Iran’s Dangerous Game, Trump’s Midterm Challenge, and Letitia James’ War on Trump

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Latita James was told by people in her office this was a ridiculous suit. And she campaigned on cheap, where she said, "I'm gonna get Donald Trump." We've never seen the pollution of the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, the White House to go out and destroy a candidate. Forget what you think about Donald Trump. They were willing to destroy the law, break the law, break the law. They were willing to break a tradition protocol just to destroy him. Well, hello, ladies, and hello, gentlemen, and welcome to Victor Davis Hanson, in his own words, on the Daily Signal Network. I'm Jack Fowler. I'm the lucky man. I get to ask Victor questions. Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow with the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. His website, The Blade of Perseus, is found at victorhansen.com. Go there. It's The Blade of Perseus. Do subscribe. Sixty-five dollars a year. Or if you just want test drive, it's $6.50 a month. And when you do go there, you'll be able to read the exclusive articles and see the exclusive videos Victor does for the site. I'm wearing, I never wear a hat here, but I'm wearing a Daily Signal hat, because on our last episode, Victor, I was wearing a hat, and I was wearing a hat, and I was wearing I implied I didn't get any tchotchke from Rob Bluey, but that's not true. He gave me a hat. So I don't wear it like you. I mean, you have a head made for hats. Mine is. I don't have a head. I have a Swedish square head, and I wear like a seven and seven-eighths head. When I played high school football, they had to get a special helmet for me. They called me football head in high school, by the way. Well, that's just because your brain is so big, my friend. No, Swedes are Danes with their brains blown out, as I was told. Okay, well, you were on the end of the bell curve. We are recording on the last day of August, the 31st, and this particular episode is up on Thursday, September 3rd, which is a famous day for The Temptations. This is the day that was the 3rd of September. Papa was a rolling stone. Go out and listen to that great song today, folks. Okay, what are we going to talk about? What are we going to talk about today, Victor? Well, you want to give a little bit of an update from our last episode, your long comments about Canada, also about Iran. I know there was some military action against Iran last night, for the first time in a couple of weeks. And then we have some stories about Letitia James wanting to go after Donald Trump again and Trump-related friends and advisors. We have some Election Day polling that doesn't look all that good. Great for Republicans. Mondami crying, maybe not literally, but about a prisoner who died at Rikers Island. Boo-hoo for him, but no pity for the man he murdered and butchered. That's why he was in Rikers Island. So that, and we have other topics, and we'll get to all of them when we come back from these initial important messages. Female athletes are being forced to compete against biological males, sometimes without their consent, or even their knowledge. In Washington, high school sophomore Callie Keeler was sexually assaulted on the wrestling mat during a tournament. Only afterward did she learn her opponent was a boy who identifies as a girl. With the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, Callie is bravely suing the state over a policy that not only allows males to compete in girls' high school sports, but doesn't require schools to disclose that information to female athletes or their parents. Don't let schools put gender ideology over the safety of girls in sports. Your support today can help fight for Callie and other athletes like her. And for a limited time, your first gift to ADF will be doubled by a special matching grant. Well funds last. Text Hanson to 83848 or go to joinadf.com slash Hanson to have your gift doubled. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson. In his own words. One last little quick commercial. Victor also for the Daily Signal does Victor Davis Hanson in a few words. That comes out four times a week. Seven, eight, nine minute videos. Do follow them. And also to our good friends, the Daily Signal has, it asks for donations and support. It's trying to broaden its investigative reporting arm. And if you are disposed to maybe doing that at the $28 monthly, they call that elite support. You get a free copy of Victor's forthcoming book, The Counter-Revolution in response to that generosity. So think about that, folks. Okay, Victor. You all hydrated, my friend? I am. I'm trying to hydrate. I've had a head cold or something. Me too. Yeah. Or allergy. Yeah. You beat me with all the ailments. So I'm not even going to complain. Oh, wait, wait, wait. One other thing to mention. You're wearing a lovely shirt sent to us by our dear friend, Shraga. So thank you for that, Shraga. And who also sent me some mackerel today. And I love it. And I got some beautiful birthday cards from our listeners. I just wish, as I've said before, I could answer everyone. But the number of them and the request and everything, I can't do it. But I deeply appreciate it. Well, you can make people happy who've done that or not by telling us your thoughts, your updated thoughts. But where do you want to start? Iran or Canada? You pick. I'll start with Canada. We mentioned it a little bit. You know, Trump is taking a beating in the Wall Street Journal and in the polls. And, of course, in the liberal media. And they say, why did he start a fight with our friends? And they were our friends. But. We had a bigger problem with Mexico on remittances and illegal immigration and cartels and Chinese fentanyl and $200 billion. And he has more or less solved those. So he has warned the cartels they're not going to get, they're not coming across the border. He's deporting, he's deported. I thought it was an interesting article in the Washington Post was claiming that, although, they claimed that 40%, which 200 of them, were not criminals. And I thought to myself, do these people have any self-awareness? So they're basically saying that we arrested 500,000 people, all of whom broke the law and are here residing in legally, many of them with false IDs or earning cash off the books, which is illegal, if you don't report it, and they don't. And they're saying that 60% of them are criminals, and they're decrying the fact that 40% had not yet got a criminal record yet, even though they were here illegally. So my point is that we're making progress with Mexico, but Canada, we like Canada. But the problem with Canada is not us. The problem originates with the fact that we're not here. The problem is the fact that they have the largest area of any nation, I think, except for Russia. And they have a small population of 41 million. It's comparable in its left-wing ideology to the left-wing Gavin Newsom, California. But Gavin Newsom lives in the United States, so there's only so much damage he can do. So we have a $4.3 trillion economy, and their 41 million people only have half of that. And they have been struggling to make. a meager 2% investment in GDP on defense. And they keep saying they're going to do it, do it, do it, do it. But maybe last year they did it, maybe not. They have created bookkeeping. But they've really fought that. And then in addition, they run a $50 to $70 billion surplus, depending on how you calculate it and which particular year. And so if you're Donald Trump, you want to rectify that and make sure they pay their NATO tax. You want to make sure they pay their NATO contributions, make sure they don't let illegal immigrations in the country, make sure that we have roughly a trade parity. And our economies are integrated. And make sure that the Chinese are not using Canada the way they use Mexico, that is to send things without tariffs below the cost of production and have them assembled. And then under the guise of it being a Mexican product, send it in tariff-free or near tariff-free. And so that wasn't an unreasonable request, especially since we haven't had any retaliatory tariffs by others, except Carney has been going over to Europe and elsewhere and saying that he is no longer a friend of the United States. He can't trust us. He's asked everybody to look toward China maybe as an alternate, which is correct. Which is crazy. And so what's the problem? The problem, as I said, is they've got this huge country, and it's got about the world's fourth largest reserves of natural gas and oil. As I said, it has all these rich minerals, and its GDP of all Western industrialized economy was the lowest per capita, and it only grew at 1% the last 10 years. And then it has, I think, 26%. 