Victor Davis Hanson in The New Yorker: Trump as tragic hero
Victor Davis Hanson has given a fascinating interview to Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker.
The interview is well worth reading if only for the thesis that Hanson, a classics professor, offers about Trump:
Do you feel that in some ways he is a hero out of Greek myth?
Yeah, as long as we understand the word “hero.” Americans don’t know what that word means. They think it means you live happily ever after or you are selfless. Whether it is Achilles or Sophocles’s Ajax or Antigone, they can act out of insecurity, they can act out of impatience—they can act out of all sorts of motives that are less than what we say in America are heroic. But the point that they are making is, I see a skill that I have. I see a problem. I want to solve that problem, and I want to solve that problem so much that the ensuing reaction to that solution may not necessarily be good for me. And they accept that.
It reminds me of Trump saying that people will get sick of winning. It seems like you are saying we have gotten sick of it, and that is the tragedy of Trump.
I think so. I tried to use as many examples as I could of the classic Western, whether it was “Shane” or “High Noon” or “The Magnificent Seven.” They all are the same—the community doesn’t have the skills or doesn’t have the willpower or doesn’t want to stoop to the corrective method to solve the existential problem, whether it is cattle barons or banditos. So they bring in an outsider, and immediately they start to be uneasy because he is uncouth—his skills, his attitude—and then he solves the problem, and they declare to him, whether it is Gary Cooper in “High Noon” or Alan Ladd in “Shane,” “I think it’s better you leave. We don’t need you anymore. We feel dirty that we ever had to call you in.” I think that is what is awaiting Trump…
How does this fit, in a Greek sense, with the man we are often confronted with—constantly tweeting, spending much of his day watching cable news, obsessed with small slights. Do these things, allowing for the modern context, also remind you of great heroes of myth?
Have you read Sophocles’s “Ajax” ever? It’s one of his best plays.
No, I haven’t.
You have a neurotic hero who cannot get over the fact that he was by all standards the successor to Achilles and deserves Achilles’s armor, and yet he was outsmarted by this wily, lesser Odysseus, who rigged the contest and got the armor. All he does is say, “This wasn’t fair. I’m better. Doesn’t anybody know this?” It’s true, but you want to say to Ajax, “Shut up and just take it.” Achilles has elements of a tragic hero. He says, at the beginning of the Iliad, “I do all the work. I kill all the Trojans. But when it comes to assigning booty, you always give it to mediocrities—deep-state, administrative nothings.” So he stalks off. And the gods tell him, “If you come back in, you will win fame, but you are going to end up dead.” So he makes a tragic, heroic decision that he is going to do that.
I think Trump really did think that there were certain problems and he had particular skills that he could solve. Maybe in a naïve fashion. But I think he understood, for all the emoluments-clause hysteria, that he wasn’t going to make a lot of money from it or be liked for it.
The article is interesting for what it presents of Hanson’s thoughts on the matter. But it’s also interesting because of the subtext, which is a cat-and-mouse game the interviewer believes he’s playing with Hanson. In the latter game, I’m not sure who wins, but I am pretty sure it depends on the bias of who is reading.
When I read the article, Chotiner’s lead-in descriptions of Hanson leapt out at me as being a debunking of the opinions of the man he is set to interview (supposedly respectfully). He can’t do away with Hanson’s obvious academic achievements and honors, but he distorts Hanson’s record outside of academia in a way that is meant to discredit Hanson in the reader’s mind before even reading any of Hanson’s words in the interview. One small example:
…[Hanson] has a history of hostility to undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants, who he claims are undermining American culture, and to African-Americans who speak about the persistence of racism…
Speaking of “hostility,” that’s a hostile summary description of Hanson’s work that’s patently unfair to Hanson, and yet meant to label him as a bigot at the outset. That Hanson’s responses to the interview are so thoughtful and interesting merely makes it even more important that Chotiner set it up in the readers’ minds in a way that the reader knows that he or she is not supposed to seriously pay attention to the actual thoughts of this bigoted person.
