Victor Davis Hanson: The Left’s Psychodrama Cycle Designed to Win Them Elections  

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.

Sami Winc: The Anthropic CEO came out, Dario Amodei, and said that there was going to be an AI apocalypse by the end of this decade, so 2030, that would make humans extinct, right? Lead to the extinction. But more than that, a Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic and said that this was going to be a problem. 

These AI companies are calling for global monitoring or at least governmental monitoring, and everybody’s suspicious of that, that they want to monopolize the industry. And then to the last two things, King Charles has come out with warning about AI—  

Victor Davis Hanson: He’s also come out that he loves mosques all over Britain too. 

Sami Winc: Yeah. And Frederick Merz, the Chancellor of Germany, in questioning said, “We have to do something about it, and don’t come back to me that this is some infringement of free speech.”  

Victor Davis Hanson: Okay, so they have to do something about it. Can we just have a little info? Of the 10 top AI corporations in the world, eight of them, eight are American. 

I think number eight is French or Chinese, and number 10 is a European company. So let’s be clear. They’re talking about America, America. We want to stop the Americans. They’re so far ahead of everybody that we want to regulate it and make it a global project. There’s two or three issues here. 

It would be kind of like this, this Coxon guy or the head of ChatGPT AI, all this, the Google people, Claude, all of them that are doing this. Let’s just say “I’m Victor and I’m a scientist, and I’ve been kind of looking around. I read there’s a couple people like me, and I’m making this new chemical that’s more powerful than nuclear weapons, and maybe some others are too. 

And I think we need an international conference to stop it, because I’m gonna do something terrible.” And you wanna say, “Well, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Come out and tell us that you’re gonna voluntarily restrain yourself from making a lot of money by doing it.” So that was number one.  

Number two is it’s in the midterms. 

So we’ve known about AI all the way back to the Terminator movies, right? Why all of a sudden, 45 days before the election, “We’re gonna blow up the planet, and Trump and the AI—.” So it was fabricated. 

And then third, do they have a history of this? Yes. So a lot of people say, “Well, we went through the population bomb. Paul Ehrlich said we’re all gonna die, and Thomas Malthus was right.” Famous British aristocrat bet him a lot of money and said the following 10 items, oil, iron ore, copper, will be cheaper in 10 years than they are now, and he lost that bet, Ehrlich.  

And then we had Al Gore that took global warming and turned it in climate change. 

That was brilliant because he said, “We’re all gonna die, but some of us are gonna die because it’s too hot in the desert, and some of us are gonna die because it’s too much water and rain on the coast.” Of course, he didn’t believe that because he had… I don’t know. Somebody mentioned that he flew private and he had a huge house, and Barack Obama built a house right on the beach. 

He didn’t believe it. 

And of course, then we went through the COVID mania where we locked down and we were hunting, you know, people with skateboards out in the middle of the open with masks that were 17-years-old that we’re gonna lock them up while 10,000 illegals were coming across the border. 

We went through the Me Too. You remember that? So all of a sudden, Garrison Keillor put his hand one time on the back of a woman, patting her, says he was trying to comfort her. That was it, as I remember. And the next thing you know, his books are off. NPR has fired him. He’s destroyed.  

Or Brett Kavanaugh allegedly is going to be confirmed. 

He’s a conservative. He’ll make the difference. And the next thing you know, somebody when he was 18 years old can’t remember any of the details, but says she was sexually assaulted with no witnesses, and they ran that thing. That ended, by the way, when all the things came out. What killed Me Too was all of a sudden they said, “Okay, Joe Biden  …” 

Remember when he was in 2020, they had all these women that came forward, and then Tara Reade came forward that she said she was digitally raped by him? Oh, and then Bill Clinton, they had all the women, and they said, “Wow, they’re gonna ruin the reputation of our only candidate that’s viable, and Bill Clinton, he’s still an icon.” I declare Me Too over. It’s over with.  

