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I'm normally like, hey, whatever, man, but now I have to

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do it. Okay, ask not
what your country can do for you,

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ask what you can do for your
country. Mister Garba Schaff Tear down this

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wall. It's a Rickchet Podcast's number
six hundred ninety seven. I'm Rob Long,

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Peter Robinson and James Lovelas are off
this week. I am joined by

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the Great Steve Dyward and We're going
to have a long, interesting, stem

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winding conversation with the Great Victor Davis
Hanton. Stay tuned. Are they are

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cheap fakes video? They are done
in bad day, and I think that

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it tells you everything that we need
to know about how desperate, how desperate

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Republicans are here Hotter, thank you
for introduction, for sharing your family story.

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You know I've often said anyway,
not a joke, Not a joke.

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Hello and welcome to the Ricochet Podcast. It is Friday, June twenty

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first. It's the longest day of
the year. Doesn't feel like but I

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guess it's going to be. I
am Rob Long, coming from New York

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City, joined by Steve Hayward.
Steve, where are you? By the

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way, I'm actually in Marin County
behind enemy lines, believe it or not.

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Exactly right, Well, did you
see that, Like the Bay Area

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now is advertising itself to the rest
of central California, which is really hot,

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by saying it's misty here or it's
cool here. It's beyond misty.

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It is freezing cold here, and
we're all wearing puffy jackets. It's unbelievable.

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That's one hundred degrees here. So
well, James Lylacks, who's usually

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here, is off today, and
Peter Robinson's usually here is off today.

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So Steve is just you and me. So a Monday, at a celebration

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of the twelfth anniversary of the Dreamers
Act, I remember that one President Biden

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announced a new immigration order to provide
a pathway to citizenship for people who entered

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illegally but have since married citizens.
And they have to have been here for

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ten years. So that's about half
a million immigrants. Apparently we'll qualify for

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that. You know, I thought
the move was going to be just get

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tough on immigration between now and you
know, November was six or whatever,

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and then loosen the strings. But
I guess that isn't That isn't what he's

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doing. Yeah, I mean There's
three things occurred to me quickly. One

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is, is he trying to lose
the election? I mean, surely they

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know the polls that immigration has become, you know, the number one or

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two issue with people, and people
are because they don't like what's happening.

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Second thing is it does look like
a purely cynical political play to try and

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attract Hispanic voters in Arizona and Nevada. Okay, I guess I get that,

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but it may cost them more than
it gains them. But then,

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third, you know, one of
the more revealing things Biden said in another

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issue, but it relates to this
one, was two three weeks ago or

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maybe more, he said, oh, the Supreme Court said I couldn't forgive

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student loans, but I didn't let
that stop me. Oh so, you

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know, a whole branch of government
says what you're doing is illegal, and

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you know, what's this about the
rules? Nobody's above the law, right,

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I didn't let them think all the
law stop exactly. And you know

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DACA from what ten twelve years ago, that's always been under legal cloud and

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I think still is. And I
think this new move is also vulnerable to

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a challenge by the way the Deep
Senate says, maybe they would like a

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federal court to do an injunction.
See those mean Trump judges are stopping us

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from being compassionate, and that's why
you have to vote for me. I'm

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not persuaded, certainly, but that
could be their crazy thinking and does seem

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like a bigger mouse trap that he's
building to try to catch a mouse that

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he could easily catch by simply saying
we're going to enforce the border, right.

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I mean, that is such an
obvious thing. It's hard to argue,

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even if you're in favor of immigration
reform and am seeing all those other

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things that that wouldn't be if that's
not a component to it. I just

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just talk about politics for a minute. I mean, I you know,

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there's always that moment where you think, am I just missing something and they

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have a secret plan that I can't
imagine what that secret plan is? But

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why aren't they running around with a
hair on fire? I mean, I

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would be doing that if I was
an incumbent president and an incumbent presidential staff

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and campaign operation looking at this,
I think it just doesn't seem like it's

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like that. You know, you're
a poker. You were playing poker and

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the guy is sitting there and he's
got this smug look on his face.

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You think, is he bluffing or
does he really have the cards? And

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I cannot imagine that anyone in Biden
world thinks they have the cards. You

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know, our mutual friend John pot
Harts has been saying for a while that

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this campaign of Biden's reminds him of
the George hw Bush campaign in nineteen ninety

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two, And of course John was
there for that. He worked in that

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bush By and the wheels came off
of everything. Nothing they did worked.

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They kept being confident, well,
things will turn around for us, without

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having a theory why. They're totally
out of touch with reality. And he

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thinks the same exact things happening to
Biden. I mean a couple of little

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things. And I'm sure you know
from your show business perspective you'd appreciate is

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you have always dreadful videos showing Biden
barely functioning, wandering off, and and

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they're pushing back on it in a
way that simply calls more attention to it.

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Right. You had greeen John Pierre
out saying these are cheap fake videos

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and that just gives the right,
It just gives the story another whole two

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or three news cycles. And I'm
guessing somebody, maybe Biden, maybe doctor

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Jill, maybe their political strategists,
say you've got to go out and push

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back on this. It looks just
as pathetic to me as when Donald Trump,

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on the second day in office,
made Sean Spicer go out and defend

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the claim that it was the biggest
to knock to the peast ever, right

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right, remember, so ludicrous And
all it did was call attention to you

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know, one of the obvious defects
that Trump has, which is grandiosity.

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So the same thing's happening here.
I don't everybody seems to have lost their

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grip on political reality, and maybe
both parties it's an all. You know

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the little British comedy called Blackadder,
and there was just one guy on black

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Adder, the sort of the sad
little character. He'd always say, I

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have a cunning plan, and then
he would tell you what the plan was,

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and you think, oh my god, we're all going to die.

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I think that's what that light was. Oh my god, we're all gonna

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Dutch. It does feel like their
their attitude is, you know, we

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just have to let we just have
to hold our breath and let Trump be

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Trump. That their solution and their
strategy is. And I think this is

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a bigger This is one of the
biggest problems I think with with with with

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American politics and American leadership in general, is the idea that I don't have

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to do anything. The other guy
is so horrible and he's gonna make his

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own mistakes. I can just stand
there and he's gonna make his own mistakes.

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Yeah, and I'm gonna The smart
play here is for me to try

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to win this election by one vote. Yeah, and we're so smart.

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We can slice up the electorate,
and we can slice up all of the

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precincts so we can figure out which
household, all that stuff, all that

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crap that they do, and they
do it in show business too, right.

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And the irony is that if you're
once you start thinking that way,

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you will only win by one vote. Once you start thinking I'm gonna be

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as smart and I'm gonna I'm gonna
be strategic, then you could only be

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strategic that way. The whole operation
It becomes about how do I just win

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one vote to and he won more
vote in Pennsylvania and yeah, and that

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is like the I mean, that
is just the worst lowest form of leadership

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I can imagine. Yeah, I
mean, you know who else had that

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theory was Jimmy Carter in nineteen eighty. They thought and said all the way

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through O Reagan is so unacceptable that
people have to come around and even though

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he's little ahead of us in the
polls, we may be able to play

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an inside straight in the electro college. And they lost by ten points,

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lost forty four states. I think
there's something similar with Trump. I think

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there the left is either doesn't perceive
but the smart ones do, or they're

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just in denial about the fact that
he has a similar appeal, that he

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runs ahead of his polls, and
so they may be in for a very

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rude shock. And so you know, right now, I think I've said

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this before, I right now think
Trump's going to win comfortably. That could

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change, may very well change,
because you know, if you have Trump

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working for the other side, right
But you know, right now, you

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know, I don't see Biden getting
any better for him. Yeah, I

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just it's it's a strange thing.
You're like, well, I understand why

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Biden doesn't get it because he's you
know, out to lunch. But I

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don't understand why nobody else in his
world gets it. So I mean,

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maybe it's just too complicated. And
speaking of complicated, well sorry, I'm

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gonna have one thought of that,
which is On the other hand, the

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recent history, especially of Obama's reelection
campaign in twenty twelve, remember something about

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Obama. He was the first president
ever re elected with a lower vote total

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than his initial election. Most re
elected presidents get more votes. But what

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they did, brilliantly and very scientifically
was fined every marginal vote that was sort

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of weakly for Obama and get that
person of the polls in the key states

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like Ohio. And I got to
think that democratic machine still exists, and

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I think the Biden people may be
counting on that, and they might be

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right to have some confidence in that
drill. Yeah, but you know,

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the Obama thing was interesting because he
started with such a cushion. I mean,

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his win in two thousand and eight
was the smashing popular of a victory

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and a smashing electoral college victory,
and so he could afford to like leak

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support for four years, which he
did. He could afford to like turn

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off people who have wanted this moderate
guy a chance by being too far left.

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Hey, just kind of do that, and he's I'm still gonna win.

