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

LaDita James was told by people in her office. This was a ridiculous suit. And she campaigned on cheap, but she said, I'm going to 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 cannon. Forget what you think about Donald Trump. They were willing to destroy the law, break the law, break 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 Eli Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale. College, his website, The Blade of Perseus is found at victorhanson.com. Go there. It's a Blade of Perseus. Do subscribe. $65 a year, or if you just want test drive at $650 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 a-- I've never wear a hat here, but I'm wearing a daily signal hat because on a last episode, Victor, I didn't-- I implied I didn't forget any chochiki from Rob Bowie, 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, mind us. I don't have a head. I have a sweetie square head. And I wear like a 7 and 7/8 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. That's-- 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. OK, 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 the Tisha James wanting to go after Donald Trump again and Trump related friends and advisers. We have some election day polling that doesn't look all that great for Republicans, madame, crying, maybe not literally, but about a prisoner who died at Rikers Island. Boohoo 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 Cali Kula 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, Cali 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 Cali 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 join ADF.com/hanson to have your gift doubled. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. So I want to ask a 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 invested, investigative reporting arm. And if you're disposed to maybe doing that at the 28 dollar month level, they call that elite support, you get a free copy of Victor's forthcoming book, "Account of Revolution" in response to that generosity. So think about that, folks. Okay, Victor, you all hydrated, my friend? Good. I am. I'm trying to hydrate. I've had a head cold or something. Me too. Yeah, you beat me with all the ailments. So I'm not even going to complain. Oh, wait, wait, I'm 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 in 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, about where do you want to start, Iran or Canada? You pay, 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 new, 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 a $200 billion. And he has more or less solved those. So he has worn 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, of the 500,000, they claimed that 40 percent, 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 with this 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 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 therefore, 41 million people only have half of that. And they have been struggling to make a meg or 2% investment in GDP on defense. And they keep saying they're going to do it. Do it, do it, do it, do it. But maybe last year they did it, maybe not. They have a creative bookkeeping. But they really fought that. And then in addition, they run a $50 to $70 billion surplus, depending on how you calculate it in which particular year. And so if you're Donald Trump, you want to rectify that and 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 Karni 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 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% or 27% of its population was not born in Canada, and you another 7 or 8% were not born of parents that were Canadians. There 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, and you put it all together, and you add these cultural practices, such as Euthanasia, you know, 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 and says we're going to be 50/50, no surpluses, you're going to pay your whole NATO, you're going to patrol the board, then people get outraged, but 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, forward 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, or smoky oil were set up to refine it. And you can send it to British Columbia or 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, 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 want. 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 and largely endowed in 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 that means, 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're going to get the permission. And that means that you're not going to grow. And then you get angry and you add as a forced 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 those problems or Mulroney who knew those problems who were staunch Canadian nationalists. And we expected that. And that's the problem. Can I just add to that, Victor, a couple of things quickly. There's no, you know, the idea of meritocracy, which we still like to believe, 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 unless you come to America and get better care. So they'd rather everyone have poor healthcare than people have alternatives. And there's also, I think, a little bit of an ignorance on our part in America, you know, we still, we're so culturally in the past and I think a lot of people think, oh, Canada, you know, we play hockey against 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, 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 colonist of Britain, who we bailed successfully, who are the best representation of what Britain used to be. More than the countries that are statutorily aligned with the Commonwealth. 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, they staged, whether it was a bad or good deal, they could have worked this out, but they staged the walk out because they're having a provincial election in Alberta about autonomy and one in Quebec. And this makes Karnie, who is not all that popular as Mr. Canadian, uniter, nationalist, zealot. 