26% or 27% of its population was not born in Canada, and another 7% or 8% were not born of parents that were Canadians. They were second-generation immigrants, and then there's a couple million visa, and you get up to about 45% of the population is either immigrant or parents are immigrant. That's fine, but the problem is that to acculturate, assimilate, and integrate, you have to have a melting pot philosophy. Not a salad bowl multiculturalism, and you need people who can come with skills and capital, not dependent on the state. You put it all together, and you add these cultural practices such as euthanasia, claiming 7% of all the deaths per year in Canada, and it's becoming essentially a EU-like country, Germany or France or the Netherlands, right on our border, which is fine. But the way they react to that is, we want to have a socialist, open borders, left-wing, don't-use-our-resources country, but we're right next to this Goliath, but we want you to subsidize it in certain ways. Certain ways. And then when we finally get a president that says we're going to be 50-50, no surpluses, you're going to pay your whole NATO, you're going to patrol the border, then people get outraged. We want Canada to be strong. I do. I want them to be very successful. But then it's very sad because then, you know, Ford and everybody in Alberta say, well, we're going to cut off all of your oil. And you think, well, you know, we're the biggest oil producer in history. We'll have some dislocations. But we just politely want to warn you that your heavy oil, sulfur, smoky oil, we're set up to refine it, and you can send it to British Columbia. You can send it to your Atlantic coast provinces, but they won't let you. In fact, if you want to have natural gas or things like propane stuff sent to Montreal, you have to go through us. So if you cut us off, obviously we're not going to allow you, once you cut us off, you're not going to have a product in our chain that goes into Montreal because we do what you won't. We are sovereign. We are a sovereign nation that allows one province to have a pipeline with another province, but you don't allow that yourself. So you use us to route around it, and then you don't think, and you start to say you're going to do this, and you don't realize it's going to hurt you. This is going to hurt them a lot more than it is us. But when you have – so it's a very good friend of ours. We want to get great relations with them back again. Donald Trump has said things that are provocative. We all understand that. But the central issue is one of their most richly endowed and largest countries in the world will not, for a variety of reasons, have a sensible immigration policy, a sensible defense policy, and a sensible use of their natural wealth. And then on top of that, they have a command socialist economy. That means if you're an entrepreneur. And you want to set up 10 X-ray locations, and you know how to do it better, you have to get the permission of the government. If you're a small little farmer and you want to break in, you've got to get the permission. And that means that you're not going to grow. And then you get angry, and you add, as a force multiplier, a person with three passports who's a Euro technocrat, who was – his nurse milk was anti-Americanism, and it's not going to work well. This is not Stephen Harper who knows. He knows those problems, or Mulroney who knew those problems, who were staunch Canadian nationalists. And we respected that. And that's the problem. Yeah. Can I just add to that, Victor, a couple things quickly? There's no – you know, the idea of meritocracy, which we still like to believe, we Americans believe in, just from the medical program in Canada. We don't care that you – we want you all to have exactly the same. You can't buy your way. You can't get better. You come to America and get better care. But – so they'd rather everyone have poor health care than people have alternatives. And there's also, I think, a little bit of an ignorance on our part in America. You know, we're so culturally in the past, and I think a lot of people think, oh, Canada, you know, we play hockey, we get some baseball. The movie Strange Brew still looms very large for a lot of people, and it's not reflective of what you've just described. This is really a multicultural nation, a multiethnic nation. It is. And what's even stranger is what's happening is the European Western British tradition that founded this country, whether you like it or not, is being undermined at its cradle. It's under attack in Britain. It's under attack in the Commonwealth countries. So Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and then the larger European cultural civilization is under attack in Europe. Where it's being most hotly defended is in the United States. So we're in this ironic position of former colonists of Britain who rebelled successfully, who are the best representation of what Britain used to be, more than the countries that are statutorily. Right. Aligned with Britain. Part of the Commonwealth, right. Yeah, and that's a problem. But it's not that Americans don't like Canadians. We love Canadians. I've always liked them. And then the other thing is, it's very clear that they staged, whether it was a bad or good deal, they could have worked this out. But they staged the walkout because they're having a provincial election in Alberta about autonomy and one in Quebec. And this makes. I don't know if you've heard this, but it's very clear that they staged the walkout because they're having a provincial election in Alberta about autonomy and one in Quebec. And then when you have Gavin Newsom and other people in the Democratic Party cutting videos about how they sympathize with Canada, and it doesn't. It looks very politically constructed as we head in eight and a half weeks to the midterms. Right. And then you add into all of this that. That, you know, Barack Obama has plans to meet with Carney if he hasn't already met with him. He plans to go to the UK. It's John Kerry in Paris all over again. Democratic politicians, we had John Kerry doing it. That was the mother's milk of Jimmy Carter's career. It was every time we have a conservative or Republican president, we get an ex-president or an ex-secretary of state. We get an ex-secretary of state who goes around the world and saying, that's not who we are. So don't cooperate with these people. They'll be over soon. They'll be out of here. And that's basically what Obama's doing now and what Gavin Newsom is doing as governor. Well, Victor, before you talk about Iran, I have to want to convey to our listeners and our viewers that if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way. Overnight, they drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime, and we've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. And policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth. Every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. 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Call 844-790-9191, 844-790-9191, or visit protectwithvictor.com. That's 844-790-9191, 844-790-9191. 