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That's how I mean. He was
like one of those billionaires who loses

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one hundred million dollars, like,
yeah, no, I don't even know

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it's self a change man, can
I can still do it? But all

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of this stuff is so they've made
it so complicated, and they've this arrogance

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of the marketer. And you think
by now they would know. You think

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by now they would know things are
complicated. For instance, you Steve,

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have you ever heard of synalytics yet? No? I have not. It's

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00:09:52,799 --> 00:09:56,480
a class of ingredients discovered less than
ten years ago, when they're being called

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the biggest discovery of our time for
promoting healthy aging and enhancing your physical prime.

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Your life. Goals in your career
and beyond require productivity. But let's

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be honest, the aging process is
not our friend when it comes to endless

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energy and productivity. That's why I
use quality analytic. If someone would to

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tell me that there are science backed
ingredients that could help me feel fifteen years

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younger in a matter of months,
I wouldn't have believed it. Then I

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tried quality yet s Analytic. As
we age, everything accumulates senescent cells in

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their body. Everyone accumulates sentacent cells, and about everyone not we all do,

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but we everyone does. Also known
these are cells. Also know this

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is as complicated as you know,
Steve. This is like science. So

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00:10:33,919 --> 00:10:37,279
I'm gonna you know. It's also
known as zombie cells. That's what we

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00:10:37,320 --> 00:10:41,240
call zombie cells. And they're old
and they're worn out, and they're not

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serving a useful function for our health
anymore, and they're taking up space and

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nutrients from our healthy cells. So
like proving the yellowing and deadlys off a

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plant, Qualitas Analytic removes those worn
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these things, They send you free

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samples. And so I tried it. And you don't dig it every day.

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It's like you take it like for
three days in a row or something,

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and then and then you don't do
it for another month. And it

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this is really kind of a strange kind

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of endorsement, but they were so
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so now I'm a customer as well
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for making an amazing product. The
good thing, Steve, for you and

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me is that we don't have to
be smart today. We can be dumb

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00:12:07,440 --> 00:12:11,279
because we are joined by one of
the smartest guys around, Victor Davis Hanson.

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00:12:11,559 --> 00:12:13,200
Victor does not need any introduction.
We're gonna do it anyway because it's

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00:12:13,240 --> 00:12:18,320
good podcast hygiene. You know him. He is the Senior Fellow in Classics

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00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:20,759
and Military History, the Hoover Institution. He's authored a bajillion I think the

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00:12:20,759 --> 00:12:28,879
actual numbers of bajillion books, including
the The Cry in the Wilderness called Mexophornia,

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which came out many years ago and
is absolutely pinpoint relevant today. Unfortunately,

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it should be a book that we
look on and see in the past,

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00:12:39,320 --> 00:12:43,279
but we haven't solved the problem yet. And his latest book is The

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00:12:43,360 --> 00:12:48,519
End of Everything, How Wars Descend
into Annihilation. Victor. Welcome, Thank

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00:12:48,559 --> 00:12:50,039
you for having me. You guys, So, I have a couple of

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00:12:50,080 --> 00:12:56,240
questions because I want a little bit
of a history perspective. Yeah, I

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I'm doing as you. I mean, you may not know, but this

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00:12:58,240 --> 00:13:03,039
I'm sort of going off to seminary
next fall. I'm going to come.

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00:13:03,440 --> 00:13:05,720
Yeah. So I'm doing a lot
of reading, and I'm doing a lot

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00:13:05,720 --> 00:13:09,519
of like New test Old Testament,
Hebrew Bible reading, yes, and kind

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00:13:09,519 --> 00:13:13,720
of and like. And there's a
point at which, you know, there's

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the there's a point which it just
feels very bronze age, and then there's

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00:13:16,080 --> 00:13:26,000
a point when suddenly it's Greek and
Alexander and Roman and they have been fighting,

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00:13:28,120 --> 00:13:33,960
these empires have been fighting in that
land for ever. It seems like,

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00:13:35,039 --> 00:13:43,519
yes, well, it becomes part
of the Holy Land, so to

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speak, what is now Jordan.
The West Bank Gaza in Israel becomes part

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of the so called West in about
three point thirty one when Alexander wins a

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battle of Isis, and then he
absorbs what was the the cane Persian Empire,

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and in that empire is Judea and
the Jews, and he pretty much

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he and his successors the Seleucids and
leave them alone. And then that empire

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is absorbed by Rome. Part of
it. The Adelids give it to Rome

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in the second century AD, but
by the first century BC, excuse me,

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the first century BC, that comes
under Roman domination, and then you

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have Herod the Great, who's a
client king, and everything seems to be

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working well until the Romans decide that
they can't give any more exemptions to the

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Jews, who won't honor the emperor
because now they've transition as a deity.

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So then we have the Vespasian and
Titus destroy Jerusalem, and that starts the

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beginning of the diaspora. But there'll
be a number of revolts after that as

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well. That's when Greek and Latin
start to become part of the Exus Jesus

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of not only the Old Testament,
but the New Testament. Is I mean

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the New Testament will be will be
written somewhere around forty five to ninety a

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d. And there's some There are
two moments in the Hebrew Bible, I

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guess, or the Tanok they I
guess they always happen a new name for

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the Tanak. They're kind of chilling. One is Alexander zips through Judea on

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his way to Gaza and they eat. There's no there's no mention of like

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any I think it's herodous. There's
no mention of the Jews. They don't,

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they don't show up. They're not. But to to read it and

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to see these names, yeah,
I know they're they're Persian subjects and they're

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they don't they're not. They've been
they've been given certain exemptions under the Persian

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Empire. And they're not sure what
his siege of God. They don't know

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what's gonna When he's besieges Tire and
Gaza, he nobody, he doesn't know

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who's going to win. And he's
only twenty one twenty three at this point.

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So a lot of people not just
the Jews, but a lot of

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people are just waiting to see if
he's really going to destroy the Persian Empire

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and then they'll make cut a deal
with him. But they don't want to

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go out on a limb and join
him and then find out he's going to

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lose. Well why And there's another
kind of creepy or mentioned in the creepy

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moment, but like thrilling moment really
in the movie where you know how it

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ends, and it's I think it's
in Second Maccabees or something, and they

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are it's a part of the sort
of political assessment, and they're saying,

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look, everybody's so crappy to us
here, the Persians and the Greeks.

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There's a new empire over there a
little farther west in Rome. Let's why

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don't we Why don't we see if
they'll come and help us get independent?

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And when you're reading it, it's
like you're in a movie and you want

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to say no, no, no, no, no, that's not going

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to be good either. That's not
a solution either, no, But it

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does. It's both. It's really
and depressing to think that people have been

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arguing over this eleven mile wide in
some places, peace of land for thousands

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of years, and we thought,
we thought we had a solution. I

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mean, ir yeah, it is. I mean, you're it's ironic when

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I walk across the Stanford campus and
hear all of these people saying from the

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river to the sea and their settlers
and their interlopers about the Jews. And

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we've got to remember that the Jews
were they began to spread after the destruction

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of the Second Temple and the City
of Jerusalem. But there was still a

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large population of Jews, and we
had the Maccabee re evolutions, et cetera.

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But when the Empire fell in the
West, that became part of the

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Byzantine Empire, and the Byzantines allowed
the Jews to stay there and they had

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pretty good relations until the mid six
hundreds when Islam came in and took and

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took the Holy Land. So we're
talking about I think you could argue that

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there's evidence of Jewish civilization with a
written language as early as thirteen or fourteen

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hundred pc some evidence. So then
you're talking about two thousand years before Islam

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even came to the Holy Land.
And who was there was the Jews that

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were there, and there were Jewish
settlements, not a lot, but that

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were continuous all the time, people
families that lived there all the way up

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until modern time. But it's a
very strange thing about radical Islam is that

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once Radical Islam goes into an area, they claim it as its ancestral homeland.

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They do that with Spain. That
was one of the biggest talking points

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of Osama bin laden LuSE. This
was ours, No, it wasn't.

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You came in in the seventh century
and tried to steal it, and then

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you occupied it for four hundred five
hundred years, but you were always at

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war with Iberians. And the same
thing is true of the Holy Land.

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The same thing is true of North
Africa. It was it was punique.

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Actually it was indigenous Berbers, and
then the Punic under the Carthaginians came in

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the eighth century, and then they
were wiped out by the Romans, and

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then the Romans from essentially one forty
six all the way into the four fifties,

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and then the Byzantines recaptured it and
the Vandals took it, and then

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they recaptured it from the Vandals and
held it for almost one hundred and fifty

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years and then the Islam was the
last those were the last arrivals on the

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scene. And yet when you talk
to people, I've been to all of

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those Middle East countries in North Africa, and yet you talk to people,

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they think it's been Islamic from the
beginning of time. And it's really weird.

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It's a very rare, weird mindset
when you talk to people like that.

