Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
As the midterms approach, one way of looking at America’s current disaster is that we, the American people, were lab rats. And since 2021, the Left were the mad scientists, eager to try out their crackpot leftist experiments on us.
The result is that the housing market is tottering on the verge of collapse.
As interest rates soar, our $31 trillion national debt crowds out everything else in the budget.
Inflation roars at a rate of 8-9 percent per annum, higher than at any time in 40 years. Yet the prices of the stuff of life—food, fuel, shelter, energy—are far steeper still than the official rate.
No one is safe from thugs anymore—whether a commuter on a New York subway or the Pelosis in Pacific Heights.
The country reportedly has a 25-day supply of diesel fuel—the energy source that runs the nation. Meanwhile, we keep draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve of oil—a commodity we have in abundance but refuse to produce fully.
We never fixed the supply-chain crisis of last year, and so still face shortages of key consumer goods.
The labor participation rate is at an all-time low—given fat government COVID subsidies, the Siren-song appeal of staying home after the lockdowns, fear of COVID, and millions of workers with long COVID.
The post-Kabul Pentagon is quiet about the depletion of its critical stocks of weaponry. We have sent billions of dollars’ worth in howitzer shells, javelin missiles, and Hilmar rocket launchers to Ukraine without replenishing our own arsenals. The Army’s recruitment rate is off 50 percent this year.
Our broken Navy is ossifying as China expands its fleet in expectation of absorbing Taiwan.
When we look to the president for an accounting for these madcap experiments, we get nothing. In the last few weeks, Joe Biden has lied that gas was $5 a gallon when he took office when it was half that.
He falsely swears that he passed his student-loan amnesty plan by one or two votes when he simply signed away a half-trillion dollars in debt by an executive order and bypassed Congress.
Kamala Harris is our border czar but she avoids the nonexistent southern border like the plague.
As the country depletes its petroleum reserves, she gushes about “solutions” like transforming the nation’s school bus fleet to battery power.
On the rare occasion she is allowed abroad, Harris has no idea what North Korea’s official name is—only that it is supposedly one of America’s staunchest allies.
We are now headed for a decisive midterm election. Strangely the hard-left architects of the last two years neither offer a defense of their failing agendas, nor agree to change them.
No Democratic congressional candidates brag about the 3 million people who illegally crossed an open border.
None boast that they helped cancel key pipelines, reduced federal leasing of gas and oil, and shut down the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. None take credit for hammering investments in fossil fuels.
None preen over the no-bail and defund-the-police policies of left-wing, big-city prosecutors and mayors who have spiked crime.
None insist that an annual 8-9 percent inflation rate is a desirable spreading of the wealth.
And yet odder still, no Democratic candidate, state or national—and most certainly not Joe Biden—offers to alter these toxic policies.
If they won’t defend what they have done, they apparently will not undo what they have wrought either.
No Democratic gubernatorial candidate wants one foot built of a new border wall. No House candidate demands that the Keystone pipeline be finished. No senatorial candidate calls for fiscal discipline to lower inflation.
Instead, they stay mute.
Biden mutters lies about MAGA extremists under every bed while daily offering yet another made-up tidbit of his fantasy autobiography.
State and national candidates either avoid debates with their Republican opponents or delay them in hopes they will become irrelevant since millions of mail-in ballots are already cast.
Rarely have voters turned over their country to radicals, socialists, and nihilists.
We did in 2020.
And once the Left took the presidency, the House, and Senate, they tried a deadly experiment on us the American people, their veritable lab rats.
It failed—and has now nearly destroyed us along with the country.
Yet in November the Left apparently demands more time for more experimentation on more of us. But to do what exactly?
Pass more no bail laws and promote more defunding of the police? Make the jails and prisons emptier?
More destruction of what’s left of the southern border?
More biological men overpowering women in sports?
More printing of money?
More cutting back on federal gas and oil leases and canceling pipelines?
Apparently, the only thing that will stop their mad experimentation is that they have run out of us—their once willing lab rats.
And they can’t cheat as much this time (Catherine Engelbrecht’s imprisonment notwithstanding).
The Atlantic is floating the idea of a Covid amnesty.
My counter-proposal = Potsdam or Carthage.