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. And then you add into all of this that, you know, Barack Obama has plans to meet with Karnie if he hasn't already met with him. These 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, was every time we have a conservative or Republican president, we get an ex-president or an ex-secretary of state who goes around the world and say, "That's not who we are." So don't, don't cooperate with these people. They'll be over soon. They'll be out of here. That's basically what Obama is 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 nation still 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. 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Yes, just thinking about Aran, 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've never really heard of this, but minds on them, and so that they could reclaim control of the hormone. 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 hit them. A lot of us, I think we said on this podcast, we expect an October, I didn't quite expect a September surprise, but Aran has to do something, because it has been 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, since we were six months from the midterms, why we didn't spend, as we said on this podcast, another 22 weeks, three weeks, four weeks, and obliterate Pike Mountain with V1s coming back again, maybe three or four missions, just hit it, hit it, hit it, maybe I didn't know, 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 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, I could put by now, 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 is something to do? 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, really, 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 and 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 West, 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 they suffered 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 night 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 said, "I've heard this so often," well, Victor, there's a million wagers that are Muslims, the Chinese treat them as slaves, yes, but they don't hate the Chinese. Well, Victor Putin in the Third Chechnya and 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 an narcotic. The best example of that is on the eve of the September 11th, the 19 murders, 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 Ben 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, 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 alien Omar, the Rashida to leave, the Zoran Mondamis, the Hassan Pikers, the Abdul Al Sayed, they really believe that they're on their side. And Al Sayed said, I have to be careful about criticizing the death of the celebrity, celebratory and 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 to, well, 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, have 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 karni, are you have, as John Kerry was negotiating in Paris basically, privately, why we were getting out of the Iran deal, are you have the left really cheering on our enemies and or calling this Trump's war, you can make the argument that they have confident, 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 the issue, and if they can do it with collateral damage to the United States, that doesn't bother them at all. And he says he's going to have record natural gas and oil production, or he's bragging that he closed the borders 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 than the whole world combined, not even close, or that our AI companies now are nine out of the top 10, our software companies are nine out of the top 10 world wide, we're racing ahead on AI, they don't care, that doesn't matter at all, and if you sit down with Aleftus and you say we went up to, we had 5% inflation for four years and we had 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, be, 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 is even Barack Obama's left, left, left revolutionary wing. This is different. This is a neilist, young, millennial. I don't know what you want to call him, but they, 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, I get classicists because I still keep up in classic, 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 and da, da, da, da, da, they're soulful 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 bankruptcy. 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 they can only reflect the deductive hatred of Trump. Does such a degree he's willing to risk his reputation by not being empirical? Well, we're going to look at the forthcoming elections in a second, Victor, but 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. 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Well, you're, you are, I'm a beautiful man. Oh, 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/vdh. That's V-A-E-R watches.com/vdh. We thank the good people from far 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 day 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, 2 points in New Hampshire, 8 points in North Carolina, 1.9 points in Texas, all down. The latest real clear politics polling aggregate data of the Senate races. Victor, any thoughts about this? 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 L.C.E., what, 10 points off, and they had that crazy candidate in Wisconsin-Hong with a sizable win and she lost. They had Vennman winning in Florida, I think by 5, 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 a week before the election, because what they traditionally do is the left. They run these polls, the Emerson Poll, Harvard Harris Poll, got 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. 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 savvy of them, 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 Tallerico. I don't think they're going to vote for Said. They had a. Well, you meant with Paxton or with Tallerico? In Texas. Yeah, I don't think Tallerico is going to win. 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 were one of the 200,000 Jews in Michigan, and given his embrace of House on 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 Deb W. 