Some of you have probably noticed that network TV spots are quickly filling up with “reality series” because that don’t require writing or even actors. Most are so bad they aren’t watchable, even if there weren’t ten commercials every ten minutes. If you’re a network TV watcher, you already suspect the powers-that-be are in this war to kill the writers and actors- decimate them so when they do come back, and they eventually will, they will have  lost enough to never try it again. The “late night” shows are probably stone dead in their hoary crypts for the foreseeable future, as, unfortunately are all the jobs and livelihoods surrounding them.

So, if you’re a TV watcher, that leaves the exploding programming on cable, especially You Tube which offers a wide variety of interesting stuff. Personally, I peruse “You Tube” for opinion and documentaries. Accordingly, I stumbled onto a guy offering his opinion that turned out to be incredibly interesting and prescient. I highly recommend you look this guy up. He is Dr. Victor Davis Hanson with tons of academic associations including Stanford. You can easily look him up:

https://www.hoover.org/profiles/victor-davis-hanson

He did what amounts to a “video podcast” you can also easily find it here

A bit more about Dr. Hanson directly, but for now, in this lecture, he outlines what’s happening politically and culturally using California as a microcosm for where the rest of American cities are headed and it’s plenty scary. Interestingly, what he’s saying is virtually word for word for what a close friend in Los Angeles has been telling me for years. I’ll spare you a word-for-word. You can hear it for yourselves when you have a few moments.

So I dug a little deeper to find out that Dr. Hanson’s politics are mostly diametrically opposed to mine, even though much of what he says on some subjects makes clear sense. When you start looking into him, and especially his associations, you find most of his diatribe wails against the “Hard Left”. In itself, that’s OK. The “hard anything” is deserving of its share of criticism. 

But it comes out that Hansen is definitely an apologist for Trump, having written a book “The Case for Donald Trump” in 2019. This was written before Trump and most of his minions lost their respective elections in 2020, and the “Big Lie”, the power grab in Georgia and the Coup attempt in January 6, 2021. Now when he’s asked about his 2019 book, he deftly changes the subject from “an extremely successful president” to not so much the president himself but the reasoning behind those who elected him. Dr. Hanson conveniently neglects a lot of embarrassing facts concerning Donald Trump, but be that as it may, he’s a great read and I highly recommend him.

I did pick up on some on a couple of his very interesting opinions I’ll outline for you:

1.  Hanson predicted the demise of affirmative action. It’s hard to argue there is a cohort of non-white victims.  If there were, it’s necessary to create the premise of white privilege, supremacy, and rage that would be integral to race-based reverse discrimination. More than a dozen ethnicities earn more per capita than do whites. Asians have been subject to coerced internment, immigration restrictions and zoning exclusions. Yet on average they do better than whites economically and enjoy lower suicide rates and longer life expectancies. The arguments for affirmative action never explained why Asians and other minorities who faced discrimination outperformed the majority white population. As a result, affirmative action ended up discriminating against Asians on the premise they were too successful!

2. “Diversity” is an illusion created by those using the concept to create “equity (or equality). The groundswell for “diversity” began abruptly at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in 2016 when it was noted that Since 1929, only 6.2 percent of minority actors and directors received Oscar nods. No black actors nominated in 2016.

But diversity can be interpreted many ways by many interpreters. In a perfect world, diversity might mean including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds. However, some define diversity in it’s more exclusive sense, more like “equity”, providing the same to all, managing circumstances to allocate the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome. 

A perfect example- Blacks make up about 12 percent of the general population. Diversity might be accurately defined as then about 12% of all TV commercials should contain black actors. Next time you choose to watch network TV, keep a pen and paper nearby and note any of the hundreds of commercials that DON’T contain a person of color. It’s somewhere between 5 and 0%. That isn’t diversity. It’s enforced congruence. 

One could easily argue that populations of African-Americans are already diverse. Blacks make up about 12 percent of the general population. In many southern cities, blacks make up 50 to 70% of their population.  In 2020 nearly 10,000 blacks, mostly young males, were murdered, the vast majority by other blacks. Recently an unarmed 29-year-old African American, Tyre Nichols, was brutally beaten to death by five Black Memphis police officers. They were charged with murder. Both the victimizers and victim were Black. The Memphis police chief is Black. The assistant police chief is Black. Nearly 60 percent of the police force is Black. The white population of Memphis is about 25 percent.

3.  In a very recent interview, Hanson hit on a very painful note. He happened, as did I, to be watching President Biden giving an ad hoc speech at the edge of the Maui fire disaster a couple of days ago. It was plainly obvious to both of us that Biden STRUGGLED to make himself understood, stumbling over simple sentences, repeating himself and halting over the reading. It was embarrassing and frightening as we wonder where these lapses might lead over the next five years. 

At any rate, although Dr. Hanson and I differ greatly on some things and you may or may not, he has some very topical and interesting opinions and I highly recommend him as a read (or watch).