Victor Davis Hanson on 10 ways Biden is causing chaos

VDH lists 10 ways by which America lost all deterrence.

"1) Joe Biden abruptly pulled all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. He left behind to the Taliban hundreds of Americans and thousands of pro-American Afghans. Biden abandoned billions of dollars in U.S. equipment, the largest air base in central Asia—recently retrofitted at a cost of $300 million—and a $1 billion embassy. Our government called such a debacle a success. The world disagreed and saw only humiliation.

2) The Biden Administration allowed a Chinese high-altitude spy balloon to traverse the continental United States, spying on key American military installations. The Chinese were defiant when caught and offered no apologies. In response, the Pentagon and the administration simply lied about the extent that China had surveilled top-secret sites.

3) In March 2021, at an Anchorage, Alaska mini-summit, Chinese diplomats unleashed a relentless barrage at their stunned and mostly silent American counterparts. They lectured the timid Biden Administration diplomats about American toxicity and hypocrisy. And they have defiantly refused to explain why and how their virology lab birthed the COVID virus that has killed tens of millions worldwide.

4) In June 2021, in response to Russian cyber-attacks against the United States, Biden meekly asked Putin to at least make off-limits certain critical American infrastructure.

5) When asked what he would do if Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden replied that the reaction would depend on whether the Russians conducted a “minor incursion.”

6) Between 2021 and 2022, Joe Biden serially insulted and bragged that he would not meet Muhammad bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, and one of our oldest and most valuable allies in the Middle East.

7) For much of 2021, the Biden Administration made it known that it was eager and ready to offer concessions to re-enter the dangerous Iran nuclear deal—at a time when Iran has joined China and Russia in a new geostrategic partnership.

8) Almost immediately upon inauguration, the administration moved the United States away from Israel, restored financial aid to radical Palestinians, and both publicly and privately alienated the current Netanyahu government.

9) In serial fashion, Biden stopped all construction on the border wall and opened the border. He made it known that illegal aliens were welcome to enter the United States unlawfully. Some 6-7 million did. He reinstated “catch and release.” And he did nothing about the Mexican cartel importation of fentanyl that has recently killed over 100,000 Americans per year.

10) In the last two years, the Pentagon has embarked on a woke agenda. The army is short by 15,000 in its annual recruitment quota. The defense budget has not kept up with inflation. One of the greatest intelligence leaks in U.S. history just occurred from the Pentagon.

The Pentagon refused to admit culpability and misled the country about Afghanistan and the Chinese spy balloon flight. The current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called his Chinese communist counterpart and head of the People’s Liberation Army to advise him that the U.S. military would warn the Chinese if it determined an order from its commander-in-chief Trump was inappropriate.

This list of these self-inflicted disasters could be easily expanded.

But the examples explain well enough why our emboldened enemies do not fear us, our triangulating allies judge us unreliable, and calculating neutrals assume America is in descent and too dangerous to join.

Yet without America, the result is a new Chinese order in which, to quote the historian Thucydides, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”"

Are you a classicist?

A Pelosi staffer (an intern) interrupted Victor Davis Hanson in a luncheon presentation for government staffers accusing him of being a classicist. Puzzled, VDH questioned what he meant. He said that because he was a classicist he was oppressing the poor and working classes. When VDH calmly explained that a classicist was a scholar who studied ancient languages, literature and history of Greece and Rome his attacker stormed out, grabbing several boxes of pizza as he left. And that my friends is what goes on in the bubble we call D.C. (VDH show on Sept. 27, podcast)

Let's compare the BLM summer of 2020 protests with the January 6 protest

For 120 days in summer 2020, violent protesters destroyed some $2 billion in property and injured 1,500 police officers in riots that led to over 35 deaths. Let's compare that to January 6. I for one want some justice and equity.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/03/who-are-the-real-insurrectionists-2/

The new government fake news office

The DHS disinformation governance board's executive director, Nina Jankowicz, at least has clear qualifications for the post. She previously had spread false rumors on social media that Donald Trump voters would show up at the polls in 2020 armed, and joined the mob’s chorus that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.” Perhaps the idea behind her hiring was “it takes one to know one.”