Chotiner also frames his questions in a way that makes his own bias known, although rather subtly. Hanson is much smarter than Chotiner (not to mention far more well-versed in the classics), but Chotiner is better at the spin and the propaganda.
And we are supposed to respect the New Yorker? They are coasting on the accomplishments of dead past authors. A dead mag walking.
Neo… this explains a lot about the situation i am in and why i came to this, and the tragic end it will bring…
But the point that they are making is, I see a skill that I have. I see a problem. I want to solve that problem, and I want to solve that problem so much that the ensuing reaction to that solution may not necessarily be good for me. And they accept that.
should never have been…
Wow–the statement that Hanson is hostile toward Hispanics and African-Americans is just a lie. Unfortunately, that lie will circle the world before the truth can get its pants on.
I’ve long been a fan of VDH.
But, I’m disappointed in him, here. Why on earth did he give an interview to The New Yorker?
We are at war, and he knows that just as much as anyone. (Not, as yet, a shooting war; and may it never come to that. I hope leftism dies out long before that happens. But we are still at war.)
It is a cold war, an ideological war, a war of propaganda.
Now it is just plainly the fact that UNLESS a journalist has known right-of-center opinions (recently re-established, so as to avoid concerns of more-recent ideological drift), and is ALSO doing the interview on behalf of a right-of-center organization/outlet, any interview will be entirely for the purposes of left-of-center propagandizing.
This means that if YOU, whoever you are, are interviewed, any response you give to the interviewer will be used to pursue their agenda, not yours. And that is nearly always a no-win situation. It is like agreeing to be a guest on Bill Maher’s show, or Stephen Colbert’s, but worse.
In such “studio audience” situations, maybe someone like a Jordan Peterson has the on-stage gravitas and self-control and quick-thinking necessary to thread that needle and come across sympathetically enough to win converts in front of a biased audience who showed up hoping to see him denounced or trounced. And maybe his best efforts aren’t undermined or overwhelmed by the emotional outbursts of other hostile onstage personalities being stage-managed by a hostile moderator.
But it’s unlikely, and it’s rare, and it requires a combination of luck and the kind of extreme skill that Peterson seems to have developed, but which few or no other right-of-center personalities yet possess. Unless your name is Jordan Peterson, you should assume, sir or ma’am, that you’re no Jordan Peterson.
And IF you happen to defeat the leftist lion in his own den, what then? If the interview gets all the way to YouTube and goes viral, then and only then does it help your side.
(That’s how the Cathy Newman thing happened.)
But with “talking heads” news programs, and with interviews for print outlets, that opportunity to help your own side doesn’t exist. Unlike “live before a studio audience” shows, such programs are assembled ahead of time from lots of extra material, and if they think you got the upper hand, they’ll leave your best bits on the cutting room floor.
This is even more true with the New Yorker piece. In print, they always have the option not to run the piece. In “editing for clarity,” they can change the meaning of your words. And they can do as this piece did: Imply you’re a bigot right out of the gate, include irrelevant references to factoids you didn’t remember with perfect accuracy, and encourage their readers to think of you as a dumbass racist blowhard with a poor grasp of the facts.
And then they’ll present that to their existing 90% leftist readership, who’re already predisposed to view you and your views unsympathetically.
What are the odds, under those circumstances, that you’ll do anything to benefit your own side, in such an exchange?
Slim to none!
And thus it was a BAD decision, overall, for Victor Davis Hanson to give this interview.
I enjoyed reading the “Greek hero” comparison. I agree with it, as I do with most of what VDH says. For those (narrow, low-importance) reasons, I am happy he did the interview.
But in the broader sense, he should have steered clear. In war, don’t make unforced errors!
Chotiner’s bias is blatant, not subtle. It’s obvious in his description of Mr. Hanson. Undocumented immigrant is of course an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp. A while back one of those “undocumented immigrants” tried to make a withdrawal at the bank, but the police shot him because he was an undocumented customer. La Raza, of course, claimed that it’s not fair that you can’t make withdrawals from the bank if you aren’t a customer.
From what Hanson has written/said over the years, he is living on and trying to work his family’s farm that has been in that family for a couple of generations.