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I was just gonna see what's to
jump in. I was in Tunis

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a few years ago, and you
know, hiking around Carthage, and it's,

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first of all, it's amazing to
think that all we're looking at is

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about ten percent of what's there,
that there's more underneath all those neighborhoods and

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houses have been built over the years. And then they show you the Carthaginian

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sort of naval yard. This is
a big circle, big round thing,

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and it's it's kind of like,
I mean, this is wrong, this

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is absolutely the wrong interpretation. But
were like this, this is kind of

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small, like the Romans were afraid
of these guys like this looked like I

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mean, like at locals, like
it's a local doc. You know,

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it's not that big. Well,
part of the problem was that the city

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actually reached its highest population right before
it was destroyed, about five hundred and

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fifty six hundred thousand people. And
Scipio the philosopher, supposedly with Polybius at

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his side, destroyed that city.
I mean, we have a description an

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00:21:07,640 --> 00:21:12,240
Appian, very graphic. They destroyed
it blocked by block. They didn't so

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salt in the ground that was a
medieval add on, but they leveled it.

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And then they prohibited anybody from settling
it. And then the Grocca I

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00:21:21,920 --> 00:21:27,319
tried to bring in some left wing
people and make kind of a utopian veterans

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communal city, and that just failed. And then for one hundred years it

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was this desolate and then when Caesar
came, he created something called Carthago Nova,

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and that was a new city of
Carthage, and it was not quite

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on the same side of the rubble, it was near it. And that

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00:21:45,519 --> 00:21:53,480
harbor you're seen is the Roman rebuilding
of what was wiped out as the Carthaginians.

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So there's almost none of the old
Ginian Punic city, but the remains

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today are the Roman city. When
the Roman city, my gosh, it

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was at I think by the first
century AD. It was the fourth largest

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city in the Empire, after Rome
and Constantinople and Antioch. Victor at Steve

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00:22:15,640 --> 00:22:19,640
Hayward out in I'm well, First
of all, I think Rob did this

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00:22:19,680 --> 00:22:22,519
too quickly. You know things are
bad when Rob Long is going off the

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00:22:22,559 --> 00:22:30,079
seminary and he's like, he's like
Augustine going to hit the oregas as the

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vandals are outside the city. God, you figured it out exactly like Fellas.

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Yeah. And the irony is is
I'm today in San Francisco, believe

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00:22:40,559 --> 00:22:44,039
it or not, speaking at a
panel on climate change, and it's freezing

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00:22:44,200 --> 00:22:48,079
cold here. It's you know,
any more perfect, right, It's colder

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00:22:48,119 --> 00:22:52,359
than even it is usually here.
But look, Rob went off the seminary.

317
00:22:52,640 --> 00:22:55,160
I saw the title of your new
book, The End of Everything,

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How Wars descend into Annihilation, And
I thought, ah, Victor's taking a

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00:22:59,119 --> 00:23:07,359
cheerful turn for a change. Look
there, there's great history here. But

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I think there's also parable, which
I think is your intention, or at

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least that's what I've taken away from
it. The subtext, and it's not

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very much sub is that America is
not immune from the peril of thinking.

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It's that things can happen quickly that
we are led by gullible and ignorant leaders.

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And you know, I think back
to Lincoln's Lycem address, which you

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00:23:30,359 --> 00:23:32,920
know, I know, you know, he said, look, we have

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00:23:32,960 --> 00:23:36,319
these two big moats around America.
This is eighteen thirty eight, right,

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00:23:36,680 --> 00:23:40,400
and so nobody can really invade us
and take us down. It's too hard.

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If we're going to fall, it
will be the authors of our own

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00:23:42,599 --> 00:23:45,160
destruction. And I still think there's
a lot that that's true, and maybe

330
00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:49,799
it connects to what you're after here. But you point out that a lot

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00:23:49,839 --> 00:23:53,079
of people have made a similar mistake
over the years and thinking either they're immune

332
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:57,519
that allies will come rescue them.
I've done the whole bullet point list of

333
00:23:57,559 --> 00:24:02,319
some of your observations. Give us
a scenario to this goes beyond the four

334
00:24:02,319 --> 00:24:04,160
corners of your book a little bit
this question, But give us a scenario

335
00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:10,720
or two of what you think are
our largest vulnerabilities that our leaders are oblivious

336
00:24:10,759 --> 00:24:15,039
to or not taking seriously. Well. In the book, all of these

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00:24:15,039 --> 00:24:22,160
societies had had long pedigrees, They
all had very impressive fortifications, they had

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00:24:22,440 --> 00:24:26,440
large empires. They all thought they
were invulnerable, and they had no idea

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00:24:26,640 --> 00:24:32,799
of the temperament of an Alexander the
Great, or Scipio or Memet, especially

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Hernan Cortes. And they all thought
as you said, and I pointed out

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that the Allies would save them,
or they could negotiate, and they all

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knew that complete annihilation was very rare
and roarer. But when I looked at

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00:24:45,279 --> 00:24:49,640
the present world, and I looked
at all the people who have been leveling

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existential threats, I mean existential by
saying we want to wipe you off the

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00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:59,880
face of the earth. That's Kim
Jong Own. I was surprised that early

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00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:03,440
he is threatened to send missiles into
Athens. He's threatened to send them into

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00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:10,319
an Ecosia. He said about Nagorno, the corridor that they just ethnically cleanse

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00:25:10,799 --> 00:25:14,119
one hundred and fifty thousand Armenians.
He said, this was the solution our

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00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:18,319
grandfathers used, and we'll use it
again. He's threatened to wipe out the

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Kurds. We've had Putin. I
think I counted seventeen news accounts of Russian

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00:25:22,119 --> 00:25:29,960
media Putin saying they would use nuclear
weapons if they felt it was necessary in

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Ukraine. And then China issued a
video remember about having to wipe out Japan

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00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:37,799
if it intervened in Taiwan. And
then I looked at the reaction. Everybody

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00:25:37,839 --> 00:25:41,440
said, this is crazy. They
never do this. This isn't even Iran.

355
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:45,880
Mister Ruff and Johnny said twenty years
ago that Israel was a one bomb

356
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:52,359
state. So there's a pattern here, and when I look at the United

357
00:25:52,359 --> 00:25:55,480
States, it kind of unfortunately falls
into the pattern. One of them is

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financial insolvency. All of these cities
did not have the wherewithal that they thought

359
00:26:02,079 --> 00:26:04,039
they had. So we look at
the United States, we are borrowing a

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00:26:04,079 --> 00:26:10,960
trillion every ninety days. And what's
funny about that is there's no one on

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00:26:11,039 --> 00:26:15,440
either side has a plan. I
mean, I thought at some point somebody

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00:26:15,440 --> 00:26:19,599
would say, well, Alan,
Simpson and Bowles had a plan, a

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00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:25,599
very simplified tax code, which had
we adopted when Obama formed the Commission in

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00:26:25,640 --> 00:26:30,519
two thousand and nine, we would
be balanced budget and we would have half

365
00:26:30,559 --> 00:26:33,160
the death paid off. But no
one's talking about that. And yet the

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00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:37,400
interest on the dead is, Neil
Ferguson pointed out not too long ago in

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00:26:37,400 --> 00:26:41,200
an article, is larger than our
defense budget, and the interest rate is

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00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:45,519
five five and a half percent,
so it's about thirteen or fourteen percent of

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00:26:45,519 --> 00:26:49,119
the entire budget. So that is
hampering us. When Trump says he's going

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to rebuild the military and up it
back to four or five percent GDP,

371
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you want to know where he's going
to get the money, and that the

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only way you get the money is
to cut The second thing is the borders

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have collapsed. All these societies could
not enforce their borders for a variety of

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00:27:04,839 --> 00:27:08,839
reasons. But our border is not
for us. It doesn't exist. They

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00:27:08,880 --> 00:27:15,119
don't believe in borders. They feel
that they're constructs, and in this globalized

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00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:18,519
mindset, everybody has an inbreak natural
right to go wherever he wants. That's

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00:27:18,519 --> 00:27:25,200
a charitable view that the uncharitable is
that this is what they call the new

378
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:30,319
democratic majority or demography is destiny,
to quote some of the books that they

379
00:27:30,359 --> 00:27:33,079
write. But we don't know what
ten million people are doing in this country,

380
00:27:33,359 --> 00:27:38,960
and we'll never I think it will
take twenty years if you had conservative

381
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:44,440
administrations to fix this. And by
fixing, I mean find out all the

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00:27:44,519 --> 00:27:49,480
ten million people are here, give
them background checks to port the bad people,

383
00:27:49,839 --> 00:27:53,920
give some process to get a green
cart. It's a control mess.

384
00:27:53,920 --> 00:27:59,720
And it was by intent, and
then of course something is deadly wrong with

385
00:27:59,759 --> 00:28:06,640
their military. And that's something that
happened in these case studies that I showed.

386
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:11,640
We have forty five thousand people who
did not they were not recruited.

