Victor Davis Hanson
When I drive in rural California and see the shacks, trailers, and compounds of 30-40 persons living in ad hoc shelters with Romex wire and water hoses attached to a small farmhouse, I conclude that this poverty is much more a third-world scene than I remember of Tunisia, Algeria, or Turkey.
Or for that matter, the countryside of northern Mexico seems less impoverished than life outside Mendota, San Joaquin, Orange Cove or Parlier, California. I would take my chances walking at night in Kuwait City over Minneapolis and would likely find a public restroom on California’s I-5 or the 99 dirtier than its counterpart in rural Greece.
Students that I have met in rural Greece were far better educated than their age-counterparts in California. Spaniards in the countryside seemed to know more about America than American teens in New York or Philadelphia.
Japanese or Kuwaiti exchange students I had in college were far better educated than most of my own CSU students. When I taught at Pepperdine, I explained to Chinese students why they rightly seemed afraid to drive alone into most areas of Los Angeles after hours.
My point? The basics of life, especially in our major cities—health care, safety, cleanliness—have reached medieval proportions.
Or to put it more accurately, there are very different Americas. A sophisticated successful suburban America maintains more or less life as unchanged from the 1970s or 1980s and remains comparable to or better than what is found in Europe.
And then there are red-state rural countrysides and small towns that likewise are still civilized.
But in a third of America in parts of the suburbs surrounding the major cities and the cores of almost all our major cities, life is truly third or fourth-world. The ERs are dirty, broke, and mostly exist to attend to evening gunshot wounds and other sorts of inner-city violence.
Garbage piles up on sidewalks around stuffed cans and bins. It is hard to judge whether the smell of marijuana or feces is the stronger odor.
I lost my wallet once in Athens and it was returned in two hours. I have lost glasses, wallet, and cell phones in my hometown of Selma and usually they were never returned or within hours I had thefts show up on my credit cards.
If my car broke down on the side of a freeway, I would prefer it happened in Israel, Germany, or Portugal than in California. There are more broken appliances and wet garbage tossed along the roads of Fresno County than there are in supposedly ragtag Italy.
None of this was true just 20 years ago. When I meet a teen or 20-something person today, I assume he is poorly educated and knows almost nothing about his own country, Gettysburg, World War I, or the Supreme Court. I can be assured only that he is programmed to have the correct ideas about diversity, or transgenderism, or the pathologies of his country.
Ignorance and arrogance are a fatal combination, especially when combined with a therapeutic society that has abandoned meritocracy and feels social acceptance and career advantage are found in trashing one’s own culture.
What explains this decline, a decay so rapid that it seems surreal, fantasy like? How did slow erosion accelerate to produce an unrecognizable country, in which nothing is secure, nothing reliable, nothing predictable anymore?
Discussion (15)
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There is still much good in this country. I live in the greater Seattle area which is deep blue and where a judge recently ruled scrawling graffiti cannot be considered a crime because of "freedom of speech." Eastern Washington is deep red and largely agricultural, the dividing line being the Cascade Mountain range is the dividing line. Each year it is a family and friend event to camp in Eastern Washington and the following event renewed my faith in people. After filling my tank with diesel at a gas station in a small town my truck (2002 F350) would not start. The next 2.5 hours was remarkable; two people attempted to jump start it to no avail then another gentleman dove under it and diagnosed the problem to be the starter. As he stood back up he called to a young woman getting gas and let her know what was going on and if she had any ideas. The young lady knew a mechanic who was scheduled to come to her place to do some work that evening. She calls him and he shows up not too long later. He happens to be a long time Ford mechanic. He also dives under the truck and agrees it is the starter. He gives me a ride to a local auto parts store where I buy a new starter (the only one in stock) which he installs in less than 25 minutes when we return to the gas station (he was after all driving his truck with a mechanic's box which included a compressor for his air tools). The good and kind people in this country are still the majority.
I think in 3 years, we have permanently ceded the cities as slums. Tragic in every way possible.
