From ISIS at Ramadi to riots at home, nothing is going right.
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” – W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”
Things are starting to collapse, abroad and at home. We all sense it, even as we bicker over who caused it and why.
ISIS took Ramadi last week. That city once was a Bastogne to the brave Americans who surged to save it in 2007 and 2008. ISIS, once known at the White House as the “Jayvees,” were certainly “on the run” — right into the middle of that strategically important city.
On a smaller scale, ISIS is doing to the surge cities of Iraq what Hitler did to his neighbors between 1939 and 1941, and what Putin is perhaps doing now on the periphery of Russia. In Ramadi, ISIS will soon do its accustomed thing of beheading and burning alive its captives, seeking some new macabre twist to sustain its Internet video audience. We in the West trample the First Amendment and jail a video maker for posting a supposedly insensitive film about Islam; in contrast, jihadists post snuff movies of burnings and beheadings to global audiences. We argue not about doing anything or saving anybody, but about whether it is inappropriate to call the macabre killers “jihadists.”
When these seventh-century psychopaths tire of warring on people, they turn to attacking stones, seeking to ensure that there is not a vestige left of the Middle East’s once-glorious antiquities. I assume the ancient Sassanid and Roman imperial site at Palmyra will soon be looted and smashed.
What is unique about American foreign policy today is not just that it is rudderless, but how quickly and completely the 70-year postwar order seems to have disintegrated — and how little interest the American people take in the collapse, thanks to the administration’s apparent redeeming message, which translates, “It’s their misfortune and none of our own.”
As long as we are not involved at the center of foreign affairs and there is no perceptible short-term danger to our security, few seem to care much that western North Africa is a no-man’s-land. Hillary Clinton’s “lead from behind” created a replay of Somalia in Libya. The problem with Turkey’s Recep Erdogan is not that he is no longer Obama’s “special friend,” but that he was ever considered a friend at all, as he pressed forward with his plan to destroy Turkish democracy in the long march to theocracy.
There was never much American good will for the often duplicitous Gulf monarchies, so the general public does not seem to be worried that they are now spurned allies. That estrangement became possible because of growing U.S. self-sufficiency in oil and gas (thanks to fracking, which Obama largely opposed). Still, let us hope the Gulf States remain neutral rather than becoming enemies — given their financial clout and the availability of Pakistani bombs for Sunni petrodollars. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has it in for Israel. Why, no one quite knows, given that the Jewish state is the only democratic and liberal society in the Middle East. Perhaps it resembles the United States too closely, and thus earns the reflected hypercriticism that so many leftists cultivate for their own civilization.
Theocratic Iran has won more sympathy from the Obama administration than democratic Israel.
Theocratic Iran has won more sympathy from the Obama administration. No neutral observer believes that the current policy of lifting sanctions and conducting negotiations will not lead to an Iranian bomb; it is hoped only that this will be unveiled on the watch of another president, who will be castigated as a warmonger if he is forced to preempt its rollout. The current American foreign policy toward Iran is baffling. Does Obama see the theocracy as a valuable counterweight to the Sunni monarchies? Is it more authentic in the revolutionary sense than the geriatric hereditary kingdoms in the Gulf? Or is the inexplicable policy simply a matter of John Kerry’s gambit for a Nobel Peace Prize or some sort of Obama legacy in the eleventh hour, a retake of pulling all U.S. peacekeepers home from a once-quiet Iraq so that Obama could claim he had “ended the war in Iraq”?
Hillary Clinton has been talking up her successful tenure as secretary of state. But mysteriously she has never specified exactly where, when, or how her talents shone. What is she proud of?
Reset with Russia? The Asian pivot to discourage Chinese bellicosity? The critical preliminary preparations for talks with Iran? The Libyan misadventure?
Or perhaps we missed a new initiative to discourage North Korean aggression? Some new underappreciated affinity with Israel and the Gulf monarchies? The routing of ISIS, thanks to Hillary’s plans? Shoring up free-market democracies in Latin America? Proving a model of transparency as secretary? Creating a brilliant new private–public synergy by combining the work of the State Department, the Clinton Foundation, and Bill’s lecturing –as evidenced by the Haitian renaissance and nation-building in Kazakhstan?