Well said dude! Here here!
Mass Formation Psychosis as in March 13, 2020 when the country shut down. (Psychosis is when people lose some contact with reality. Mass formation psychosis is when a large part of a society loses some contact with reality over one or more issues which generate undue fear. FEAR is the key, so well used by Fauci, Deepstate, to control population. Fortunately, the Left, the neocons and their minions are losing grip. Watch Nov. 8 for widespread fraud or claims by the Left that the Right is Facist. Oh, that happened Nov 2.
Ted in Milwaukee, WI
More people should read Professor Matthias Desmet or go to Tucker Carlson today and listen to the interview 9/1/22! Absolutely eye opening study this man has done and few no who he is! But they should!
I hope the vote counting is fair and accurate. The media’s current talking point that the election results might not be known on Tuesday is worrying. Good luck, USA.
Dear Dr. Hanson:
The thing that amazes me is that nearly half of the country seems still willing to be the lab rat. Their the dems) votes should be a low as CNN and MSNBC ratings, yet the races are close? Something just does not add up! People in cities should be able to see the problems, yet the urban vote goes democrat and the rural vote goes republican? Half the country just keeps asking for it! BTW, I intentionally no longer capitalize democrat or republican. Neither deserve it!
The Democrats are quite happy just filling their pockets and bad mouthing anyone who doesn’t agree with them. I have never seen anything like it! I was a Democrat for 60 yrs, I am now an independent! God Bless America, she really needs it right now!.
When all is said and done, we are failing because we forgot who is really in charge!! Without Him we are nothing!!
Spot on “Lab Rat” metaphor…
Must admit that I am totally amazed that any administration could so effectively mess things up domestically and internationally in just two years. Biden and Harris are an embarrassment not only for the Democrats but the nation. It’s just unbelievable. Best wishes to Professor Hanson to fully regain his health. We need his insights analysis now more than ever.
It’s easy to mess things up when you’re trying to do exactly that
All their evil machinations made possible by stealing the 2020 elections with republican support.
Also, did you forget the US-China produced Wuhan virus and the deadly, experimental, EUA injections that have harmed millions?
But V, calm down, you are missing the point entirely. The dems are doing precisely their job and are doing it exceedingly well. For if not, how would we ever know good governance if we had not something starkly the opposite to contrast it to?
The only way to convince a liberal that their policies are inherently flawed, is to allow them to run such policies until it very quickly becomes evidently so. However, the problem therein lies that by then, the system is often irrevocably destroyed. But worry not . . .
THE US GOVERNMENT, 2022. A SYSTEM BARELY ALIVE. GENTLEMEN, WE CAN REBUILD IT. WE CONSERVATIVES HAVE THE RIGHTEOUS PHILOSOPHY. WE HAVE THE CAPABILITY TO BUILD A SHINING POST BIDEN WORLD. CONSERVATISM WILL BE THAT WORLD. BETTER THAN IT WAS BEFORE. BETTER, STRONGER, FASTER- AND WITH FAR LESS INFLATION.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x10emd
I have to agree with you Gary; what the dems are doing are not mistakes on their part – it is all integral to the design. This is all deliberate.
It’s a feature, not a glitch.
thank you… this was a swell article!
*
your thoughts re zelensky, please. a u.s. placed puppet? if zel were to negotiate instead of firing away at russia, ukraine would be settled. zip! the gig is to blame trump and putin, in my book. hows about blaming biden and zelensky… :0-)
Gary, in your comment you wrote: “The only way to convince a liberal that their policies are inherently flawed, is to allow them to run such policies until it very quickly becomes evidently so.”
Just look at the decline of our nation’s major cities in the last 60 years of Democratic Party leadership. I’d say the liberal population missed the “very quickly” boat in recognizing the need for fundamental change. Bribing people with their own money is a very powerful “drug”.
Dinesh D’Sousa’s excellent article (available via google search) entitled “LBJ’s Democratic Plantation” is a very relevant read on this point.
OK, Doc, you had me going there with the “Hilmar rocket launchers”. I had to check my sources south of Turlock to make sure they didn’t have a new product at Hilmar Cheese.
We most certainly did not in 2020, stolen elections have catastrophic consequences