387
00:28:12,279 --> 00:28:15,640
The Pentagon says, well, it's
because the job market is tied, or

388
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:18,880
people are obese, or they're in
gangs, or they're not. But they've

389
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:22,440
lowered the standards and they still can't
get them. But when you actually don't

390
00:28:22,440 --> 00:28:26,039
listen to the Pentagon, but you
go online and very carefully, it's very

391
00:28:26,079 --> 00:28:30,960
hard to do. But a couple
of us have looked at it. They

392
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:36,839
do have demographies of the people who
are not joining. Latinos are joining,

393
00:28:36,839 --> 00:28:40,599
Blacks are joining, women are joining
everybody, but you know who, white

394
00:28:40,599 --> 00:28:45,799
males. White males are not joining
the military. And when you look at

395
00:28:45,839 --> 00:28:52,319
the fatality rates in Afghanistan and Iraq, they died at roughly seventy five and

396
00:28:52,440 --> 00:28:56,559
seventy four percent wwise. They're numbers
and the demography, so basically the military.

397
00:28:56,640 --> 00:29:03,920
When Mill went on congressional testimony with
Austin and Gilgad or whatever his name

398
00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:06,960
was, Chief of Naval Operations in
twenty one and They said that they were

399
00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:11,160
going to hunt out white rage,
they were going to read Professor Kenny's book,

400
00:29:11,440 --> 00:29:15,359
and then they bounced out eighty five
hundred people who had most of them

401
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:18,559
had natural immunity, and they said
they went vacks. They sent a message

402
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:23,519
that these people were not wanted or
that they wanted to be promoted or retained.

403
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:29,640
They were going to be DEI standards. And they just said, fine,

404
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:32,720
I don't want to do it,
especially after Afghanistan, that humiliation,

405
00:29:33,519 --> 00:29:37,039
and so now we don't have the
people that we send that volunteer to go

406
00:29:37,079 --> 00:29:44,400
to god awful places like Helman Province
or Fallujah. The condition of the military,

407
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:48,200
the morales bad I hear from people
is giving me flashbacks. And I'm

408
00:29:48,240 --> 00:29:52,160
not sure whether to invoke the old
Santa Ana people who don't remember the pastor

409
00:29:52,279 --> 00:29:56,960
doing to repeat it, or the
or Marxist line. The history repeats FIRSTUS

410
00:29:56,079 --> 00:30:00,519
tresiting then as farse. But I'm
having flashed the Carter years when you had

411
00:30:00,519 --> 00:30:04,880
a lot of the same thing happening. Very low morale inflation had put some

412
00:30:04,920 --> 00:30:11,079
of these soldiers below the poverty line. Things didn't work Desert one, and

413
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:15,440
I thought it was not possible to
exceed the gullibility and ignorance of the Carter

414
00:30:15,519 --> 00:30:18,079
administration. But right now, I
would take ze big new Berzinski and cy

415
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:22,200
vance back in a heartbeat compared to
our current leadership, which seems to me

416
00:30:22,240 --> 00:30:26,319
an order of magnitude worse than the
Carter people were. Yes, I'm glad

417
00:30:26,359 --> 00:30:30,640
you brought that up. I've wrote
an article, but I didn't realize,

418
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:34,519
and you're the Reagan historian. I
didn't realize when I went back and spent

419
00:30:34,599 --> 00:30:41,079
about four or five days reviewing that
campaign how close that race was. Yes,

420
00:30:41,279 --> 00:30:44,960
in June and right about now.
I mean, I think the polls

421
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:48,839
were slanting, but Reagan was either
a point back or three points up,

422
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:52,839
and went back and forth, and
he really didn't break that open until wasn't

423
00:30:52,839 --> 00:30:57,319
there a poll Stephen like ten days
before by Gallop that had Carter even ahead.

424
00:30:57,559 --> 00:31:00,759
Yes, I think that's right.
Yes, And so I think it's

425
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:07,720
very similar because we hear that Trump
is ahead with he's making historic inroads with

426
00:31:07,960 --> 00:31:12,240
youth, with Latinos, Blacks,
even Asians are coming back. But when

427
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:18,720
you look at the national polls,
Fox had Biden ahead. So either that

428
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:22,880
that in road is only in these
swing states. And then the California population

429
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:26,119
of New York makes up for it
on the national level or there they're not

430
00:31:26,880 --> 00:31:30,039
accurate. And it reminds me so
much of Reagan, and what they said

431
00:31:30,039 --> 00:31:34,920
about Trump and Reagan were eerie.
That Reagan had no federal he had never

432
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:40,559
been, had never been a federally
elected official, that he was going to

433
00:31:40,799 --> 00:31:45,960
blow up the world. George W. Bush had called him voodoo economics,

434
00:31:47,000 --> 00:31:51,440
and uh, he was too old, and Carter was going to slice him

435
00:31:51,519 --> 00:31:53,640
up in the debate. It was. It was very reminiscent. So that

436
00:31:53,720 --> 00:32:00,039
gave me a little bit of hope
that this election, if they keep doing

437
00:32:00,079 --> 00:32:05,079
what they're doing, and Carter was
pandering in the same way. I mean

438
00:32:06,079 --> 00:32:10,119
Biden when he sells out Israel for
a few thousand votes in Michigan, or

439
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:16,000
he drains the strategic petroleum or this
latest amnesty or the tariffs are working with

440
00:32:16,079 --> 00:32:22,039
Obador now to send people away from
the border, or the student loan forgiveness.

441
00:32:22,079 --> 00:32:27,079
He thinks that he can patch up
all of these little slivers of you

442
00:32:27,119 --> 00:32:29,559
know, pandering, and they're going
to make a majority. I don't think

443
00:32:29,559 --> 00:32:30,839
it's going to work, and I
don't think people like what he's doing.

444
00:32:31,720 --> 00:32:35,799
But so I think it could break. I think it could be broken open.

445
00:32:36,319 --> 00:32:40,759
I think if Trump is careful and
gets you know, I don't know,

446
00:32:42,039 --> 00:32:45,920
that's a broken record. But if
he doesn't, if he doesn't go

447
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:50,519
after and call people, you know, right he said about Paul laying the

448
00:32:50,519 --> 00:32:54,440
other I started laughing. He said, get that dog off of the I

449
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:57,599
mean, if he hadn't said the
word dog, it might have been more

450
00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:04,039
effective. But he could blow this
thing apart. He really could. It

451
00:33:04,079 --> 00:33:07,039
does feel like a change election,
right, It does feel like that's what

452
00:33:07,359 --> 00:33:12,559
I think it change election. I
do because there's just so much It just

453
00:33:12,599 --> 00:33:15,000
feels like there's so much powder in
the keg here. It's just going to

454
00:33:15,079 --> 00:33:21,640
have to go. I would imagine
within two to three weeks, Israel will

455
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:27,799
feel that it's pretty much decimated Homos, and then when we get into late

456
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:31,640
July or August, it's going to
do something about his blaw and that's going

457
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:35,440
to be a big, nasty war
and that's going to put a lot of

458
00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:39,759
pressure. Part of the subtext of
what netnw who's video was about is that

459
00:33:39,799 --> 00:33:45,799
they're not giving them the actual Jaydam
adapted all of that stuff that's necessary to

460
00:33:45,839 --> 00:33:51,079
stock up for his belaw, and
that's going to be right during the election.

461
00:33:51,519 --> 00:33:55,079
And I think if Biden comes out, I mean, his blow doesn't

462
00:33:55,079 --> 00:34:00,519
get the kind of romance that the
Palestinians do. It gets some, Yeah,

463
00:34:00,559 --> 00:34:04,319
but it's very hard for a young, stupid, useful idiot on say

464
00:34:04,359 --> 00:34:09,360
Berkeley campus to start waving HASB law
flags. It's easier with Hamas, and

465
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:15,639
so I think that if he sells
Israel down the road and they get into

466
00:34:15,639 --> 00:34:20,199
an existential war with HESBI law and
you get major damage to hypha and stuff,

467
00:34:20,199 --> 00:34:22,719
it's going to really hurt him.
I think, by the way,

468
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:25,199
quick prediction Victor, I think that
if that comes to pass, and I

469
00:34:25,239 --> 00:34:30,800
think it will, I think the
Prohamas pro Palestinian left is going to aim

470
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:34,719
to shut down as many American campuses
as they can, and I think they

471
00:34:34,719 --> 00:34:37,679
will succeed. Yeah, it's hard
to know the stand. Did you see

472
00:34:37,679 --> 00:34:43,880
today that the Stanford outgoing president Richard
Salier, who might know he was a

473
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:50,840
classicist and I didn't think he was
particularly muscular giving all these second third chances.

