America in Flux: Supreme Court, Iran, Cultural Change, and More | Victor Davis Hanson

Your time is valuable. Your perspective should be too. The Economist cuts through the noise with the stories that truly shape your world. How can you believe that a new regime won't crush you just like the previous one? Online scams are stranger than they've ever been. When the world's turned upside down, no which way is up. Read, watch or listen to The Economist. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there, integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time, from startups to scale-ups online, in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Why is the lift so crazy? Is it Trump derangement syndrome? That's what everybody says. I think he's a catalyst in some ways. His legacy, his greatest legacy, maybe he destroyed the Democratic Party, turned them into Jacobins. But I think the real thing is that they know deep down inside that their protocol, their blueprint, their agenda does not work. And they know it doesn't work because everywhere it is employed, people leave. They leave. And every time you turn on the television, there's somebody screaming and yelling and threatening violence, or just whining, it's on the left. Well, hello ladies and hello gentlemen, and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words on the Daily Signal Network. I'm Jack Fowler, Lucky Man. I get to host the show. I get to ask Victor questions, the kind of questions I think you are, fair listeners and viewers, the hundreds of thousands of you that you'd want Victor to answer. We are talking on Sunday, May 3rd. This episode will be up on Tuesday, the 5th. Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He's a senior contributor at the Daily Signal. He's the author of many bestselling books, including the forthcoming bestseller, Counter Revolution, which is, by the way, two different words, counter revolution. I thought it was. I thought it was. The editor insists it's one. Oh, well, the title has it. Well, the cover is deceptive. Victor's got a website, The Blade of Perseus. I'll tell you more about that later while you should be subscribing. Victor, as ever, tons of stuff to get your take on the gerrymandering, the first one, the Supreme Court's decision on the Voting Rights Act and black congressional districts, and then what will happen, what could happen if gerrymandering was embraced by each party in each state and how that might turn out for both either the Republican or the Democrat Party. We have an article, An Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, by Holman Jenkins, addressing the Iran situation he's calling at Trump's Bay of Pigs. Get Victor's take on that. President Trump is withdrawing 5,000 American troops from Germany, and we got some Democrat corruption stories in Maine and many other places. So we'll get to as much as we can, and we'll do that when we come back from these important messages. If you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen, you might enjoy The Daily Signals flagship show, The Tony Kennetcast, the same common sense perspectives you love weekdays at 7 p.m. Eastern. Unlike some of the other evening shows, we work up until showtime to bring you the latest breaking news, analysis, and good old American starcast. Tom Tillis, I'm pretty sure might have been useful at one time as a doorstop, find The Tony Kennetcast on YouTube, X, Radio, TV, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor also has four times a week he does for The Daily Signal. Victor Davis Hansen in a few words. I have to talk to Rob Bluey, our big kahuna at The Daily Signal, so people are asking, where can they get that hat, Victor, the one that you wear so confidently and brilliantly. So I checked The Daily Signal just renewed its website, so folks should check it out. Maybe there's a store there. I don't know. I should have looked before we started. Victor, what's your take on the Supreme Court's sixth street decision on the Voting Rights Act that has kind of blown up the need for a black majority districts in America? Well, there's two issues. There's the issue of something's been in existence a long time. They're always reluctant to remove it, at least if it's something on the left. But by any interpretation of the 14th Amendment or the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 5, you name it. It's illegal. You can't just say, I'm going to draw these districts up so that this one particular group of a particular race will have an advantage over other people. So it was long and coming, and I was surprised that all of the six conservative justices stayed with it. And the other thing is, I don't get their outrage since the left's outrage. I understand that they feel they're going to lose political power, maybe so, but I guess the last, if you think about it, 2008, we had a black president. 2012, we had a black president. And 2020, we had a black vice president. And 2024, we had a black candidate. So four out of the five last four-year tenures, we'd never had black candidates at the highest level in the United States, president or vice president as candidates. And we've had a, in three of those five, we've had a two of the highest positions held by three black, Obama twice and Kamala Harris. And Republicans have shown again and again, they're perfectly much, they're much more willing in white districts to elect black candidates than blacks are in these gerrymandered districts to elect whites. It almost never happens in a black majority district that they elect a white. They vote along racial lines, but in the case of Byron Donalds or the guy in Michigan, and they're all running for higher office, the four or five black representatives that are in white districts. So I don't quite get it, but on the larger, the larger gerrymandering, because this is gerrymandering, if you collate three, two things immediately and one in the long term, immediately, if everybody was to gerrymander, which reflected the vote percentages in their state vis-a-vis what they are now, the Republicans are vastly over-represented, I mean underrepresented, and they would pick up about 16 or 17 seats. If you add into the equation that these black caucus seats are racially gerrymandered and they would be, they might have, you know, they would be more logical in terms of terrain and population and racially blind, then you might get even more seats and we're only four years away from the census in which this massive multi-million person exodus every year from Blue State America to Red State is supposedly going to give congressional seats to red states from either eight to 12 seats. And you could see the Democrats long term being a perpetual minority party in the house if these trends continue. And I think that is why James Carville and Susan Rice have just said that we're going to pack the court. As soon as we get in, we're going to pack the court, not by an amendment, not by a congressional, we're just going to do it. I think their motto is Niki, just do it. The Niki ads, Nike ads. And then they're going to bring in two states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico to get four Senate seats. They're going to vote for the National, they're going to get a couple more legislatures they think for the National Voter Compact and they will get rid of the electoral college, which will be thrown out by the Supreme Court, I think. And they're going to get rid of the filibuster. As soon as they get the majority in the Senate, they will get rid of it. And they're just waiting to dare, they just dare the Democrat, the Republicans to do it so they can get some cover when they do it. But they won't care about the cover. They'll do it anyway. It's the only thing I would say in all this, I don't even think it's a Democratic party. I don't think we should even use that term anymore. It's a Jacobin party. It's just like the French Jacobins. That was the revolutionary party that hijacked the French Revolution. It was run just like the Democratic party by very wealthy people, the Robespierre brothers and some of the Turncoat landowners, the aristocracy. And it was holistic. It was culturally 360 degrees. It wanted to rename the days of the