Meanwhile, no one seems to much care that between 2009 and 2017, we will have borrowed 8 trillion more dollars. Yet for all that stimulus, the U.S. economy still has staggering labor non-participation rates, flat GDP growth, and stagnant household income. As long as zero interest rates continue, the rich make lots of money in the stock market, and the debt can grow by $500 billion a year and still be serviced. Financial sobriety is now defined as higher taxes bringing in record revenues to service half-trillion-dollar annual additions to an $18 trillion debt.
The liberal approach to the underclass continues as it has been for the last 50 years: The elites support huge, unquestioned redistributionist entitlements for the inner city as penance for avoiding it. Minorities are left to run their own political affairs without much worry that their supposed benefactors live apartheid lives, protected by the proof of their caring. The public is left with the lie “Hands up, don’t shoot” as a construct that we will call true, because the made-up last-seconds gasps of Michael Brown perhaps should have happened that way. As an elite bookend, we have a Columbia coed toting around a mattress as proof of society’s insensitivity to sexual violence, which in her case both her university and the New York City police agree never occurred. In theory, perhaps it could have and thus all but did.
The elites support huge, unquestioned redistributionist entitlements for the inner city as penance for avoiding it.
As far as scandals go, no one much cares any more about the implosion of the Veterans Administration. In the public’s defense, though, how does one keep straight the multitudinous scandals — Lois Lerner and the rogue IRS, the spying on and tapping of Associated Press journalists, the National Security Agency disclosures, Fast and Furious, the serial lying about needless deaths in Benghazi, the shenanigans at the General Services Administration, the collapse of sobriety at the Secret Service, the rebooting of air-traffic controllers’ eligibility to be adjudicated along racial and ethnic lines, and the deletions from Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server, which doubled as her government server
Always there is the administration’s populist anthem of “You didn’t build that”; instead, you must have won the lottery from President Obama. If his economic programs are not working, there is always the finger pointing at those who are too well off. Michelle Obama lectured a couple of weeks ago on museum elitism and prior neglect of the inner city, in between recounting some slights and micro-aggressions that she has endured, presumably on jumbo-jet jaunts to Costa del Sol and Aspen. I think her point is that it is still worse to be rich, powerful, and black than, say, poor, ignored, and non-black.
Then there is the strange populism of Hillary Clinton. It is hard to know why she rails about growing inequality and the lack of fairness in American life. After all, Barack Obama has been president for over six years, an administration in which she served for four. Did she ever visit the Oval Office to decry her own administration’s failure to use its House and Senate majorities in 2009–2011 to help the poor?
Is she now running against Obama’s economic policies, which she never publicly objected to before? And how can an unjust country be so fair to Bill and Hillary, who just made $30 million in the last 16 months, or about, on average, $62,500 per day — their speaking fees predicated on the likelihood that she would soon be a candidate for president and, as secretary of state emerita, had already enhanced the pay-to-play modus operandi of the Clinton Foundation?
The Foundation currently pays young Chelsea — who bragged in bohemian fashion that money had no hold over her inner self (but only after achieving a net worth of a reported $15 million from various hedge-fund sweetheart billets) — $600,000 a year and provides her with a staff of five. At some point, to paraphrase Barack Obama, might the Clintons have confessed that making, say, $15 million was enough? Or might Chelsea now agree to work for her parents for the discount rate of $499,999 per annum to free up more money for the Haitians? Or might Hillary have talked to her son-in-law about paying a little more in taxes on his hedge-fund profits?
Perhaps populist Clinton donor George Stephanopoulos can interview his former employer on transparency, as he recently did the author of Clinton Cash, Peter Schweizer. Stephanopoulos last year signed a seven-year, $105 million contract with ABC; that equals about $41,000 a day for the next 2,555 days for his disinterested journalism. I wonder how those wages factor into the Clintons’ populism. Is it better or worse than the $26,724 per televised minute that ace reporter Chelsea Clinton received not long ago from NBC?
