So it would seem, Socrates

What is it about Victor Davis Hanson -- conservative columnist, Peloponnesian war reënactor, and lead sistrum player in Country-&-Western Bœotia-&-Thracia favourites 'The Kindly Ones' -- and the word 'Grandee'? Enquiring minds are enquiring.

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.

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. It appears to bear no specific meaning for him (other than a free-floating signifier of disapprobation and resentment about 'people who think they're better than me'), leaving him free to mix it up in arbitrary combinations.

Appearances in the VDH oeuvre include "liberal grandees", "Silicon Valley grandees", "wealthy Wall Street grandees", "Muslim Brotherhood grandees" (!), "military grandees" [i.e. non-maverick, non-VDH-approved generals], "European Union grandees" and "Senate grandees". 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 concept 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. For consistency with the classical theme, I assume that the software is implemented upon the THEAETETUS hardware instantiation consisting of an aviary of trained birds. These being the birds which suddenly appear, every time you are near.

This means that when the aviary's containment is breached -- as always happens -- humankind will be up against a hostile AI, distributed across a flock of beaked, clawed flying vermin... a mash-up of The Birds and The Forbin Project. This will be the worst horror movie EVAH. Or the best.