Victor Davis Hanson https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/01/the-new-disinformationists/

Democrats--the party of wealth and power

How often during the last year of wokeness have middle- and lower-class Americans listened to multimillionaires of all races and genders lecture them on their various pathologies and oppressions? . . .

 
Do we need another performance-art sermon on America’s innate unfairness from billionaire entertainers such as Beyonce, Jay-Z, or Oprah Winfrey, or from multimillionaire Delta or Coca-Cola CEOs? . . .

 
By 2018, Democratic representatives were in control of all 20 of the wealthiest congressional districts. In the recent presidential primaries and general election, 17 of the 20 wealthiest ZIP codes gave more money to Democratic candidates than to Republicans. . .

 
Class is fluid; race is immutable. So by fixating on race, the left believes that it can divide America into permanent victimizers and victims—at a time when race and class are increasingly disconnecting.

Victor Davis Hanson
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/07/15/democratic-party-wont-admit-its-become-party-of-wealth/?

VDH Common sense as always

“The proper conservative response to last Wednesday’s violent entry into the Capitol and vandalism, as well as assaults on law-enforcement, is to identify the guilty parties and ensure they are arrested.”

“Those who wrongly demanded to defund the police, now rightly deplore the lack of a Capitol police presence. Their only consistency is their own perceived political self-interest.”

Crazy 2020 Is Dead! Long Live Crazier 2021! - American Greatness (amgreatness.com)

Democrat media gives Trump so much free publicity, just like 2016

Worth reading again. President Trump lives rent free in the heads of the Democrat media. I heard that Trump gets 11x the publicity, all negative, from cable and broadcast news than all the Democrats running against him. Also that he has 94% support from Republicans.

“Do not underestimate the Trump voter. When they channel-surfed cable news, or heard of the antics that took place on college campuses, or saw street-theater demonstrations on television, they boiled at the idea that they had often worked at minimum wage, saw their jobs outsourced, never discriminated against anyone, and yet were being damned by smug youth who in a few years would draw on their college B.A. cattle brand, their parents’ lobbying, and the good-old-boy network of being rich, white, and from the proper zip code to inherit their rightful place in business, investment, politics, entertainment, the media, or the university. Google all the rich, white, privileged pundits who at one time or another, both in jest and in all seriousness, have called to deport the deplorables and in their stead give amnesty to illegal aliens or import “better” people from abroad.” Victor Davis Hanson,

Who killed the Golden State?

Ten million Californians have fled in the last generation. When my family lived there in 1944-45, the Oakies and Arkies were flooding the place--it was the land of opportunity and new beginnings. Now their grandchildren are leaving.

If you believe charging higher taxes is the answer to poverty, educational system failure, violence, bankrupt pension funds, then California should be a lesson for you. Who killed the golden goose and golden state?

The hallmark of all liberal thought--self righteousness.

". . .one of the landmarks of the new California mentality is denial and self-righteousness that assume it is illiberal to notice that a quarter of the nation’s homeless population sleeps on California streets, or that violent crime is 20 percent higher in California than the national median, or that San Francisco ranks No. 1 in per capita property crime rates of all the nation’s largest cities."

Coastal California is a lot like feudal Europe--only richer.

"So there is a separate state of Coastal California, a manor of prosperity. And it is probably the richest urban area in the world, or rather in the history of civilization — drawing on its geostrategic location, long coastline, weather, climate, blue-chip universities, and high-tech industries. Residents have the disposable income and leisure to live the life of aristocrats — and do so if gauged by their lifestyle choices, travel, hired servants, and appurtenances."

