You may find this interesting, or you may not , the article you sent me is actually the problem, and I’m thinking of using it for a future piece, because it illustrates my point too well.
Ah, here it comes, you’re thinking. Bill’s going to tell me it’s all wrong. No. I’m not. In fact, I’m going to agree with you, and kill the messenger in the process. Because here’s the thing: it’s either my way or your way, but not both ways.
The right hates the left, the left hates the right, and they’ll let the country die before they work together.
But back to the link you sent. “Dems’ hatred of Trump created this socialist monster, and now it’s turning on them.” Boy, isn’t that clickbait bullshit to begin with. I should use it myself.
So I read it. Had to force my way through it, honestly, because all I saw at first was reverse name-calling, oldest trick in the book, one of Trump’s most-used tactics: “you’re a thief,” while he’s picking your pocket. So I took it to Grok, the “right-leaning” AI, and asked it a few questions. And guess what?
It validated the article. And it validated me. What? How can that be, you ask?
For those who don’t want to read much further, your loss, a little education is always good for you, there are some genuinely good points being made here, especially about how political parties create their own monsters, ones that end up doing more damage than good. And this time, the monster might be Blue, not Red.
That’s the validation. My validation. It’s not always what you say, it’s how you say it. Our political rhetoric has curdled into hate speech, so often there’s something worth saying, a valid point buried in there, but if you don’t wrap it in a hate-wrapper, you’re afraid, yeah, “afraid,” another loaded word these days, that nobody will listen, that it’ll just get lost in the noise.
I put it to you: in the long run, the noise fades. The calm, rational voice is the one people took notes on.
The hardest lesson to learned here, is to look in the mirror upon occasion and take those rose colored glasses off. I’m not always happy with what looks back at me, and it’s not just the age.
Bill:
Just who is Victor Davis Hanson, is he legit or so far right he will never see the color of the sky again?
Grok:
Thought for 5s
Victor Davis Hanson is a legitimate, highly credentialed classicist and military historian who has become a prominent conservative political commentator. He is not some fringe crank; his academic work on ancient Greece and warfare is widely respected in those fields, even by people who disagree with his politics. victorhanson.com
Background and credentials
• Born 1953 in California’s Central Valley (Selma/Fowler area). Fifth-generation farmer on a family orchard/vineyard; he still lives and works on the farm.
• BA in Classics (highest honors) from UC Santa Cruz (1975); PhD in Classics from Stanford (1980), focused on Thucydides and Aristophanes. Also studied in Athens.
• Professor Emeritus of Classics at California State University, Fresno (started the classics program there after farming full-time for a few years).
• Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution (Stanford).
• Distinguished Fellow at Hillsdale College; past visiting roles at Stanford, the U.S. Naval Academy, etc.
• Awards: National Humanities Medal (2007, from George W. Bush), Bradley Prize, American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award, and others.
• Author or editor of ~24–26 books. Scholarly ones include The Western Way of War, The Other Greeks, Carnage and Culture, A War Like No Other (on the Peloponnesian War), and The Second World Wars. More recent popular/political books include The Case for Trump (2019), The Dying Citizen (2021), and The End of Everything.
His early scholarly work reinterpreted Greek warfare and the role of the independent yeoman farmer in the rise of Western institutions. That’s the foundation of his reputation; the political commentary came later, especially after 9/11.
Politics
He was once a registered Democrat but became a conservative (now identifies as independent). He supported the Iraq War, wrote regularly for National Review, and is a strong Trump defender — The Case for Trump argues Trump’s style and policies addressed real problems the establishment ignored. He is a frequent critic of progressive orthodoxy on immigration, identity politics, crime, higher education, foreign policy, and cultural issues. He appears on conservative outlets (Fox, Daily Signal, his own site/podcast) and writes syndicated columns.
Critics (mostly on the left or Never-Trump right) call him a partisan apologist, especially for Trump, and argue some of his commentary prioritizes advocacy over detached analysis. Supporters see him as a clear-eyed classicist applying historical patterns (rise/fall of republics, Western military culture, agrarian values) to current events without the usual academic progressive filters.
“Far-right” or just conservative?