844-790-9191, or visit protectwithvictor.com. History rewards those who take the long view, and we thank the good people from Allegiance Gold for sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Okay, Victor, on to you, Iran. Victor Davis Hanson Yes. Just thinking about Iran, there's some developments today that we, on one of the islands in the Strait, thought that they were, thought, I think we were pretty assured that it happened, were arming missiles that had, I had never really heard of this, but mines on them, and so that they could reclaim control of the hormones. So then we took those out, and then they replied by sending eight or nine missiles to Jordan, which didn't do any damage. And now, as I'm talking, I think Trump is considering to, to hit them. A lot of us, I think we said on this podcast, we expect in October, I didn't quite expect a September surprise, but Iran has to do something, because it is being squeezed economically, culturally, medically, politically, militarily, and it has, its economy is ruined, and we, I don't know. The only thing I'm troubled is, I understand that we did a lot of damage for the first 38 days, but I don't understand. Victor Davis Hanson I don't understand, but I don't understand, but I don't understand, but I don't understand, since we were six months from the midterms, why we didn't spend, as we've said on this podcast, another 22 weeks, three weeks, four weeks, and obliterate Pike Mountain with B-1s coming back again, maybe three or four missions, just hit it, hit it, hit it. Maybe I didn't know the, I'm not aware of the inventory status of our bunker busters, but I didn't know why we didn't take out some of their dual-use bridges, their TV communications. I didn't know why we didn't to crater their airport and really do a lot of damage early and then start what we're doing right now in April. In other words, complete economic sanctions, blockades, shut down their access to foreign exchange, everything. Secondary sanctions against those who trade with them. And I don't think we'd – I think they would have been kaput by now. Yeah. Not that they won't be, but – Well, do you think it has something to do with Donald Trump's belief and his talent for being a negotiator? Do you think that has something to do with it? I do. I think the difference is you can – the Chinese have a sense of their own self-interest. The Russians have a sense of their own self-interest. We learned that – I mean, they were the biggest – those two countries were the biggest mass murders in history. Clearly, Stalin and Mao. But I'm not sure Iran does. I think they are – I know everybody's rational, supposedly. And I know that these people who say that they're waiting for 72 virgins in paradise seem to be pretty savvy investors when it's stealing money from the people and buying townhouses in the choice locations of Paris or London. That said, I just don't think that you can believe what they say. I don't think you can believe. anything they agree to. They have a different vision. Their vision is that this is a corrupt world. The Western colonial experience harmed them, was an insult. There were great days of the past when there was a caliphate, and then the Ottomans, at least, even though the Iranians and the Arabs suffered terribly, mostly the Arabs, under the Ottoman Empire. The point they have is they want to create a Sharia, radical Islamic, 9th century, kind of like the Taliban, only in Shia terms, with a headquarters in Tehran, run by a bunch of theocrats, with nuclear weapons and using the oil. And making the Gulf Arab states subservient in the way that Hamas and the Houthis are, and using the combined oil of their own and the Arabs to really shake down and destroy the West. They hate the West. Everybody's said, I've heard this so often, well, Victor, there's a million Uyghurs or Muslims. The Chinese treat them as slaves. Yes, but they don't hate the Chinese. Well, Victor, Putin, in the Third Chechen War, he leveled Grozny. He just wiped out thousands of Muslims. Yes, he did. He doesn't hate Islam. They don't hate Putin like they hate us. They hate us because we're successful, we're wealthy, we dominate the culture of the world, and they know that it's a narcotic. The best example of that is on the eve of September 11th, the 19 murderers, where were they? That week on the eve of what they were going to, when they were going to commit mass murder and be such Puritans, they were in Vegas partying up. And what was bin Laden doing before we got him? He was thumbing through his porno collection. So they are so repressed that they hate the titillation and the seduction of what they think is a corrupt West. So they're never going to listen to Trump. Never, never. They're only going to listen if they have no choice. So if he continues to squeeze them, squeeze them, squeeze them, one of two things will happen. Either they will come begging him to stop, and I doubt that's going to happen, or there will be a popular uprising at some point, or they will starve if we continue to do it, or something will stop Donald Trump. And what would that stumping? Because here we're getting to the meat of the argument. They really do believe that the democratic socialists of the left, the Islamist voice in America, the Ilhan Omar's, the Rashida Tlaib's, the Zoran Mondami's, the Hassan Piker's, the Abdu Al-Sayed, they really believe that they're on their side. And when Al-Sayed said, I have to be careful about criticizing the death of the celebrity, being celebratory in tone about the death of the Supreme Leader. He was on the hot mic. He said on the hot mic, be careful, that wouldn't go down too well with my constituents. So they really believe that they're winning demographically and politically, and that there are forces in the United States and this new democratic socialist dash democrat dash Islamist coalition that will stop Trump once they win the midterms, and either cut off funds, which they won't do, or in some strange way, resolutions, who knows. They have something, I'll just finish this rant. They have some evidence for this because I mentioned that when you have ex-presidents visiting at heightened tensions, like Obama planning to mention to go carny, or you have, as John Kerry was negotiating in Paris, basically, privately, while we were getting out of the Iran deal, or you have the left really cheering on our enemies, and are calling this Trump's war, you can make the argument that they have confidence, there's reason for their confidence that you can call off the United States, that there's people on the left that agree with them and want to stop Trump by any means necessary. And so they would rather see the United States hurt if that involved the destruction of Trump. By all means, they want to destroy Trump. That's their issue. And if they can do it with collateral damage to the United States, that doesn't bother them at all. When he says he's going to have record natural gas and oil production, or he's bragging that he closed the border so there's zero illegal immigration de facto, or they sent back 300,000 criminals, or we have more space launches suddenly under his tenure, or they sent back 300,000 criminals, or they sent back 300,000 criminals, or we have more space launches suddenly under his tenure, or they sent back 300,000 criminals, or we have more space launches suddenly under his tenure, or they sent back 300,000 criminals, or we have more space launches suddenly under his tenure, or they sent back 300,000 criminals, or they sent back 300,000 criminals, or we have more space launches suddenly under his tenure than the whole launches suddenly under his tenure than the whole world combined, not even close, than the whole world combined, not even close, than the whole world combined, not even close, or that our AI companies now are nine world combined, not even close, or that our AI companies now are nine out of the top ten, our software or that our AI companies now are nine out of the top ten, our software companies are nine out of the top out of the top ten, our software companies are nine out of the top ten worldwide, we're racing ahead on AI. They don't care. That doesn't matter at all. And if you sit down with a leftist and you say, we had 5% inflation for four years and we had a cumulative 22% inflation and the first year we had 1.9% of Trump, we don't know what it's going to be, but it won't be 5%. They don't care. They'll say the unaffordability that we caused is your fault. So it's an irrational hatred. That's one reason I wrote the book about Trump, The Counter-Revolution, because I don't think that even he sometimes realizes that you can't negotiate with the Iranians, but you also can't ever, ever don't expect any credit from the left. This isn't the Democratic Party. This isn't even Bill Clinton's kind of left-wing version of it. This isn't even Barack Obama's left, left, left revolutionary wing. This is different. This is a nihilist, young millennial, I don't know what you want to call them, but they detest him to such a degree that they want him and everybody with him to fail. I can see it just by writing good things about him. When I get classicists, because I still keep up in classics. I try to write an article a year. I'll have people who I knew very well, but just the fact that I wrote a book about Trump, they'll write and say, he was a terrible classicist. He sold his soul to Trump. They're so full of hatred and they're not empirical. And some of our best friends that we used to know, when Robert Kagan writes an article that the Iran war is lost, when Iran has no functional military and it's on the edge of and OPEC is splintering apart and Israel is stronger than ever. And the Gulf States collectively have much more clout than they've ever had. And he says that Iran is winning. That can only reflect the deductive hatred of Trump to such a degree he's willing to risk his reputation by not being empirical. Right. Well, we're going to look at the forthcoming elections in a second. We're going to look at the forthcoming elections in a second. We're going to look at the first to our listeners and viewers. We tend to forget that civilizations are remembered less by their politics than by what they made. The tools, the objects, the things built well enough to last the people who built them. For most of the last century, America made things. Then like much of the old productive economy, watchmaking packed up and moved overseas. Well, today's sponsor is trying to bring a piece of it back. VAR, that's V-A-R. VAR is a Los Angeles watch company whose goal is pretty straightforward. Bring American watchmaking back. They now assemble watches in California, as well as Arizona, Rhode Island, and Alabama with leather straps made in Illinois and Florida. And these aren't fashion accessories. They're proper tool watches, sapphire crystals, premium materials, and full waterproof warranty. Meaning that you can actually swim or dive with them on. I'm going to show mine now. Here we go. VDH, I'll show yours, Victor, has VAR's C5 Korean field solar. How did you know that I had it on? Because I had my cuff over it. Well, that beautiful shirt. Yes. Well, I know there's something even more beautiful underneath. I feel like I'm a walking advertisement for a beautiful shirt and a beautiful watch. Well, you are. I had a beautiful watch. Wait a minute. I have a C5 tactical field solar. They're both great. VAR has already earned over 10,000 five-star reviews, and it's become one of the largest independent watch assemblers in the United States. If you value things that are rugged, made to last, and built here at home, take a look. Go to varwatches.com slash VDH. That's V-A-E-R watches.com slash VDH. We thank the good people from VAR for sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Victor, here are the polls. This is a story out today in the New York Post, today being August 31st, Monday the 31st. Excuse me. Senate races. Republicans are down two points in Alaska, 7.5 in Georgia, 2.3 in Maine, 1.8 in Michigan, 2.6 in Ohio, two points in New Hampshire, eight points in North Carolina. 1.9 points in Texas. All down according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling aggregate data of the Senate races. Victor, any thoughts about this? Yeah, some. I mean, most of those polls, not all, are done by left-wing pollsters. And it's not that they should be totally discredited, although they had El-Said, what, 10 points off? And they had that crazy candidate in Wisconsin, Hong, with a sizable win, and she lost. They had Vindman winning in Florida, I think by five, and he lost with a wipeout. And so they don't have a good record. But what they usually do is we should pay attention to them, oh, a week before the election, because what they traditionally do is, the left, they run these polls, the Emerson poll, Harvard-Harris poll, all of them. The name doesn't matter. It's who they hire. They hire people right out of college or people who are left-wing. And what they try to do is they try to give an extra four or five points to leftist candidates to do two things, to help them raise money and to get the vote out by supposedly sowing surging momentum. And then, and then, at about four or five days, the more the more savvy of them, the more they're going to be able to get the vote out. Then they get accurate, because they don't want to be totally disgraced. And they only cheat by about one or two. So I don't really believe that Susan Collins is behind in Maine. I think Texas will vote for Tallarico. I don't think they're going to vote for Saeed. They had a- You meant with Paxton or with Tallarico in Texas? Yeah, I'm not- The Republican? I don't think Tallarico is going to win. I think- Okay, absolutely. Yeah. I think Paxton's got to get out there. I haven't heard anything from him. He's almost a stealth candidate. He needs to get out there. Maybe they're waiting to the traditional kickoff, which is Labor Day for November elections, but they got to get moving. There were a Jewish, I think there was a Jewish Democratic caucus last week in Michigan. And I don't think very many people showed up. I just can't see that if you're one of the 200,000 Jews in Michigan and given his embrace of Hassan Piker, who basically said that it's not going to be good for Jews from now on. I don't think how, I don't see how you, even Debra Wasserman Schultz basically said that the other day. I don't see how that's going to help him. There has to be a lot of people in the Islamic community that are business people that would not want to vote for socialists. So we'll see. There's so many known unknowns, as we keep saying, we don't know. We have nine and a half weeks. You can think of a lot of scenarios. They're not likely scenarios. I'm not just trying to, I think it's clear that the Democrats have the advantage as they would have, no matter what was happening, given the midterm history of the end party. But if you just game it out, if in three weeks, there's a million people on the street of Iran and that government falls, the Democrats will lose the midterms. I really believe that because they won't be able to say a thing. If the oil price collapses and you see in eight weeks, cheap gas, it'll make a big difference. If you take the $400 million in PAC money that Donald Trump controls and you seed it wisely to these key Senate and House races, that'll make a big difference. If they know how to run the ads and show people that this democratic effort, which is, have you noticed what's going on? They're sending out James Carville, Rahm Emanuel, the old Clinton team, and then the Pelosi's, and they're saying the following. Yes, they're democratic socialists, but they have nothing to do with us. They're not part of the party. And if that were to be true, why do so many in the democratic party endorse them when they run? And why do so many democratic socialists vote for them? Or we wouldn't even be discussing it. And why do they run as basically Democrats in democratic primaries if they're not Democrats? You know what I'm saying? So they need to make that distinction that these people are revolutionaries. They do not like the United States, at least as it's currently formulated. They want to tear it down. And there's a strong Islamist element in it. And if they can do all of that, I think they're going to win. It'll be a close election if they get a few breaks in the news cycle. I think, as I've said before, if I had to give any advice to Trump, I would have a tragic tone and not a bullying tone. I would say, I don't want to get in a fight with our neighbors. The last thing I want to, I love the Canadian people, but we can't go on like this, subsidizing their surpluses with us and subsidizing their defense and trying to offer here in North America a model that is pro-open society, pro-freedom, pro-free market economy and not the EU model with having our Canadian brothers adopt the socialist EU open borders, new green deal type of socialism. And then when it doesn't perform well, wanting us to subsidize it and say, I regret even saying that. I don't like, but I think he would win more that way than he would saying we're going to change the name of Lake Ontario. Well, Victor, before we. Take a break. And after the break, we have two New York-y kind of stories. One is Mondami and this murderer, and the other is Letitia James' new jihad against Trump and Trump world. You did write a column, the new WWE, Women's Wrestling Entertainment, which is your way, I think, of rebranding the