Victor Davis Hanson assesses the sad state. https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/california-coastal-elites-poor-immigrants-fleeing-middle-class/

VDH explains why and how Trump won in 2016

If you listen to even 10 minutes of Victor Davis Hanson you'll have a better understanding of why Trump won and why (if you are a Democrat) you are still so puzzled and so angry. California professor Victor Davis Hanson and Canadian professor Jordan Peterson seem like brothers to me--anyone else see that? Erudite, calm, sensible, practical, rural backgrounds. If you are a conservative, you'll get a lot from the Q & A; but it would make the liberals squeamish. Being a classicist, VDH has a great sweep of history. And being a farmer in California, he has some interesting input on illegal immigration.

I don't see a date for this speech, but it was before Trump’s inauguration, and everything he cites that he expects Democrats to do, they did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YtzgA310t0

Diversity and White Privilege

“Do not underestimate the Trump voter. When they channel-surfed cable news, or heard of the antics that took place on college campuses, or saw street-theater demonstrations on television, they boiled at the idea that they had often worked at minimum wage, saw their jobs outsourced, never discriminated against anyone, and yet were being damned by smug youth who in a few years would draw on their college B.A. cattle brand, their parents’ lobbying, and the good-old-boy network of being rich, white, and from the proper zip code to inherit their rightful place in business, investment, politics, entertainment, the media, or the university. Google all the rich, white, privileged pundits who at one time or another, both in jest and in all seriousness, have called to deport the deplorables and in their stead give amnesty to illegal aliens or import “better” people from abroad.”

Victor Davis Hanson, https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/strange-career-of-white-privilege/

The hypocrisy of academe

Victor Davis Hanson is unhappy with academe-- faculty who make fortunes and careers lecturing about inequality and diversity so they can not feel guilty when buying million dollar homes and fancy cars. It's a mechanism. Paul Krugman earns $225,000 in retirement for studying inequality and not teaching a course. The Ohio State president makes $3.5 million, but entry level faculty salaries have only gone up about 1% over the past 15 years. But they rail about corporations and the poor in society. All the race and class and gender jargon is just that--it means nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsYwekCjkvI&t=40s

Antifa and BLM

"When Minnesota Black Lives Matter marchers chanted of police, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon,” was that a call for violence that was not long after realized by a spate of racist murders of policemen in Dallas? Are such advocates of torching police officers morally equipped to adjudicate which Confederate statue must come down?" Victor Davis Hanson

"Two parties, two culpabilities; but except for the initial statement of President Donald Trump, condemning both sides, only one party has been held accountable, and that happens to be the one that was in the park legally.

What is taking place in the media accounts and political commentaries on this event is an effort by the left to turn the mayhem in Charlottesville into a template for their war against a mythical enemy — "white supremacy" — which is really a war on white people generally." David Horowitz, Aug. 21

The Boston rally in a nutshell: “Excuse me,” one man innocently asked a Globe reporter, “where are the white supremacists?” (Jeff Jacoby tweet)

When a peaceful group called for prayer, it was called “White Supremacist. Nancy Pelosi has called Joey Gibson's group white supremacist): “I’m not white. We have about eight speakers and only one speaker is white. You know, we have a couple of black speakers, a Hispanic, we have a transsexual speaker; we have a woman speaker. It’s very diverse. It’s really just about what’s on the inside – what you believe, what’s in your heart, your soul – it has nothing to do with skin color.”

In Charlottesville, one side wore white hoods the other black hoodies.  Both violent, both racist, but only one side is part of a global movement with financial support from George Soros.

From eerie Obama worship to creepy Trump hatred

"Trump goes after individual washed-up celebrities; Obama indicted an entire people for being lazy, clinging to their guns and religion, intolerant, nativist, and unnecessarily chauvinistic. Take your poison: personal score-settling or mellifluent contempt. . . It was Obama, not Trump, who established the practice of going after journalists by name, . . . Obama was angry that a few reporters did not join the cult of Obama worship; Trump is peeved almost no one in the press is disinterested. Trump saw Obama’s precedent, and proverbially trumped it." Victor Davis Hanson