But, the Central Valley area he is living in has basically been “transmogrified,” invaded and occupied by mostly illegal Mexican aliens, who are trashing the area, and making it harder and harder for him to keep his family’s farm going.
They routinely dump trash–things like bags full of garbage and dirty diapers–on his property, trespass on his property to vandalize or steal things–including the irrigation pumps he needs for his crops to survive–reckless unlicensed, uninsured drivers have hit him, people have dumped dead cars on his property, menacing people routinely come up on his property and show up, uninvited, at his front door, the local houses are deteriorating, and way over-stuffed with several families each, and on and on.
Yet, despite all this he is still trying to keep his family farm going.
If all this happened to me, damn right, I’d have a dim view of illegal aliens who were primarily Hispanics.
Yet, VDH has merely described the situation, not ranted against Hispanic or illegal aliens. I see no hate here. In fact, from his attitude throughout, he actually seems have sympathy for their situation.
Ray:
Chotiner’s bias is indeed blatant to us on the right. But we are not his intended audience. His bias is subtle or undetectable to those he is trying to reach.
As for whether there is, “then”, an inherent tragic dynamic or arc to Trump…
Socrates transmitted a very different interpretation of an Achilles or an Ajax, because for him these were not stock tropes in a canned drama, but highly flexible ‘professional shape-shifters’, who served the need of the moment.
The oral story tellers rendered a different narrative every time they told it. Even – or especially – with the same audience; they should know when they leave, that the teller gave them something new, just for today.
Trump is a Socrates. Most of us are. We are not tied to a written-down script, despite themes. We can, and in healthy form do take a new slant on the trope, every day.
Neo does this, as a well-tuned literary device and a professional style. She is always looking at story-prospects for the yes-but interpretation. 🙂
” I’m disappointed in him, here. Why on earth did he give an interview to The New Yorker?”
Don’t know, but at a guess he might have assumed the interview was about the book, or about his historically informed perspective on Trump, not about himself.
That would be one way for a “journalist” with an agenda to get around the widespread suspicion conservatives have when someone says they wish to write a profile of them. Say instead: “I’d like your views on Trump”
Note too that the author of the article says:
1, that it was a phone interview
2, that what he was presenting was highly edited and condensed … as if he was trying to head off some anticipated blow-back from the interviewee.
The Ross/Shawn New Yorker has devolved to the Remnick New Yorker.
That’s a very long fall.
Interesting interchange, and I am sure that Chotiner believes he vanquished the classicist with his insinuations. Neo is 100% correct that one will see what one wants to see in this interview. VDH’s assessment of Trump’s life and fate are interesting indeed. Chotiner’s attempts to reduce VDH are obvious, unoriginal, and picayune.
The discussion of Trump’s resort to birtherism was revealing. VDH points out that an advertising group that worked in concert with his publisher (it appears to have been Obama’s literary agent) put in a booklet that Obama was born in Kenya, and Trump promoted that fact as evidence of foreign birth. That all seems pretty historical to me, and Obama had plenty of resources to counter the accusation. Chotiner appears to disapprove of Trump’s promoting this issue as being somehow racist, and he appears to disapprove of VDH’s raising the facts in this discussion.
Well, I got it. VDH is trying to figure out Trump using the facts at hand, and Chotiner has no use for Trump or for anyone that wants to rationalize how we got here, including VDH, who “has a history of hostility to undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants, who he claims are undermining American culture, and to African-Americans who speak about the persistence of racism.”
I canceled my subscription to the New Yorker at 5:00 am the day after they printed Ronan Farrow’s wanglegate story about Bret Kavanaugh when they were unable to substantiate it.
I’ll learn more about human nature from an hour with VDH’s books than I’ll learn in a year with the New Yorker.
This is precisely why I no longer read the New Yorker. Calling Hanson, who has practically retired the crown on human decency, a racist and anti-immigrant is stupid and idiotic. Hanson, who owns a ranch near the border, has more day-to-day contact with Spanish-speaking people than any moral zombie at the New Yorker has had since the invention of spaghetti. Malcolm, light in the shoes Gladwell; Woody Allen’s “son.” To think Joseph Mitchell used to write for this rag.
