Victor Davis Hanson: Imagine the Unimaginable

Contact Your Elected Officials

Americans are now entering uncharted, revolutionary territory. They may witness things over the next five months that once would have seemed unimaginable.

Until the Ukrainian conflict, we had never witnessed a major land war inside Europe directly involving a nuclear power.

In desperation, Russiaโ€™s impaired and unhinged leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin, now talks trash about the likelihood of nuclear war.

A 79-year-old President Joe Biden bellows back that his war-losing nuclear adversary is a murderer, a war criminal, and a butcher who should be removed from power.

After a year of politicizing the U.S. military and its self-induced catastrophe in Afghanistan, America has lost deterrence abroad. China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia are conniving how best to exploit this rare window of global military opportunity.

The traditional bedrocks of the American systemโ€”a stable economy, energy independence, vast surpluses of food, hallowed universities, a professional judiciary, law enforcement, and a credible criminal justice systemโ€”are dissolving.

Gas and diesel prices are hitting historic levels. Inflation is at a 40-year high. New cars and homes are unaffordable. The necessary remedy of high interest and tight money will be almost as bad as the disease of hyperinflation.

There is no southern border.

Expect over 1 million foreign nationals to swarm this summer into the United States without audit, COVID testing, or vaccination. None will have any worry of consequences for breaking U.S. immigration law.

Police are underfunded and increasingly defunded. District attorneys deliberately release violent criminals without charges. (Literally 10,000 people witnessed a deranged man with a knife attack comedian Dave Chappelle on stage at the Hollywood Bowl last week, and the Los Angeles County D.A. refused to press felony charges.) Murder and assault are spiraling. Carjacking and smash-and-grab thefts are now normal big-city events.

Crime is now mostly a political matter. Ideology, race, and politics determine whether the law is even applied.

Supermarket shelves are thinning, and meats are now beyond the budgets of millions of Americans. An American presidentโ€”in a firstโ€”casually warns of food shortages. Baby formula has disappeared from many shelves.

Politics are resembling the violent last days of the Roman Republic. An illegal leak of a possible impending Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade that would allow state voters to set their own abortion laws has created a national hysteria.

Never has a White House tacitly approved mobs of protesters showing up at Supreme Court justicesโ€™ homes to rant and bully them into altering their votes.

There is no free speech any more on campuses.

Merit is disappearing. Admissions, hiring, promotion, retention, grading, and advancement are predicated increasingly on mouthing the right orthodoxies or belonging to the proper racial, gender, or ethnic category.

When the new campus commissariat finally finishes absorbing the last redoubts in science, math, engineering, medical, and professional schools, America will slide into permanent mediocrity and irreversible declining standards of living.

What happened?

Remember all these catastrophes are self-induced. They are choices, not fate. The United States has the largest combined gas, coal, and oil deposits in the world. It possesses the know-how to build the safest pipelines and to ensure the cleanest energy development on the planet.

Inflation was a deliberate Biden choice. For short-term political advantage, he kept printing trillions of dollars, incentivizing labor non-participation, and keeping interest rates at historical lowsโ€”at a time of pent-up global demand.

The administration wanted no border. Only that way can politicized, impoverished immigrants repay left-wing undermining of the entire legal immigration system with their fealty at the ballot box.

Once esoteric, crack-pot academic theoriesโ€”โ€œmodern monetary theory,โ€ critical legal theory, critical race theoryโ€”now dominate policymaking in the Biden administration.

The common denominator in all of this is ideology overruling empiricism, common sense, and pragmatism. Ruling elites would rather be politically correct failures and unpopular than politically incorrect, successful, and popular.

Is it not the tired story of left-wing revolutionaries from 18th-century France to early 20th-century Russia to the contemporary disasters in Cuba and Venezuela?

The American people reject the calamitous policies of 2021โ€“2022. Yet the radical cadres surrounding a cognitively inert Biden still push them through by executive orders, bureaucratic directives, and deliberate cabinet nonperformance.

Why? The Left has no confidence either in constitutional government or common sense.

So as the public pushes back, expect at the ground level more doxxing, cancel culture, deplatforming, ministries of disinformation, swarming the private homes of officials they target for bullying, and likely violent demonstrations in our streets this summer.

Meanwhile, left-wing elites will do their best to ignore Supreme Court decisions, illegally cancel student debts, and likely by the fall issue more COVID lockdowns. They will still dream of packing the Court, ending the filibuster, scrapping the Electoral College, adding more states, and flooding the November balloting with hundreds of millions more dollars of dark money from Silicon Valley.

When revolutionaries undermine the system, earn the antipathy of the people, and face looming disaster at the polls, it is then they prove most dangerousโ€”as we shall see over the next few months.

Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hansonhttp://victorhanson.com/
Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.

The Very British Stalemate: British Politics Explained for Americans

The assumption in the minds of American commentators, politicians, and analysts is that the UK has "gone to the dogs" with "woke" political ideology.

NFL Vikings Male Cheerleader Controversy ย 

The NFL under the leadership of Roger Goodell is back to yet another controversy that is causing backlash and a possible boycott.

Euronews Is Euro-Trash: Lessons in Media Deception Tactics

Euronews โ€œcoveredโ€ the vicious murder of a 17-year-old Dutch girl by so-called asylum seeker who raped another girl, calling him simply a โ€œ22-year-old man.โ€

The Woke Left Goes Lock, Stock And Cracker Barrel

Another legendary American institution has been targeted by woke leftists. This time it is the popular family restaurant chain, Cracker Barrel, founded inย 1969.

โ€˜Indigenous Drag Story Hourโ€™: A Back-to-Public-School Treat For the Kids

I gave leading child-grooming outfit Drag Queen Story Hour my email to solicit me for funds to convert more public school kids into trannies.

Democrats Map Strategy and Urge Unity โ€™to Win Elections, Not Argumentsโ€™

DNC Chair Ken Martin called upon fellow Democrats to prioritize results over rhetoric as party opened its summer meeting in Minneapolis on Aug. 25.

Federal Reserve Signals Rate Cutโ€”What This Means for Your Money

In Jackson Hole keynote address Fed Chair Powell stated current conditions, a deteriorating labor market, โ€œmay warrantโ€ a change in monetary policy.

Netflix Unveils Opening Dates for Philadelphia, Dallas Entertainment Venues

Opening this fall in Philadelphia and Dallas, the Netflix House complexes will feature themed experiences and a restaurant inspired by Netflix content.

Texas Democrats Take Center Stage at DNC Summer Meeting Amid Redistricting Battles

Texas Democrats got a heroesโ€™ welcome on opening day of the Democratic National Committeeโ€™s summer meeting in Minneapolis.

Trump Floats New Meeting With Kim Jong Un as South Koreaโ€™s Lee Visits White House

President Trump welcomed South Koreaโ€™s new president, Lee Jae Myung, to the White House to discuss trade, investment, and defense collaboration.

Trump Signs Order Targeting American Flag Burning, Desecration

President Trump signed an EO that directs the attorney general to prosecute those caught burning the American flag or desecrating it in other ways.

Trump Signs Executive Orders Aimed at Ending Cashless Bail

Trump signed two EOs aimed at eliminating cashless bail, along with order adding specialized law enforcement units to executive agencies in Washington.

Airbnb Co-founder to Redesign Thousands of US Government Websites

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia is honored to redesign thousands of U.S. government websites after he was appointed as Trumpโ€™s new design chief.
spot_img

Related Articles