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 as 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, no matter what was happening, given the midterm history of the end party. If you just game it out, if in three weeks there's a million people on the street or Iran and that government falls, the Democrats will lose the midterm. I 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 packed money that Donald Trump controls and you see 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, Rob, Emmanuel, 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." If that were to be true, why do so many in the Democratic Party endorse them when they run and why do so many Democrats vote for them or we wouldn't even be discussing it? Why do they run as, basically, Democrats in Democratic primaries if they're not Democrats? What I'm saying? 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. If they can do all of that, I think it'll be a close election. If they get a few breaks in a new 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 this 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, we're all wanting us to subsidize it. And say, "I regret even saying that." I don't like it, but I think he would win more that way than he would say, "We're going to change the name of Lake Ontario." Well, if it took me four, we take a break. And after the break, we have two New York-y kind of stories. One is Mandami and this murderer and the other is Latisha James, New Gehud 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, the 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 a show. It's really, and I don't mean that to deprecate the athletes 'cause when you're 280 pounds and you're a solid muscle and you're picking up somebody, it'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 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 support Sophie Cunningham. You can't, and they're just fans, you can't have a league where they take Hausson Piker and they say, your anti-trans get out of here. You can't have a league where every time Caitlin Clark is roughed up, it seems not every time. I would say every, it seems like the referee misses it or that they have decided the refs. If we call every single time she's pushed or slapped or scratched or tripped or butted, that's all we would do because they were trying to hurt her. So what we have now and the women's, and let me be clear, they have $1 billion in revenue. Their individual franchises just in the pre-Caitlin 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 five hundred 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 except in media contracts and television and radio and streaming, it's a whole new. And the strange thing about it is they have two types, I think of people who tune in. One are people that don't like Caitlin Clark because she disturbed, she and Sophie Cunningham, the notion that the WNBA was sort of but often a tide pool from the NBA. And it was 70%, 65% black, 50% gay, 25% white. And it had particular constituencies, not very many and it was going broken, it was subsidized. And those people watch and they like the idea that Cunningham and Caitlin Clark get beat up. And then there's another constituency, a huge constituency that goes there and follows the Indiana fever. And they are championing Caitlin Clark because she's a natural, not because she's white just because she's shaken up the entire league. And she has a style of play 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 so each person is watching what's going to happen to her. Half, I'd say a quarter one, 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 Gulf Stream that takes us to the, because they don't like the person who gave you that large ass or the old maximum, the hate, 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 is you nice to him the other day? He must go back and, and that's how they look. And the other half are watching because fairly or not, and I think it's kind of unfairly. 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 coming to watch them. But in today's polarized America, if what I just said is more white than black, that's racist. Even though you could say that most of the fans let's say that watched 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 rafts, the coaches are gonna have to have a big meeting and say, basketball, we've never seen something like this before. We saw something like it with Michael Jordan or Wilk Chamberlain or Larry Bird. When you have a marquee athlete that is so good and so dominant, they help everybody. And we wanna 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. They show these pictures of our arms. They're just full of scratches after it. 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? You admitted it yourself. We're the world's wrestling entertainment. We're women's wrestling entertainment. Women's wrestling, 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 not going to close line, Stephanie or Kate, 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 much in 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. Some day we'll have Linda McMahon on, Victor, and we'll talk about the real double UWI. I mean, I'm not saying, yeah, I think it's fascinating to watch. Yeah. Well, you're not discussed before as we move off the politics and the policy here just to say, as young boys, we were both in our way on the East Coast. You were the West Coast, we had a lot of dilucally, but I got a, I came home off the bus in third grade and I got on my little bicycle. I don't know when he was home at home. I rode down to the house I'm living. My grandparents were, my grandfather was on the ranch. I was about nine. And I turned on the TV to watch Luce Libre with Pepper Gomez versus Ray Stevens. And watch out for the sleeper hole, Pepper. And so I loved it, 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 J Strongbow and Andre the Giant. Did you guys, they never came to our West, but was classy Freddie Bellassi in the East Coast. Freddie Bellassi became a manager. And he would, he would always call Vict Vince McMahon, and others, he penciled like Geek. That was his insult for certain wrestlers. I even like the guy. What was his name, the chic later? Oh, yeah, the iron chic with the camel clutch was his famous, famous hold. Anyway, Vict, we're going to take a little break. And then we come back. We're going to talk about Mondami and Latisha James. We'll do that 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 evidence. 