I just read the whole interview. Chotiner’s questions are for the most part pure snark, which I don’t think Hanson picked up on at all because he answered most of them as if they were guilelessly straightforward.
…[Hanson] has a history of hostility to undocumented Mexican and Central American immigrants, who he claims are undermining American culture,
Hanson’s book, “Mexifornia” is an unsparing look at what was happening to California in 2006, 12 years ago. I am unaware of any of his writing about blacks.
VDH has always impressed me as not only extremely intelligent and knowledgeable, but also as a straight shooter. Chotiner comes across as a smug, south end of a north bound horse.
We can all agree VDH is not stupid. I say he gave the interview because he believes he can reach some NYer readers despite Chotiner’s hostility and dishonesty.
I think VDH is right. I think the left is past the point where moderate liberals, however bien pensant, aren’t getting queasy with where the New New Left is taking them and, however unconsciously, willing to consider alternatives.
Sorry to dodge the VDH and Trump angle, but here’s an amazing story linked to the New Yorker.
Also, the Mr. Fry provided this info. to a New Yorker reporter, listed in the indictment (not indicted), who is believed to be Ronan Farrow. Furthermore, said reporter learned why Mr. Fry was doing this. Because Mr. Cohen’s documents were sealed to Mr. Fry which he thought was suspicious. So Fry found a way around that, which maybe is how he got caught.
Does John Fry normally snoop through IRS files or was he assigned to Mr. Cohen’s case?
Increasingly, various powerful groups, corp. and gov., have lots of information on us, and they promise they won’t abuse it. Until they do.
If in your spirit mind body you embrace freedom, you are an enemy of the state. “Society is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst state, an intolerable one.” Tom Paine
We are on the cusp of intolerable. (Did you get that loud and clear fbi, cia, nsa, and the rest of the alphabet soup?)
huxley,
I agree, VDH took the interview in hopes of reaching/rescuing a few minds to stop drinking the kool aid.
whether it was “Shane” or “High Noon” or “The Magnificent Seven.” They all are the same—the community doesn’t have the skills or doesn’t have the willpower or doesn’t want to stoop to the corrective method to solve the existential problem, whether it is cattle barons or banditos. So they bring in an outsider, and immediately they start to be uneasy because he is uncouth—his skills, his attitude—and then he solves the problem, and they declare to him, whether it is Gary Cooper in “High Noon” or Alan Ladd in “Shane,” “I think it’s better you leave. We don’t need you anymore. We feel dirty that we ever had to call you in.”
This immediately made me think of Churchill, who prior to the war was thought a nut by most… until Hitler invaded Poland. Then, in the next election after the war, they tossed him out of office.
Of course, now that enough time has passed, we see that their descendants are reaping what their immediate ancestors sowed. Not that today’s majority deserve any sympathy, given that majority’s support for the left. It will not end well for the UK’s citizens, who are in the early stage in the formation of a Police State (Tommy Robinson among others) as well as having imported the means of their destruction.
Sheep are constitutionally incapable of challenging wolves.
“If God did not want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep” the bandito Calvera from the movie, The Magnificent Seven
Something like 1/3 of the colonists actually supported the revolutionary war. Over time, the other 2/3 got the vote. They’ve consistently voted themselves ever greater “bread and circuses”.
Heinlein On Democracy; “For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”
Isaac Chotiner- any relation to Nixon associate Murray Chotiner ?
GB,
The ‘barbarians’ are inside the gates, and they want no borders to grow their barbarian horde. “A Republic if you can keep it.” Sadly, a majority does not understand how a republic is the only form of government that guards the gates against the barbarian mob outside and inside. Beans and bullets, go long.
The indomitable VDH in his own words.
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/03/11/survival-at-the-white-house/
This is a corollary to the arguments Hanson makes about the Deep State aka Permanent Elitist Bureaucracy.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/bureaucrats-civil-service-veto-presidential-policies/
ICYMI
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0219/hanson022119.php3
Changing reality with words
By Victor Davis Hanson
Published Feb. 21, 2019
I rejoiced when I got the New Yorker set of DVDs. For $12 I could bounce around to every article they published until 2005.
