https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2020/06/29/victor-davis-hanson-trump-victory-cultural-revolution/
Historian Victor Davis Hanson speculated on Sunday that President Donald Trump would be reelected in November — and that only Trump’s victory could stop the “Cultural Revolution” in the country.
Dr. Hanson offered his remarks on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak.
Pollak invited Hanson’s analysis of upcoming presidential election.
“Well, I don’t think the election is anymore about just Donald Trump or Joe Biden, or Democrat or Republican, or Trump agenda versus Biden agenda,” Hanson determined. “It’s more or less whether you like the United States more as it was before Memorial Day, or whether you would prefer what’s evolving after this Memorial Day, and by that I mean, whether you think that we didn’t have to be perfect to be good, and our institutions from the founders were necessary to incorporate change in a lawful and calm peaceful manner and then they can adjudicate any particular flaws we have in society versus we have a cancer, supposedly from our founding, and that racism has to be irradiated or cut out, and if it kills us, the host, then that’s a necessary price to pay. I think it’s that stark a choice.”
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Riots and vandalism in recent weeks were amplified by lockdowns imposed following the coronavirus outbreak, Hanson assessed.
“Had we not had the epidemic, we wouldn’t have had this degree of violence,” said Hanson. “The degree of violence would be analogous to something we saw maybe after Charlottesville, or during the Obama administration with Ferguson or Baltimore, but it wouldn’t have been so extreme.”
Hanson added, “I think that every day the violence was aggravated — not just by the fear of the virus — but by essentially almost 90 days of self-imposed quarantine, by economic recession, 40 million people out of work, and suddenly to let all of that go out in one burst.”
Current unrest is also a function of longer term trends, Hanson determined.
“Long-term, we were headed for where we are now,” remarked Hanson. “I think there were people in the country that, on a number of issues, whether it was race, or whether it was globalization, or whether it was foreign policy, they just had a different idea of what America should be. It was more in tune with Europe or the French Revolution — rather than the American Revolutionary emphasis — [which] was that equality of outcome or radical egalitarianism was preferable to freedom and individ al liberty.”
Hanson continued, “I think most people, before Memorial Day, said, ‘You know what? We have inequality. That comes with human nature, and we have mechanisms to deal with it. We have government assistance. We have philanthropy. We have private and religious charities, but we can make everybody so wealthy with our free market system that our poor would be rich anywhere else.’ That was the presumption.”
An increasingly aggressive left is generating nervousness among many Americans, Hanson remarked.
“A lot of people are getting edgy, right now, because it’s going in so many different directions, and it’s threatening,” Hanson stated. “You get a very liberal soccer mom in Minneapolis suburbs and she calls 911, she gets a busy signal, and she says, ‘Well, wait a minute. I don’t want that, anymore.’ I don’t know where that point is, but I think we’re getting awfully close to it.'”
Pollak asked, “Are we stuck with this even if Trump wins the election? Does Trump winning stop the cultural revolution?”
Hanson replied, “Yeah, I think it will, because I think what they’re saying to us is that everybody is to be judged by the worst thing they did in their life, not their best thing, or that we in the 21st century are going to add your life up in the past. We’re going to put on one side your pluses, on the other your minuses, then we’re going to judge you according to our own value system, right now.”
Hanson added, “It’s a madness, and where’s that leading the Democratic Party? Right now, they’re all high because they feel that Joe Biden can run a virtual campaign from his basement. Pretty soon, they’ll say there’s not really a need for a debate. They may think that the lockdown should go all the way to November [and] we’ll have a mail-in [election]. It’ll be something different that will favor Biden.”
“While it looks bad for Trump now, I don’
Hanson concluded, “I think the only way it’ll stop is for them to lose and be humiliated and then bicker and blame each other for going over the cliffs like lemmings.”