WNBA, Women's Professional Basketball. Would you like to tell us a little bit about that column? Well, I mean, the World Wrestling Entertainment is WWE. It works as an entertainment. It doesn't say that it's, you know, it's not, it's a show. It's really, I mean, and I don't mean that to deprecate the athletes because when you're 280 pounds and you're a solid muscle and you're picking up somebody that's 300 pounds and you're throwing them off the ring, that is as difficult as any sport in the world. So it is a sport, but it's kind of. It's kind of predetermined in most cases. So what I'm getting at is it's a show. And when I look at the WNBA, it's now a show. And everybody knows that you can't have a league where owners, co-owners, get from their boxes, go down in the stands and start yelling at fans because they, they can't support Sophie Cunningham. You can't. And they're just fans. They're not, you can't have a league where they take Hasan Piker and they say, you're anti-trans, get out of here. You can't have a league where every time Kaitlyn Clark is roughed up, it seems, not every time, I would say every, it seems like the referee misses it or that he, he, they have decided the refs, if we call every single time, we're going to have a league where they're going to have a league where they're going to have a league where every single time she's pushed or slapped or scratched or tripped or butted, that's all we would do because they are trying to hurt her. So what we have now, and the woman's, and, and let me be clear that they have $1 billion in revenue, their individual franchises just in the pre-Kaitlyn Clark, and this is not to disparage the athletes, they're good athletes in many cases, but they were worth about 20 or $30 million to buy a franchise. They're worth about four or 500 million now. And the reason is that she's infused a billion dollars. Many economists believe a billion and added media endorsements for everybody and added media attention and added attendance, et cetera, and media contracts and television and radio and streaming. It's a whole new, and the strange thing about it is they have two types of I think of people who tune in. One are people that don't like Kaitlyn Clark because she disturbed she and Sophie Cunningham, the notion that the WNBA was sort of a, often a tide pool from the NBA. And it was, it was 70%, 65% black, 50% gay, 25% white. And it had particular views, not very many, and it was going broke and it was subsidized. And those people watch and they liked the idea that Cunningham and Kaitlyn Clark get beat up. And then there's another constituency and a huge constituency that goes there and follows the Indiana fever. And they are championing Kaitlyn Clark because she's a natural, not because she's white, just because she's shaken up the industry. That is finesse. And every time she is confronted with people stronger and bigger, she manages to dribble behind her back, pass behind her back, shoot a three and clutch. And, and so each person is watching what's going to happen to her half, I'd say a quarter want her to be hurt and don't like her because of her race or her sexual orientation or her success. I know that sounds weird. Why would they hate Victor? Someone who we used to fly, stand in line and fly economy. And now we have a Gulfstream that takes us to the, because they don't like the person who gave, gave you that largesse or the old Maxim. They hate stuff. What have you done lately? What have you done lately for them that would make you want to hate you? My neighbor used to say that. I said, that guy's kind of really mean. He goes, well, what did you nice to him the other day? You must go back and, and that's how that, that's how I feel. They look and the other half are watching because fairly or not. And I think it's kind of unfairly there. They are representations of an old type of basketball or play by the rules. Don't brag. Don't be ostentatious, use finesse. Don't knock people over as much unless you want to, you know, have to create deterrence and they're, they're coming to watch them. But in today's polarized society, you know, we don't, we don't have the right to do that. You know, we don't have the right to do that. Let's say that watch the WNBA were black, but now if you've got white fans or you've got Asian, whatever group is watching a particular iconic player of their tribe, then they feel that's racist. A lot of people do, but it's an inner, it's becoming entertainment. It's very dangerous. At some point, the commissioner, the owners, the refs, the coaches are going to have to have a big meeting and saying basketball, we've never seen something like this before. We saw something like it with Michael Jordan or Wilt Chamberlain or Larry Bird. When you have a marquee athlete that is so good and so dominant, they help everybody. And we want to make sure that we don't let people beat up on them to intimidate them. Either out of jealousy or to distract from their effectiveness. They have to be treated like anybody else. No special treatment, but we're not going to let them be targeted. And they haven't done that. They keep trying to hurt her. When they show these pictures of her arms, they're just full of scratches after. And so I don't, I just think it's an entertainment league and they're making money and they're saying, and they would say to me, well, why would we do that, Victor? We weren't making any money. Don't you understand? We're not making any money. You admitted it yourself. We're the world's wrestling entertainment. We're women's wrestling entertainment. Women's wrestling, WW, and we're making more money than we ever dreamed of. And we're making more money because we're not doing what you suggest. We're letting it be a lucha libre where millions of people tune in every single to see whether Angela Reese is going to close line. I mean, Stephanie or Caitlin, that's what we want to see. And you want to take that away from us and put it back to where, no, we're not going to do that. I'm watching hockey because I want to see a fight, you know, that's kind of along those lines a little bit. Well, they don't want to see a fight. They want to see an ambush. Yeah. Someday we'll have Linda McMahon on, Victor, and we'll talk about the real WWE. I mean, I'm not saying, yeah, I think it's fascinating to watch. Yeah. Well, you and I have discussed it. We've discussed it. We've discussed it. We've discussed it. We've discussed it just before. Now, we move off the politics and the policy here just to say, as young boys, we were both in our way of being on the East Coast, you were on the West Coast. I came home off the bus in third grade and I got on my little bicycle. Nobody was home at home. I rode down to the house I'm living. My grandfather was on the ranch. I was about nine. And I turned to watch Luce Libre with Pepper Gomez versus Ray Stevens. And watch out for the sleeper hold, Pepper. And so I loved it. Oh, me too. In New York, it was Channel 47, the UHF's channel. And Vince McMahon was just founding it. I would come home from work on the vegetable truck as a delivery boy on Saturdays. And it was Chief Jay Strongbow and Andre the Giant. Did you guys, they never came to West, but it was - Classy Freddy Bellassi in the, coast petty pretty classy was became a manager uh and he would he would always call vick vince mcmahon you and others you pencil neck geek that was his uh insult for uh certain wrestlers i even like the guy what was his name the chic later yeah oh yeah the iron chic yeah the camel clutch was his famous famous hold so all right anyway victor we're going to take a little break and then we come back we're going to talk about mondami and leticia james we'll do that right after these important messages every state is home to significant historic sites that tell the american story but not every site is telling that story honestly and fairly that's why the heritage foundation created the heritage guide to historic sites this interactive guide equips american citizens with the tools they need to enjoy the sites that depict some of the greatest moments in our nation's history analyzing them for historical accuracy and provides resources for families or educators planning a visit from mount vernon to independence hall to gettysburg and more americans deserve transparency and sites that steward our history faithfully deserve our