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 Site 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 dot heritage dot org to start your adventure today. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson 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 doubt. Can I ask you one last question? Did you ever have Mitzu Awakawa? As I'm wrestling well I guess it's because we were west so there were two Japanese tag team villains and one was Mitzu 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 would get everybody would get enraged and then when they come to Fresno then the liberal Fresno be 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 that there was a Japanese tag team I forget who they were but there was a prominent guy but to Ruta Naka who was the Japanese America who would mouth that kind of 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 the 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 oh my god oh yes the wrestler I don't yeah that was great 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 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 jump all the way down like eight feet and put there so they'd 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 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 asked 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 Kamala the Ugandan giant who was about 400 pounds and he would jump off the turnbuckle and and 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 while I know that Tyrus you know that on gut pill 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 it was called the Tyrus Soros or something when he thought 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 they they're very intelligent and so that's part of the allure I think I went to Tyrus's stand-up or you actually sat down I didn't know that oh yeah he does see 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 smart as you say he's really smart and I think we're saying Victor listening to two people just spiel he has he has so much profound common sense and wisdom it's I think he's a gem all right well let's let's wrap this up let's combine these two since at both New York and they're unrelated except I'm sure for effect will find a way the first has to do with a story out to 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 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 on with his family and love 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 Latisha James is a story oh Miranda Miranda divides column today in the New York Post AG Latisha James evil eye on Trump and blind eye to New York crime so here in a bridge burning email to 2,000 colleagues at 10 a.m. on Friday this is just the other day assistant attorney general Daniel Wyzenfeld 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 gonna say that is being able to tell the truth without fear of consequences so here we go again his email began et cetera et cetera so she's on the attack and we have Mandami proving once again that the Democrat party is the party of the criminal well Ladita James was told by people in her office that this was a ridiculous suit that and she she campaign on cheap campaign there's clips over I urge you all to go look them up where she said I'm gonna get Donald Trump in other words it was you know it was a Soviet to show me a bereya Lavendi Berria show me the person and I'll find the crime and she did and it was ridiculous how in the world when he takes along from the Deutsche 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 Deutsche Bank said no we'd lend it again and then she said well he undervalued the Marlago 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 a 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 convicted 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 a Barack Obama just paid the largest fine in history with not reporting foreign donations but we didn't go after him criminally we could but we didn't he'll we broke the law had to pay substantial money back in 2016 she hired a foreign national Christopher Steele which is illegal but he didn't care he just said well he signed a non-disclosure with stormy down meals not to protect his family but but to protect his campaign and therefore it was a campaign donation and I'm gonna put him in jail for that and that was crazy and I could go through those same thing with Fannie Willis they all have one thing in common they all were themselves shady people Jack Smith was spying on US 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 has 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 his what he earned and then she had no records and then she said it was racist and black people spin 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 it was fine, I don't know, $20,000. Finally, the judge. had to take her off the case. I could go on with all of them at the whole point. Well, 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, break tradition protocol, just to destroy him. And that's what it was, that's what Lutita 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. They're not in destroying them, 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." And you say, "No, it's not." I said, "Yes, it is. We've got a guy that says it's worth 350." And but you say, "Well, Bank of America didn't think it was worth 350." 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. It 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. Fanny Willis did, Jack Smith did, Alvin Bragg, shoehorned, a federal offense. It wasn't even no federal attorney would have touched that. None did. And Latita James herself was had a assorted history of, remember her apartments 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. She lied about a loan application. It was in a primary residence. Yeah. Well, um, Muntami, the criminal lover. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's all right. That's sweet. Muntami 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 Muntami, 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 El Sayed. I can say that when I hear a Jewish, uh, Senegal or a Jewish center is attacked by someone of the, of an Islamic Arab immigrant, uh, 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 clarification that 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 it got to remember that the oppressed and the victims cannot be oppressors are, are 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, or, uh, your male, I don't know the exact number of tribes you have to belong to to firmly ensure that you're in the victim izers, but usually white is enough male, Christian, heterosexual will be forced 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 appearances. 