week, the days of the month, the foundational day, year zero, just like the 1619 committee. Just it was an iconoclastic movement. They tore down statues and they wanted open marriage and all sorts of stuff. Just same thing. This Democratic party, I've said that so many times, if you look at the 1992 and 1996 Democratic platforms under Clinton, they would be called racist and fascist, you know, teens that commit murder will be tried as an adult, secure borders, no illegal immigration, deportations, et cetera, et cetera, balanced budget. This isn't Democrats. This is something completely different when you have a guy like Graham Platner. Even 30 years ago, having a Nazi tattoo on your chest would have been disqualifying in the Democratic party. It would. And they would have been on campus, liberal Democratic professors on campus, even left-wing as they were. When I was a student, if they were people pushing Jews and harassing Jewish, they would have objected, but not these people. They're incapable of objecting. So it's just different. It's just, I mean, Antifa. It's the party. It's the party, yes, Antifa. It's the party of the mayor of Seattle, of Mondami, who are, I would assume, quite to the left of... Even Chuck Schumer. Even Chuck Schumer's left. Even Chuck Schumer's left. Because he's left of what he... I don't think the old Chuck Schumer would have gotten in front of the Supreme Court and said, Gorsuch Kavanaugh, you sowed the wind and you're going to reap the whirlwind and you're not going to know what is going to hit you. I don't think he would have said that. I don't think the old Nancy Pelosi would have said, I want to Trump. I want to hit Trump in the mouth and go to jail if I have to. So did Gavin Newsom. And so did Joe Biden. Like to take him behind the gem and beat him up. Yeah. So this is new. This is new. This is new. This is new. This is new. Jerry Mandarin. Yeah. Well, we're going to talk about Plattener a little more later on. But two things. One of the... I want to ask you about actual Jerry Mandarin. But then this analysis to bring up the point you raised earlier, the Guardian, the British paper, a couple of months ago, wrote it, had an article about the... Here's the headline. Some Democrats want to use Jerry Mandarin. That's a bad idea. And here's what the first paragraph said. A simulation conducted through 538s Atlas of Redistricting in which every state is aggressively Jerry Mandarin to maximize the house seats of the party in power at the state level results in a notional house of 262 Republicans and 173 Democrats. A 30 plus seat jump for Republican party compared with a nonpartisan map that maximizes the district for compactness. By the way, I don't know if that article even... that analysis then takes in... It was written before the Supreme Court. Yeah, it was. It was. Black majority districts. People said that would be 10 seats itself and another 10 in the next census. And here in California, we've already... I think we're going to lose three to five of them seats anyway. And so it's... They say it's a bad idea only in the sense that if it worked, it would be a good idea. It's not a bad idea on the principle of it. But here in California, 41% voted for Trump and we're going to have 9%. It looks like Republican representation in the House of Representatives. And that's just... That's how they think. There's things below the radar. I think everybody realizes, but we don't speak about... There are massive changes going on in the United States right now. Massive changes. When you have 53 million people who were not born in the United States of all different statuses and you have 16% of the population, and here in California, you have 27% of the resident population was not born. And most, not all, but most of these immigrants come from very impoverished societies in Latin America, Africa, or Asia. Then you've got a whole new constituency the left brought in. And it's a very... And because we're a a... A magnanimous nation, when you want to bring people up immediately to parody, you're talking about trillions of dollars of entitlements that are necessary. It's... 40% of the state is on Medi-Cal. 50%, one of every two bursts is on Medi-Cal. So that's something... And then this exodus we don't talk about. People are just leaving. 300,000 people have left Los Angeles in the last two or three years. And they're leaving the state at that number each year. And you can see it, Jack. When I... It's something... If I drive into this little town, Salma, and I drive through districts, I can point to houses of people that I knew, not just in high school, but 20 years ago. And I look at that house, and that house, and that house, or that farm, they're gone. They left. On my street right here, every single person that I grew up with, family, every single person for one mile down the street that I went to high school with, and I knew as late as 19... I don't know, 75 or 80... They're gone. They're all gone. Those houses are either rented out by corporations to people who are here from Mexico illegally, in many cases, not all. But it's just a complete flight. And I don't think anybody has really digested the implications of that in California. California is going to have chronic budget deficits. And when this billionaire bill gets in, and these 21 or 31, whatever term you... Whatever data you choose to employ when that kicks in, we're going to lose about $60 billion over... We can lose $60 billion in capital that would be taxed. So it's... The whole country is in a massive influx, and it makes it worse for the left. Part of the reason, why is the left so crazy? Is it Trump... The Rangement Syndrome? That's what everybody says. I think he's a catalyst in some ways. His legacy, his greatest legacy, maybe he destroyed the Democratic Party, turned them into Jacobins. But I think the real thing is that they know deep down inside that their protocol, their blueprint, their agenda does not work. And they know it doesn't work because everywhere it is employed, people leave. They leave. And every time you turn on the television, there's somebody screaming and yelling and threatening violence or just whining, it's on the left every single time. And grift is the central practice of the party. Yes. And I think they know it. I think they know that we have to say things that are just crazy because nobody wants us, if they were rational. And they said, well, this is our agenda. We want to shut down the fossil fuel industry and go into massive wind and solar. We would like abortion on demand up to the birth canal delivery. We want trans men in women's sports and in locker room. We want an open border. We don't believe in borders. 10 or 12 million people will refresh us every year. We don't want no cash bail. They would know what people would say. Shoplifting is not a crime if you stay careful to steal less than $950. Nobody would vote for that. So it has to be that Donald Trump is fascist. He's Hitler. Charlie Kirk has to be eliminated, all of that stuff. And yet that's not going to work. I don't think they're going to... I'm not a very good prognosticator, but I'm not sure that it's a done deal. They're going to win the midterms because there's certain things in play that they're not aware of. And one of them is this gerrymandering that could really... I mean, they're talking about stopping the election and stopping the ballots going out in Louisiana and Florida. You know what I mean? And just say stop it. These are for local, not the national congressional seats, but there's no question that they will be in new districts. And they're not even aware of that. They don't seem to be aware of it. Maybe James Carville, as I said, is when he advocates all these structural changes, but they don't understand how many people don't like them. They might not like Trump, but they don't like them. And they don't... They like Trump. They may not like Trump, but they like his agenda. They don't like their agenda and they don't like the messenger nor the message. And I don't think they grasp that yet. And then I think the economy... I mean, the jobs report was the best, basically the fewest people fighting from unemployment since the 1960s. And then there was strong... The GDP, even after the shutdown, longest shutdown of the government, partial shutdown, and you still... And still the effects of last... The big shutdown of the whole government, and you still had 2% GDP should have been negative, I would think, especially with the gas price coming at the tail end of that report. And even with gas as high, but they don't understand that there is trillions of dollars being invested in this country. And these AI techs are convinced that AI is the future and they're spending trillions of dollars, billions, hundreds of billions of dollars in generation. 