 "Sputtering journalists (Jim Rutenberg, Carl Bernstein, Jorge Ramos, Christiane Amanpour) are exasperated to the point of openly confessing that their craft should give up empirical reporting to deal with Trump, without shame any longer over the partisan propaganda their organizations and colleagues peddle. Those declarations are not a change of course, but a confession of what the media have been doing from the election of Barack Obama. The logical media progression from eerie Obama worship was to creepy Trump hatred." VDH

"People are tired of the social justice warrior Obama frolicking in Tahiti, the feminist Hillary Clinton excusing four decades of the sexual predations of her husband upon the weak, the supposedly in the know campus bullies picking on the vulnerable while shelling out a quarter-million dollars for a mediocre education; the progressive media decrying inequality and fairness amid face-surgeries, hair plugs, nannies, and prep schools; the Silicon Valley masters of the universe sermonizing on the evils of walls, inequality, and social justice from their gated hideaways, servants, and schemes to monopolize, offshore, outsource, and avoid taxes." VDH

https://amgreatness.com/2017/07/02/trumps-high-stakes-tweeting/

What's in a name?

 "American society lavished scholarships on the upper-middle-class prep-school graduate Barack Hussein Obama but perhaps would not have done so much for just another Barry Dunham. It is not surprising that when George Zimmerman had been in a fight with Trayvon Martin, his scars were photoshopped away and his 911 call racialized. Would that have happened had he chosen to go by the name of Jorge Mesa?" Victor Davis Hanson

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429215/anti-westernism-hypocrisy

Mission Accomplished. . . oops

“As he precipitously pulled out all U.S. peacekeepers from Iraq, the president had his own “Mission Accomplished” moment when declaring the country “stable,” “self-reliant,” and an “extraordinary achievement.” “ VDH

But Obama showed himself to be a weak and confused leader after the war was essentially over and won by the time he took office in January 2009 with nothing left to do but stabilize the victories.  His supporters didn’t seem to notice, but the terrorists certainly took note.  Now that ISIS has overrun the region, he is looking around for someone to blame.  Bush and the Republicans, of course.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/381831/how-obama-lost-middle-east-victor-davis-hanson

Conservatives who don't get it

When I listen to Rush or Hannity or read Karl Rove or Victor Davis Hanson, sometimes I just shake my head. They are speaking/writing as though Obama really intends to save the country instead of destroy it. They ponder the stupid, idiotic, unpatriotic things he is doing and wonder why he thinks they will work. He's not stupid, gentlemen, and those things like the apology tours or taking over car companies only look dumb if you still believe he has any intention of being a real president. Haven't you ever known anyone whose job it was to fire all his co-workers after a merger, and then finally lock up the empty store and walk out with his paycheck?

Hanson (a classicist and a farmer) begins an excellent story of his relationship with a very difficult neighbor over water rights with a note about the trillions and trillions of national debt Obama is ringing up and how there aren't enough "rich" to tax, so that will leave it to the rest of us to bail him out. He closes with

"Obama will come to his senses with his ‘Bush did it’, reset button, moral equivalency, soaring hope and change, with these apologies to Europeans, his Arab world Sermons on the Mount to Al Arabiya, in Turkey, in Cairo, etc., his touchy-feely videos to Iran, his “we are all victims of racism” sops to Ortega, Chavez, and Morales. It is only a matter of when, under what conditions, how high the price we must pay, and whether we lose the farm before he gains wisdom about the tragic universe in which we live." VDH June 5

No, he won't "come to his senses," and it isn't just a matter of time, because he hasn't lost them and there is no more time. He is doing exactly what he planned to do, just a little faster than we all expected.

Hope he can change says VDH

"Anyone who cares about the U.S., at home and overseas, must be worried, very worried, about the disastrous last two weeks. Even the fawning media — that is responsible in some way for the crisis, given that they chose to be Pravda-like in encouraging the messianic style that got a haughty Obama in his present mess — will soon start bailing in efforts to restore their last fides. If a Dick Morris figure does not come to the rescue soon, Obama’s soaring rhetoric of hope and change will become the stuff of Leno/Letterman and general laughter. Bush was unfairly demonized, but no one abroad thought he was predictably soft and would be so-so about protecting U.S. interests, or that his words and his deeds would be so often in direct antithesis."