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 0.001. You can, you can put, if you know a guy named Sam, uh, if you know a guy named Charlton Garcia, and he's one quarter Hispanic, and now he's good. You know, Charlotain Garcia, you put an accent, and he's 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 leptospirosis in Los Angeles and they do it from uh, lice and, and vermin, and they're on blankets, uh, that people are defecating urine on, injecting, fornicating in the homeless community along the sidewalk, or you have typhus, uh, they are victim. 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 got to get off of here because you're endangering and the attitude is you're endangering home. The victimizer class, no, no, no, you can't touch this homeless person. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this, you know, sunny, sunny hosting on the view can spout out racist thing as wippy racist things as wippy go, but they are victimizers, victimized. So as she says something outrageous about the holocaust in Jews, you can't say a word. And the same thing. Yeah. Mayor German. It was on MSNBC, MSNBC. What a read. Joy read. Yeah. I mean, she she all she did was spout racist hatred. Al Sharpton, you know, get your Yarmocs come over here. So Mayor Johnson, he's just basically flat outside. I'm only going to hire black people. And his predecessor, Mayor, said, I'm only going to talk to black journalists. And that so you can be just as small and you can pull off the most outrageous crazy, physically chemistry and possible thing in the world. And defy the laws of physics that you told 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. Yes, 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, we got about two emails. Are you going to talk this week about Donald Trump changing Lake Ontario or Donald Trump, the Gulf of America? Well, yeah, 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 Bolt Hall or their Earl Warren legal institution or the address where I work. Father, who nipio Sarah Plaza, but the left does it all the time. And they they established the precedence. I think people should realize that if you think that Donald Trump is overarching and democracy dies in darkness or he's no kings or he's an autocrat. And you want to carry that argument? Now, 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 lawyer is a attorney general. Well, so far Todd Blanchett 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 law fair, I haven't seen any major political figure. I haven't seen Buttigieg called in or newsroom and faced with a 500 million dollar fine. So I didn't see Tara Reed brought in during the campaign who had a much more plausible case of being sexually harassed than Eugene Carroll did. And I didn't see a hundred million dollars or whatever they put up to broadcaster case and then go and get a train, you know, Tara Reed shows up in Utah or Wyoming in 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 Stroke saying, don't worry, 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 I understand him, but he said that 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, he'll be 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 did 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 the, whatever they're bitching about, they are doing. That's what they do with 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. Although we're, 'cause 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 Ann, they came on a lot of Nashville or you 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 this superb Chinatown recently. Said as you know in 1930s Los Angeles. And one scene, the Jack Nixon's in character, trespasses into a peach orchard, looking for evidence of precious water being nefariously re-rooted. He gets into a scuffle with hard hands during which he enrages one guy by calling him a dumb oaky. How would a contemporary audience understand that and solve it at all? They would if they knew the grapes of wrath or followed Victor. So anyway, and I just watched my wife and I watched yesterday who retired. So we watched "Ride the High Country." Oh yeah, it was on TCM list. It was and it was great because at that final, to go these so-called white, he said, "You pecker blank, blank wood." (laughing) And it was Sam Peckin, Sam Peckin-Paul growing up about 25 miles somewhere I'm speaking. And the prejudice of that period that I grew up, he was a little older than I was about the Oklahoma diaspora. You know, the poor whites that came in dirt poured during the Oklahoma diaspora. And they were called white trash, oaky's, all sorts of words. And they project that back into the old west, you know, about-- - Right, right. That was such a great movie anyway. - I have to believe that would be a badge of honor at some point. So anyway, Victor, crackers, I don't know. - Crackers, white. I know that when I was, I'll just finish by saying, I went to a school two miles from here. I would say there was 400 students in 1960, 63 to 66, or it was three grades of four to six. And I would say there was 25 people of that 400 who were not Mexican-American, 20, 24. And we had a really nice Mexican-American teacher, kind of a trailblazing guy. We had a guy who's a really sweet guy and he had a German name and his name was Dice. He was one of the most wonderful person. But just to egg him on, he would call him D-E-I-S and he would call him D-As. D-As, you know. And then I, like a stupid, I went up to him and I said Mr. F, his name was a Spanish name that was in F. I said we shouldn't do that to Donald, his name is Dice. He said we hear it all the time, you guys do it to us. And I thought, wow, I'm 10 years old and I have no idea what he's talking about. But the times I would hear Oki and cracker and a white trash, I heard it all the time. And there was, I heard the N word all the time and it was never by the Oki trash. So it was, it