500,000 electricians are needed just to build these plans. And you can see it... I can see it just... On my little country road, I go out there and there's trucks. It's not just high-speed rail going. They're everywhere. And my daughter called me the other day and she's trying... She wants handrails. She has a house on a slope for people who are elderly and she can't get anybody to do it. All the contractors are backed up. And I think there's a... The message hasn't gotten out that the economy is far more resilient. And if Trump should solve this problem in a month, squeeze them in Iran to the point where they either collapse or then kinetically take out the ability to sell oil at Carg Island, oil from it, and just open the Strait of Ormuz. You could see that would be a radical achievement. Well, it's possible America's attention span is pretty limited. So come October, November, ask... Yeah, what's America... ...May seem like 10 years ago. Yeah, ask the American on the street, what was going on February 1st? What was the big issue? Was it the shutdown? They kind of remember the all the anger about the shutdown. Was it the ice riots? And what were those? I forgot all about those. That's how long... That's how short their memory is. What they're going to remember is, what is the economy on the day before the election? And what is the foreign policy status of the United States the day before the election? And what are Democrats saying and acting like the day before the election? Right, yes. Yeah. What madness has Mondami... And again, I don't remember her name, the mayor of Seattle. Seattle. But what more lunacies will these people engage in? She said, bye-bye. Yeah. Millionaires are mad that I'm going to tax you well? Bye-bye. They love killing the goose. They're all wealthy, they're close to themselves. Oh, yeah. Well, especially in her case, right? I don't know if it's a true story, but on the internet, have you seen these stories that Mondami wears a Cartier... No, it's Hassan Piker wears a Cartier diamond, and he has a Porsche Targa, and Mondami's wife has very extensive jewelry and all this. It's just like the Jackabins, Robespierre with his perfume wig and his panties. Well, all these... The learning center people in Minnesota and the hospice people in California are all driving Bugatti's and Lamborghinis and Lamborghinis or whatever the heck so. Well, Victor, we're going to have another race-related political matter to raise, but first, fluoride. The government has been medicating your water with it for over 80 years, not because you asked for it, nor because you voted for it, but because they decided you needed it. Well, that's not a decision someone else should be making for our families, which is why you should filter the water in your home with Cove Pure. And if you're watching this video, this podcast, you'll look over my left shoulder, you'll see a Cove Pure. So over 209 million Americans are on fluoridated water right now. And here's what the science actually shows. In September 2024, a federal judge ruled that adding fluoride to water poses, and I'm quoting the court directly, quote, an unreasonable risk end quote to neurological health. Not a fringe study. A federal court ordered the EPA to act then in January 2025, a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pediatrics, one of the most respected medical journals in the world, confirmed a link between fluoride exposure and children's IQ scores. The higher the exposure, the lower the IQ. Sure, states are moving on this, Utah and Florida have banned it, but that process takes years. Your kids, your family, they're drinking this water today. You need something that works now. And that's exactly what Cove Pure is. It's clear wave reverse osmosis technology is certified to remove up to 99.9% of contaminants, fluoride, PFA, lead, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, anything that isn't water gets filtered out. I love that Cove Pure makes my water taste like pure, delicious water. Actually, it's deeply refreshing. It's really, really good. And it doesn't taste like anything else. Not like it came out of a swimming pool or a rusty can. It's super easy to get set up and gives you water just how you want it in an instance. So don't wait for the government to catch up, go get yourself a Cove Pure. If you use our link, CovePure.com slash BDH, you'll get $250 off that's Cove Pure C O V E P U R E.com slash BDH. And we thank the good people of Cove Pure for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. And I'm going to toast them with a nice refreshing glass of... I'm drinking my Cove Pure. Yeah, I was drinking the Elevate. It's a good... I shouldn't... Yeah. You need to be elevated. Hey, by the way, Victor, before I ask you this thing, could you share you... because since you told us about the tests you're having and have had, you have any news to... I do. It's good. Well, I got the flu this week, so that was bad news, but that was a minor price. Yeah, they have this, as I said, this new... It's very... It's very... It's so revolutionary the last three years that the oncology people don't quite know what it means. And it just means that when you have... There is a grail test that anybody can take and it will spot DNA in your blood of cancers. It's not that exact though. In fact, one of the reasons that I was misdiagnosed for a long, long time was I took that test along with another cancer just generically, and they were both negative when I did have cancer. But the Signetera is a different test. You have to have the actual tumor removed or biopsied, and they cut slices and they can find 16 mutations. And then they run an AI diagram, I guess, and they make a profile unique to you and no one else. Then they take your blood and they run it through this audit system to find out if you have a single cell of DNA of that cancer. And they take it after 30 days after your surgery and then every every 90 days, in my case, it'd be 120 days. The first one is a little iffy because if it's negative, people have said, well, it's too... When they pull the tumor out, there might have been shedding and you don't... It hasn't shown up. But the second one is a lot more important. And I just had that and it was negative. So right now, I can say there is no cancer in my blood. There may be some in the airways that will show up. But the problem is they don't know quite what to do with it. If it was positive, the tumor doesn't follow for four to eight months. So it's kind of like having a little, as I said, an IED in your system. Uh-oh, there's DNA circulating, but there are only one or two cells. What do I do before it turns into a tumor somewhere outside of my lung? In my case, my mutation would be the brain or the pancreas. So I was wondering all week with this flu, kind of I was getting a little press. I thought, well, what do you do if it turns up? Because I don't know where it's going to turn up. You get chemo, but chemo doesn't work on this mutation. Do you get immunotherapy? But it doesn't work either. So you just wait until one day you feel it and you go in and you get a scan or it's so new. They're trying to develop protocols how to use it properly. But for negative, it can be the only other, some tumors that are mucus like mine, they kind of, they may shed the DNA a little bit more. So they want three to four negatives before you're considered in remission for the year or two. But the good thing is forget all of the pathology, whatever, whether it's in your lymph nodes or not, your margins, the type of tumor, the size. They've done studies that just show you all the people who took the test of any