Victor Davis Hanson
Presidents—Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden—have either been doubling the national debt in their four- or eight-year tenures or added several trillion to it. We all know that adding a trillion dollars in debt to what we collectively owe every 100 days is unsustainable. But then again, we all know that to stop the borrowing, much less to concede the need to run surpluses, would earn a president the smears of “racist,” “uncaring,” and “cruel,” if not run the risk of a recession or worse.
So our presidents, in the manner individual Americans handle credit card debt, embrace Louis XV’s much-quoted observation “Après moi, le déluge”—“after me, the flood.” Put in modern Americanese, it means enjoying the unsustainable while you can because the next generations will pay heavily for what we incurred. Presidents prime the economy by printing trillions of dollars in funny money, hoping, as in the game of musical chairs, that the money music won’t abruptly stop on their watch, leaving them without a seat.
It is astonishing how our major downtowns so quickly, so easily transmogrified into near wastelands. Drive into downtown Los Angeles in 2019 and it was a crowded bustling city, with a rebooted downtown. Ditto San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. Drive into them just five years later and they are dangerous and toxic moonscapes. Had we shown a photo of a 2024 San Francisco Walgreens to someone in 2019, he would have thought it a caged prison infirmary.
So what or who tore off the thin Thucydidean veneer of civilization so quickly?
First, we must concede the “gradually,” given we have been in decline for a long, slow time—printing money, turning our schools into feel-good therapeutics rather than rigorous learning, destroying merit, contextualizing crime, embracing racial tribalism and chauvinism, allowing our roads, reservoirs, and bridges to decay, weaponizing our agencies from the CIA and FBI to the IRS and Pentagon.
No good could have come from jettisoning civic education, history, languages, science, and math—and crowding them out with the social sciences and their bastard children of -studies courses (black studies, green studies, queer studies, Chicano studies, etc., etc.) and faddish classes on comic books, social media, sports, and popular culture from rap music to TikTok.
How did we end up with our elite universities amassing multi-billion-dollar tax-free endowments while the government is in hock for $2 trillion in student loans, with 30% of them nonperforming?
All that was the “gradual,” but why in 2020 did the decaying nation suddenly start to implode?
In the last four years, we discovered there is no free speech on campus, but plenty of anti-Semitism and tribal hatreds. We learned that our entire system of jurisprudence was hijacked by critical legal and critical race theory jackals, who either did not charge violent lawbreakers with crimes or let those out who were convicted or both. We now expect the Left to remove their opponents from ballots or to use the courts to achieve what they cannot through the ballot.
When did these new Soviet versions of McCarthyism, the Salem Witch trials, and medieval iconoclasm take over—doxing, deplatforming, shadow banning, ghosting, ostracizing, erasing perceived rivals and opponents? When did the increasingly unmarried, childless, hook-up/break-up young males become the near norm—disengaging to stagnate amid video games in their parents’ basements?
What were the forces that caused the statue toppling, the name changing, and the Trotskization of our past? Since when did states encourage 70 percent of their voters not to show up on Election Day, present an ID, and do their civic duty?
Who destroyed the Oscars, the Emmys, the Tonys, and the Grammys? What turned the NBA of Julius Erving and Michael Jordan into the buffoonery of LeBron James? How did a mediocrity like Colin Kaepernick gain such attention for dishonoring the symbols of his country?
Where did the Squad and its hatred of the American past come from? Why did corporations lavish tens of millions of dollars upon the thieving architects of the racist Black Lives Matter? Why did we allow Antifa to burn and destroy our cities?
Why did the border simply disappear? Why did we canonize the law-breaking illegal alien and ignore the law-abiding legal immigrant? Since when were defecation, urination, injection, and fornication OK on our public streets—if committed by the homeless?
And since when did Mexico, the cartels, and China face no repercussions for lacing all sorts of pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs with fentanyl to kill 100,000 Americans a year with impunity?
Why does the government shut down its sources of cheap energy, outlaw clean-burning natural gas stoves, and try to ban efficient gasoline and diesel engines? Was Afghanistan planned, given such lethal incompetence would be hard to replicate? Why was not the Chinese spy balloon shot down on day one of crossing into U.S. airspace?
How and why did the most lethal military in history fly from Afghanistan, abandoning billions in weaponry to terrorists?
How did Iran simply take over the Middle East through the bloodwork of its terrorist tentacles?
So what exactly caused this “suddenly” that followed the “gradually”?
Discussion (19)
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The answer to all your questions is simple--the left.
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Seems the question is, what now can be done to save our republic? We the people have the power, unfortunately we have abdicated our responsibilities as citizens and are waking up to our demise. Political activism starts at grassroots levels. Slow the go it seems has worked for the socialist, communist agenda we are witnessing in our country. So—-get started!