The center of this culture is not holding. Even a few Democrats are worried that Hillary Clinton’s mendacities are unsustainable. More Americans privately confess that American foreign policy is dangerously adrift. They would agree that the U.S. no longer has a southern border, and will have to spend decades and billions of dollars coping with millions of new illegal aliens. Some Americans are starting to fear that the reckless borrowing under Obama will wreck the country if not stopped. Racial tensions, all concede, are reaching dangerous levels, and Americans do not know what is scarier: inner-city relations between blacks and the police, the increasing anger of the black underclass at establishment America — or the even greater backlash at out-of-control violent black crime and the constant scapegoating and dog whistles of racism.
Whatever liberalism is, it is not working. Our country’s policies overseas are falling apart, while at home our society stagnates and turns tribal — with a growing and embittered underclass, a shrinking and angry middle class, and a plutocratic and apartheid elite who, as absolution for their privilege, are desperate to praise in the abstract what they so studiously avoid in the concrete.
Discussion (20)
Join the conversation. Logged in subscribers avoid the Captcha verification and get priority commenting approvals. No vulgarity, links, or code allowed.
Greetings! I've been reading your blog for some time now and finally got the courage to go ahead and give you a shout out from Houston Texas! Just wanted to mention keep up the fantastic work!
In respose to zygote314: "I’m assuming you’re European, from your loaded statements about America. But before you get too carried away with your self-righteous finger pointing and accusations of American hypocrisy you should remember a few facts" 1) The “until recently” is a nice way of saying “until the USA put its boots on ground where they didn’t belong”. And you’ve been doing it ever since WW2 with questionable results. 2) The Marshall plan was for all of Europe, not just Germany. Of the $13 Billion divided across the European counties, West Germany only received 11%. Yet the German people still managed to build an economy greater than that of the former British empire not to mention all of France, Italy and Spain combined. And we did that ourselves. And don’t kid yourself about Stalin and the old USSR rolling across Europe. They were never a real threat to Europe despite American Cold Ware rhetoric. They couldn’t even feed themselves and even their industry was stolen (piece by piece) from Germany. Do you know anyone who owns a Russian made product even today? I thought not. 3) Long vacations and health insurance has always been provided by our companies. It has nothing to do with our government. Since the early days of Siemens and Krupps at the turn of the 1900’s, German industrialists knew if you take care of the workers, they’ll take care of the company. Pretty basic really. Maybe if your industry’s were less Upton Sinclaire's “The Jungle”, you wouldn’t have to deal with Obama-care a hundred years later. 4) And what did you get for those 30,000 lives? A country who’s industry helped to displace Ford, GM, RCA and Westinghouse with KIA, Hyundai, Gold Star and Samsung. Well done! And what about Africa, Cambodia, North Korea and all those other places where the “light of freedom” has been snuffed out? Are you planning to go there too? Good luck with that. There’s no shame in learning from other people, or recognizing that other ideas might actually be better than your own. Especially where things like a free education, affordable healthcare, a strong economy and low unemployment and long holidays are working quite well. Stop wrapping yourself in your flag and wearing faded laurels. It’s polemic and contributes nothing to the reality that a once great country has been brought low through its own arrogance and lack of leadership. Admitting a there’s problem is the first step in solving it.
THE OLD WAY There are two essential approaches in responding to the chaotic notions that "the center of the culture is not holding." The lions and tigers and bears, oh my! - fear based approach being one reality eloquently set forth above as the good Professor seems to have done. This approach is not assigned exclusively to any one political party even as the evidence used suggests it must. Lions and tigers and bears express instead the nonpartisan state of current affairs that the people have come to realize after years of constant war, both main parties are driven by the same howling corporate masters in a cancerous corporatocracy culture that clings to power through constant war for the benefit of the few who are bankrupt of a vision for governing - right and left. AND THE OTHER WAY The other approach is to reject fear, face our nemeses with understanding and forgiveness, defang the beast and release it and us from its howls of aimless confusion. Nationalize the Federal Reserve, call in all Federal Reserve Notes and issue Treasury-Direct US Dollars. Whether these dollars are soundly managed fiat currency or transitionally disciplined gold-backed dollars are not as relevant as the act of nationalizing the Fed. This action will start a virtuous life cycle that cascades prosperity among people as we find them. Pivoting between China and Russia, oh my! --- will transform away from existing game rules of "I win. You lose," to "Trickle Through Prosperity & Trade." So far I have found only one 2016 U.S. Presidential candidate who engages this discussion along with many other fearless topics, who seems to retain a vision for governing. Facebook "Andy2016!" Andrew D Basiago.
Just as they did during the Vietnam conflict, our socialists (communist lite) commonly referred to as democrats will do what is necessary to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. While many, if not all of us see Iraqi Freedom as a mistake, the fact remains that we won. Bush's leadership and our brave combat troops destroyed al Qaeda in Iraq and subdued the country. Unfortunately, a democrat administration followed and all those hard fought gains, and sacrifices have been squandered in a few short years. Democrats will do anything including collaborating with the enemy to embolden and empower our enemies. Their desire for power and money trumps all else. Iraq is a lost cause now and the suffering of the Iraqi people is in large part, our fault. Funny, the Pentagon blamed the loss of Ramadi on Iraqi troops lacking the will to fight. Who is left to fight after thirty years of war beginning with the Iran Iraq war? Millions of Iraqi troops have died over the last three decades. And now, they have been abandoned by their latest conqueror, us. I wouldn't fight either...
Nothing like handing over the initiative to our enemies. At this time, I don't believe our representatives are very skillful in their handling of some grave global problems we currently face. They need to do better in problem-so,vying. I see no modern day Pericles to guide the ship of state. Rather the great US eagle looks sick with an illness that presents a perception of weakness and confusion. I hope we wake up soon. We are not flying so high now.
It takes 300 to 700 days to build a custom home... only one to burn, flood, explode, bomb or smash it.
"But we can be tranquil and thankful And proud for man's been endowed With a mushroom shaped cloud And we know for certain that Some lovely day someone will set the spark off And we will all be blown away They're rioting in Africa There's strife in Iran What nature doesn't do to us will be done by our fellow man" Sheldon Harnick-1958
History should damn Obama as the worst thing to happen to the United States in a long time -- although in a lot of ways he's just reflecting the zeitgeist. But a certain number of historians -- and Obama himself, if he had any interest in or knowledge of history whatsoever -- will see him as the modern Diocletian, making the necessary changes to slow the decline. Here's a suggestive quotation from A Survey of European Civilization, by Ferguson and Bruun: "...hitherto the old forms of senatorial government had been preserved. Diocletian abandoned all such fictions...."
America is not falling apart any faster than it always has been. Go back a few decades and recall the Watt riots, Kent State shootings, Vietnam and Watergate. Go back another few decades and you'll find the Great Depression, Tammony Hall, and the invention of the IRS and the Federal Reserve. For over a century, Internally and externally, America has really never been what thinks it is or claims to be. While it chants the mantra of "world leadership", who asked for it to lead anyone in the first place when you can hardly lead yourself? You boast of the American Dream and a high standard of living. Which has turned out to be nothing more than a debt-based nightmare. You scoff at "lazy" Europeans while you work two jobs, earn less, have fewer vacations and an unaffordable health care program. Well, at least you can depend on your Social Security program for retirement, right? Yes, a big military and lots of flag waving is nice. But like Hillary Clinton's accomplishments, even the mighty US military really can't claim to have really done anything significant since WW2; Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Somalia and Iraq.Thousands of dead US soldiers, billions in wasted tax dollars, for what? For a what was once a Christian nation (according to president Obama, you're not anymore) you fail on a national scale to heed a simple truth right out of the Bible: Matthew 7:5 "You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
The fact of the matter is that as bad as things are, and they are bad, they can be solved. It may take an economic collapse, or the ongoing chaos and conflagration in the Middle East, Asia, or Europe to coalesce in to World War III, so as to focus the attention of the West, but we have no other choice but to resist and carry on as our forefathers would have. As American's we owe it to the children of men like Chris Kyle and the fallen war dead who sacrificed all to carry on the fight. People like Dr. Hanson have spent great portions of their lives trying to bring knowledge to ignorant people, like me, and are national treasures, but I think we've reached a point were we must set aside informing and start preparing for what looks like a dark future ahead for America and for the world. We will need great minds like Dr. Hanson, but I think we may be in for a time where the qualities of men that are shunned and disdained in times of peace and prosperity, become a prerequisite for survival in the moments of desperation when nations erupt. It is times like these that make me glad I'm a Christian. No matter what happens, I know my side wins in the end. We should count ourselves fortunate to have been deemed by the Lord to exist at a time of such consequence for our Nation, and as American's have the opportunity to defend her against usurpation and defilement.
Eva Firia - You ask for a solution and/or suggestions from Professor Hanson. It is not his duty, nor does he have the obligation to produce any. President Obama has a team to perform the duties you petition for. The President, on the recommendations of his advisors, chooses to make the wrong decisions, or worse, no decisions on many of the issues pointed out in Professor Hanson's article. Mr. Hanson's critique of the President is within his First Amendment rights. You would do well to ask those who are in President Obama's inner circle about those issues pointed out in the article. In doing so, you could also address the ineptitude of those members of President Obama's team who, apparently, are making poor recommendations to the President.
Sadly, it is true we as a nation are dismally adrift in trying to come to grips with the grave problems going around in our troubled world. I'd think it quite apparent that our representatives in power are without skill in navigating the United States of America in trying to deal with its difficult global relationships. I see no Pericles at the U.S. tiller but rather a sick eagle looking at the sky lost within an illness that saps its energy in confronting our enemies. I hope we wake up ....and quick.
Mr. Hanson hits the critical points but who is paying attention? On Fox News, with Harris Faulkner, Pat Caddell, well known democrat and political strategist, said America is becoming tribalist. Meaning, I think, that the American voter makes choices based on political (tribal) affiliation only. Personal experience, reputation, character, integrity, honesty or lack thereof are a mere distraction, irrelevant and not worthy of consideration.
When the current generation is purposefully uneducated, they are left only with their "herd instincts" to judge what is happening. Pain becomes the only teacher they will respond to, and that is exactly what Solzhenitsyn meant by the “the pitiless crowbar of events”. So simple and true in just a few words. Bravo. On the Middle East, one author, an academic former adviser and supporter of the Administration, said, on a panel discussion, that Obama felt Iran was more reliable than Saudi Arabia, the home of most of the 9/11 killers, and the source of their, and most, terrorists' funding. He said 90% of Iranians love America and only a "small veneer" of tyrannical leaders hate the U.S. That sounded rational, but ignored Obama's vast record of diplomatic failures, which only fools and people who lie to themselves could do. As a Viet Nam veteran, I see the desire to re-enter Iraq as a mistake based on frustration. We've sacrificed enough of our children trying to "nation build" a culture that loves its 1400 year old religious war. There can never be a real Caliphy to fear, while Muslims are split with hatred, so I believe they are only a serious nuisance to us, rather than a serious threat. Regards,
As always, right on Mr Hanson. The only thing I see as positive is in the ME, with Obama waffling about what to do and not committing any ground forces, Saudi Arabia and others realize they need to step up and do their part or they will be toast. Everything else is exactly as you say, a total disaster! God help America.
sir: historically all of this befuddlement is a run up to war. sooner or later, war is the answer. john jay
Well said, Professor. I would like to think that humans would promptly incorporate inconsistent data into their thinking but I cannot. Even today's blizzard of disturbing facts on each and every front does not register. A radio talk show host some years back took a call from a fellow whose wife had left him. She obviously objected to his drinking but it still didn't seem to register on a deeper level of his consciousness. The host told him that her leaving him "was like a kuh-LEW." Meaning "clue." Similarly, even just one of the matters you discuss ought to cause a person of reasonable intelligence to begin to discard any illusion that all is well with us. Rather, Franklin's "Experience keeps a dear school but a fool will learn in no other" seems to be the order of the day. Solzhenitsyn's version of that was "the pitiless crowbar of events." Ten tons of reason, analysis, and remonstrance seem not to be up to the task or waking up the majority. The entire West is committed to utter madness. Sweden is only slightly more lunatic than all the other countries. Oh well!
Great article! And some of the pictures are very appropriate: a disgusted looking POTUS, a statue of 2 women(?) weeping over a document (the constitution?) of our country, a laughing ("what difference does it make!?) Democratic candidate. So appropriate for this timely article, headed and footed by Old Glory!
Obama remains America's greatest enemy as he continues to "fundamentally transform" us from a Constitutional republic to a third world totalitarian mess. The rest of the world are along for this hellish ride.
Hello Mr. Hanson, this is an impressive total of problems, however, I do not see any solution. Or suggestions?