474
00:34:50,840 --> 00:34:53,400
But they are going to prosecute the
so called journalists that claim that she

475
00:34:53,639 --> 00:34:59,039
was just happened to be there.
Right, And so I think they understand

476
00:35:00,039 --> 00:35:04,679
that if they get they all know
deep down inside that if any it's sort

477
00:35:04,679 --> 00:35:07,400
of like the French, you know, a whiff of grape shot, or

478
00:35:07,440 --> 00:35:14,599
they they hung Admiral being Voltaire and
encouraged the others that type of from Voltaire,

479
00:35:14,679 --> 00:35:17,800
that famous thing about what the British
do If they just had one strong,

480
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:22,599
muscular president that just put these kids
in jail for vandalism, burglary,

481
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:28,960
violence, assault, felony charges,
it would all dissipate. Yeah, So

482
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:31,079
what you're looking for is one act
of courage and academic a victor. Yeah,

483
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:37,719
I saw you're a historian, one
Saikawa haunted. Jump up on a

484
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:42,880
car and can we zoom out for
a minute, just talk about big sweeping

485
00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:51,800
things for a second. Margaret Thatcher, the the the serendipity of having Thatcher

486
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:58,920
in Downing Street and Reagan in the
White House. It was a huge unexpected

487
00:35:58,960 --> 00:36:01,599
thing to happen. Really. Yeah, but now it looks like if you

488
00:36:01,599 --> 00:36:06,440
look at the rest of Western Europe
right now, there is a in co

489
00:36:06,679 --> 00:36:13,599
it and probably in progress in information, a kind of center right maybe collection

490
00:36:13,880 --> 00:36:16,960
of coalitions that are happening all over
the place, in places that you never

491
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:22,280
expected in France, for instance,
or Holland, or in Germany or places

492
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:30,199
where this feels new, and it's
almost like we're America's out of step a

493
00:36:30,239 --> 00:36:32,760
little. It is. I just
got back from France. I took one

494
00:36:32,840 --> 00:36:37,800
hundred and sixty people for the eightieth
anniversary of D Day and traveled around all

495
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:40,840
over the country and talked to people. And you know what's funny is that

496
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:45,360
we all thought that Europeans were crazy, that they were these crazy socialist and

497
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:50,679
one world government and naive, and
they all there was a lot of truth

498
00:36:50,679 --> 00:36:54,679
to that, but compared to what
where Biden has taken us, they are

499
00:36:55,000 --> 00:37:00,280
We're way beyond that. They don't
There's certain issue is that they you talk

500
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:06,199
to them, and they don't believe, and they don't allow this sexual transformation

501
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:10,639
of twelve year olds with dangerous surgeries
and hormonal They're beyond that. They don't

502
00:37:10,639 --> 00:37:15,400
believe anymore in open borders. They
really don't, especially the Swedes, you

503
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:22,519
know, and they understand they're pretty
or much more open about radical Islam than

504
00:37:22,559 --> 00:37:30,119
we are as too, and that
that's new. They're also they're also very

505
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:37,119
if you went into Versailles at the
are you went into Verdun at the Ossi

506
00:37:37,199 --> 00:37:40,760
area, or you went into any
of these monuments about d Day that the

507
00:37:40,760 --> 00:37:45,280
French and you went and desecrated them
like they did the Lafayette Statue. The

508
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:49,800
French would go basilistic. I think
they would. I think they put you

509
00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:53,920
in jail so that I think we
all have to realize that we're in a

510
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:59,559
jack of This isn't even a democratic
party, this is a Jacobin revolutionary party.

511
00:37:59,559 --> 00:38:01,920
And I think their attitude is we're
going to run up so much debt

512
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:07,400
that when you take over, you're
going to have to raise taxes and that'll

513
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:10,639
be our legacy that you had to
become more redistributed, redistributedive. We're going

514
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:14,599
to let in so many people,
You're going to have a whole generation to

515
00:38:14,639 --> 00:38:19,079
do on do what we did.
We're going to so we define the Middle

516
00:38:19,079 --> 00:38:25,719
East until as Obama did to the
Hesba law, Ranamas Lebanon access that you're

517
00:38:25,719 --> 00:38:29,400
going to have big trouble. It's
going to be there. I think that

518
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:35,559
that's what they're after to just cause
so much mayhem that it will be lasting

519
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:42,000
and it will make the Republicans and
the Conservatives have to do things they don't

520
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:45,719
want to do like, they'll have
to, I don't know, raise taxes

521
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:49,119
or cut entitlements or do something.
And then the left is going to say,

522
00:38:49,119 --> 00:38:52,280
well, yep, maybe look at
that. That's yeah, and that's

523
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:54,719
good. Maybe you'll have to raise
taxes and help the poor. So so

524
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:58,039
that's what they're doing. There's a
lot. I guess what I'm trying to

525
00:38:58,079 --> 00:39:01,440
say is there's a logic to their
madness. Mm hmm. Well, it's

526
00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:07,599
always been the issue that economic conservatives
have always thought, well, we can't.

527
00:39:07,679 --> 00:39:12,400
We clearly can't run up instead,
that's crazy. But economic liberals are

528
00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:15,079
like, no, of course we
can. We have we have one hundred

529
00:39:15,199 --> 00:39:20,679
we have access to one hundred percent
of the GDP if we want. We

530
00:39:20,760 --> 00:39:24,079
just passed a law and tax it. Modern monetary theory exactly, we could

531
00:39:24,079 --> 00:39:28,760
do whatever we want. And they're
kind of right. I mean that that

532
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:32,199
absolutely is in fact true. I
mean, but as margut Thatchers said it,

533
00:39:32,199 --> 00:39:36,239
pretty soon you run out of the
people's money. How many of these

534
00:39:36,519 --> 00:39:40,519
you know, how many of these
empires that you've studied, the big sweeping

535
00:39:40,679 --> 00:39:44,800
in and out across the land,
and certainly even across the Holy Land,

536
00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:49,599
how many of them fell because they
just went broke. I think all of

537
00:39:49,599 --> 00:39:54,159
them did, and thee the Byzantines
did. The buzant Tings were completely broke.

538
00:39:54,679 --> 00:40:00,280
The Romans were broke, and you
know, the first century Juvenile wrote

539
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:05,840
that famous satire about bread and circuses, and there was a million people at

540
00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:09,400
Rome, and probably half of them
didn't have any source of employment, so

541
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:15,039
you can tell. I mean,
they had a word in Athens called redheads,

542
00:40:15,159 --> 00:40:21,599
and that meant that the silver tetra
drachma, which was the coin of

543
00:40:21,639 --> 00:40:25,679
the realm and the Athenian Empire,
was veneered, so that raised head of

544
00:40:25,719 --> 00:40:30,039
a person's profile. You know,
of Athena, for example, the thin

545
00:40:30,199 --> 00:40:36,960
veneer wore off very quickly and then
they had red hair because the copper showed.

546
00:40:37,639 --> 00:40:42,320
And Aristophanes has a take on that. But it was there were you

547
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:45,519
know, if you look at the
classical city state, Athens paid people to

548
00:40:45,559 --> 00:40:49,440
go to the theater in the fifth
century, and by the fourth century they

549
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:52,679
were paying people to vote, and
they had twenty thousand people working for the

550
00:40:52,679 --> 00:40:59,039
government in various bureaucracies, and they
didn't have the money anymore, and they

551
00:40:59,039 --> 00:41:06,760
were and so's never happened here.
That's amazing. We're in California, Steven,

552
00:41:07,679 --> 00:41:12,199
No, so well, we had
a seventy six We had a ninety

553
00:41:12,199 --> 00:41:17,480
eight billion dollar as you remember,
ninety eight billion dollar surplus just eighteen months

554
00:41:17,519 --> 00:41:21,519
ago. Now we then we had
seventy seven billion. Now we're down to

555
00:41:21,559 --> 00:41:25,840
forty five billion, we're told.
And I don't see any hope at all.