status, when they do have specific ones, but do they have a sort longer survival rate with one negative, two negative, three? And it turns out they do. It just a matter, if you have one negative at the beginning and that's all you take, then you have a higher survival rate over all the other considerations. If you have take two, much higher. So in my case, I shouldn't be talking too much about myself, but 40% chance of recurrence given the type of tumor I had. And so the first one took it down to statistically 35 and this one took it down probably to 30% recurrence chance. And I take another one in three months. And it's kind of weird, Jack, because you're sitting there on your computer and it says it'll be here in five days or something. And you know that the last one came early, so you're on your computer and you say, should I go like this? Should I actually go to the site and touch it? Because then it's like your whole life goes before you in a second, because if it's positive and you're a particular mutant exemption like me, you can't do anything. And it's just like, well, what do I do in a month from now? So it's kind of stressful. And maybe that's why I got the flu, because I was stressed out about, but I mean, I took it pretty well. I couldn't believe it was negative. I couldn't believe it was negative because the mass was so large, not that the tumor itself, but the ground glass opacity around it. But I think the millions of people and I did millions who think about you and pray for you deserve to know that are probably happy to hear the same welcome news. I plan to get over these heart problems I have and the lung and keep working. Keep working. Not today? Not today, not yet. Not yet, not yet, not yet. Well, I wanted to Victor get your take on a few other things. Obviously, we're going to talk next about this Holman Jenkins piece in the journal, but something about Black Voting in America. And this is the law of undetected consequences, fitting in the wind or about, you know, coming back to something, coming back to bite you in the heiny. And this has to do with abortion. But Peechie Keenan wrote this on X. And Peechie, I don't know, writing where now, but the American mind for the long, maybe still at the American mind, but Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood as a way to eugenicize mass numbers of Black people and it worked. The total Black population of the U.S. is currently less than 15% of the country, around 50 million people. 37 to 40 million are over the age of 18, but without abortion, roughly 35 million Black people in America were never born. Roughly 20 million Black people over the age of 18 would be alive today if they or a parent had not been aborted. In other words, the abortion industry has erased at least 50% of the Black voting age population, which is why they need to practice extreme gerrymandering to maximize their political power. Democrats accidentally genocide at half their most important racial voting. I would like to think it was accidentally, if I could be a little impolitic and kind of blunt. Please be impolitic. The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the heartthrob of all liberal who was on the court was asking, this is off the top of my head, so please people fact check me. I think the interviewer was from the New Yorker and she was asking about the fight to save abortion and she said, I think it was in the context of conservative, she says, well, I don't know what's the problem, aren't we aborting the right people? Remember that? She said, we're aborting the right people. So it was all the eugenics movement was always a progressive idea. It came out of the industrial revolution, the scientific revolution of the late 19th century. Eugenics was always the original property. It might have been right-wing people appropriate some of it, but it was Adolf Hitler and the people in the Nazi world were very fond of American eugenicists and they tried to emulate them. But I just think that, and you know, the other problem with the black districts, it really in another way hurts blacks because we only had Barack Obama as the only black senator and we have, what's her name from, I think she's half black, isn't she from Chicago, Illinois, Tammy, she was a military veteran. I think she's- Yes, I forget. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think she's, is she part black? I mean, I thought she might be, but she's Asian and black. Duckworth, Dathworth, Duckworth, I forget her name. Duckworth, yeah, Tammy Duckworth. Yeah. Well, my point is that when you create 40 or 50 of these gerrymandered black districts, the candidates then demagogue each other because Barack Obama could have never been elected congressmen from Illinois. He tried and Bobby Seal, I think, just killed him. He made him look like an idiot on the, I looked at that debate stage or is it Bobby Rush, excuse me, Bobby Rush, I think did. And he basically said, you're a light skin moderate from you, you know, from out and I'm an authentic ex- Yeah. Yeah. I'm an authentic ex, I'm authentic ex-black panther. So what happens in those races, they always try to, as in the old white conservative Jim Crow, where the Jim Crow, during Jim Crow, the congressional candidate would always say, I'm not, no one is ever going to out inward me. Remember LBJ said that, I'm never going to be out in again. And the same thing in reverse is that no one is ever going to be more radical than I am. But what that does is it gives you the house, but then you've disqualified yourself for states, for a statewide race as a senator because you're too extreme. And so that's what happened. And you won't see any of those black congressmen and women. Look at Jasmine Crockett. Once they get a lot of notoriety and they say all these crazy things to their base, and then they get out in the wide state of Texas, they're not going to win. Or they're not going to win in Illinois. The only reason that Barack Obama won in Illinois that is because he, besides leaking the divorce records of his primary and general election opponents, thanks probably to David Axelrod and his contacts with newspapers. But the primary reason was he was not elected a congressman and he didn't go on record as a extremist. And so when he went on that general election, he got more white votes than he did black. And when he ran for president in 2008, he got more white votes than did John Kerry in 2004. And so it would be good to get rid of these, it would be good for black people to get rid of them. And that's why Republicans have had more success with black candidates being mainstream because they're not captured as part of the black caucus. We would have had a black governor, Larry Elder, and it's kind of odd for Democrats to talk about race because the LA Times basically said he's the face of Jim Crow, I think he said. Yeah, Larry Elder. So they went out and they used the race and then there were people who were doing at those demonstrations, those left-wing demonstrations, they were using all these, somebody dressed up wasn't in a monkey suit or something, it was horrible what they did to him. And they used the race card and they did, they used the race card because they said, well, we're on the left and we can't be guilty of racism, therefore we're going to be racist because there's nobody going to police the police, as Juvenile said. Well, Victor, we're going to come back to domestic politics, but let's take it to opportunity now before we take a break to get your take on this Holman Jenkins article, just the concept here, Trump can't escape his Bay of Pigs. And I know Holman a little bit, I've seen him once a year, Larry Kudlow has an event, he's an awfully nice guy, he's a great, very good syndicated column, not syndicated, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, but that concept that I ran right now is somehow Trump's Bay of Pigs, I don't know, I don't know, what do you think about that analogy? If you actually read the column, the title doesn't reflect the Bay of Pigs, and that, I don't know if it was his title or an editor used that to get clicks, but the Bay of Pigs was a fiasco, it was an absolute disaster where we use ex-Cubans, ex-patriots and land them in