It was a flawed product. I had to hack it so I could copy all the DVDs to my hard disk and access them directly, but still it was a treasure trove. Those in charge of the magazine decided they didn’t want to support the product or, more likely, preferred people subscribe to the magazine and access past articles online.
Ten or so years ago I vowed I would never give liberal media another nickel so that’s out. But the magazine has become so partisan I am not missing much aside from an occasional article like this VDH interview.
Alas the New Yorker has fallen to the Gramscian Long March and it is another great cultural loss.
Artfldgr by this definition you are a Hero. Try your best not to be a tragic one.
I met VDH several years ago in Greece when he was giving a lecture tour of Delphi. I met with him, uninvited and not part of the tour. We had many good discussions that afternoon. He is truly a decent and knowledgeable man.
Into the lion’s den he goes, because he must. Tragic.
This quote tells me that VDH is wise to the game being played by the interviewer:
‘Have you read Sophocles’s “Ajax” ever?’
Note the word “ever”. VDH knows he hasn’t read it, probably has never heard of it. That word is unnecessary except as a dig at the interviewer.
I think VDH is right. I think the left is past the point where moderate liberals, however bien pensant, aren’t getting queasy with where the New New Left is taking them and, however unconsciously, willing to consider alternatives.
My 38 year old daughter, who works in the art world, lives in Santa Monica, and was convinced that Trump would be impeached shortly after taking office, now admits that some of the things he has done are good.
That should worry Kamala Harris, if she were self aware.
The New Yorker used to have excellent ‘long form’ journalism articles on non-political subjects. Since around 2005 or so … they stopped doing that.
VDH was, is, and likely always will be, a National Treasure.
VDH’s family farm “at the border” but, rather, more near the center of the Central Valley of Cali, somewhere near Fresno. Not that that distinction matters much in California wrt frequency of encounters with illegal aliens.
I’m a lifelong reader of the New Yorker. It was in the house when I was growing up. I quit in disgust over the stupidly, hackishly, pretentiously one-sided politics about 15 years ago. Do not miss it even a little. Sometimes I read it when I’m at someone else’s place, just to see if I’m missing anything much, but I’m not.
Meant to say it’s NOT at the border (as a previous commenter had noted).
Also, VDH was a Democrat not that long ago but apparently the party left him and/or he was too smart to remain.
To quote about some of VDH’s personal experiences from a review of his 2003 book, “Mexifornia: A State of Becoming”:
“…He goes on to catalogue the frequency of theft and fencing of stolen goods among the illegal aliens. When Mr. Hanson has something that has been stolen from his property, such as farm equipment, he will visit the Selma Swap Meet on a Sunday, see the item that was stolen and buy it back at ten cents on the dollar. This is not an infrequent occurrence.
He finds himself habitually replanting vines, because five times in twenty years, inebriated illegal aliens have left the road at high speed and plowed through his vineyard leaving thousands of dollars in damage. All five times the illegal alien has left the scene of the accident.
The California Highway Patrol eventually arrives finding a car without license or registration, and the car is impounded for the price of towing it away. In winter Mr. Hanson will replant the vines and wait three years for them to bear fruit.
At least once a month Mr. Hanson must clear the roadside of trash—not just the occasional beer bottle or fast food remains but also big plastic bags of foul wet garbage, soiled diapers, and assorted household items. At least twice a year, sofas, beds, televisions, washers and dryers and entire bedroom sets with dirty mattresses appear on his property.
Mr. Hanson’s strangest find one morning was “a whole trailer in front of [his] house—not a two-wheeler, but an enormous cotton model of 1950s vintage with no license plate or identification.” The trailer had three or four tons of trash in it; garbage was stacked ten feet high, and the monstrosity eventually had to be removed piecemeal by the county with a dump truck and a skip-loader.
One tragic aspect of Mexifornia that Mr. Hanson reveals is the decent, hard-working Mexican farmworker who has a second-generation gang-banger son. On a nightly basis, Mr. Hanson picks up “their needles and condoms, and brandy bottles near [his] farm pond.” Such items are a mute witness that assimilation is not happening.”
