Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American power,

politics and prejudices. The election is over, but the Americano never stops, and there will be a lot to talk about with the second Trump administration.

And so we'll bring you more and more Americano, because judging from the feedback, that's what you guys want.

So please keep listening.

Hello, and welcome to this, the last Americano of 2024. It's been one hell of a year in American politics and America

as a country and society as well. And we have covered it all from the very beginning of the

year to now the end of December as we approach the end of December, around Christmas now we are.

This time last year, I think it was December 20th last year. I spoke to Victor Davis Hansen,

who is a brilliant scholar, a classicist, a conservative commentator, and the author most recently

of a book called The End of Everything,

How Wars Descend Into Annihilation. And Victor is joining us here. Victor, last year, I think the

headline of our podcast was, will America descend into civil war? And you were

not that gloomy. You said you didn't think that America would descend to civil war,

but we were having a sort of realistic discussion about whether that could happen. I think

it's fair to say, from your point of view, certainly from your recent writings, the mood music in America has changed.

Has it changed?

Yeah, and it's not my view alone. The data shows that it has. This was the first election since 2004,

in which a Republican won the popular vote. It was an overwhelming electoral college vote.

The Republicans come into power with control of the White House,

the House representatives, the Senate, the Supreme Court.

Here in Blue State, California, five counties flipped from blue to red. And Carmela Harris did much more

poorly than Joe Biden did in this overwhelmingly blue state. But more importantly, all of the

...