the Bay of Pigs, and then when they started, everything started to go south, we just pulled out and left them. And it was embarrassing for Kennedy, etc., etc. Iran is a fantastic military success, 13 tragically lost soldiers, but we destroyed the most formidable state in the Middle East by far. The problem is, it's the political strategic end of the whole thing, the denouement. The Bay of Pigs was gone from the moment it started, it was a disaster. Iran was not, so if you actually read what he says, he says that. He says that things are going well in Iran militarily, and Donald Trump is now at a crossroads. He knows that he has to do a little bit more probably kinetic use of the military, but he said he wasn't, and they've lost two or three weeks with this on and off typical Iranian negotiate, delay, negotiate, and they will never consent to giving up their nuclear weapons, nor their missile arsenal, nor their ability to do either in number. So he's saying, there are things that you can do without the use of ground troops. You can take out cargo island, you don't have to take out the oil storage tanks, you can take out the dock, so they can't land. No one can land there, no cargo ship, no tanker can land there, nobody can. It's almost as if the oil would be intact if there's a revolution someday, and you can keep, you can start, I don't know why there is one today, there was another tanker that was harassed, I think fired upon by these speed boats. They may have 100, they may have 200, I don't know why the warthogs are not just blanketing the sky, knocking them off. Maybe it's because of the truth, so maybe we're afraid that they have 15% of their missile force and they're going to hit Saudi or the Emirates or something. But what he was saying is that if Donald Trump went this far and took this much risk, and he still has six months from the midterm, and they're so close to being completely disarmed and defanged, and he gave them a legitimate window to negotiate, which they didn't take seriously, then you might as well use enough force to ensure they're not going to be an existential threat. And then get the people in from the Europeans. Europeans, you know, they said they're going to have this big armada. I'm waiting, waiting, waiting, where are the British battleships? There are no more battleships, I was just kidding, but where are all the British ships? Where are all the French ships? Where are all the German ships? Where are all the Italian ships? And somebody said, well, they can't. Well, then they were very poor. You could argue the best destroyers that were made in World War II were the French. And Jean Bart was a very sophisticated battleship. The Italians built six of the Cavuto class. They were really good battleships in World War II. And the French Navy was the third largest Navy in the world until the collapse of France. And so they can do it. They created the battleship. The British created the battleship. They created the aircraft carrier along with us, but they were right with us. So they have the ability to do this. And, you know, they came off very badly, Jack, because the Arab Gulf states are some of the big exporters of their oil along with North Africa to to Europe. And you'd think they want to protect their suppliers. They didn't lift a finger. Why didn't France or why didn't, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that any of them sent anti-aircraft batteries to Kuwait or Qatar or anybody. They could have helped them. They didn't lift a finger. They haven't lifted a finger to keep the straits. They talk about it. Lebanon is a French colony. They're always talking about, well, we have special interest in Lebanon. Okay, you do. Now they want to cut a deal. They want to get rid of Hezbollah. Hezbollah is cut off from Iran. There's no money anymore for them. There's no terrorist subsidies. They've been decapitated over the last year and a half. Just send some troops in and help the Lebanese government get rid of them, but they won't lift a finger. So it gets petrified by their own Muslim voter. I think they're terrified of their left-wing parties and they're terrified. They know the Europeans hate Trump. So they're worried about their party. They're worried about, as you say, their Muslim base and they're terrified of Iranian funded terrorism. And they don't want to do, you know, Iran just said that its embassies are going to encourage suicide bombing. So they're terrified of that. And, you know, when everybody's upset about Trump said that he's going to take out 5,000 troops, I've been watching all these generals, retired generals get on and just deplore that. But they miss the point. The point is that Europe has 450 million people in the EU and NATO countries. It's got a GDP of over 20. GDP is about the size of China's. Look what China's doing with its GDP. The Europeans have all this money. They have a big population and they have a, they could build a huge military and they just keep saying no. No, no, no, no, no. And 2% is just pathetic to defend themselves when there's a war going on. So we shouldn't have to have anybody there other than a hospital and a base and logistics. But why would we want to have 35,000 troops there when Germany has got 80 million people? Yeah, 80 million people. They could make an army of a million people. And then- They used to. Far more than that. I'm not saying, well, I remember where Lord is in 1953. Lord, they asked Lord is made reportedly. I'm not sure he went on the record with that, but he was quoted widely. Why would we want a North Atlantic Treaty organization? He was the first NATO general and he said to keep America in, Russia out, and Germany down. And they solved that problem by allowing the Americans, we couldn't really allow Britain, but they allowed France to get nuclear material and the two of them have nuclear weapons. And Germany was discouraged not to along with Japan. So now there's a nuclear France and a nuclear Britain and there will never be a Germany forthright. There's a wind and solar Germany. Victor, I'm going to come back to America here in a second. But first to our viewers and our listeners, if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all today. America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime and we've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. And policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth. Every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise never waited for collapse. They prepared for the correction and that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history, physical gold, not a speculation, but as insulation, our reputation of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words matters to us, which is why we're partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability, and an A plus rating from the Better Business Bureau. For years, they've guided Americans through transparent education and longstanding relationships built on trust. And right now they're extending a special liberty offer to our listeners and viewers to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in the bank. If you believe as we do that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious, call 844-790-9191, 844-790-9191, or visit protectwithvictor.com. That's 844-790-9191, 844-790-9191, or visit protectwithvictor.com. History rewards those who take the long view and we thank the good people from Allegiance Gold for once again sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. And I should say Victor has a website, I said it earlier, but you should be subscribing. It's 650 a month just to test it out. Why would you do that? Because Victor writes exclusive, twice a week, an exclusive article for the blade of Perseus and he does an exclusive video weekly for it. There's tons and tons of free stuff there too. Victor's various other appearances you'll find links galore. But if you want the full year it's $65. So where do you go? You go to VictorHansen.com, the blade of Perseus. By the way, Victor, this is going to be up a few days before Mother's Day. And I think if somebody who's a listener or viewer knows that mom is a VDH fan and lover, I met that in the Christian sense. That would