He is firmly on the right by today’s standards — Trump-supporting, critical of open borders, DEI, radical gender ideology, and what he sees as elite progressive excesses. But he is mainstream conservative intellectual, not “far-right” in the sense of white nationalism, conspiracy extremism, or the online alt-right. He has explicitly criticized antisemitism and Hitler revisionism appearing in some right-wing circles (including pushback against figures associated with Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes-style views). mediaite.com
Think traditionalist classicist + farmer + military historian who concluded the cultural left went off the rails, not someone who “will never see the color of the sky again.” His academic credentials and body of historical work are solid; his political takes are opinionated and polarizing, as expected from someone writing for conservative audiences. Read his actual history books if you want the scholarly side; the columns and podcasts for the commentary.
Me: (Interest, doesn’t sound like a hate monger out to attack anyone, actually kind of intelligent, might have an interesting conversation with)
Bill:
Thank you, just read one of his ‘attacks’ against the left and verbiage was almost unhinged in its structure. The whole article could have been taken with better credibility without the ‘it was their unhinged hate that’ prose.
Grok:
Yeah, that’s a fair criticism of a lot of his recent political writing.
Hanson’s scholarly books on ancient warfare and Greek history are usually tightly argued and relatively measured. His opinion columns and videos, especially the ones aimed at current politics, often shift into a more polemical, high-temperature style. You’ll get phrases that lean hard into moral condemnation — “unhinged,” “Jacobin,” “nihilist,” “collective madness,” “graveyard of destructive ideas,” etc. It reads less like dispassionate analysis and more like a prosecutor summing up the case against the other side.
That rhetorical heat can make the piece land as angry rather than persuasive, particularly for readers who aren’t already in agreement. A cleaner, more clinical version of the same arguments (focusing on outcomes, data, historical parallels, and incentives) would almost certainly carry more weight with people outside the choir. Strong adjectives and “their hate drove them to…” framing tend to signal tribal combat more than truth-seeking, and it gives critics an easy opening to dismiss the whole thing as partisan venting.
This isn’t unique to him — plenty of writers on both left and right do the same thing when the audience rewards intensity over restraint. Hanson’s version just stands out because his academic background leads people to expect more cool detachment than he sometimes delivers in the columns.
If you have the specific piece (title or link), I can look at the exact language and see how much of the substance holds up once you strip out the emotional overlay.
Hanson claims the current surge of open socialism/communism inside the Democratic Party is not mainly a reaction to “affordability” problems. He argues the party’s establishment spent years normalizing radical positions (open borders, defund-the-police rhetoric, gender ideology, the 1619 Project, COVID origin narratives, etc.) and that their intense, prolonged hatred of Trump further lowered every norm. The younger socialists, in his view, did not hijack the party — they were raised by it and are now simply dropping the remaining restraints and turning on the older leadership that created the conditions.
The key line you flagged is right in the middle:
“The Democratic establishment’s unhinged hatred of Donald Trump helped birth the socialist-cum-communist Frankensteinian monster that’s now devouring its mad-scientist creators.”
He repeats variations of that framing throughout: “crazed new socialists,” “insanity,” “electrified socialist monsters,” etc.
On the style
You’re right about the prose. The piece leans hard into moral and emotional language. It treats the Democrats’ anti-Trump posture as the primary causal force that “birthed” the more extreme left, and it does so with loaded metaphors (Frankenstein, mad scientists, monsters). That kind of writing signals tribal combat more than cool analysis. A tighter version could have made the same historical claim — that establishment Democrats radicalized the atmosphere and the younger cohort is now outflanking them — without the repeated “unhinged hatred” and monster imagery. The heat makes it easier for critics to dismiss the whole thing as partisan venting, even if some of the underlying observations about party trajectory and internal incentives have substance.
This is classic late-career Hanson political writing: sharp historical analogies mixed with high-temperature rhetoric aimed at a conservative audience that already shares the premises. The scholarly books are usually more restrained; the columns often are not.
If you want, I can pull out the factual claims he makes (the specific examples he lists about dossiers, lawfare, public statements by Schumer/Waters/Harris, etc.) and separate them from the interpretive framing so you can judge the evidence independently of the tone.