Wonderful! Can't tell you how many times I have heard and said, "How did we get here? " Is there any chance this series could be broadcast? I am afraid the spoken word today spreads further and has a greater impact, I listen in the car, in the kitchen, and walking when I would not have time to sit down with my computer - and even then, when all those paragraphs appear in stark rows, the latest episode of Yellow Stone is only a click away. I resist. That I resist is proven by this comment and I am so grateful.
Unelect every Demcrap.
Professor, Though hard to accept, your description remains painfully accurate to long dwell upon. Are we... is western civilization... could the American Republic be near or even, God help us, past the so-called *tipping point* where there exists little probability that the next generation may recover? With that, I am... Peter Lumpkins
A two-state solution, for America, is likely the only possible remedy at this point. The takers go to the blue side and the makers go to the red side. We are far beyond any chance of compromise being a viable option. We are speaking two different languages. When you can’t even agree on what is fundamentally good or bad, there is no way you can live together. Legacy media, along with government and corporate propaganda, created this situation. Is it really any more complex than that? I don’t think so. I’ll hate to leave my native state of California, but you can get used to anything.
Wow! All great questions.
French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville predicted long ago our demise: “The American republic will survive until its Congress realizes it can bribe the people with their own money”. Our feckless, self-serving politicians have been leading us to ruin for 60 years now. Their political self preservation is more important then the preservation of our republic. God help our future generations.
The way to destroy a nation such as ours is the same way the nation of Isreal was destroyed after leaving Egypt. The prophet, Balaam, was paid by the Moab King, Balak, to help destrory the nation of Isreal, which was under the protection of God, and unbeatable in battle. Balaam told King Balak that the key to their destruction was to remove God's protection from them by introducing Isreal to sexual sins that were against God's design for man. This can be found in the book of Numbers Chapters 22-25. Barak Obama, knew that to remove God's blessings from the our nation he had to lead America into accepting sexual sins by mainstreaming the homosexual lifestyle and gay marraige. He did this during his first term in office on May 9yh of 2012 and the rest is history.
The professor preaches, has been for the many years I have been following him. Are there enough members in the 'flock'? Are those members willing to make the sacrifice to do something or will we just depart the church, enjoy another 'week' then come back on 'Sunday' to hear more, agree more; then go on our merry way believing the apocolypse will not happen in our lifetime!
But now what can we DO about it to get back to "normal?"
We are "Ocean Locked Protected" and "Land Locked Protected.", the Pacific in the West and the Atlantic in the East. Canada in the North and Mexico in the South. We have never known a real war where we had to protect ourselves from an outside enemy. In the poorest of neighborhoods, there are at least 1 car, often 2 in the driveway. And don't forget the dish antennas everywhere. We are fat, flabby and lazy... and spoiled rotten. We are past the point of no return for all of the observations made by VDH. It just a question of how bad it's going to get and when.
A lack of moral conviction in the name of "tolerance." Tolerance just dug the hole deeper and a little bit of power corrupts so why not take more? I also believe we have leaders that hate this country and are a puppet of China. While not a fan of what they have done, their strategy to pocket leaders and decay our country from the inside out is genius and working flawlessly. All this in service to the global elites plan for a one world govt.
"Slowly, slowly, then bam!, suddenly", is a fascinating principle to ponder. Definitely, it appears to adhere to a plan. So then, a very early element would have been the dumbing down of students (who later would pay taxes and vote); iow, the education system. However, the actual cause, that is, the driver, the engine of the disintegration is also a fascinating motivator to ponder. There may be one cause, or possibly more likely, there are multiple, or at minimum, a congregate that, over time, create a thresh-hold beyond which there is no return. Not unlike the 'event horizon' of a black hole, collapsed star of a certain, critical mass. Once light passes the event horizon, it apparently cannot escape that pull of gravity. For societal collapses, at least the collapse of ours', notably a few heavy weights have appeared to have had a significant impact, for example, George Soros deliberately worked to undermine justice across the whole nation. Mark Zuckerberg worked night and day to undermine norms via his social media and entrapments. Bill Gates since leaving MS has worked steadily on vaccines to save humanity all the while confessing his belief that too many live on the planet. Others seek profit off wars and meddling in the affairs of other, sovereign nations. The first step is creating generations of non-thinking people via education that emphasizes propaganda over thinking skill that allows voters to continually elect candidates whose agenda only does harm.
The brainwashing began long before we, or our parents, realized it.
“Stop rolling downhill like a snowball headed for hell”. Merle Haggard
Indeed, all these events should have never been allowed, the most egregious in my mind is the cowardly withdrawal from Afghanistan killing our US servicemen as well as countless Afghan civilians. When will enough be enough? If there was ever a time for revolutionary change in America, the time is now. But I fear what would come next would be worse than before. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss! We should be able to effect change but it will take Herculean efforts to win the hearts of the middle that sway back and forth. Our foundations and our constitution may save us but we must return to a foundation of moral and ethical excellence.