be a subscription to the blade of Perseus would make a great gift. Well, it is true. I enjoyed reading these beautifully calligraphy letters from women in their 60s and 70s. And I only say 60s and 70 because they would tell me about all of their heroic efforts to beat cancer or their husband's effort. But what I meant, I mentioned that last time that we're at a crisis in our culture and it's nice to have people who take the shopping cart back and all these little tiny things in the broken windows tradition. But when you see people that write with stationery, you know what I mean? With beautiful stationery, smaller envelopes, sort of often illustrated and then they write this beautiful calligraphy. It's really something to see. It's very personal. It is. It's a lost art. I'm very happy you're getting that. I just hope that they pass it on. I think the classical schools, which are of course a growing movement, are, have reintroduced penmanship as we used to get graded on in grammar school. So maybe it's cursive is coming back. Let me just ask the court. Cursive will replace the cursing. Yes, Victor? Have you noticed this new phenomenon? I'm getting a lot of letters, maybe one a day from readers and they send me videos from usually blue failed states, but often here in California, they'll send me a video of downtown palace of fine arts in San Francisco circa 1945. What it was it like to drive through an LA neighborhood in 1952 and what was downtown Los Angeles like in 1960? And it's just amazing. People are all well-dressed. I know there's so-called quote-unquote hobos down by the railroad track or whatever. There was, and people were poor in real terms than they are now, but they weren't culturally poor. Everybody was better dressed and the system seemed to look better. I always go back to those scenes in Vertigo, you know, they're filmed in actually in downtown San Francisco. Even, you know, I was thinking, I watched Dirty Harry not too long ago and I thought the 70s were kind of a terrible period of decay, but San Francisco looked a lot better in 1971 and two than it does now. I don't think we've really appreciated how bad it is, what our generation has done, or the generation behind it. The slobbliness is really disturbing. I am the, I'm the best dressed person at my mass on Sunday, which is I'm no clothes horse, but- How about the airlines? The guys of a certain- I don't know how many times I've sat next to somebody in yoga pants that were two sizes too small and are people eating a chili boat with, you know, right next to you. But small, that's the only regret when you, you know, when you get older and you've had a health challenge, you look back and I grew up in this house, you know, and when I was young, it was one of the safest neighborhoods. Nobody had a, but it's not now. And I always think that it would have been nice to say when I was 60 to move somewhere that would capture that small town, safe, you know, people. And one town that is like that, I think you came to it once, Jack, Kingsburg, California. I did, yeah. With Richard and Big Mike, yeah. Yeah. And it was founded by my great-grandfather, Nells Hansen, was one of the founders that came from Sweden, but it was a, it is a beautiful city still and it works and you go downtown, it's just different than the other cities. But they take 110% to make sure the town is clean, that there's no homeless people and the stores stay open and there's very little crime and it's, so you can do it. Well, we're conservatives and conservatives conserve, right? They want to pass on the beauty and the importance of not only their view on this policy or that policy, but on the distinctness of their locality. And they're reproducing themselves. The left, isn't it? It's shrinking. Ben Sasse got in kind of trouble. I don't know why they objected to what he said. He said something having two or three children is an investment in the future. And they really, he got a lot of criticism for that. I don't know why. It's true. Yeah. I, as we're, as this show is coming out on the fifth, tomorrow will be the sixth and he will be at, I hope he'll be at this, Ben Sasse, at this Manhattan Institute, Hamilton dinner, which I think you, I'm not sure if that's a dinner you, yeah, I think I've been to one. Yeah. So I hope to see him. He's a great, great guy, great friend. He's got this new immunotherapy drug. I think he has a crass mutation. You might even have a crass R mutation like I do, but I doubt it's R. I think that has really, he was diagnosed, I think, around Christmas with four months to live and it's, you know, it's already six, seven months. Right. And his tumor has shrunk. I read the interview with 71% smaller. And each year that he can live, there's more and more drugs, you know, coming out, you know, therapy. That somebody with pancreatic cancer, 20 years ago, you would have been dead in six weeks. Never mind. Unless you're George Schultz. When I first got to the Hoover, he had pancreatic cancer. And he, he went in the hospital and they peeled off the tumor at the top of his pancreas and he gave, I was at a conference at the Hoover institution and he led it from this hospital bed by telephone. And he lived to like a hundred, didn't he? No, when I went there, 2003, he was about 81 and he lived until he was a hundred a month. So you never know. Well, speaking before, you raised our culture and I'm going to divert a little bit because two days ago was May Day. Nobody gave a rat's patoot about May Day 20, 30 years ago, except the commies that were still behind, you know. Well, you see Santa Cruz, there were, there, all the red commie flags were shown. I remember. Oh, that's right. That's such a radical place. Well, two stories, Victor. One, has to do with these student rallies. These teachers in major cities across the country took their students, elementary school students out to go to these big city protests for, you know, whatever the policies of the National Teachers' Unions of the American Federation. So that's one, what happened on May Day? Your kids may have been taken out of class to attend a political rally and then separately, there was a rally outside in New York City, outside Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, talking about cancer. And this, this happened because, I don't think we ever spoke about it, but Ken Griffith, the billionaire and the, who has been targeted by Mondami, well, he gave $400 million to this hospital, which is saving the lives of children with cancer, but leftists were protesting outside this hospital because Ken Griffith had given, has given it money. And that is a special kind of twisted. Anyway, this was May Day in America, 2026. Any thoughts on this, Victor? I don't understand that. I mean, he didn't, he wasn't born wealthy, Ken Griffith. He created all this wealth with his own know-how. I mean, every billionaire has a nice lifestyle, but he can't use all of this money. He knows that. And he's been very magnanimous in giving it away over a billion dollars, I think, to New York City and various causes. But you see, the left's mentality is that as Elizabeth Warren once articulated for us, you didn't build that. The society built it. You're only taking credit. You're a result. You're a dividend of our society. You wouldn't have been able to do it if you didn't get social security or your kids didn't get free school, that kind of stuff, which is, you know, not free. It's from taxes. And they're very, this, that's why I keep using the word Jacobin. They're very crude. They, there's nothing that's sacrosanct for the left, nothing. When they go to an anti-ice riot, they will have those rubber fallacies that look like penises, excuse me, and they will point them at people's face or that crazy Minnesota family will go up to the troops reporter and blow that, that noise right in their ears if they could break her eardrum and then the father will push her from the back or they'll throw defecate, they'll defecate and throw it at the, that ice officers. There's nothing or even the congress women. Remember that commercial they cut about boxing and hitting Trump and kickboxing? They wore kind of Joe Zitsu suits or something, sweatpants. Everything, and the F word, I know