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: Wired had a great story on expatriates, and we’re talking ordinary expatriates, not people like Rosie O’Donnell that are super rich. And these expatriates said their move was a mistake. So they left this country because of Donald Trump, and now they regretted being in their new country, and these were some of the reasons.
They found the new countries had a lower standard of living.
Victor Davis Hanson: You think? Don’t they read the statistics? 30,000 less income in Canada alone, 40 in …
Sami Winc: Exactly. And things that were ordinary here, like a washing machine, were luxury goods there.
Victor Davis Hanson: No. You mean little baby washing machines?
Sami Winc: Yeah. They didn’t like the fact that there was so much anti-Americanism around, so they were caricatured, and their accents were mocked. They were mocked and caricatured. And they felt like maybe they had overreacted to Donald Trump.
Victor Davis Hanson: You think, you think, you think.
I lived three years overseas almost, and I can remember when I was 20 and I went to Greece, and there was one supermarket, Marianotis’. And you had to go to these little 1920s-like things, and you pointed out what you wanted, and then they went, they brought them. They were very nice.
And then I remember on our, two streets down, there was a little red light, and some people were going to a legal prostitute. She looked like she was about 55, and I would talk to her as I walked by to class.
And then we had a hot water heater. It was about the size of a teapot. And everybody got angry because we had to turn it on. You could not leave it on all the time ’cause the cost. So you turned a little switch, and it took, like, 20 minutes, then somebody would take a bath, and then you…
We had four of us in a room. And then to wash, we had to go down to this little laundromat, and the washer was, like, half of a U.S. normal washer. And then you had to have this machine, I forgot the name. It was not the derangulator or the …
You were not allowed to put the wet stuff in the dryer ’cause they were afraid it would break the belts. So this thing squeezed it and brought all the … We had to pay for that. So I would go down, and it took all morning ’cause everybody used the laundromat.
And then, you know, gas was the equivalent today, about $9 a gallon.
And the food was great. It was cheap. But then I had, you know, I had some medical problems, of course. I got malaria in Egypt, and I tore a tendon, and I had to have that operated on, and then I got food poisoning.
And then the worst of all, I had a kidney stone that tore my ureter in half. So I was in bad shape and had to be flown home. But the medical care was medieval. It really was. The doctors were good. They just didn’t have any backup. And when you went to a hospital, you had to have a little list, and you said, “Souvlaki, $1,” “Brushing your teeth, toothpaste, so much money.” And then, “Do you want your hair cut?” And you had to pay everything on a menu. Everything. Clean sheets, everything.
Sami Winc: I like the fact that they told you the price beforehand, ’cause they don’t do that these days.
Victor Davis Hanson: No, they don’t.
Sami Winc: When you’re in the hospital these days, you have no idea.
Victor Davis Hanson: You think it’s free, but I just got … I looked at my bill, and you get, like, $2 for an Advil tablet.
But anyway, the standard of living wasn’t what it is here.
I was walking on a street once with a bunch of guys, and there were two of us, and they were building, they just had rebar that stuck out of the side, and they hadn’t sawed it off. And it tore the guy’s arm open and my own. We said, “What was that? Did somebody knife us?” And it was at night, and it just tore big gashes into our … Or you’d walk, and there’d be manholes that were no warnings.
And then, you know, every summer for 20 years, I went to Europe, and there would be somebody who was Count this or Duke that, ancestral, and they would hear about us, and they’d say, “We want you to come over to our ancestral palace.”
They were beautiful, but they were like 3,000 square feet, but they had little narrow staircases and little, tiny bathrooms, like one or two in a, like a four- or 5,000-square home. And then one guy’s, “I want you to come all over to my Versailles home, and we have a pool.” And their pool was like 10 feet by 10 feet. You know what I mean? We’re just so much in excess. People don’t realize that until you go.
Everything is in excess here. And so, it’s just so much cheaper, and you get so much more for your money. And then when you wanna get a big-screen television … They don’t have our idea. You just go in something and … They do have Amazon now, but it’s an American idea.