And then we had the George Floyd mania. Remember that? After the COVID lockdown, then we had George Floyd, where all of a sudden no SAT, police are shooting blacks all over that are unarmed. That was a lie. Gotta give money to BLM. They stole it. But there’s one thing I wanna get to, and I’ll shut up. 

Every one of those things was drummed up by the Left. So take a look very quickly. When did the population bomb come out that we’re all gonna die because of overpopulation? 1968. 

Who was running? Humphrey and Nixon. Who was cast as the devil in the media as a person who’s offending American capitalism and consumerism and not worrying about the planet? Richard Nixon. That thing swept the world. 

1992, global warming turns into climate change. Who wrote the founding document? Al Gore. His book came out, his climate change book as a campaign book saying that the internal combustion engine and right-wing capitalism, “Earth in the Balance.” Remember that book? That was Al Gore’s, and he became a billionaire. 

I mean, he was the guru, but it was a campaign book. 

Me Too. What really’s fueled Me Too? It was there, but it was the Kavanaugh hearing when it really got out of control. And what was the purpose? The Left genned that up to stop a key Republican from being nominated.  

What started the whole COVID mania and that we’re gonna shut down everything? 

In January of 2020, the Trump economy was setting records. It had like 1.9 inflation. It had like 3% unemployment. It was booming. And then we’ve got to shut this down, Anthony Fauci. We’ve got to shut the economy. We have to… What was the word they said? It was, everybody has to, no mask. 

Well, one mask, no two masks. What was it? Say in place. That word they used for— 

Sami Winc: Yeah, not sequester in place. Yeah, but remain in place. Remain in place. I can’t remember what the word was.  

Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah, it was a cute little form where we’re gonna shut down the economy. 

You’re all gonna stay in your… And then people like Scott Atlas said, “Well, if you do this, we’re going to have soaring suicide rates, drug use, familial abuse, alcoholism, missed cancer screens. Breast cancer rates are going to go up. Everybody’s going to be in their house. Then when they come out, they’re going to be crazy.” 

And then we had George Floyd, and they were crazy. And then there was a George Floyd. What year did that happen? 2020. So is that a pattern that all of these psychodramas, 1968 election Democrats use that. 1992, Al Gore says he’s going to save the world from George Bush and the Republicans’ fossil fuels, and we’re all going to die. 

I should say another one. 1983, Ronald Reagan is headed right toward re-election, landslide re-election, and the Democrat, “What are we going to do?” I know what it is. It’s… And the Russians had missiles, mobile missiles stationed in Europe on trailers pointing at NATO, and nobody did anything about it. 

Reagan said, “Take them out.” And they said, “No.”   

“Okay, we’re going to put Pershing II missiles, and our missiles are better than yours.” And so, they put them all through Germany. The next thing we knew, it was 1983, headed into the campaign, and Carl Sagan, the beloved astronomer, he said, he coined up a new word. They always coin up a new word. 

Population bomb, Earth in the balance, global warming, climate change. His was nuclear winter. We’re looking at a nuclear winter. This is going to be a nuclear exchange. It’s going to be a nuclear winter. And let me give you the data on a nuclear winter.  

Within two days of a nuclear exchange, clouds form. Within six weeks, crops fail. Within 10 months, we’re all dead. And then Hollywood said we’re gonna film a film with this. What was it called? “The Day After?? Yeah, I think it was called “The Day After.”  

Sami Winc: Yeah, I think it was called “The Day After.”  

Victor Davis Hanson: I don’t know. It was Jill Clayburgh or somebody like that. 

She later became an official in the Clinton government. It was not Jill Clayburgh, but it was somebody like her. But anyway, you watch that movie, and it was like all these mushroom clouds in the Kansas or the Midwest, and then they’re all, “I have…”  

One little girl said, “I have not had sexual relations yet. What’s it like, Mom? We’re all gonna die.”  