556
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:30,519
This state, this state is a
model of where the United States is

557
00:41:30,559 --> 00:41:36,840
going, and it's completely dysfunctional.
I where I live, everything is dysfunctional,

558
00:41:37,199 --> 00:41:44,400
nothing works, and it's very scary. The book is called The End

559
00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:47,199
of Everything, How War is the
Sent into Annihilation, but the epilogue is

560
00:41:47,280 --> 00:41:58,599
titled How the Unimaginable Becomes Inevitable.
So I'm giving you a chance here,

561
00:41:58,719 --> 00:42:07,679
Victor, to not destroy everybody's weekend. This is your opportunity. It's not

562
00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:10,119
inevitable, right, and we were
Americans. No, it's not. It's

563
00:42:10,159 --> 00:42:15,519
not inevitable. We can change it
if we, if we, if we

564
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:21,079
decide to the only thing you know
in my whole here is I live in

565
00:42:21,079 --> 00:42:24,199
a town that's ninety five percent Mexican
American, and my brothers were married to

566
00:42:24,239 --> 00:42:30,559
Mexican American people, and I can't
I'm not exaggerating. I have not met

567
00:42:30,199 --> 00:42:37,400
and Mexican American over forty male who's
self employed, and there's a lot of

568
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:42,679
them who is not voting for Trump. They all are, I know their

569
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:45,920
kids aren't, and maybe their wives
are. But I think you're going I

570
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:50,079
think you're going to see forty five
or fifty percent of the Latino vote in

571
00:42:50,159 --> 00:42:55,760
California get close to Trump. And
that's that. Really. If that happens,

572
00:42:57,039 --> 00:43:00,360
then a lot of the bad things
that are happening will start to I

573
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:05,920
mean, the whole tribalism, chauvinism, white this, you know, Marxist

574
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:09,880
oppressor, oppressor, victim, victimizer. When you start seeing minorities get close

575
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:15,639
to fifty to fifty, then that
all disappears. Then the left, of

576
00:43:15,639 --> 00:43:22,000
course would shut the border in two
seconds. But that's my hope. And

577
00:43:22,679 --> 00:43:28,199
economic Trump has been very It's such
an irony for someone who was so uncouth

578
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:35,039
and called a racist and all of
these blasphemies, and yet he has appealed

579
00:43:35,159 --> 00:43:39,320
to working class people, including minorities, far more than McCain or Romney or

580
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:46,920
the I think the two rules of
American politics right one is the obverse of

581
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:51,719
the traditional rule, which is they
say, you know, you vote for

582
00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:53,960
the guy you want to have a
beer with. And I actually think it's

583
00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:57,639
sort of the obverse or the CONVERSI, which is that you vote for the

584
00:43:57,679 --> 00:44:02,119
guy you think would have a beer
with you. Yes. Now I know

585
00:44:02,239 --> 00:44:05,519
Trump doesn't drink beer, but I
think most people look at him and think,

586
00:44:05,559 --> 00:44:09,079
I bet you this guy would be
fine sitting on my sofa. And

587
00:44:09,119 --> 00:44:14,119
you know, you know, you
know in that in two thousand and sixteen,

588
00:44:14,159 --> 00:44:16,400
you know that she did not want
to be in your house. And

589
00:44:17,039 --> 00:44:22,760
I think the other one is that, well, the other the other rule

590
00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:28,480
is that you you the winner of
the race is the person Is that a

591
00:44:28,599 --> 00:44:36,639
politician or the candidate who could behave
like a normal person for ten seconds?

592
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:42,719
Yes, because it's very hard for
people in politics or even on camera to

593
00:44:42,880 --> 00:44:45,639
behave like a normal person for ten
seconds. So this guy who I mean,

594
00:44:45,760 --> 00:44:52,199
I full disclosure, I'm not a
fan, but I see him broad

595
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:54,360
and around, this guy who like
lives in a tower and has a gold

596
00:44:54,360 --> 00:44:58,599
toilet and is the weirdest person I've
ever been, think that he is somehow

597
00:44:58,639 --> 00:45:04,639
more normal than any like I was. It was just, you know,

598
00:45:04,679 --> 00:45:07,840
you're a musing with people. What's
going to happen. You know why,

599
00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:10,239
why why wouldn't they just replace Biden? Just replaced Biden. And then the

600
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:17,159
question is with whom the who?
There's nobody normal, There's no there's nobody,

601
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:21,840
And that is like the essence of
the problem. Yeah, it is

602
00:45:22,119 --> 00:45:25,119
Trump has he has a he feels
at home with them, with the working

603
00:45:25,159 --> 00:45:30,800
class. He does. So I
have a an axiom I teach the students

604
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:32,800
when I teach the presidency, which
is the trick of the presidency and means

605
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:37,679
the candidates is this, Americans want
to look up to our president. We

606
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:39,559
want to put them on a pedestal, but we want to gaze at them

607
00:45:39,639 --> 00:45:45,559
at eye level. That's our democratic
sensibility. That's a paradox. Of course,

608
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:49,119
the people who can figure that out
of the ones who win landslides Franklin

609
00:45:49,199 --> 00:45:52,360
Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, right,
George W. Bush to a certain extent.

610
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:57,079
And the Democrats problem is they keep
throwing up these obvious elitists who look

611
00:45:57,119 --> 00:46:00,599
down this like Al Gore and John
Kerry and Hillary Obama is a sort of

612
00:46:00,599 --> 00:46:05,360
special case. But and then Biden
is just an old hack they settled on

613
00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:08,760
because they were terrified at Bernie Sanders. I think there are some plausible Democrats

614
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:13,320
out there, but you don't hear
much about him, like the governor Shapiro

615
00:46:13,360 --> 00:46:17,360
Pennsylvania actually, and even Jared Poulis
of Colorado I think is a creditible guy.

616
00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:22,440
But nobody's talking about them. They're
all talking about the identity candidates.

617
00:46:22,679 --> 00:46:25,440
Yeah, and they can't. They
have no future because yes, if they

618
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:30,760
were to be reasonable on the border, or climate change or electric vehicles,

619
00:46:30,760 --> 00:46:35,840
they would they would be Yeah,
their base would would canibalize them, right,

620
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:38,679
and that the party is really a
Jacobin party. It's been hijacked.

621
00:46:38,679 --> 00:46:42,559
It's funny, and they always project
so that of course they say that the

622
00:46:42,599 --> 00:46:45,880
Republican Party has been mega. But
when you I was looking at today at

623
00:46:46,039 --> 00:46:51,400
a whole list of Republican issues,
and you look at the MAGA issues except

624
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:57,239
on tariffs and entitleed, entitlements,
maybe budget, there's not that much difference

625
00:46:57,880 --> 00:47:02,639
between a traditional Republican. If Trump
gets in there, he will pret he

626
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:08,440
will get conservative judges. He'll close
the border, he will up the defense

627
00:47:08,519 --> 00:47:15,480
budget, he will be reasonable about
energy, he will try to be energy

628
00:47:15,920 --> 00:47:20,599
independent. He will try to be
no better friend and no worse enemy to

629
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:23,679
or Allah he won't try to destroy
all what they say, it'll be pretty

630
00:47:23,719 --> 00:47:28,840
much. One thing he won't do
is have an optional military engagement in the

631
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:34,599
Middle East on the ground. Yeah, but I suspect that that is in

632
00:47:34,679 --> 00:47:37,480
keeping with a vast majority of Americans. I think that is not ultimately the

633
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:43,079
most the deepest worry, which I
think is probably unfounded. But who knows

634
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:47,960
is American boots on the ground in
Gaza and some kind of peacekeeping force after

635
00:47:49,159 --> 00:47:53,159
it's turned into a pile of rubble
or Ukraine or something, And that is

636
00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:58,639
I think in twenty twenty four,
is unacceptable to Americans. He's on the

637
00:47:58,719 --> 00:48:04,639
right of almost every issue, maybe
the exception abortion, and that's complicated.

638
00:48:04,880 --> 00:48:07,679
Trump is on the side of the
American people on the border, on foreign

639
00:48:07,719 --> 00:48:14,000
policy, on deterrence, on the
defense budget, on woke, on DEI,

640
00:48:14,639 --> 00:48:17,519
on energy, on inflation, every
single one of them. He's on

641
00:48:19,079 --> 00:48:22,159
the right side. And that's very
hard for Biden. For all the institutional

642
00:48:22,679 --> 00:48:28,480
support he has, academic, corporation, entertainment, the media, it's still

643
00:48:28,519 --> 00:48:35,119
going to be very hard for people
to vote against their perceived interest on these

644
00:48:35,159 --> 00:48:37,360
issues. I know you got to
go, and I don't want to keep

645
00:48:37,360 --> 00:48:38,360
it. I just have one more
question about this, because what we were

646
00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:42,039
just talking before you join us,
and we're talking now, it looks to

647
00:48:42,039 --> 00:48:45,519
me, to me, looks like
it doesn't look that complicated for the Democratic

648
00:48:45,519 --> 00:48:50,400
Party to pull this out. Just
get rid of his old die and a

649
00:48:50,639 --> 00:48:53,519
numbskull he's got as vice president and
find somebody with some gravity. Don't make

650
00:48:53,559 --> 00:48:57,880
this big mistake, like it's such
an obvious mistake. I mean, if

651
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:00,840
you're reading, if this is,
if you're were the history of this election,

652
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:07,599
it's like, why did you guys
not see the train coming down the

653
00:49:07,599 --> 00:49:10,199
other other end of the tunnel.
I know they've done it before. I

654
00:49:10,199 --> 00:49:14,760
mean Roosevelt understood he was going to
probably die, or they told him he

655
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:17,440
was going to die in forty five. So they got rid of Henry Wallace.

656
00:49:17,480 --> 00:49:21,960
They just and they were unceremoniously about
how they got and they just said,

657
00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:24,199
you're done for He was not a
bad guy. I mean, he

658
00:49:24,280 --> 00:49:28,800
was a communist, but he turned
out he was good. You know,

659
00:49:30,440 --> 00:49:34,000
I had a soft spot because he
was a farmer, but he turned out

660
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:37,679
right wing right before he died.
Actually, yeah, But my point is

661
00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:44,000
that they could easily open up the
convention, release the delegates, and then

662
00:49:44,199 --> 00:49:47,480
I think either a Josh Shapiro or
maybe Gavin Newsom would win, and they'd

663
00:49:47,519 --> 00:49:51,480
say to Kamalo, you know you're
welcome to run. We hope you can

664
00:49:51,559 --> 00:49:53,760
win the nomination, but you didn't
get enough votes. Open it up.

665
00:49:54,159 --> 00:49:59,519
And I think that's actually why we
have this historic I think everybody's pointed that

666
00:49:59,639 --> 00:50:02,000
out as June debate. We've never
had it before either one of the candidates

667
00:50:02,079 --> 00:50:07,079
was nominated. It is a stress
test for Joe and if he can take

668
00:50:07,199 --> 00:50:09,760
the adderall or whatever he's rumored to
take like he did in the State of

669
00:50:09,760 --> 00:50:13,519
the Union or the first day,
he may be able to do that.

670
00:50:13,559 --> 00:50:15,519
I think he'll be fine and they'll
keep with him. Not fine, but

671
00:50:15,559 --> 00:50:21,519
I mean he'll be fine that night. But if he has declined geometrically not

672
00:50:21,679 --> 00:50:27,039
arithmetically, and I think he has
then and he stumbles, I think they

673
00:50:27,079 --> 00:50:31,480
will get him off the ticket.
Right after looking at it from history right

674
00:50:31,519 --> 00:50:36,400
now, I might have a controlling
theory of our current the past twenty five

675
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:39,480
years, which is that it's sort
of the age of blunder. Very smart

676
00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:45,119
people making very big mistakes in every
realm in the public health realm with COVID,

677
00:50:45,199 --> 00:50:50,320
in the financial realm with the financial
collapse in the China nation build realm

678
00:50:50,400 --> 00:50:57,599
in Iraq invading Ukraine from a very
smart Kenny leader Valderia Putin who didn't realize

679
00:50:57,679 --> 00:51:04,800
just how hollow his armforce. With
all these like big mistakes. What what

680
00:51:04,880 --> 00:51:10,320
is the closest moment in your historical
sort of sweeping understanding where you're reading the

681
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:15,239
history and you're shouting at the page, don't do this stupid thing. You

682
00:51:15,679 --> 00:51:20,239
still have a shot at getting at
not doing this. I mean, is

683
00:51:20,280 --> 00:51:23,719
it Napoleon going to Moscow? What
is the moment where it's sort of like

684
00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:29,440
this, where you're reading it you're
thinking, why were these people driven to

685
00:51:29,599 --> 00:51:34,239
suicide? You sound? Ian Kershaw
wrote a really good book called Faithful Choices,

686
00:51:34,280 --> 00:51:37,519
and we went through ten things in
World War Two that were all preventable

687
00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:42,360
going as you said, going in
the Soviet Union. Why didn't the Japanese

688
00:51:42,400 --> 00:51:46,559
just sidestep Singapore Pearl Harbor and take
the duchiest Indies and into China They had

689
00:51:46,559 --> 00:51:52,199
all the oil they needed, learned
to be no war And a lot of

690
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:59,199
it is perceptions. I think people
they get caught up in the mood of

691
00:52:00,039 --> 00:52:06,079
xhilaration, hysteria, and they don't
step back and look at the actual Mussolini.

692
00:52:06,119 --> 00:52:08,920
Why would he invade Greece and go
into France right at the end of

693
00:52:08,920 --> 00:52:13,039
the brands, and when you look
what he had, he was told,

694
00:52:13,119 --> 00:52:17,199
you have no army, you have
no don't do it, you have five

695
00:52:19,119 --> 00:52:22,360
you have ten percent of the GDP
of Britain, don't do it. But

696
00:52:22,559 --> 00:52:25,639
they get caught up, and I
think that happens. And the other thing

697
00:52:25,760 --> 00:52:31,440
is that I do think there in
a lot of these places they're institutional training

698
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:39,639
of these leaders. It creates a
predictable orthodoxy. And they get all of

699
00:52:39,679 --> 00:52:43,559
these titles, or they go to
law school, or they get their BA,

700
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:46,559
or they go to the Ivy League
or the surroundment. And these brands

701
00:52:47,519 --> 00:52:52,719
supposedly guarantee competence. But when you
look at history, most of the people

702
00:52:52,760 --> 00:52:59,239
who were pretty pretty good were mavericks, or if they did go through those

703
00:53:00,199 --> 00:53:02,639
chain of command or the curses of
norm that they didn't like it or they

704
00:53:02,679 --> 00:53:07,440
had trouble. George Patten was a
brilliant, I mean he really was a

705
00:53:07,599 --> 00:53:13,199
military genius, and he was dyslexic. They hated his guts, he yelled,

706
00:53:14,719 --> 00:53:17,400
and there's something to trump about that. His first term I thought was

707
00:53:17,480 --> 00:53:22,239
so much more successful if you looked
at just what he did than other Republican

708
00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:29,480
presidents, and partly was that he
was not part of that consensus. And

709
00:53:29,519 --> 00:53:32,480
I think that's really important. I
know that when I look at my field

710
00:53:34,119 --> 00:53:39,960
and I said, who was Schleimann
who connected a historical event with the Homeric

711
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:45,880
poems? Or who was Michael Ventrist
who deciphered leniar b Or who was Melman

712
00:53:45,920 --> 00:53:53,159
Perry who proved that the Homeric corpus
was composed? Orally they were all either

713
00:53:53,239 --> 00:53:59,519
amateurs. Ventrist was a worked on
codes, he was an architect. They

714
00:53:59,559 --> 00:54:04,280
were out outside the world of classics. And when I look at I've been

715
00:54:04,320 --> 00:54:08,920
reading about Fauci the last week.
That guy is just typical of just getting

716
00:54:09,039 --> 00:54:15,760
award after award, and he knew
nothing of virology, immunology, anything,

717
00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:22,800
and he had fifty billion dollars to
disperse to loyal psychophones. And so I

718
00:54:22,880 --> 00:54:25,920
think that's a lot of it.
In the modern state, or any state,

719
00:54:27,079 --> 00:54:32,920
you've got to be very careful of
bureaucracies, administrative groups, institutions that

720
00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:39,639
tell us that this person is very
competent and because he got this this brand

721
00:54:39,760 --> 00:54:43,840
or this degree, or he went
to this particular school, and I just

722
00:54:43,880 --> 00:54:47,519
don't think they have a record of
I think one good thing about all this

723
00:54:47,599 --> 00:54:52,119
campus disruption is there's a lot of
parents that are not sending their kids at

724
00:54:52,119 --> 00:54:55,119
these school I have a lot I
get under enrollment here. Yeah. I

725
00:54:55,119 --> 00:55:02,320
get a call every week from some
Stanford alumnus and said, Hey, I'm

726
00:55:02,320 --> 00:55:06,079
not sending my two kids a Stanford. I know they're going to bring the

727
00:55:06,159 --> 00:55:07,920
SAT back, and my kids got
a great SAT. But I don't want

728
00:55:08,000 --> 00:55:12,440
him anywhere near that campus because I
won't he said. And one guy just

729
00:55:12,480 --> 00:55:15,400
called me and said, I won't
recognize him at Christmas if he goes there.

730
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:22,400
Wow, seats right, So I
go that will be good. Yeah,

731
00:55:22,400 --> 00:55:25,039
we can do. And if Trump
can cut at tax their endowments and

732
00:55:27,320 --> 00:55:30,960
put some strings on federal money maybe
and get rid of the student loan program

733
00:55:31,000 --> 00:55:35,079
and let the universities back their own
loans, they could have real change.

734
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:39,519
Anyway. Well, that's well that
it does feel like a change, a

735
00:55:39,639 --> 00:55:45,199
cycle of change rendering. I hope
since we start to see it in Europe

736
00:55:45,199 --> 00:55:49,039
and maybe it's coming here, So
once again, I'm just going to say,

737
00:55:49,199 --> 00:55:52,280
just for people, how many books
have you written? A million?

738
00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:59,760
No, my wife says twenty six. Right. You really should know by

739
00:55:59,760 --> 00:56:02,559
the way she says that, because
she asked me how long they take,

740
00:56:02,599 --> 00:56:07,320
and I said between two and three
thousand hours. And then she's just said,

741
00:56:07,360 --> 00:56:10,519
these are the amount of times that
we never see You're you're you're slumped

742
00:56:10,559 --> 00:56:15,000
over some book on the plane.
Once you get a life, you're done.

743
00:56:15,239 --> 00:56:19,159
So I think my I got a
bad case of COVID right now,

744
00:56:19,320 --> 00:56:22,679
and I'm getting over. I had
long COVID for a year and then I

745
00:56:22,719 --> 00:56:24,880
got over and I felt great after
beating I said, you can't beat long

746
00:56:24,920 --> 00:56:29,000
COVID. I got over. I
took one hundred and sixty people to Normandy.