gratitude the heritage guide to historic sites invites every american to rediscover the places and stories that define our nation whether it's across the country or in your backyard visit historic sites.heritage.org to start your adventure today we are back with victor davis hansen in his own words this episode is up on september 3rd which is just five days before the publication date of the counter revolution the fallen rise of dump can i ask you one last question oh yeah did you ever have mitsu awakawa as i'm wrestling it's not well in the west i guess it's because we were west so there were two japanese people who were in the west and there were two japanese people who were japanese tag team villains and one was mitsu i really liked him he's a nice guy but they would have little samurai swords and they would wave and then they would they would give interviews and they would say things like we shot a one pearl harbor and then everybody get everybody would get enraged and then when they come to fresno then the liberal fresno b to their credit would run an interview and they were like really nice guys you know what i mean but yeah they would get enraged everybody would get enraged there was a there was a japanese tag team i forget who they were but there was a prominent guy taru tanaka who was the uh japanese uh america who would mouth that kind of uh i'm trying to remember the sleeper hold his name was mark lane or mark something and he had to be really careful because he could put you out with a special hold and you'd go into a coma for like three minutes and then they'd have a doctor would always be at ringside you were talking about though the we're not we're not we're not mocking this now and we'll get on to these other subjects in a second but the physicality of this that movie with mickey rourke oh yeah the wrestler i don't yeah that was great i mean it really i don't know how they did it i mean you would i know that it takes a technique to pick up a 300 pound person without throwing out of your back or how do you i never understood how they got to the top of the ring and then they would put that knee and they'd jump all the way down like eight feet and put their so they land with their knee on the guy's neck or his throat and it doesn't break up break open his adam's apple but it it they were very they were very good athletes all of them i have a friend and his name as a wrestler was robbie parliament and and he was a lawyer and a cpa he used to take the train and he lived in new york and we were i was asking about his career and then i said what'd you do before that what'd you do before that what'd you do before that he said i was a professional wrestler like what are you kidding me he's a big guy and he he was one of those guys they tended to get beaten up but there was a famous wrestler uh kamala the ugandan giant who was about 400 pounds and he would jump off the turnbuckle and and and rob and and seth is my friend said seth said my position was to be on the canvas on my back but i was on my stomach and and that put him out for the first well i know that uh tyrus you know that on gutfeld sure yeah he always has wrestlers come on when he's guest hosting and and they're all very bright like ty whatever people think about tyrus i think he was called the tyrosaurus or something when he fought he's one of the brightest guys on television he's really astute and he's got a great sense of humor and he's got a natural wit to him and every time i've seen one of these guys when they talk to me they're like oh my god he's got a great sense of humor they're very intelligent and so that's part of the allure i think i went to tyrus's uh stand-up where he actually sat down i didn't know that oh yeah he does he does count performances he was in new haven and they were the place was packed and there's no cheap tickets to anything anymore but he was really good very funny very as you say he's really smart and i think with saint victor listening to two people just spiel he has he has so much profound common sense and wisdom it's uh i i think he's a a gem all right well let's let's wrap this up let's combine these two since they're both new york and they're unrelated except i'm sure perfecta will find a way the first has to do with a story out to um the other day with mandami he's he's essentially crying about the death of this knife wielding killer who was in rikers island new york's prison and he put out a so he died in prison and mandami put out on x this post i'm deeply saddened by the death of a new yorker in city custody at a jail on rikers island early this morning my thoughts are with his family and loved ones as they grieve this loss we do not blah blah blah blah well why was he in rikers island because he went into a laundromat and he butchered this guy who he didn't know to death stabbed him to the guy bled out at the at the laundromat so mandami shows no love or no compassion for the family of the murdered but he cares for the murderer and then the other thing victor and dear listeners i'm going to shut up here in a second um leticia james there's a story oh miranda miranda divine's column today in the new york post uh ag leticia james evil eye on trump and blind eye to new york crime uh so here in a bridge burning email to 2 000 colleagues at 10 a.m on friday this is the first time i've seen a this is just the other day assistant attorney general daniel weisenfeld who works for james claimed that he had been instructed by his supervisor quote to find and pursue crimes committed by specific individuals and organizations affiliated with donald trump the best part of having blank you money f you i'm not going to say that is being able to tell the truth without fear of consequences so here we go again his email began etc etc so she's on the and we have mandami proving once again that the democrat party is the party of the criminal well letita james was told by people in her office that this was a ridiculous suit that and she she campaigned on cheap campaign there's clips of her i urge you all to go look them up where she said i'm going to get donald trump in other words it was you know it was a soviet uh show me a beret lavendie beria show me uh the person and i'll find the crime and she did and it was ridiculous how in the world when he takes a loan from the deutsch bank and he pays it ahead of time with full interest does she say there's fraud when there's no injured party that she can identify the deutsch bank said no we'd lend it again and then she said well he undervalued the mar-a-lago estate at 17 million and that's what it was assessed at the time and and people said we don't care what it was assessed it has waterfronts on both sides it's priceless it's probably worth two or three hundred million dollars maybe more than that now and so and then they and her attitude was i don't really care it's donald trump the left wants me to do this i'll be a pop hero and i'm gonna get a manhattan jury and convict him and she did and the same thing with alvin bragg the federal person said do not file this thing it's a federal offense it's not a campaign violation if it was we'd have everybody in jail uh barack obama just paid the largest fine in history with not reporting foreign donations but we didn't go after him criminally we could have but we didn't hillary broke the law had to pay substantial money back in 2016 she hired a foreign national christopher steel which is illegal but he didn't care he just said well he signed a non-disclosure with uh stormy damiels not to protect his family but but to protect his campaign and therefore it was a campaign donation and i'm going to put him in jail for that and that was crazy and i could go through the same thing with fannie willis they all have one thing in common they all were themselves shady people jack smith was spying on u.s senators their textual and phone records not the actual content probably but the actual data he rushed that thing ahead in a way that no special prosecutor would It had a certain schedule. He wanted to get it before the 2024 election to embarrass Trump. He had all this idea about insurrections and all of this, and he had to drop all of those. Fannie Willis was a total crook. And she hired her boyfriend, who then took the money and he got, I don't know, he was paid way more than he'd ever been paid. He had no experience