It was horrible. It was a horrible movie, but it scared everybody, and Ronald Reagan was the villain. I remember going into Selma Safeway in 1983 in November, and a good friend of mine from high school came up, and he said, “Hey, somebody told me you voted for Reagan.” 

I said, “I wasn’t allowed to vote for Reagan in ’80, my parents… But I voted for John Anderson. I could not vote for Jimmy Carter.”  

“Well, are you gonna vote for [Walter] Mondale? He looks like he’s…” I said, “No.”  

And they said, “Well, you want nuclear war, don’t you? You wanna blow up the world. Did you see this movie last night? We’re all gonna die. It’s called a nuclear winter.”  

So Carl Sagan made a whole career. He went all over. Campaign year.  

So what I’m getting at is AI is now. Why? Because we’re going into the midterms. Everybody’s known about the issues, and all of a sudden, the Democrats said, “The Tesla thing is done for. The ICE thing is done for. 

“They’re no longer visible in the North. They’re hanging out in the South, and they’re doing it stealthily. The No Kings has been done. What do we have? I know what we have. We’re all gonna die from AI, just like it’s used in the past. So let’s gin it up, and they won’t have time.”  

And then they said, “And we’ll do what we always do, an international colloquium of experts.” 

And I’m thinking, how did the League of Nations work? How did the Washington– How about the Kellogg-Briand Proviso that was going to outlaw war? You remember that? And then there was the Washington Naval Treaty. We’re all going to get together and restrict the size of battleships. 

That didn’t work out when people cheated. And then we had the Paris climate control. Don’t forget the Munich Accord.  

And so, my point is, every time you get a bunch of international groups or a group of nations and they’re going to, we’re going to set rules for AI, it all depends on the weakest link. 

And so China will be involved, which means it’ll be like COVID. Trump got out of the WHO. Well, the WHO is a Chinese-run front and so is the International Criminal Court. And these stupid people all want to take control of AI. And you look at the, as I just said, we’re controlling it now. Everybody said that China was ahead. 

We’re way ahead. All of our companies, nine out of the 10 companies in market capitalization are American, eight out of the 10. And now the world says, “We need an international conference to control these Americans because they’re way ahead of us.” And the Chinese, they’re worried too. And they’re on our side now with Canada and EU. 

And so now they’re all, the Democrats are saying, Bernie Sanders right out of this socialist communist handbook out there ranting and raving. And so the only way to control AI is not to let the Chinese have it because they are not a consensual transparent society. We have a free press, just like the nuclear war. 

They said Oppenheimer was a saint because he thought, “Hmm, maybe we should have an international conference and just give the bomb to everybody.” No, no, no, we’re not gonna do that. You can’t trust the Russkies. They’re commies and they’ll cheat. And the way to do it is have deterrence. We can trust ourselves because we are consensual. 

And that’s how it should be. We should trust the United States that it will bring on all the tech lords and say, “Don’t do that.” 

And anytime gain of function research, did we do the right thing? Yes, we outlawed it. Did we say everybody has to outlaw it? We tried to, and who didn’t outlaw it? The Chinese. And Fauci even said, well, in the spirit of ecumenical, I’ll let my instrumentation and I’ll let my scientists go over to Wuhan and help them and I’ll give them some money. 

How’d that work out? Million dead Americans. Don’t trust these groups, and don’t trust the Democrats not to use these hysterias, these frenzies, these madness. And I’m not even getting into the other category the Tawana Brawley category, the Duke Lacrosse category, the Jussie Smollett category, the Covington kids category-  

Sami Winc: Oh my. 

Victor Davis Hanson: The latest suicide-by-hanging category, the race car driver who had the little rope on the garage door category. Yes. All of those were manias.  

Sami Winc: It’s a book.  

Victor Davis Hanson: And they all had one thing in common. They were all cooked up by left-wing liberals and race hacks, and they were all lies. 

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