was a raw racial tribal group and I was, from first grade to third grade, I went to Jefferson School and it was even more, it's on the west side of my little town. It's 99% Hispanic now and I went fourth to sixth grade and it was 85%. And that was because I was on the dividing line and my parents said all our neighbors are going to the country school where all the farmers go. And those were mostly white, Armenian, white Armenian Portuguese. And Asian, a lot of Japanese farmers. But she said you guys need to get away from farmers and meet different people. And so that's where we went, all of us. And I think my twin brother and I were attacked and like I would say in six years I got in six or seven fights. I never started one of them and I lost half of them. That's why you have that helmet behind you. Hey Victor, that reminds me, you know, the famous scene in the Godfather where Tommy, the lawyer goes out to meet the movie Jack, whatever is named, the producer of the movie. Yeah, and they call some, you daygo, Guinea, Wapgris, Guzbo, but he says so, well, I'm German Irish. Okay, my crowd, McFriend, you know what I'm saying? He flipped it in another second is insulting. So anyway, I noticed one thing. And just in finish, I'll say one last thing. Yes, you and I have been talking about watching these old shows like Vertigo and others where you see Los Angeles or San Francisco and even Chinatown. I mean, even to make the scenes, even though it was retro. But I was watching the other night, a, oh, a Dana Andrews show. He had two movies and, well, and they were scenes. From Zalora. Yes, Gilda and another one. Okay, okay. Yeah, and then, and I was watching some of them. I kind of watching, I'm very curious about the landscape or the physical structure. And I understand Hollywood, there's ghettos always. And, but you couldn't film any of those today. Unless you went, send an advanced crew to clean up, you know what I mean, Union Square and San Francisco, you couldn't do it. And then when you see the way people are dressed, you couldn't find, I mean, they have pictures, those pictures of New York, you know, in the 40s and 50s. Yeah, but people of all races were walking down the sidewalk with ties on, hats on, immaculate dressed shops. It's just, you know what a great, a great, where the city is part of the, a character, it is what you're saying in part. And so, it is. To me, one of them is a DOA, where the, oh my gosh, Edmond O'Brien is poisoned. And San Francisco is the backdrop. And it's, it's just, it really is like bullet. And San Francisco is part of that. And I always thought that we always look back up until around 2010, and we look back at the crazy '70s when the '60s had ruined things. And we had, you know, death wish, Charles Bronson, where there was crime. And then we thought we were over that with Giuliani, and we had the reaction, and we had Reagan, and we had 12 years of Reagan and Bush. And then two terms of George W. And everything was, we thought we're back and kilter. And now it's worse than the '70s, and I don't think the '70s. I can't remember watching almost every night in LA, a intersection taken over, and people like stealing cars, and then, you know, just racing in circles, and 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 in recently in City Journal, and in 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 LA homeless shelter, and he says, what has happened? It turned into, okay, is it the tents and the showers and whatever. But they were also open air, the Thievery Market. So they would go out and steal. the things back and then people will come by and they engage in commerce of stolen property. So, the help the homeless programs were underwriting a thievery in very open air thievery. I have an article coming out tomorrow in American greatness Tuesday and it's called the modern medievalism. In the medieval world you had plagues, sewage in the street, the city walls, gates were locked up at DOS 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 have, 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 occurrences 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 a jarring contrast that I wrote. We in our society will get somebody with a lot of letters after his name, master's degree, PhD and 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 it. 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 or a fluvia. 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 mats 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 that's that's incredible advancement and yet with the same society will kill a baby as it looks out at life from the birth canal as it's and it's it's medieval but it's medievalism juxtaposed to a whole different sophisticated society technologically and consumer wise and 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 knew where you know 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 they we don't know anything about bacteria or viral but are what's our excuse we know everything about it but we don't do anything about it yeah because of this 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 in your victim and you have repertory 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 he was drug drugged up yeah somehow rather that's a plum well you're in your cap you know you go to a firm bar and say 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 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 are there it's only helping the people and placing placing be on the safe side of the binary handing out needles yeah yeah all right well okay before I collapse you've been terrific Victor and an early happy birthday to you and thank you in a couple of days you'll turn some magical number 70 73 do you look it's god bless you're you're gonna be here at 83 I don't know I'm working for 70 I'm gonna be here in 20s my goal is 27 me 22 when I go 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 civil thoughts that's what I do the free weekly email newsletter comes out every Friday go to civil thoughts dot 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 into the daily signal please like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this you can also check out my own website at victorhanson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition