, Victor.
Let me formulate it, Jack, in a little different way.
Let's say that you wanted to imagine a scenario in which the United States had no border and no control over who came.
and it was an ungodly humanitarian and health and political, cultural, social, economic disaster.
You couldn't do any worse than what we're doing.
You couldn't imagine anything worse.
We're gonna have 2 million people from all over the world crossing the southern border without tests, without vaccinations at a time when Joe Biden is saying if you work for a business of 100 employees, you're gonna have to be vaccinated.
or you're gonna have to be tested every week, or federal employees and soldiers.
The soldiers are, remember, are escorting Afghan refugees, 100,000 strong, without vaccination.
So think of that for a minute.
You, American citizen soldier, you're going to have to get vaccinated, even if you've had COVID.
You, foreign national, about, we know nothing about, we wouldn't want to impose on you and ask for a vaccination.
This is insane.
And then when you add to this equation, the idea that
We don't know how to support these people.
We're going to tax the social services.
It's very mysterious how the distribution seems not to be proportionally represented sometimes.
And it's sort of reminiscent of the new equity that they are invoking about the distribution of monoclonal antibodies, a very effective treatment for COVID.
It doesn't seem to be based on medical utility or the number of cases or the, you know, get the biggest bang for the buck.
It seems to be political.
This seems to be political.
And I think at some point, I mean, look if you look at those pictures there's no outhouse there's no facilities there's no toilets there's no showers and why are these people coming they're coming because joe biden and his administration opened the borders why did they open the borders they opened the borders because they said to themselves we have flipped california it's no longer the state of ronald reagin pete wilson george stripped major we have flipped new mexico we have flipped colorado we are flipped nevada we're about to ready to flip arizona we flip Georgia.
And we want to flip as many states as we can.
Our message does not appeal to 51% of the electorate.
Therefore, we have to do one of two things.
A, we have to change the demography and let in a million or two million people who are A, dependent on government,
are ripe for...
what I would call the diversity argument that you are suffering from
the gains of white privilege, white supremacy, you have solidarity with other non-white people.
And three, you're going to be dependent for a long, long time because you don't have a high school diploma, you don't have educational skills, you're going to be exploited, and we are here to give you cradle-to-grave social services.
That's what they're doing.
And do they care about the American poor?
My hometown, looking out the window at it, do they think that when these people come up to a place like Selma, California, they're not going to impact dialysis for our poor or the emergency emergency room at our hospital or the schools that are trying so hard to have advanced placement and are now finally evolved beyond just bilingual education.
They don't care about this because the people who are the architects of this policy, whether it's state or local or federal, for the most part, their children do not go to public schools that are going to be impacted.
They don't live with people who are immigrants.
They don't socialize with them.
This is a top-down,
let them eat cake attitude.
And that ground level disaster, then let the other people deal with.
Let the Border Patrol people kind of deal with 10,000 people where there's no toilet facilities, there's no, you have no idea who has COVID or who doesn't.
You think that somebody comes across a border with 101 temperature and a cough is going to say, I raised my hand,
I think I've got COVID.
Can you please?
No, he's not going to say that.
And so this is, it's a disaster and it's malicious.
Malicious is a good adjective.
Right.
And it's nihilistic.
It's almost as if the left is saying to us, if you look at the way we got out of Afghanistan and you look at this paying people $21 an hour not to work, and if you look at the way that they shut down 3 million barrels of fossil fuel, oil and gas production, it's almost as if they said, you know what?
I'm going to screw this thing up.
I'm going to make it chaotic.
I'm going to just destroy things.
This is anarchy.
This is nihilism.
And then, you know what?
Out of this, we're going to get social justice.
We're going to get critical legal theory.
We're going to get new monetary theory because we're going to destroy it and start with a year zero mentality.
And that's what they're doing.
Speaking of top-down, it's hard to find a more top event than the annual
gala in New York at the Met Museum,
this fashion show.
And actually, you know, once upon a time, the late Pat Buckley, who was the wife of Bill Buckley, but a friend, nevertheless, she and some others, I think you may know some folks
whose spouses once ruled the roost in that kind of fashion world in New York.
Well, it's not that way anymore.
This is a tremendously political event.
And what filled the airwaves earlier this week was AOC attending that event, draped in some tax-the
rich dress.
Everyone, all the elites, and they were elites, just ask them,
unmasked and enjoying themselves, surrounded by people with masks.
And so there was a lot going on there for commentary.
Do you have any thoughts about that
event?
If anybody thought that the Democratic Party was not the party of the very wealthy, then all they had to do was go to the Obama gala a few weeks ago or this Met
Vanity Fair thing and they can see what the Democratic Party and the left is all about.
It's a medieval idea that there are certain celebrities, certain politicians, corporate people, Silicon Valley people, Hollywood people, professional athletes, and they're very wealthy and they are entitled to certain exemptions from their own ideological positions.
And one of them is they don't have to wear a mask.
Obama didn't wear a mask.
Did you notice when we got pictures of the Obama gala that all the servant class had masks on, but not Obama?
And the same thing with AOC, all the servants had masks on.
It's not easy to wear a mask.
I had to go on a long trip and I was in 20 hours waiting in airports, planes,
circling around diversions.
You wear a mask for 20 hours, sense of well-being, it's disorientating.
And yet we don't even care about the servant class.
They're just supposed to do it.
And this is from people who have lectured us ad nauseum that they are the voice of the working class.
They're not.
The Democratic Party is a small elite, bicoastal mostly, who are wealthy and feel they should be privileged.
Our kids should be in prep school.
They should hang out with one another.
They're celebrity starved.
And then it's a vast underclass that's subsidized by the federal government and it's at war with the lower and middle and upper middle class.
That's what it is.
Somewhere around 60 AD, a Roman noble, Petronius Arbiter, wrote a novel called the Satyricon.
And we don't have much of it.
We have about the fragments, 15th and 16th books and other places.
But the theme is Trimalchio's Banquet.
And he describes what Rome in the first century has become.
And boy, when you look at the emphasis on food and fashion and name-dropping and money and the servant class, it's that we saw at the Obama Gala or this one before the Met.
It's no different than what Petronius was describing in the SaturaCon.
Victor, before we take on that last item about culture and the great Nikki Minaj,
I'm
throwing you a curveball here.
At this point in his presidency right now, Joe Biden, I'm looking at a headline of a place I used to work.
It's called a flailing president.
Do you see him as flailing or more importantly, do you think he sees himself as flailing and
give him the ability to be compass mentus?
I think he doesn't know where he is sometimes.
He seems to be, I don't know if it's a side effect of a heart medication, that he's got a chronic cough.
He can't finish the sentence without coughing.
And he gets angry if you cross him.
And like many people who have been cognitive challenges, you can't discuss things with him.
He just lies.
He just says, oh, there's nothing wrong with Afghanistan.
Oh, there's, oh,
and you can't, he doesn't want any discussion with all because he can't discuss discuss it.
He can't explain.
And he keeps giving these very strange
revelation of prompts.
They won't let me ask questions.
I'm not supposed to do this.
It's time for me to go, they told me.
And so he's not in control.
And so who is in control?
Nobody's in control.
Sometimes I feel that the Obamas are in control.
Sometimes I think it's the Camilla Harris people.
Sometimes I think it's Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
Sometimes I think it's
the tribalism in the Congress and the Senate.
But
there's no chaos.
I mean, there's nothing but, excuse me, there's nothing chaos.
I mean, economic policy, we're headed for seven or eight percent annualized inflation when we have, we've never had seven or eight percent annualized inflation when
you take a 25 year, 30 year old mortgage at 2.7 percent.
Right.
You think that all these people with money are going to start giving money to banks and saying, you know what?
I really want that 2.5%, 2.7%, whatever the bank skims off, but 2.5% on my money.
That's just a great deal, why it's losing 8% of its value every year.
They're not going to do that.
And the Federal Reserve knows they're not going to do that and they're going to raise interest rates.
And then you think these people want to pay 20%, 30%, 40% more on a house than just a year ago when they know that they cannot get a 2.7% loan.
And you go up 5% or 6%, you're going to double the monthly payment.
And all of a sudden, these enormously inflated prices are not going to be competitive because the interest rate won't subsidize them anymore.
So I think it's really scary, but there's no cognition, there's no recognition, there's no assessment of where we're headed to a stagflationary economy.
I just watched this long press conference with General McKenzie, and it was just, it was tragic.
We killed these people and they would not admit it for two weeks.
12, these innocent people in Afghanistan, Jack.
And then he said, well, we've had success.
This was not a success.
This was a non-success.
Non-success?
Is that what you call killing 12 people?
Why didn't you tell us about it?
Said, well, this should not,
the enemy won't think that we're any less ready to strike.
Yes, they will.
They know that if American people will not put up with killing 12 civilians, and the next time that the military tries to have a quote-unquote over-the-horizon strike, they're going to be very careful.
And then he says, well, we don't think the Taliban gave us the information.
It doesn't matter what you think.
They're in control of the government.
They're in control of the country.
And if you say you have 60 vectors, I don't know what that means, but he says he has 60 vectors.
then that means maybe some of them are getting genuine information from the Taliban.
They don't know it's in the Taliban.
The point is we don't know.
And he says, well, this was a one-time thing because we had people on the ground.
Now we don't have people on the ground.
We do have people on the ground.
We have over 100 of them.
Hostages.
It's worse.
They're hostages.
So we're going to start seeing videos of people being executed, mostly Afghans, but maybe not all.
And at some key point, Al-Qaeda or ISIS is going to take over certain areas and then they're going to start doing that to Americans.
And then what are we going to do?
We're going to be in bad strait.
And this is is all at a time when you and I just discussed Millie.
So we're losing deterrence.
Right.
But over, but over the horizon is presented as a reasonable national security policy.
I had never heard of it before.
Maybe why.
I don't like when you kill people.
You call it a non-success.
I don't like it when you don't know where you're getting the information.
You call it an intelligence vector.
I don't like it when
you have no ability to be on the ground, you have no bases, you have no
immediate access to tactical operations, but from remote locations, and you euphemize that and call that over the horizon as if it's a legitimate or even a superior methodology.
It's not.
Over the horizon means we're blank.
Right.
That's what it means.
Right.
Yeah.
Starts with an F, but that's I know that.
It's not, it's not fire truck.
Yeah.
Okay.
Victor, the last topic on today's episode of the traditional list is Nikki Minaj.
Now, I can't believe we'd ever be.
My wildest dreams would have thought we would be talking about Nikki Minaj on the Victor Davis Hansen show, but let's, because
I think what happened earlier this week was a telling thing.
She tweeted some.
She has a huge following on Twitter or Instagram.
Millions and millions of people follow her.
Reported about the vaccine and a cousin's friend of a cousin,
some kind of
testicular bad reaction to this cousin who lived somewhere in the Bahamas, somewhere, Trinidad.
Anyway, she was immediately attacked.
How could you be this whole thing about misinforming, this like it's the sacredness, this religious doctrine now, you're misinforming.
And she, she, unlike, say,
we've seen these cowering episodes, not necessarily in vaccine stuff, but uh, remember with the, oh, I can't think of his name, the quarterback for the, for the New Orleans Saints, who last year immediately went,
he just started groveling.
But she's not a groveler.
She's like, screw you.
And she, she attacked, this is Jory Reed at MSNBC, attacked her and has kept up her
attack on the
attack on the attackers.
Anyway, I think it's an interesting cultural happenstance.
Do you have any thoughts about it?