. . . the most exalted ethical rhetoric ever, and the greatest ethical lapses of any incipient administration in memory. Over 10 lobbyists now appointed, plus all the tax problems.

. . . the Blago tapes yet to be released.

. . . inflated lectures on historic foreign policy made by the clumsy political novice who trashed his own country and his predecessor in the most ungracious manner overseas to a censured Saudi-run press organ

. . . shrill campaign rhetoric about FISA, Guantanamo, Patriot Act, Iraq, followed by ‘all that for now staying the same’

. . . the stimulus is an ungodly disaster

. . . Robert Gibbs, the new press secretary is, is a Scott McClellan nightmare that won’t go away

. . . Biden has ridiculed the Chief Justice, trashed the former VP and bragged on himself ad nauseam

. . . really creepy people abroad are now lining up to test Obama

. . . Read the full article, if you dare, by Victor Davis Hansen

3159 Hanson on illegal immigration

One of the things that handed the Republicans their heads last Tuesday was their namby-pamby stand on illegal immigration. Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on whether or not the flow of illegals across the border is actually a good thing for Mexico and the USA, as we are often told. I think we know that Democrats, who need more victims, more low wage workers, more members for their unions, and more household and farm help (including Ms. Pelosi), will try to stop any reasonable solution to keep them out.

Even if it were true that Mexican families are more traditional (and apparently they aren't), take a look at any American city where the children are growing up without their fathers, and women without husbands. The elderly without their sons. Would we think a city like that was a good idea for a solid social and economic base? Are they picking up the negatives of our culture or transporting their poverty and crime across the border?

We've been watching what has been happening in Oaxaca because friends of ours have a son and daughter-in-law who had to flee and are now living with them temporarily in Columbus. However, the family of their daughter-in-law is still there. Hanson specifically comments on Oaxaca.

". . . the state of Oaxaca is also one of the chief sources of illegal immigration to the United States. Hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied Oaxacans have fled to the U.S. and now send millions of dollars back southward. Why, then, is the city on the brink of chaos? Could it be that far from stabilizing Mexico, the continual flight of millions of Mexico's disenchanted - one in 10 currently live in the U.S. - has only made things worse..." The rest of the story.

nablopomo
illegal immigration
Oaxaca

3013 Before you vote

be sure to read Victor Davis Hanson's assessment of where we are in the Middle East. Then if you still want "cut and run" candidates, pause and say a prayer for all the millions of Vietnamese we sent to their death the last time we did that.

". . . by the historical standards of most wars, we have done well enough to win in Iraq, and still have a good shot of doing the impossible in seeing this government survive. More importantly still, worldwide we are beating the Islamic fundamentalists and their autocratic supporters. Iranian-style theocracy has not spread. For all the talk of losing Afghanistan, the Taliban are still dispersed or in hiding — so is al Qaeda. Europe is galvanizing against Islamism in a way unimaginable just three years ago. The world is finally focusing on Iran. Hezbollah did not win the last war, but lost both prestige and billions of dollars in infrastructure, despite a lackluster effort by Israel. Elections have embarrassed a Hamas that, the global community sees, destroys most of what it touches and now must publicly confess that it will never recognize Israel. Countries like Libya are turning, and Syria is more isolated. If we keep the pressure up in Iraq and Afghanistan and work with our allies, Islamism and its facilitators will be proven bankrupt.

In contrast, if we should withdraw from Iraq right now, there will be an industry in the next decade of hindsight exposés — but they won’t be the gotcha ones like State of Denial or Fiasco. Instead we will revisit the 1974-5 Vietnam genre of hindsight — of why after such heartbreak and sacrifice the United States gave up when it was so close to succeeding." VDH Private Papers