747
00:56:29,039 --> 00:56:31,519
I had a long flight home and
she and I got COVID and I'm

748
00:56:31,519 --> 00:56:35,960
having trouble with that long COVID again. But my point is that she just

749
00:56:36,039 --> 00:56:39,119
told me, why don't you enjoy
life? No more? Out of state

750
00:56:39,159 --> 00:56:43,760
speaking, just it's sort of like
your decision to go to the seminary.

751
00:56:44,239 --> 00:56:47,119
Yeah, I think my seminary will
be Yeah, you're going to try.

752
00:56:49,159 --> 00:56:52,400
I think I'm going to stay out
here on the farm. Well, I

753
00:56:52,519 --> 00:56:58,320
speaking as a loyal and incredibly,
I don't know what we wrapped reader.

754
00:56:58,360 --> 00:57:00,159
I have to save all your books. I have to. I hope you

755
00:57:00,199 --> 00:57:05,639
continue to not have a life,
and you continue to not enjoy your life

756
00:57:05,679 --> 00:57:07,639
so that you can keep writing.
The most recent book is The End of

757
00:57:07,679 --> 00:57:12,320
Everything? How wars to send it
into annihilation? And I asked you one

758
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:17,559
last question. Absolutely, there's something
wrong with the New York bestseller list.

759
00:57:17,559 --> 00:57:22,360
They don't that's not based on actual
because the reason I asked that is I

760
00:57:22,440 --> 00:57:28,639
wrote a book, The Dying Citizen, and it was number one on Amazon

761
00:57:28,920 --> 00:57:32,840
for three weeks. It sold well
over two hundred and thirty thousand. It

762
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:37,239
was only on there for one week. This book, I know, has

763
00:57:37,320 --> 00:57:40,880
not sold as much. It's put
on the New York Times for five weeks.

764
00:57:42,079 --> 00:57:47,280
And there's no reason it's Amazon's numbers
don't correlate with And what do they

765
00:57:47,320 --> 00:57:52,000
do? What do they use?
Is it bookstores? Are a certain bookstore

766
00:57:52,119 --> 00:57:59,840
or bult certain books? Dear Times, there's the Economist magazine recently did a

767
00:58:00,079 --> 00:58:02,239
very deep dive study on this and
they published it two three weeks ago,

768
00:58:02,639 --> 00:58:06,639
and what they found was and it
is the Economist. They're pretty mainstream,

769
00:58:06,719 --> 00:58:12,719
but they found that the New York
Times bestseller list is definitely statistically significantly biased

770
00:58:12,760 --> 00:58:17,000
against conservative titles. Yeah, and
are you serious? That's pretty serious.

771
00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:22,960
They've got a whole bitch right.
That makes sense. That makes sense because

772
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:25,760
the Trump Book, the Case for
Trump, and the Dying States, and

773
00:58:27,000 --> 00:58:30,559
even the World War two have outsold
this book. This book's not political.

774
00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:36,760
But this book has been on there
for five weeks, and I because I

775
00:58:36,840 --> 00:58:38,719
was sick with COVID for two and
I was gone for two. I haven't

776
00:58:38,719 --> 00:58:44,760
done any publicity until this week,
so I don't understand why. And it

777
00:58:44,800 --> 00:58:46,760
hasn't been reviewed. That has got
a nice view in the Wall Street Journal

778
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:52,119
a few others, but I don't
understand they're calculus because they're not. That

779
00:58:52,159 --> 00:58:55,960
book has not sold enough books to
be the top twenty, you know what

780
00:58:55,960 --> 00:58:59,760
I mean. It doesn't make sense. And I don't know why that is

781
00:59:00,039 --> 00:59:04,880
slipped through the ideological screen. Probably
they have an AI that reads your book

782
00:59:04,920 --> 00:59:08,199
and decides whether it or maybe there's
some judge who got sick of woke and

783
00:59:08,280 --> 00:59:12,519
said, I'm going to irritate people
by putting this book on I don't know

784
00:59:13,119 --> 00:59:20,079
yeah, don't don't put any money
on that one. Okay, Well,

785
00:59:20,199 --> 00:59:22,679
I'm thrilled that it's doing so well
because it certainly deserves to. Hey,

786
00:59:22,760 --> 00:59:24,840
Victor, thanks for joining us.
Good luck for both of you, and

787
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:29,079
feel better. Yeah I will,
yeah, but not too much because we

788
00:59:29,079 --> 00:59:31,840
want another book. Okay. By
you know, think about Victor. I

789
00:59:31,840 --> 00:59:37,280
always feel like when he I feel
a little bit like I'm asking him questions,

790
00:59:37,599 --> 00:59:40,679
like I don't want to pay him
to be in his class, Like

791
00:59:40,719 --> 00:59:43,840
if I have it here, i
can I can ask him like, oh,

792
00:59:43,840 --> 00:59:45,119
you know, I was reading this
thing the other day, could you

793
00:59:45,119 --> 00:59:46,440
explain that? And I'm just hoping
anyone else is interested in it. But

794
00:59:46,840 --> 00:59:51,679
when you have Victory kind of want
to ask him questions about the sweep of

795
00:59:51,760 --> 00:59:55,000
human history from two thousand BC to
twenty twenty four. Yeah, I mean

796
00:59:57,920 --> 01:00:01,199
you always realize right away that he's
got eight or ten levels of depth of

797
01:00:01,239 --> 01:00:06,440
knowledge in these matters. And of
course there's a gravitas about him too,

798
01:00:06,519 --> 01:00:10,559
right. I mean you almost feel
like you know he'll say as I was

799
01:00:10,559 --> 01:00:17,119
saying to Alcibiades right before the Syracuse
I mean, and I mean the point

800
01:00:17,199 --> 01:00:21,239
I don't mean that's a joke entirely
is that the point is that he is

801
01:00:21,320 --> 01:00:24,679
one of those rare persons who can
actually bring to life in a vivid and

802
01:00:24,760 --> 01:00:29,880
direct way and relevant way, something
that you thought is just a remote interest

803
01:00:29,960 --> 01:00:32,039
in, you know, pain loving
antiquarianism. It's not that at all.

804
01:00:32,079 --> 01:00:36,719
There's not a hint of pain loving
antiquarianism about him. No, and he's

805
01:00:36,960 --> 01:00:39,559
somehow he's like managed to be it's
kind of cheerful, even though what he's

806
01:00:39,559 --> 01:00:43,039
saying, well, what did you
just say, We're all doomed? Like,

807
01:00:43,159 --> 01:00:46,199
oh, probably. Anyway, it
was a lot of fun. I

808
01:00:46,480 --> 01:00:51,440
always love having having Victor around,
and I'm a sort of now thrilled that

809
01:00:51,800 --> 01:00:55,000
James and Peter weren't here because they
tend to aug the chit chat and we

810
01:00:55,119 --> 01:00:59,559
had a nice chit chat with him. If you are listening to this and

811
01:00:59,559 --> 01:01:00,639
you remember Ricochet, we thank you, and if you were not, we

812
01:01:00,639 --> 01:01:04,199
would like you to join. Go
to ricochet dot com if you'd like to

813
01:01:04,239 --> 01:01:07,400
meet your fellow Ricochet members. There
are meetups scheduled throughout the summer and in

814
01:01:07,440 --> 01:01:10,559
the autumn. Just go to a
rickchet dot com and look for meetups and

815
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:15,559
show up. We'd love to see
you there. This podcast was brought to

816
01:01:15,559 --> 01:01:19,840
you by Qualia, so you can
support us by supporting them. It's a

817
01:01:19,840 --> 01:01:22,639
great product and if you have a
minute. I know everyone really says this

818
01:01:22,760 --> 01:01:27,480
and people don't do it for some
reason, but if you go to Apple

819
01:01:27,519 --> 01:01:30,199
Podcasts leave us a five star review, it actually does work. Their magic

820
01:01:30,199 --> 01:01:36,360
algorithm will resurface our podcast and more
people will hear it. New listeners will

821
01:01:36,360 --> 01:01:39,159
discover us, and that's how we
keep the show going. Steve, any

822
01:01:39,280 --> 01:01:44,079
big summer plans, No, I
mean, you know, classes are over,

823
01:01:44,119 --> 01:01:45,559
so I'm going to try and rest
and relax and catch up on some

824
01:01:45,639 --> 01:01:52,000
leisure reading. Oh that's yeah,
all right, Well I'm just gonna I'm

825
01:01:52,000 --> 01:01:54,079
gonna hang out and drink beer and
smoke a sgar. That's my my July

826
01:01:54,199 --> 01:01:59,480
plan. Well, thanks for joining
me, and thank you of course again

827
01:01:59,519 --> 01:02:06,920
to Victor, and we'll see you
next week. Ricochet, join the conversation.