Yeah, I mean,
you were vaccinated.
I was vaccinated because we thought that the risk of side effects in the vaccination were less than the risk of COVID.
And we were told that you, you know, remember how this thing was sold to us.
Don't worry about the other person.
Do not worry about it.
You get vaccinated, you're 96% protected.
You can be in a room with COVID people.
It's not going to hurt you.
And this whole change in atmosphere and landscape and ideology came when the vaccines were shown, at least in the case of the Delta variant or over across time and space, not to be as effective as advertised.
There were so-called breakthrough cases.
And this came at a time when we had increasingly a loss of confidence in our medical authorities.
And we did so because, you know, masks or masks don't matter.
Oh, got to get a mask.
Oh, got to get two masks or quarantine.
We've got to, you know, stop this curve.
No, you know what?
We're going to keep going for a little while.
Oh, you know what?
If you're a BLM demonstrator, then it's more dangerous to your mental health not to break the quarantine.
So that's okay.
And, you know, gain of function.
No, no, yes, maybe kind of.
Wuhan elaborate can't be no connection with the pangolin or a bat.
Oh, maybe it is.
So there's been so much misinformation coupled with a self-righteous exactitude that we are experts.
And that's one element.
And she is saying to us, I may basically the subtext is, I may not know what I'm doing,
but I'm a citizen.
I'm a unique individual.
I have a right to have an idea.
And until you can give me exactitude, then you've lost credibility.
And that's true.
They have.
And the second thing, the message, as I understand it, because I I don't know a lot about her, but her.
Glad to hear that.
She's saying to a particular group of people,
elite professional classes that get in everybody's business.
Many of them are the white bicosto elite, the left-wing progressives, the minority, professional minority class.
But she's saying to them, I don't care what you think.
I don't care if you call me names.
I'm going to call you worse names.
And she's retaliatory.
She did.
And they're thinking, uh-oh,
I have a black woman and I can't shame her like I do black conservatives that she doesn't appreciate all the things I've done for her as a white progressive.
And this woman's talking back to me, uh-oh, I don't like this.
And that's what it's about.
And she knows that.
And so she's basically telling the white progressives and the white professional minority class, don't do me any favors.
This is all aside from the medical question
of whether we should all be vaxed or not.
But the problem that our authorities have is they can't tell us if we all got vaxed, if everybody was vaxed.
They keep suggesting that there'll be zero COVID.
And then they say, well, new variant, epsilon, gamma, you know, or delta,
who knows?
So they don't have exactitude.
They don't have knowledge.
Science is not perfect, and they act as if it is.
And then these self-appointed sensors go around and getting everybody's business.
And, you know, I'm speaking kind of passionately because I just got back from Hillsdale College.
15 days, no mask, no social distancing.
They encourage everybody to get back.
All the faculty have been vaccinated and vaccinated very early.
They encourage the students, but there's no Stanford University policy.
You have to be tested every week.
You've got to download your vaccination.
You know, you're going to trace your cell phone pings, none of that.
And nobody, I mean, there's people who get ill, they get COVID, they get tested.
If they're positive, they go into quarantine.
But there's no epidemic there, at least yet.
And life goes on.
So what do I'm saying?
I'm saying the university is functional.
And these other universities are dysfunctional.
So you have a choice.
Everybody has a choice.
They're going to say, you know what?
Am I a tragic person or am I therapeutic?
Therapeutic means I want everything perfect.
I can control nature.
I can control the environment.
I can control everything or else.
Or the the tragic person says, I'm going to do my best, but I'm going to do some so with courage and I'm going to do some so with self-doubt and know that it's not perfect, but I'm going to do my best.
I'm going to try to make this country continue to function.
