Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
If an administration deliberately wished to cause havoc on the border, to ensure fuel was nearly unaffordable, to create a crime wave, to spark 1970s hyperinflation, and to rekindle racial tensions, what would it have done differently than what Joe Biden has done?
So is Biden malicious, incompetent, or a wannabe left-wing ideologue?
When pressed about inflation and fuel price hikes, Biden either blames someone or something else, gets mad at the questioner, or claims Donald Trump did it.
His administration apparently believes things are going well and according to plan.
When polls disagree, his team either believes the American people are brainwashed or that they themselves have not supplied sufficient propaganda. So they never pivot or compromise, but rededicate themselves to continued failure.
Why? Apparently, what most in the country see as disasters, Biden envisions as success.
Take the border—or rather its disappearance.
Never in U.S. history has an administration simply canceled immigration laws, opened the border, and welcomed in millions of illegal aliens. All arrive illegally, and without audit, or vaccinations and tests in times of a pandemic.
Cartels now import lethal drugs at will into the United States. We have no idea how many terrorists walk across the border each day.
Almost all the millions who break the law by entering are poor, without high school diplomas or English skills, and in dire need of massive federal and state housing, food, education, legal, and health subsidies.
Do the leftists in Washington believe that millions of dependent new residents will look to the Left for decades of support and soon find ways to reciprocate with fealty at the polls? Is that why Democrats brag in unapologetic tribalist fashion about changing the demography of the electorate?
Barack Obama’s energy secretary-designate Steven Chu once gaffed in the 2008 campaign when he openly wished that U.S. gas prices would reach European levels.
In truth, the Left has always believed the only way to achieve their objectives of discouraging driving, forcing middle-class Americans onto trains and buses, and persuading them to live in urban high-rises rather than drive carbon-spewing cars from spacious suburban ranch-style homes was to encourage high fuel prices.
Is that agenda why Biden, during the current energy crisis, simply canceled new federal oil and gas leases? As diesel hits $7 a gallon in California, why else did he refuse to finish the Keystone XL pipeline or reopen Alaskan oil fields?
Inflation continues officially to exceed eight percent per annum. Most consumers feel it is double that when they pay for food, fuel, building materials, houses, or rent—the essential stuff of life.
What did the Biden Administration expect would follow from keeping real interest rates at near zero, while printing trillions of dollars at the moment supplies were short and demand was spiking?
Or did it think inflation more fairly “spreads the wealth”? Does it prompt new necessary attacks on “corporate greed?” Does it demand more federal intervention and socialist policies?
If inflation is “bad” for most, it may not seem so to this left-wing administration.
Violent crime is on its way to 1970s levels. The combination of defunding the police, radical city and county prosecutors who don’t charge or lock up criminals, and emptying jails and prisons have ignited a national crime wave.
The Biden Administration shrugs. It offers no new federal help to fund more police or charge freed criminals under applicable federal statutes.
Does it think it is more socially just to let criminals free than incarcerate them?
Does it buy into “critical legal theory” that laws do not reflect ancient ideas of right and wrong, but instead are “constructed” by the privileged to oppress the already oppressed?
Is what Americans see as dangerous crime something the Biden zealots applaud as tough social karma?
Americans are tired of the new woke tribalism. Judging individuals on the basis of their race, gender, or superficial appearance is amoral, and contrary to the entire civil rights movement, and the U.S. Constitution.
It destroys any idea of meritocracy and divides the country artificially into supposed victims and victimizers.
But do the Biden people see it that way?
Or do they promote racial tensions and tribalism, as welcome revolutionary fervor?
In that regard, the Bidenites promote identity politics as a good way to stir up the pot, to demonize supposed oppressors and deify the oppressed—all as a way of retaining political power. For the Left, living in a socialist nation controlled by an elite is far preferable to living in a free and prosperous one answerable only to the people.
The public believes the Biden Administration has failed America, with disastrous results due either to its incompetence, belligerence, or left-wing zealotry.
But Biden and his delusional team seem delighted with what they have wrought.
In sum, what Americans see as an abject catastrophe, they cheer on as a stunning and planned success.
If you were a political ecosystem and you wanted to prevent “heathens” from interloping, but couldn’t say so explicitly because your national propaganda depends on an illusion of meritocracy, you might wreck the country at the first opportunity and, if the heathens don’t get the message, do it again and again until they do.
VDH,
All of this chaos is by design to usher in the Great Reset / New World Order. The objective of the global elite (Klaus Schwab, Rothschilds, Bill Gates, George Soros, etc….) is to make life so miserable and intolerable that the masses than turn to government to solve all their problems, bringing in a global central bank digital currency that can control the masses with the UN as the standing authority. Post mean meme online mocking government? Boom – assets are frozen and mobility halted.
These tyrants want a surveillance state and social credit score like CCP has enacted so that their power can never be challenged. Critical race theory, intersectionality, modern monetary theory, queer theory, trans theory, etc… are all avenues to destabilize society.
The playbook was observed in Canada with Peoplekind Trudeau, who is nothing other than a sock puppet for the powers that be no different than Joe from Scranton, who tried to shake hands with an invisible person on camera….#SOS
Nothing makes sense anymore because it is not supposed with the goal of driving sane, rationale people insane…. welcome to Clown World.
