Editor’s Note: This is the second of a three-part series featuring an interview on Liberty Nation Radio with the brilliant author and columnist Victor Davis Hanson, acclaimed for his insightful and provocative analysis of the COVID pandemic. In part one, Dr. Hanson made some dire predictions about the left’s intransigence on restarting the US economy.
As we reach the two-month mark of the COVID pandemic, unmistakable patterns of political behavior have emerged. To the surprise of few, if any, most Republicans are itching to return to work while many or most Democrats remain deathly afraid of the virus, at least in their public statements.
Through it all, the left has not stopped at blaming President Trump for the tens of thousands who have already died during the pandemic. They are already laying full responsibility for all virus-related deaths after reopening at Trump’s feet in a transparent attempt to somehow push Joe Biden across the finish line and into the White House in six months.
It’s not like we haven’t already seen just this sort of takedown multiple times in the Trump era as the elite media has morphed into a propaganda arm of the Democratic party – Comey, Mueller, Stormy, Cohen, Avenatti, and Ukraine to name a few. And it’s no different now, as exemplified in a recent editorial from The New York Times labeling the GOP as “the party of death,” with Trump as the willing, even enthusiastic executioner.
The tip of the spear for the left these days is the collective power of 24 Democratic governors who can comply or resist the guidelines set forth by the White House. And as we continue our discussion with Victor Davis Hanson, it’s clear that such authority is increasingly being employed in service to a larger cause: a fundamental transformation of our economy that the left could not achieve at the ballot box.
Tim Donner: In your recent article titled, “It’s a Free Country, Brother,” you write, “Out of nowhere little Napoleonic governors arise to enact decrees prohibiting gardening or strolling on an empty beach – decrees that seem to have little purpose other than to reflect that they can do so.” You seem to be implying, if not downright stating, that the crisis has served as some sort of permission concept for power hungry politicians.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah, I didn’t say that lightly. I’m afraid it’s true because everything we know about the virus says that it’s transmitted inside homes in moderate temperatures and in close proximity to people. So when the weather warms up and people can get out and get sunshine, healthy environment, go out on the beach and distance themselves, that would be a positive. But there is no scientific justification that you would prevent that. And we’re seeing it again and again. We see it in New York where people were infected and sent right into the worst place in the world, nursing homes, where the virus exploded. And yet governors and mayors and unelected officials have said things about masks, “You must wear them, you must not wear them. You must wear them sometimes.”
So we’re getting all of these unelected people who were issuing these edicts. You cannot say things that are unscientific. Two doctors in Kern County gave a very informative, scientific-based appraisal of the virus; it’s not the orthodox appraisal, and they’re taken off of YouTube. Or they’re censored by the American Academy of Emergency Room doctors. So at this point, it’s getting a little scary, and I think these states need to open up and follow the Swedish model and develop herd mentality, protect the most vulnerable. And we can do that without going into a depression, but time is running very, very short.
Tim: Well indeed, Sweden has basically done what you’d expect in a free country, which is to pass along clear guidelines to their people and then let them decide for themselves. And by the way, last I looked, Sweden’s death rate and infection rate was just about the middle of the pack for Western Europe. So there’s no big spike in this one country where they decided to go against orthodoxy.
But let’s talk about the media a little bit. It seems like you’ve got the smoking gun on the media’s anti-Trump at all costs crusade, when you write, “Donald Trump was trashed for musing that as chief executive he could order states to open up if he wished, and then hours later trashed even more when he suggested that the decision was really up to the governors.”
Given what we’ve seen in the last three years, is it even possible now for the media ever to go back to just being a reliably left of center vessel, instead of an industry that’s forsaken every one of their own standards in fealty to the notion that Trump must be removed at any cost?
Victor Davis Hanson: No, I don’t think they can go back. I think they’ve turned off half the country and nobody ... It’s just too many stories again and again and again. You know, that Trump’s said that the virus was a hoax, or that a man killed himself by drinking hydroxychloroquine because of Trump’s recommendation. Except that there’s just too many of these false stories, and they all conform to a typical pattern, and they’re not systematically fair. By that, I mean Joe Biden has a sexual assault allegation and it’s sloughed off in a way that Kavanaugh’s never was.
So I think everybody understands now that the media, for a variety of reasons, feel that they have a noble goal of mandating the quality of result, fairness, whatever term they use, and that any means necessary to obtain them are not only justified but have to take place. They feel like they’re on a mission and they won’t be stopped. So the only way to deal with it is to tune out. And that’s difficult because the universities, the foundations, the media, Hollywood, entertainment – you name it – control powers of influence in this society in a way that’s not commensurate with their otherwise kind of small numbers. So it’s kind of scary.
In the final part of this series tomorrow, Victor Davis Hanson discusses the culture of experts that has been unleashed and commanded broad authority during this crisis.
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Read more from Tim Donner.
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