Here he is in a recent column (courtesy of Roy Edroso):
The column begins by citing Hesiod at length about the two kinds of jealousy. Apparently there is a good kind, the Republican kind, where people who already have stuff covet their neighbour's ass and are motivated to bejazzle their own ass in Veblenian conspicuous consumption which is good for the economy; and a bad, Democratic envy, as performed by people who don't have stuff and so are not entitled to want stuff (ideas-above-their-station and all that).* I think. Some would say that the vapourings of a Bronze Age sheepshagging Bœotian peasant are not the ideal source of insights into the ordering of a modern society... but when you come down to it, Americans are already basing their worldview on the vapourings of Bronze Age sheepshagging peasants, albeit of the non-Bœotian variety.
Hesiod. Or VDH. Not sure which.
Appearances in the VDH oeuvre include "liberal grandees", "Silicon Valley grandees", "wealthy Wall Street grandees", "Persian grandees", "Muslim Brotherhood grandees" (!), "military grandees" [i.e. non-VDH-approved, non-Saviour generals], "European Union grandees" and "Senate grandees". Grievances about "the academic grandee" are particularly frequent, hinting at a less-than-stellar academic career on his part. References to "aristocratic grandees" begin in 2009, oblivious to the concept of 'tautology', perhaps under the impression that 'pleonasm' is what happens after a symposium at the hands of a well-paid hetaera.
However, the notion of 'French revolutionary aristocrat-executing aristocrats' is a new swerve away from coherence. Inevitably speculations arise that VDH is actually an experiment in computerised language simulation in the tradition of ELIZA, manipulating semantic tokens in a glass bead game, so comprehension of these verbal placeholders is not to be expected. For consistency with the classical theme, I assume that the software is implemented upon the THEAETETUS hardware instantiation consisting of a Platonic aviary of trained birds. These being the birds which suddenly appear, every time you are near.
Birdbook sculpture from Severin Books.
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* Readers will be reassured to know that Hanson is every bit as repetitive and predictable when shuffling pejoratives about hoi polloi as he is on the topic of VDH-excluding elites.
5 comments:
That's a very beautiful image. Perhaps the mind of VDH is more a belfryful of parallel-processing bats, explaining these strange repetitions of his columns, resembling episodes of change-ringing.
Isn't it amazing that with the entirety of classical Greek and Roman history and literature to draw on, Victor Davis Hanson seems only to find anecdotes which support his own prejudices?
'French revolutionary aristocrat-executing aristocrats'
It's a little-known fact that the French revolutionaries imported a group of Portuguese aristocrats to behead the French aristocrats. It was called the Guilherme team.
explaining these strange repetitions of his columns, resembling episodes of change-ringing.
It also occurred to me that they could be his homage to Homeric epithets. No-one complained about *Homer* banging on about "grey-eyed Athena" and "Rosy fingered Dawn" every time he updated his blog.
But I digress. 'Grandee' is one of Hanson's favourite words. Perhaps he is under a Geis (of the Goidelic variety) obliging him to use it at least once every column.
Maybe he's a big Kingston Trio fan... did he ever claim to win his wife in a card game?
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