What did it take to bring about such chaos, such instability? It took long-term planning, biding time til all was ready to ignite. It took a near-religious, fanatical resolve to follow through all together. It took considerable wealth to transform (slowly then suddenly) so many critical institutions so completely. It took deep understanding of motivational & behavioral psychology to conduct such a semi-global operation, especially w.r.t. orchestrated mass hysteria and mass incomprehension of the extent to which people have been manipulated. Xi’s Belt & Road ambitions (to be built on the backs of Mao’s subjects) fed directly into the joint aspirations of the World Economic Forum and the Western Security Forces to strive to create One World Government. Hey, plans are we'll all be happy.
Professor Hanson has provided those suggestions for over twenty years.
I am likely 10 years older than Victor, so my shock at what's become of our country, and the Western World generally, is even that much more profound. It seems as though I just turned around and suddenly discovered that what was once true and accepted, no longer is. Worse, the apathy in the face of what has become all to obvious when one reads or watches the news is truly horrifying. Everyone seems to nod, yes, we see it, and yet nothing happens. People agree that Biden is a disaster, but on he goes, day after day, unimpeeded, while everyone waits for 2024. Will that change things? Not in the last mid-terms. I was not raised in a particularly religious home, but I am becoming convinced that a cultural/political renewal in this county cannot be accomplished without a serious religious revival. What are the chances that this can occur?
Thank you Professor Hanson.
Will look forward to your explanatory discourse--and your suggestions for what can be done.
An educated populace is something of a misnomer. If we look to our revolutionary days most individuals were not educated and in particular women. Yet we can read our forefathers rail at the lack of education or common sense of what they perceived as the citizenry, small farmers, merchant men and land owners, those few of the elite. Watch any movie of the twenties or thirties and hear both liberals and conservatives claim that the youth were ignorant of not only the world but of their own country. In the fifties and early sixties I heard that same mantra repeated by both political sides. Then came the big long slide in public education, first in the elementary schools and then in the secondary sector as the educational establishment pushed the idea that all students should attend college or university. To do so the schools would need to relax standards so that all could have a chance for the good life. Finally the academic slide towards ignorance became the excuse to raise tuition, hire far more non academic administrators, and rarely use past endowments for the education of its student body. No, colleges and universities were hooked on government grants and student loans. From the ignorant we see the dependence of tribalism led by those whose daily bread greatly depends upon such adherence.
So true and so true for many of our elected "representatives', e.g., AOC and others approach comedy but fail at that too. Surely "ignorance and arrogance" are offensive ills that Xi will take advantage of, if he hasn't already. I definitely know that in old China, a common first offense was to flatter, cuz it very often lsets up overconfidence, lack of prep, and eventually the fall. Mulitiple there have told me they used to view us a near gods after WW2 and when Nixon opened that door. Some still do there but most no longer flatter America. Mostly now China accuses us of bullying, unmerited arrogance, and now diss and disrespect. They would rant on Bush's doctrine of nation building and viewed it as highly offensive and disrespectful. A couple years ago a notable there publicly boasted that they had citizens in the highest reaches of our federal government. Little did we know, they had bought 10% for a measly $6 million, a very insignificant percentage of our defense budget. For China, it was a great investment, a few million to grow trillions.
An ignorant man is more dangerous than a tiger. - Turkish proverb
Think about the evil inherent in the architects of this misery. The leftist cabal pulling the string of this most destructive administration in US history. Make no mistake about it these architects are brilliant and comprehensive in their planning, every aspect of american life is being dismantled in only 2 1/2 years. These trends are not reversible. The will to fight has been broken in most of the american people, the indoctrination of our youth is almost complete. Being a grifter on the system is admired. I think at one point this will devolve into civil unrest not seen in this country since the civil war, with attempts at secession of states. Our intl enemies smell blood and the sharks are circling. Only G-d can save this country. Thank you VDH for clarity, honesty, & courage.
I grew up in the 50's in what was considered a "slum" area of my small town in Indiana. I was so ashamed to live there that I had friends drop me off outside the boundaries. Some of them never knew where I lived. And yet, I have no memory of overflowing trash, feces in the street, a pillaged corner grocery or fear after curfew. The kids were tough and mean and dirt poor, but there were unspoken rules of dignity that even the citizens of this misfortune didn't lose. It's mind bending, truly frightening and so very, very sad.
"Ignorance and arrogance are a fatal combination". For proof, take a look at our current president.