PPS–According to the biographical information in this review VDH is a fifth generation farmer.
See https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/06/daily-life-mexifornia-victor-davis-hanson-jonathan-coe.html
Given the state of affairs described above–and I’m pretty sure that it hasn’t gotten better since 2003, but a lot, lot worse–how many ordinary American citizens do you think have been driven out–just packed up, and moved to someplace where the living is better.
Fifth generation farmer VDH must be very stubborn; a man who doesn’t want to be run off the farm that has been in his family for five generations.
But at some point, it seems to me, such resistance just becomes futile.
Because, given the government and trends in California–really increasingly the “Mexifornia” his book described–things are only going to get worse.
California transformed/deformed into Mexico, with all the problems of Mexico that, ironically, prompted all of the Mexican illegal aliens to jump the border to settle in California.
Snow on Pine:
Good summary. Hansons’s family farm is in Selma, CA. A common theme of Hanson’s articles is the policies made by the gated community coastal elites destroy the lives of the not so fortunate 95%. Eventually their proclivities and policies will destroy even those inside the gates.
Anyone who is interviewed by a reporter of any stripe should automatically record every word of the conversation and announce that it will be placed on the web in its entirety for all to hear. It’s easy to do these days with any cell phone. It’s smart self defense.
AMartel:
I had subscribed to The New Yorker for about 30 years when I canceled it about 14 years ago.
I wish that ALL conservatives, and VDH as well, would tape their interviews, preferably on video. And have the entire thing available on their own website (for some limited time?) as well as YouTube/ Vimeo.
VDH is trying to reach the independent voters. (The two who are left?)
Actually, there probably are many who still want to call themselves open minded.
VDH does a reasonable job with Charlottesville. White nationalists were marching along with history buffs who opposed tearing down historical statutes. Some of them were good people.
Many Nazis were good people. Many FDR admin gov’t employees were good people, even tho they wrongly and immorally put thousands of Americans in concentration camps.
The tribal identity hatred being promoted by the Dems is terrible because it attributes to everybody in a group some specific bad action of some members of that group.
The New Yorker writer did an OK job in allowing VDH to talk, and pretty good job for his side in using VDH words to support the Dem demonization of Reps.
Tuvea on February 23, 2019 at 9:32 am at 9:32 am said:
The New Yorker used to have excellent ‘long form’ journalism articles on non-political subjects. Since around 2005 or so … they stopped doing that.
VDH was, is, and likely always will be, a National Treasure.
* * *
neo on February 23, 2019 at 11:02 am at 11:02 am said:
AMartel:
I had subscribed to The New Yorker for about 30 years when I canceled it about 14 years ago.
* * *
I also read NY for its great cultural and philosophical/historical musings, but in about 2003 I took all my unread back issues and put them in the trash.
So what happened in 2005? Change of editors?
Bush winning again push them over the edge?
That happened to a lot of people on the Left, I think: they decided to take the velvet glove off of the iron fist, and tell us bluntly what we were supposed to believe, instead of just gently slipping it in amongst the verbiage.
I do miss some of the cartoonists, though.
Rod Dreher has a fine note, with quotes from current elite college professors.
Life among the WokeScolds
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/life-among-the-wokescolds/
My students are generally pleasant, but they’re never any fun. Where’s the joy in their lives? They live to denounce. It’s like having 25 Robespierres around you three times a week. They’re always on the lookout for something to be outraged about.
Such students won’t care so much about FBI lawlessness — they’ll remain outraged at Trump for anything and everything that seems bad, including FBI crimes to frame Trump.
And these elite students are filling up the power slots of American culture, education, and politics.
The USA needs more Republican professors, and also K-12 teachers. Probably more male teachers, too.
Pingback:Victor Davis Hanson – national treasure – Tom Grey – Families, Freedom, Responsibility
Geoffrey’s quote of Heinlein reminded me of one of my favorite poems. I’ve thought it a propo for quite awhile now.
Waiting for the Barbarians
…Constantine Cadafy, 1860 – 1933
…tr. from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.