Exactly and to say they are trying to show us how bad it can get so we will see the light is on of the million delusional games Dems play on themselves so they don’t have to “see” what their party had done. If you have watched, as I have, the seeds of this movement grow over 60 years. I’m not afraid of the word Communism. I know what it is and how it works. But even people in their 70s were products of an educational system designing what we have now. Drop by drop upon our minds. Until now Yale Law School shouts down anyone who doesn’t tow the party line. Free speech is gone from this generation’s universities.
Thank you Victor, “And you tell me Over and over and over and over again, my friend You don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction, No no, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.” Eve Of Destruction, Song by Barry McGuire 1965. VBW, G
The Bidenites do not read history. A reckoning is coming!! I feel that Putin will use a tactical nuke – maybe WWIII? – and Biden will have his first success which will be succeeding at failing by actually squaring that circle. IMHO.
You are dead on. That makes the Biden administration the most dangerous government in my lifetime (71). They don’t even try to justify their policies under traditional values and ideals. They openly reject our form of government, our economic system, and our Judeo-Christian ethic, and promote radical change by destroying the present systems without proffering and defending an alternative other than fuzzy ideas of “justice” and “equity”. They are iconoclasts.
I remember Francis Fukuyama using a slogan in his 2 volumes of political history saying the U.S. needed to be “Getting to Denmark”. Our current situation really seems like the Biden administration is “Getting to Venezuela” as fast as they can.
In school, when you “fail” a class you have to take it again. I hope we don’t follow that plan with Biden.
excellent, from your mouth to Gods ears !!!
It’s difficult to believe the Biden disaster is a consciously contrived plan and much easier, given the players, as simply the product of unbridled emotion and ignorance.
Good point. If this were a part of the “master plan” why wouldn’t xiden’s message be one of reassurance…I know there is pain at the moment but as we get further into our green, sustainable, renewable new economy…
Victor ! Thank you for all you do. You bring sanity into this upside down World. But even you, an intellectual giant are too little to change much. The Left cabal is on the march and when hopefully the real President Trump re-takes the tiller, he will have a huge mess on his hands. I admire his optimism. And yours. Be well.
Thank you Dr. Hanson. Our precious Lord and you keep me sane. I know you are both correct.
It is like George Carlin said, “If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?”
Failed – because it will produce a negative emotion.
Trotsky?
Their Morals and Ours?
Just in case someone needs an Old Testament reference –
Mene mene tekel upharsin
Wow. Confirmation of Obama’s suggestion concerning Biden’s ability.
Contrary to other opinions here, I don’t think it’s the end of the world. The end of life as we’ve known it, most certainly.
But, the human spirit is both partly controllable and partly unpredictable. Any overimposition that affects the ground-level way of life for an average American will rise John Smith and Mark Johnson from their inaction, and they will be willing to sacrifice for the freedoms they were originally granted.
That optimism in the human spirit is at least a part of what made this country great in the first place.
“The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.” George Washington
If the voting box isn’t, an armed citizenry could be the best defense against government planned destruction.
The Worse, The Better – Vladimir Lenin
I fear the only thing that can stop these destroyers of America is a real Insurrection throwing their asses out on to the Whitehouse lawn and making them walk to the bus station. Washington is nothing more than Americas largest Crime Syndicate. You don’t become worth millions of dollars as a public servant. Every one of them are for sale to the highest bidder and will perform their masters tasks. Americans were thrown overboard years ago only DJT gave us a glimmer of hope and they managed to destroy him with a perfectly times pandemic and a shut down of the economy, destroyed real American Family Businesses while they opened borders now I see a taco truck on every corner and Mexican Restaurants, bakery’s and Grocery stores all over my hometown.
Put a fork in her ladies and gents Americas done if Biden is allowed to finish his term….Done!
God Bless and Stay Armed Only You Can Look Out For You!
William, I could not have said any better, great job !!!!
Ideologue, malicious, or incompetent?
How about this idea: Biden is incompetent but is not really running the administration anyway. When he does make decisions, such as his withdrawal from Afghanistan, it is beyond regular levels of incompetent and trending on cynical and disastrous.
But usually, he doesn’t make the decisions. Whoever *is* running the administration is quite malicious, but thankfully incompetent enough to not fool the American people completely about it.
Well stated, and DI has nailed it. Cynical and disastrous is exactly what the so-called progressive wing is; and only the malnourished young Trotskyites making passing grades on PoliSci I classes in the junior colleges, thrown in with the would-be young intelligentsia sucking on mummy and duddy’s fiscal teat in UCB/Harvard/Stanford etc. fall for such tripe. They represent the 7% who find the Biden mis-administration “inspiring”, and are among the 20% who approve of Biden/Harris (i.e., the DC consultants/lawyers/camp followers and their kowtowing bureaucrats). Remember: 90%+ of DC voted against DJT in 2019 precisely because DJT dissed them as unnecessary, expensive, and prone to “cynical and disastrous” half-baked social theories, such as has inundated the current “gang who couldn’t shoot straight”.
Why choose one? Why not all three?
ALL of the above written comments say it all !!! All that is remaining is for all of us Americans to go to the ballot box and vote them out of office and put them in jail as traitors, hang’em high !!!