Because there's something that we're missing, Jack, in this whole conversation, and that is if you go to a hospital and there's not a nurse there, or you go to a store and there's not baby formula there, or you get on an airplane and that guy tells you that
they had to wait four hours because they're short attendance or they're going to make a sudden diversion because they have no fuel that's happened to me i think three times in the last three weeks then
that that that that's important and it's not a it's not a zero-sum game we're all going to get vaccinated or we're all not or we're all going to conquer no it's cost-to-benefit analysis if you shut down the economy again people are going to die and people are dying right now because they didn't get that psa exam they didn't get that breast exam, they didn't get that so-called optional surgery, they didn't get to see their parents in the rest home.
All of those are costs.
And these people, these quote-unquote Karens never factor in that cost.
Right.
And layer on top of that, pay people not to work.
It's just a prescription for a screwed-up country.
Victor, that's about all the time we have.
But as is our new, relatively new custom, we do want to thank the folks, the listeners who, particularly, all listeners, thank you, but those who listen on iTunes and leave five-star reviews,
which is what your average is.
There are a few, but there are about 1,600 review people who have left
ratings, and it averages out to 5.0 because everything else is kind of anecdotal.
So that's pretty sterling.
And those five stars, of course, are for
Victor.
I want to just read one of the, some people actually leave written reviews, and one of them that came in the other day was from someone named Jack, calls himself Jack Mule.
Wow.
And this is what he wrote.
Been a listener for a little over a year when a family member introduced me to VDH.
I eagerly look forward to every episode, but the latest, The Culturalist, that's what's the great Sammy Wink, folks, is one of my favorites.
Thank you, VDH, for continuing to provide us with knowledge and opportunities to expand our minds and learning.
I hope that although Classics is seemingly on the collegiate crash cart, I hope and pray that it can be revived in the near future by
unknown, as of yet, researchers and academics.
God bless you, VDH.
Keep it up.
Thank you, five stars, as always.
Thank you, Jack.
Emule and thanks to the others who leave reviews.
We do read them.
We care what you think.
And I guess that's about it.
Other than to say, we will be back with another episode of the traditionalist in a few days, right?
Almost.
There is such a thing called the dying citizen that lays out the historical background
of what we're talking about.
And that's the new book on October 5th.
Right.
Well, you did.
I did plug it earlier, but
I'm reminding people to talk to you.
I'm trying to save you from having to plug it too much.
Well, let me do it one more time, though.
Go to VictorHanson.com, listeners, great listeners.
Subscribe to VictorHanson.com.
When you're on the website, whether you're subscribed or not, look on the right-hand column, click the link, and order today at Amazon, The Dying Citizen.
You'll get it the first week of October.
So that's all the time we have.
Thanks for listening.
Thank you, Victor, for sharing your wisdom.
And we'll be back soon enough again with another episode of the traditionalist part of the the three podcasts of the Victor Davis Hansen show.
Thank you.
Thank you and thank everybody for listening.
I really appreciate it.
I do.
I knew we all had two ages, our actual age and our internal biological age.
What I didn't know is I've likely lowered my biological age without even knowing it.
Here's the thing.
Because Americans eat so many processed foods and not enough fruits and veggies, many, perhaps most, are 10 plus years older on the inside than their actual age.
They're ticking time bombs.
A major university study suggests how to slow aging and diffuse that biological time bomb.
Participants slowed their aging by drinking field of greens.
That's all.
They didn't change their eating, drinking, or exercise, just field of greens.
When I started field of greens to replace my multivitamin, I was amazed.
After about two weeks, my energy improved.
I've been exercising more, and my overall wellness feels great.
Each fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was doctor selected for specific health benefits.
Cell health, heart, lungs, kidney, metabolism, even healthy weight.
It's wonderful knowing Field of Greens can slow how quickly I'm aging.
And I encourage you to join me.
Swap your untested fruit, vegetable, or green drink for Field of Greens.
While there's time, check out the university study and get 20%
off when using promo code Victor at fieldofgreens.com.
That's fieldofgreens.com, promo code Victor.
And we'd like to thank Field of Greens for continuing to sponsor the Victor Davis Hanson Show.