*
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn’t anything going on in the senate? ?Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/waiting-barbarians
The great majority, of run of the mill liberals, are politically closed minded, and they will die that way. An estimated 20 to 30 per cent are somewhat open minded, and many of them will eventually see the truth, as they gain life experience. VDH may have reached some of them.
Irony… This interview is like excellent classic literature.
One man, a brilliant man with an almost unbelievable understanding of history (and therefore the future..), more common sense that 5 average people, and a broad range of living experiences. The other, a shallow, credentialed (not educated) elitist who thinks snarky comments score debate points. (Unfortunately it does with his target audience…)
Here Hanson plays the role of hero. A man who understands what he is talking about at a level that Chotiner, and probably most readers, will not understand at all. They will see Hanson as supporting all the the evils that they have created in their heads. They neither understand the evils such as racism (it does exist, but not as they think) nor understand how absolutely wrong they are. And the tragedy is that they won’t understand, until the culture they hate is destroyed and is replaced with something even worse.
I would love to see the raw interview
The interviewers phrasing of VDH’s replies don’t sound at all like VDH
Julie, thanks for the poem. Cavafy was as well qualified as VDH to write on the subject. He was a Greek from a Constantinople family who lived, worked and wrote Greek poetry in Alexandria when Egypt was a British protectorate. He favored classical themes, and his reputation is largely posthumous.
VDH was justified in accepting the challenge of a hostile interview, if only to set the Trump/Ajax/Shane/High Noon parallel out before a literate audience – many of whom are equipped to understand about flawed heroes, even if the interviewer isn’t.
Yes, the interviewer was trying to make VDH look bad and stupid. That’s why I loved it when Hanson asked him, “Have you read Sophocles’s “Ajax” ever?”
Ha! He never should have brought up the classics…
Why would VDH give an interview to a hostile magazine? Beyond selling books I think he sees the opportunity to peal off a few true believers. I would also guess that VDH recorded the conversation and the interviewer knew it so that nothing could be taken out of context without a career ruining crapstorm.
What would Socrates say if The New Yorker called? Well, they may learn something. I certainly will; either a confirmation or mitigation of my presumptions about them. Let them ask. Let me answer. Let them edit, distort or misquote. If the madman may have his point, and he often does, even a lying Leftist may contribute, even if unwittingly.
Why does the New Yorker have wall designed to keep me out?
William, re Cavafy:
🙂
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Piper, I think it’s because The New Yorker is a subscription magazine. Their policy seems to be three free articles/month, as a teaser.
(I notice that even free-marketers — of which group I am one — often seem bothered by on-line subscription newspapers and magazines.)
But perhaps you were speaking tongue-in-cheek. :>)
Julie near Chicago on February 24, 2019 at 12:05 am at 12:05 am said:
Geoffrey’s quote of Heinlein reminded me of one of my favorite poems. I’ve thought it a propo for quite awhile now.
Waiting for the Barbarians
…Constantine Cadafy, 1860 – 1933
…tr. from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.
* * *
Wow – just, wow.
In re The New Yorker:
I don’t mind subscription magazines – pixels are cheap; they ain’t free – but it’s gotten so there is not enough value in the rags to make them worth the price.
Three articles a month is usually all I’m interested in, and I won’t pay for leftist cant.
It’s older than that: http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_tommy.htm (1892)
Aesop, 🙂 It’s always taken me that way, too. (One of the sites carrying it observes that it’s ironic or tongue-in-cheek or wry –forget which– humor. Never thought of it that way, but I think the site may well be right.)
Agree with your “3/mo is enuff already,” and I won’t pay for lefty drivel either! :>))
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Robert, yes indeed. An oldie-but-goodie for sure. Thanks. :>)
Which one is the tragedian?
http://donaldjtrump.com/cf
Not in an adult’s book.
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VDH has placed a response thread to Chotiner’s piece on his Twitter account, here: https://mobile.twitter.com/VDHanson/status/1100077015665913856
To quote: “An unfortunate piece that shouldn’t have been published in its current form and should be retracted.” VDH