whatsoever. He was a total incompetent. And then he took her on these junkets with state money, and she was supposed to pay him back, I mean, state money, visa, what he earned. And then she had no records, and then she said it was racist and black people spend cash, which is a complete lie. Black people are like white people, like Asians, they do not, when they go on trips, they have credit cards. So they were trying, that was itself. And then she refused freedom of information. She was fined, I don't know, $20. Finally, the judge had to take her off the case. I could go on with all of them. The whole point was, and that was sort of what the first third of the book that I have coming out. We've never seen that before, Jack. We've never seen the pollution of the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, the White House to go out and destroy a candidate. They were willing to destroy the law, break the law. Take tradition protocol just to destroy him. And that's what it was. That's what Latita James said she was going to do. Alvin Bragg said they were going to do it. And they did it. They tried it and they were successful, not in destroying him, but getting a conviction in Alvin Bragg's case. And then just imagine that you're Donald Trump. Just imagine that you're you and they do a Donald Trump on you. So Jack goes in. And says, I want to buy a car wash. And they say, fine. And you say, here's my house. It's worth $500,000. And I use that money to buy the car wash. And I pay the loan back on time. And then they say, hey, Jack, you overvalued that house. It's really worth $350,000. And you say, no, it's not. I said, yes, it is. We've got a guy that says it's worth $350,000. But you say, well, Bank of America. Didn't think it was worth $350,000. They wouldn't give me the loan. It doesn't matter. I paid the loan and off. They want to loan me another one for another car wash. It doesn't matter. This person's been running to get me. Get me. Doesn't matter. That's what it was. It was surreal. And so Latita James, they all have one thing in common is they all themselves broke the wall. Fannie Willis did. Jack Smith did. Alvin Bragg shoehorned a federal offense. It wasn't. It wasn't even. No federal attorney would have touched that. None did. And Latita James herself was had a sordid history of remember her apartments that she said that she claimed was her. She didn't have a residence in New York that was required by statute. So they all had their own problems. And if she lied about a loan application, it was in a primary residence. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Mondami, the criminal. I love her. Yeah. And yeah. Well, that's all right. That's sweet. Mondami is like Elsa. You always have to realize that the first reaction is the real person. And then the clarification apology is meaningless. So when Mondami, the first thing out of his mind is I don't care what this person did. I want to shut down prisons. And this is ammunition for me to say that he died in Rikers. I don't know the circumstances, but it's useful. For me to demagogue this issue, same thing with Elsa. I can say that when I hear a Jewish synagogue or a Jewish center is attacked by someone of the of an Islamic Arab immigrant, the first thing I'll say is hurt people, take a deep breath, hurt people, hurt people. And then that's thrown back in his face. And then we get the clarifications. That doesn't mean anything. So what is the commonality? They believe in a world is a binary. And on one side are all the people that are victims, the oppressed. And they've got to remember that the oppressed and the victims cannot be oppressors or victimizers. They just can't. It's impossible. It's impossible. So if you're if you and what is the dividing line? If you are white, if you are heterosexual, if you are Christian or you're male, I don't know the exact number of tribes you have to belong to to firmly ensure that you're in the victimizers. But usually white is enough. Male, Christian, heterosexual will be forced to multiply. And then on the other side is if you are non-Christian, like. Muslim, if you are non-white and that can be almost anybody, it doesn't really matter what your skin color or your superficial appearance is. It's just the labeling of that. And you can label that by if your name is Elizabeth Warren, you can say you have high cheekbones and you're now point zero zero one. You can you can put if you know a guy named Sam, if you know a guy named Charlton Garcia, and he's one quarter Hispanic and now he's, you know, Charlton Garcia, you put an accent and he is a victim. It's very arbitrary. But once you're on that victim side, you're incapable of doing any wrong. So if you and who else isn't the homeless people, the homeless people. So if you know that rats are spreading leprospirosis in Los Angeles and they do it from lice and vermin. And they're on blankets that people are defecating urine on, injecting, fornicating in the homeless community along the sidewalk, or you have typhus, they are victims. So that means the victimizer class cannot go over there to that sidewalk and say, look, we have an outbreak of typhus. That's a medieval disease. We want to clean up this and you're going to have to go into a hygienic setting. We have a camp. Each person has a tent. There's a commute. There's showers every five tents. We have medical people come. It's safe. It's secure. But you've got to get off of here because you're endangering. And the attitude is you're endangering whom? The victimizer class? No, no, no. You can't touch this homeless person. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This, you know, Sonny Hostin on The View can spout out racist things as whoopee gold, but they are victimizers. So when she says something outrageous about the Holocaust and Jews, you can't say a word. And the same thing. Yeah. The woman who was on MSNBC, Joy Reed. Yeah. I mean, all she did was spout racist hatred. Al Sharpton, you know, get your yarmulkes, come over here. Mayor Johnson, he just basically flat out said, I'm only going to hire black people. His predecessor mayor said, I'm only going to talk to black journalists and that. So you can be Jussie Smollett and you can pull off the most outrageous, crazy, physically, chemistry, impossible thing in the world and defy the laws of physics that you throw bleach and it doesn't, you know, freeze and you, because you're a victimizer. And so we were, we don't have the time to talk. Yeah. That Karen out to you from the Washington Post. Most to us was, was fired after her reckless comments. Charlie Kirk last year, she's a black woman. Well, she's been ordered to have her job back. And she said outrageous things. And, and if anybody else had said that from the victimizer class, they're all through. And, you know, and so the same thing, Donald Trump, I got about two emails. Are you going to talk this week about Donald Trump changing Lake Ontario or Donald Trump, the Gulf? Well, yeah, I, I don't think he should have changed the Lake Ontario. I think it'll be changed back by the next left wing, but I didn't think they should change Boat Hall or the Earl Warren legal institution or the address where I work, Father Junipio Serra Plaza, but the left does it all the time and they, they establish the precedence. I think people should realize that if you think that Donald Trump. Is overarching and, uh, democracy dies in darkness or he's no Kings or he's an autocrat and you want to carry that argument, I'd be happy to debate you because anything that you accuse him of, he only took the prompt from the left. I don't know if that was, so he's got his own lawyers, eight attorney general. Well, so far, Todd Blanche didn't say, Hey, everybody, I'm Trump's wingman. Like Eric Holder, or he's not RFK working for his brother, JFK from the department of justice or If Trump is waging lawfare, I haven't seen any major political figure. I haven't seen Buttigieg called in or Newsom and faced with a five hundred million dollar fine. So I didn't see Tara Reid brought in during the campaign who had a much more plausible case of being sexually harassed than E. Jean Carroll did. And I didn't see a hundred million dollars or whatever they put up to broadcast her case and then go and get a, you know, Tara Reid shows up in Utah or Wyoming and a federal court to say that Joe Biden raped her. Right. And