Sami Winc: Yeah. So these expatriates were learning a lesson, much as you did when you were a young kid.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah, if you’re a left-wing expatriate and you think you’re just gonna, “Oh, I’ll just get on my Tesla, and I’ll go around to Whole Foods, and I’ll get my favorite wines and cheeses, and I’ll just zoom back.”
No, you will be in a traffic zone where they’re charging you for a congestion fee, as the pastor told me last night from his experience in England, and then you will not have the variety that you do here.
And somebody will say, “Well, I think you should go out to the winery.” And they have some things that are superior. The food’s better. But an American goes in, and he gets his hamburger and fries. He pulls over on a trip, and the waiter, waitress has got eight other customers, and then she doesn’t … The moment he finishes, he starts getting, “I’m ready to go,” you know, and they get angry.
You go to France or Spain, and you eat this meal, and it’s delicious, and the waiter just walks by you, “Hi, how you doing?” And you say … If you say, in Greece, you know, “To loga rismo,” I want the bill. And they, “Yeah. Nah, nah, of course. You know, we’ll be here in a minute.” An hour later they come. So everything is just slower, is what I’m trying to say. Slower.
Sami Winc: The waiters are more professional.
Victor Davis Hanson: They’re professional. Absolutely. They’re very professional. They’re well-dressed. It’s a lifelong profession.
I hate to lose that Europe. It’s kind of like a museum. When I go there, I think everybody are museum pieces inside a museum.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah, that’s probably true.
The last time I went to Normandy, there was a little, there was a coffee and … What’s the word for it in French, you know, for a bakery or les boulangerie, boulangerie?
Sami Winc: Yes. Either boulangerie or a patisserie.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah. So I go there, and this French waitress, she had her little uniform on, looked like a maid with, you know … It was really nice, and she was so … She gave me a latte. It was the best latte I ever had. And then she kept by, and she didn’t even ask me. She just put a nice little whipped cream on it. And when she made the latte, it had that little emblem, like a flower or something she could do.
And then I had a croissant, and she came by and heated it. I didn’t ask that. And it was just … And then she was … It was just different. You know what I mean? But it wasn’t geared to American efficiency.
So when you see Americans come over Europe in a group … I love my group because …
Sami Winc: They get frustrated.
Victor Davis Hanson: …they would go into a restaurant, and there was one guy, he’s passed away, I really like, and he’d say, “I want a drink.” And somebody would whisper to him, “This is one of the most expensive bars in Switzerland, and they charge you 30, 30 bucks for a little gin and tonic.”
Sami Winc: Wasn’t that Sardinia where that …
Victor Davis Hanson: What?
Sami Winc: Sardinia, that city of Sardinia?
Victor Davis Hanson: It happened there too.
A guy, one of my best friends. And anyway, he just pulls out his wallet, and you look at there, and it’s like five inches thick with euro, 100-euro, 500-euro bills. He just throws them on the thing, and that really … They’re freaked out by that.
When I go over there and I see a base, like in Germany, when you see U.S. soldiers, they’re frightening. They’re like 6’1″, they’re really big. Or I go to Germany or Spain, you see U.S. soldiers, and then you see French soldiers. They look so tiny compared to them. I hope they have certain skills, sniper skills or something, because they wouldn’t last against those guys.
Sami Winc: No. But they’re probably better trained. You know what bugs me about those riots? Even the … It’s about education, is that the French really educate their citizenry very well. Any time I’ve had a French … I used to teach, and any time I’ve had a French student from France, even though they didn’t … English wasn’t their first language, they could outperform the English speakers because they had had such a strong education.
Victor Davis Hanson: The Dutch, I had so many Dutch students at Cal State, and they spoke English better than any of the Americans did. They would correct their grammar and stuff. And you’d say, “Well, you can speak Dutch and English?” “Yes, yes, I can speak Dutch and English and Danish and German and French and Spanish.”
So they’re very impressive ’cause they … It would be as like we have all these little countries in the United States instead of one country. There were 30 countries here, and we all had to learn their languages. And they’re integrated.
There’s a lot to be said for Europe. I just hope they can save themselves from themselves.
Yeah. Well, it sounds like they’re starting to wake up if Chancellor [Friedrich] Merz is anybody to listen to.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
Continue reading...
[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
