Hello ladies, hello gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hanson show. I'm Jack Fowler. I'm just the host, the star, the namesake. That's Victor Davis Hanson. He is the Martin and Eli Anderson senior fellow at the Hoover institution.

And the Wayne and Marsha busky distinguished fellow in history at Hillsdale College. You can find everything Victor writes at Victor Hanson.com. You should subscribe to I'll tell you a little more about that later. As for me, check out civil thoughts.

I'll tell you about that. Let's get to what we're going to talk about today. Two things at the forefront of this program will be related to China. We're going to talk about the Shanghai lockdowns. And we're going to talk about Taiwan. Does it need to be aggressively rearmed. And we'll get to those topics right after this important message.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson show. We're recording on Monday, Easter Monday, April 18th. This show will be up on the world wide webs on I believe April 21st. So Victor, these are some issues that have been hanging around a little bit.

I wish we could have gotten to them sooner. The dynamics of what's happening in Shanghai and China may have changed may change between today when we're recording and when we're up and people are listening to it. But regardless of the change, there has been just a total oppression of human beings.

You know, problem with China is is the Chinese Communist Party and its brutal tactics, which it employs on its own people. And one of the things they've done with a hint of COVID coming is to lock down Shanghai and people are in desperate situations.

I need food to eat. If you're locked in your apartment, et cetera. So I don't think this is any surprise. But I'd like to hear your thoughts about if you have any general thoughts about this lockdown. And then also, okay, we know about it. But I don't think we're hearing this certainly to me, no intense coverage of this in the American media. I imagine it's one of the world's biggest cities.

Totally everyone shut down locked up and it gets really perfunctory news attention, at least by what I see. And I think there's a reason for that. But anyway, Victor, your thoughts on what's happening in China itself in Shanghai.

Make a good point. I go even further. I don't think in the history of post-industrial life, there has ever been an attempt to completely control every member of a huge multi multi million person city to the point where they're locked in the air apartments.

They call and say they have a fever or they might, they're stupid enough to do that. I think none of them are doing that now. Then they're taken to these huge centers, former pervillians for trade or international exhibits. And they're put in little cubby holes. And they're, they're given no hot water to take a shower.

They're given pretty bad food and the lights are on 24 seven and they're put in there not for five days, but apparently from first time accounts to or more weeks, three weeks, some cases.

And they're doing this with a level of coercion that's just unimaginable in the West. And they're doing it. I don't know why they're doing it because Europe's not doing it. We're not doing it. Japan's not doing it.

I guess they had this reputation that they had stopped on the ground and yet there were epidemiologists like John Yanides or Jay Bacaria or General Health policy experts like Scott Atlas, who warned us that if you take a population and you lock it away, would bring these variant mutations.

And only are you going to destroy the population in the sense of psychological damage substance abuse damage and missed important screenings for, especially the young population, it's not subject to serious COVID naturally.

So the downside we know now is worse than the upsets. So they took this population. And it doesn't make any sense other than this variant of Omicron is not going to kill 99.9% of the population, especially if they've been vaccinated or they've had prior cases of COVID.

So why isn't it being covered? Partly it's the distraction of the Ukraine war and the democratic implosion in home. And partly it's because China has always been given exemptions from normal scrutiny and sensor and audit by the American media and the American corporate world and American political class.

So why is it because they're less pernicious in the Russians? No, they're more pernicious because they have greater wear with all. But it's because so many Americans are making so much money from the chief financial officer who says we can gouge each Chinese foreign students to the joint venture or cheap labor assembly plant in China to LeBron James.

So I wonder if one of the reasons for acting so landishly is to show that they can indeed do this as opposed, you know, showing the people of China, showing the people of the world that they can suppress an entire millions of people.

That's an excellent point. I think we in the West field that there are certain sidelines, parameters that we as a sophisticated post-industrial post one side don't dare go beyond as if human nature has changed.

When you meet somebody like Chinese communists or Putin, they don't think that way. In fact, they think in a very scary manner that's even worse. They think we are going to shock the Western world that history hasn't ended and it will never end in human nature.

And we're going to kill people and we're going to use a level of violence and we don't care what you say. So Putin, he had planes that were capable of carrying nuclear weapons, buzzing the skies of Ukraine.

And so is it impossible that he would send you know one kiloton tactical nuclear weapon and it keep no, he might do it just for the hell of it and say what are you going to do about it or is it impossible they could shut down all Beijing and Shanghai. Yeah, they could do it and say so what we don't care what you say.

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