does it right before the 2020 election. They didn't that didn't happen, but it did with Trump. So they destroyed all of these. They destroyed the FBI. They destroyed the CIA. They all politicize them. You know, when you have Peter Strzok saying, don't worry, Andy, Andy will take care of it. He will not win. We have an insurance policy that we haven't seen that. And so I don't understand Tucker the other day. Why understand him? But he said that Trump Trump said that he was he mentioned nuclear weapons. So he should be removed from office. I don't know what he meant. I didn't see the exact quote. I just read about it. But Tucker's been calling for all of these removals from office. But I didn't. There's so much more egregious things you could do. I mean, Hillary Clinton had communication devices subpoenaed under FBI subpoena. And she told her assistant to destroy them. And then when she asked them about did they bleach them or do they. Oh, you mean they poured. Bleach on them or, you know, it was there was just lawlessness and no one said a word. No one said a word. When Obama, he surveilled the associate press reporters. He went after James Rosen's calls to his grandmother. I could go on and on for hours. And so it's very whatever they're bitching about, they are doing. That's what they do. Their projection. I have a whole chapter in this new book about the projectionism. Whatever they accuse somebody of doing, they they are very articulate about the accusation because they have done it themselves. Well, Victor, I have to apologize for cutting you off. No, it's fine. Because I'm collapsing. But I have to read one question that came in. Thanks, everyone who writes. You know, we read them. I read them. I know Sammy reads comments on YouTube and other things. And this is an email that came in from Andy and Andy and his wife and they came on a lot of national review. Cruises, and I think they went on some of your trips to Europe, Victor. And he writes, Hi, Jack. Just a little resonant moment. I thought you might enjoy rewatch the superb Chinatown recently set, as you know, in 1930s Los Angeles. And one scene, the Jack Nicholson character trespasses into a peach orchard looking for evidence of precious water being nefariously rerouted. He gets into a scuffle with hired hands, during which he enraged, enrages one guy by calling him a thief. He gets into a scuffle with hired hands, during which he enrages one guy by calling him a thief. Everything we thought were back and kilter, now it's worse than the 70s. And I don't think the 70s, I can't remember watching almost every night in L.A. an intersection taken over and people like stealing cars and then, you know, just racing in circles and a riot or people going into a jewelry store or a sneaker store or a clothing store and just ripping off everything with impunity. You were talking about the homeless in Los Angeles, and I can't remember the author, but recently in City Journal, and City Journal, the magazine is tremendous and the website is tremendous, too. But the author explains why he left the left, and he was a volunteer in the L.A. homeless shelter. Yes, I saw that. And he says, what has happened, it turned into, okay, the tents and the showers and whatever, but they were also open-air thievery markets. So, they would go out and steal, bring the things back, and then people would come by and they'd engage in commerce of stolen property. So, the Help the Homeless programs were underwriting thievery in very open-air thievery. I have an article coming out tomorrow on American Greatness, Tuesday, and it's called The Modern Medievalism. In the medieval world, you had plagues, sewage in the street, the city walls. Walls, gates were locked up at dusk so nobody could come in because of crime. All the elite had the castles and walls. But the same time you had that, you had Chaucer and Dante and St. Thomas Aquinas and people discovering eyeglasses. And so, it's kind of like we're in the modern medieval period. We've never had more sophisticated technology. We've never had more sophisticated healthcare. We've had space exploration. Now with AI and people have never had nicer homes and more appearances. But at the same time, we are medieval. We have medieval plagues on the street. We have filthy, we've lost all concept of sanitation. I'll just leave everybody with a jarring contrast that I wrote. We, in our society, will get somebody with a lot of letters after his name. Master's degree. Ph.D. in environmental safety or something like that. He will go to a sewage plant and he will try to find, and thank God we have them, one billionth of a toxic metal or a toxic substance to show that or check our water supply as he does. And that treated water is let out into the bay often from 30 in the San Francisco Bay 36. So we do. We have reached the pinnacle of sanitation science. No other period in history are we more careful about ensuring that we can deal with our effluvia. At the same time we're doing that, I've seen this twice now in San Francisco, where if you get up early in the morning, people have those high mat suits on and they have a high pressure water truck and they're going in the morning and you can smell bleach is mixed in it. And they are just hosing off sidewalks. Full of feces. And detritus that's going into the storm drain. And that storm drain is going out there. And so it's the same thing with health. We have now the ability to save a young baby at 23 months premature. 23 weeks. Excuse me. That's incredible advancement. And yet the same society will kill a baby as it looks out at life. Life from the birth canal as it's it's and it it's medieval, but it's medievalism juxtaposed to a whole different sophisticated society technologically and consumer wise. And I think it makes God weep all the more. It does. At least the medieval society would say, hey, Victor, we don't know about bacteria. We don't know what to do when everybody craps on the street. We don't know new where, you know, when. When it rains and we don't know what to do with all the urine and feces and all that stuff. We don't know about lice and rats. We don't know. We don't know anything about bacteria or virus. But our what's our excuse? We know everything about it, but we don't do anything about it. Yeah. Because of the binary we're talking about. These there's a whole there's like a wall in our society. And if you're on this victimized wall, then you're exempt because you're you've been suffering and you're a victim. And you have. You have reparatory complaints against the majority that allow you to get exempted in various ways. Yeah, and you're virtuous because your thoughts are belonging to whatever nonprofit results in some guy walking around the streets of Philadelphia as a zombie who's drug drugged up. But somehow or other, that's a plum in your cap. You know, you go to a fern barns. What are you doing? Hey, what do you do? Well, I work for a nonprofit that is trying to help the homeless. And I, you know, I make eighty five thousand dollars is beginning. Oh, do you are you trying to protect the public from you from plague and typhus? Oh, no, no, no. I don't worry about them. I worry about the people who are whose environments are breeding the rats, not what the rats do to other people. There's no virtue signaling performance art there. It's only helping the people and place. Placing be on the safe side of the binary. Mm hmm. Handing out needles. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, OK. Before I collapse, you've been terrific, Victor, and an early happy birthday to you. Thank you. In a couple of days, you'll turn some magical number. Seventy seventy three. Look, it's God. God bless you. You're going to be here at eighty three. I don't know. I'm working for 70. I'm going to be here in 20s. My goal is twenty seven. Let me. Twenty two. One goes tomorrow. Yeah. One day at a time. Yeah. Well, thanks for everything. Thanks to our bosses at The Daily Signal. And thank you, folks who subscribe to Sybil Thoughts. That's what I do. The free weekly email newsletter comes out every Friday. Go to SybilThoughts.com. Sign up for it. And we will see you soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Bye bye. Thank you, everybody, for listening and watching. Thank you for tuning in to The Daily Signal. 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