that Trump uses it and I've been critical, but they, they, that was never used 30 years ago, 20 years ago in public discourse. So there's, it's just kind of a, a Jacobin, a Jacobin, there are, all tradition is artificially suppressing human nature and we're all noble savages that if we just get all of these rules and regulations off, we can express ourselves naturally. That's what homelessness is. That's what the new decor is at the, on the airlines. It's the Greyhound bus. Greyhound, when I was at college, when I went to college, I had to take the Greyhound bus, it was like eight hours of Santa Cruz. People were poorly dressed because they didn't have any money. You know what I mean? Today, people have money if they're flying, but they're more poorly dressed than the Greyhound bus people are today. And it's, it's really disturbing. You know, it really is. See the coarseness of everything. I sound like the poet horse. He said, yeah. And one of the, in famous Odie says, we are a generation that produced a generation worse than ourselves, about to produce a generation worse than themselves. Yeah. Well, it's, how we, how we, how we do a 180 is beyond me other than praying for it. Well, the Western empire lasted 400 years after Virgil wrote that. And the Eastern empire lasted a thousand. So more, more, excuse me, 1400 years. There's hope. Victor, let's, let's conclude with a couple of crime. I think crime was just mentioned before. And I have a, I have a bevy of things here, but I just want to mention a few and get your take on this. We brought it up in prior podcast of the Democrat Party being party that almost loves crime criminals in Colorado. For Colorado Democrats blocked a Senate bill, which would have required jail time for child rapists. The, the, I'll mention their names, these Democrats, Adrian, Benavides, Nick, Henrichson, Katie Wallace, and Mike Wiseman. Do humans do this? They do there in New York. I'm holding today's New York post for those who can, or are watching this on YouTube. Albany, that's the capital of New York. There's a bill being put forward there that would parole, this is David Berkowitz, by the way, the son of Sam. He's in, he's in prison. And under this law, anyone that's 55 or older, who was served 15 years, would have immediate recourse to parole hearing and hearings every two years. And there's also some legislation about letting people out after a certain, a certain age period. And I thought they had, I have like 10 criminality, oh, the last criminality one is in California, is in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles unified school district has come to a settlement with the teachers union. Let me see, if a union teacher sexually abuses a student in Los Angeles, they have unlimited job security, they just get sent to a new school. This is an agreement that education officials have, I mean, this is... A subtext is that is the epidemic is not what you would think. A bunch of bald, obese white guys chasing beautiful 16 year old girls around the desk. It's sophisticated, supposedly sexually experienced teachers, feminine, female that are having sex with boys to fulfill that old 1950s jock type idea that it's not really sexual. It's initiation, it's not sexual harassment. You know, the idea being if you said, in my high school class to a bunch of guys, the hot Mrs. Smith who's 28 is going to have sex with you at 15 or 16, they would say, oh, yeah, but that's what I bring that up because that's what they're going back to. You don't even mean that attitude that maybe these women are mentors or groomers or something. And it's really sexist because if it was an older male unattractive trying to coerce a woman, they wouldn't do that, but maybe they would under this statute. But it's... I don't know whether it's epidemic or it's just in the news all the time of these young women in their 20s who are teachers that are having sexual relations with young men. And where does it come from? I think it's part of... It started with the idea that pederasty that was in the gay world of... Harvey Milk was accused allegedly of having a live-in person who was under the age of 18. I don't know if that's true, but I think people Pete Hexess, Pentagon wanted to rename the... Didn't they want to rename the USS Harvey Milk, a logistic ship? I don't know if they did for that reason. But there are a lot of people... I think there's a person in the California legislature, gay guy, who wants to water that down because they feel there's a long romantic literary tradition in the West, partly in the public schools, which are the private schools, are Britain and in Europe. Tea and sympathy. Yeah. Yeah. But also same sex, grooming... Yeah. What the Greeks called the Erastes, the active older man and the Aramanos. And that tradition that was imbued with philosophical seriousness supposedly, that was the idea. And it's kind of scary. What I'm getting at is the... I think it's one of the pluses, by the way, Victor. On the flag, I think that's... that man-boy love is now one of these plus, plus, pluses. Yeah. Well, you know what's so funny is that in the 70s and 80s, it was the Democratic Party that really... it was not the libertarian Republicans as much. They were moralistic, much more moralistic. I should say moral, not moralistic, but they were not driving these laws about the age of consent. It was a... remember that it was a children. It was Hillary. We have to save the children. And they were really going after any sexual activity under the age of 18 in most states. And now it's just... they've come 180 degrees. It's now... well, who are you to say that the person isn't old enough to give an age of consent? You know? And I think it comes from the idea they feel that it's oppressing the gay community somehow, that they can't date young boys. And... because that's the people who are the most advocate of the peteresty, which is a Greek word. It just means pice, the word for boy, and then erao, the verb in Erostes, the noun, loving a boy. Pedophilia is a little different. That is termed with... under the age, I think, of 12, pedophilia. That's love for a child and over the age of 12, given the etymology, it's sexual acts with it with a child. But in our world, we call pedophilia, I think, the worst crime because a person's not even at puberty yet. That was the distinction. But it's funny how the Democrat... this new Jacobin party, they want to destroy all of these norms that they used to say were so important. You know? Remember about abortion? I want... we... I think that abortion should be... here's Bill Clinton. I think that abortion should be, you know, legal. And where? And where? He said that. No, it's legal and common. Safe legal and right. You know, this stuff with the... with moving the teachers around, or just moving them to another school. This is the same group of people that in various states, the left, extended the laws in order to go after priests. And I'm not defending priests here who were engaged in... but to say, oh, this... the Catholic diocese was bad because the priest did this and he abused this boy here, they moved him to another parish, and that's bad. Now, it doesn't matter if it happened 50 years ago, we have to go after them. Meanwhile, if you're a teacher, it's okay to... to move you around if you... Well, they're not done yet. ...allested to kid. They may feel that liberation theologists in the church have certain dispensations because they're trying to groom people in national liberation theology and things happen. Who knows what they're capable of? They're a very fluid mindset, the left, and whatever is necessary or whatever is convenient, they don't believe in absolutes or norms or unchanging human nature. And so, they come up with all these... I mean, I never... if we had this discussion 10 years ago, 15, we wouldn't even know what a transgendered person was. It was some clinical description called a transexual that affected 0.0001 of the population. Christine Jorgensen from the 1960s who changed hers. And all of a sudden, it became 30% of the kids that, you know, Ivy League schools were saying they would like to transition. So, it's... it's... every... as I keep saying, every bad idea starts in the faculty lounge. And from the faculty lounge to the American popular cultures about two years. Well, Victor, we're going to cross the finish line here in a few minutes because you got a rest. You've got this... you got good news and we're very happy for you. We've got a... You've got this final flu out of your system. Yeah. So, I want to read a couple of the comments that folks have left on YouTube. But that... I mean, again, it's always a staggering amount of them. Try to go through them. The transit driver writes, make Skeletor great again. Love you, Victor. I just... that's kind of funny. Michelle... Michelle Ande writes, I love these discussions with Sammy and Victor. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Tricky Vicky writes... Tricky Vicky. Tricky Vicky. In the time since February 28th, we lost 13 soldiers in the Iran operation. And during the same time span, 67 people were murdered in Chicago. Very good. Very good. Very good. No one talks about that. No one wants to talk about that. No one... I heard a representative on TV say, we may have spent $25 billion. And I'm thinking, California, we spent $250 billion and just burned it up on hospices and COVID relief and all of that. Nobody got excited. I have two more... Two more here. One is, you mentioned this... You were talking about purgatory again, even without me... Pres... and limbo, but you said something about your own baptismal record, or lack of there for such. So, Pastor Josh St. Luke's 6592 writes Luther... Victor. I am a Lutheran pastor who also happens to be of Swedish lineage. I do believe you have faith and will go to heaven. If you would like to be baptized, I would happily drive to California at the drop of a hat. Thank you so much. You're in my prayers daily. By the way, my grandfather was Danish. So, we spell our last name Hansen with an E. So, do you have that outstanding offer? And finally... I ordered my... I have a lot of Greek New Testaments, but I thought that... I ordered a new one. I came yesterday, a Greek... And I've got my... My other one's worn out, Greek Latin, so I've got that ordered. So, I'm trying to read as much. Okay. I hope it's a Catholic Bible. So, Eliza 6722, this is the last one, writes, When I was doing my PhD, my department had a department picnic. Some professors there chat about scandals done by their peers and other institutions and how some peers manipulate to get tenure. I said, I think before becoming a mathematician, we should first learn how to be a human being. An assistant professor said, that's what you think. But many mathematicians don't care because all they care about is whether they can publish papers in certain journals so they can get tenure. The tenure system doesn't care about your morale. So, academia is full of psychopaths. They don't have morale. It's way worse than the private sector. Yeah, he's absolutely right. If anybody's out there, for all you people who are not in academia or grammar school or K through 12 teacher, can I ask you a question? After six years as a plumber, electrician, can you... You get lifetime employment and do you take off from the first of June to the first of September? And do you set your own hours when you can come and go? And there's no accountability. I don't mean you're sales. You work like crazy three days and then you take a day. No, I'm talking about every single day. No matter what you do, you're going to be paid and you don't have to show up for the whole day because that's what academia... And you have off every seventh year, right? Yes, you get off... You're sabbatical and there's all sorts of other. You can take leave without pay and get a big grant. It's one of the easiest jobs in the world and they keep saying, well, we're subsidizing groundbreaking research that's got consequential results for the nation. No, you don't. You just read the titles. It's the sexual divinity or the transgendered nature of Artemis at Brauowen or something. It's just worthless. It's going to be like... I loved how... I was writing my thesis, oh my gosh, 50 years ago and I went in the library and I was a lot of German books that were on Greek military affairs and I saw one. It was actually a pamphlet and it had, I think it said 1933-1 and I didn't know what it was, but then when I started to read the book, it had so much stuff about race, like the hellots were genetically inferior or something and they subordinate. But my point is, it was the year one of the Third Reich and it was an alternate date for the publisher. But what I'm getting at is if you today are studying classics and you want to go back to some really seminal works, if you go to work that's probably... I would give them a little credit, maybe 1934, 1935 to 44, it's worthless because it's all imbued with national socialist subtext everywhere and it has a lot to do with race and ethnicity. And my point of all this is I think this... The 1990s is pretty worthless now when you go read articles in my field. It's Derrida, Lacan, Michel Foucault, Postmodern... It's a silly. And now I think then the 2000 to 2020, it's pretty much worthless. It's DEI, diversity, equity. So we haven't really... That's modern academia is what I'm trying to say. Early American history is attempts to find transgenderism in the founding fathers. Yes, to find something well written that is well written and not written in verbage, you have to go before 2000 and if you don't, you'll have to get somebody outside the university. There's great writers outside the university, but not somebody that's tenured in the Harvard History Department or somebody. It's going to be ideological Stanford History Department, ideological and poorly written. Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife, the importance of passing along our values to our children, the faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive. As long as we keep first things first, we've only just begun. America, the beautiful. Well, Victor, you've been terrific. I'm so glad about the great news you're shared for yourself. I dodged a bullet for 120 days. As one oncologist said to me, you never are cured of cancer. You are relieved of it for a while. That means it can well. Another person, I have a good friend, I mentioned Max Nikias a lot. He's an engineer, so he's a very scientific mind. He sent me a nice email today. I mentioned it to him and he's shown me that the life expectancy of where I am now at 72 is the same as the signatory expectancy. So in other words, when you get two or three negatives, you still have cancer. Even if it comes back, it may not come back to you. We're going to be dead anyway from another cause. I think people are 78. But the closer you get to 78, I think your odds go up, living a few years beyond it. I don't know. It was Max implying you might be 87 and still doing these podcasts with me and Sammy. He didn't give you a shelf life, did he? I don't know about that. All right, perfect. But I get analysis, a critique of my podcast, believe me, from every single day. Oh, I've seen, yes. Some of them are very constructive, some are not. Some are. Some of them try to be constructive or not. Anyway, I just want to mention, please folks, go to civilthoughts.com. Sign up for civil thoughts. That's the free weekly email newsletter I write for the Center for Civil Society. Comes out every Friday. Absolutely free. We're not selling your name, et cetera. 15 recommended readings, great articles I've come across the previous week. I know you will like it. Victor Davis Hansen's website is the blade of Perseus. Go to VictorHansen.com. If you're on X, his handle is at BD Hansen. If you're on Facebook, BDH's Morning Cuff. And a great friendly group, not official, anything to do formally. It's the Victor Davis Hansen fan club. And of course, go to the Daily Signal and check out all the great things they have there. Maybe they'll be selling Victor's hats soon. You never know. So Victor, thanks for all the wisdom you shared today. And we will be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Thank you everybody for watching and listening. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. And also check out my own website at VictorHansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.