Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
America has a lot of built-in safety backups and redundancies.
But every once in a while, when tradition, science, time-tested protocols, and common sense are ignored, a fragile system utterly collapses.
Usually, an iconic event reveals how vulnerable the entire country has become, and predictably occurs when suicidal ideologies and nihilism, in perfect-storm fashion, wreak havoc.
The media, academia, the bureaucracy, and higher education can mask the dangers of their political agendas—at least until their sheer incompetence or toxicity can no longer be hidden or excused, and a predictable disaster ensues.
Take the January 4-5, 2025, Pacific Palisades fire that destroyed an entire historic neighborhood of Los Angeles. The embers had not even cooled when we were lectured that “climate change” was responsible for the historically predictable annual autumn and early winter Santa Ana winds that whip up horrific fires before the first winter rains arrive—a phenomenon documented for over two centuries.
The media, in reporting the conflagration, downplayed human culpability. But over the next few weeks, outraged former homeowners and independent journalists began cataloging the real symptoms of a total system failure that turned the normal end-of-year fire season into a catastrophic inferno.
A lot of things had to go wrong to utterly destroy an ancient, coveted neighborhood. But DEI managed to do all of that with ease.
First, we learned that the incompetent mayor, Karen Bass, had cut the fire budget. Then, despite warnings of dry hillsides, underfunded fire protection, and predicted high winds, Bass was nowhere to be seen during the most dangerous weeks of the year.
Why? She was junketing in Ghana, an African nation rarely considered vital to the running of the third-largest city in the United States.
The now-convicted felon, Deputy Mayor Brian Thompson, was under house arrest for phoning in a bomb threat to the city hall. So a mayoral apparatus did not exist.
Next, the clueless and vastly overpaid Janisse Quiñones, the CEO and Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, was likely hired based on diversity, equity, and inclusion criteria despite a prior uninspiring record in her administrative roles at PG&E. She was utterly unprepared for the fire.
When the fires swept in, a key reservoir that might have saved the community had been bone dry for months while under superficial repair. Dozens of fire hydrants were nonfunctional.
Unhinged environmental mandates had prevented homeowners from clearing nearby combustible brush on the hillside, the proverbial fuel of the Santa Ana wind-powered fires.
The chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, Kristin Crowley, had bragged about her diversity hiring but had done little to ensure her firefighters had enough water to put out the fires.
In other words, the wages of electing, appointing, or selecting officials on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation, or making policy on the basis of radical green orthodoxy, rather than proven meritocracy and empiricism, finally came due in a systems collapse of the city government, utilities, fire protection, and prevention.
There have been lots of Palisades events in the past. And there will be far more to come in the future, as our ever more complex society that requires meritocratic operators cannot afford social engineering and ideological agendas at the expense of lives and property.
Similar to the Palisades disaster was the train of events that led to the needless murder of a 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant, Iryna Zarutska, on a light-rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina.
DeCarlos Brown, a 14-time felon, was out on cashless bail, despite his lengthy record of violent offenses that should have ensured imprisonment. He was homeless with a lifelong record of recidivism.
Who let him out? And why? A magistrate, Terese Stokes. She had never passed the bar but seemingly enjoyed impunity from apparent conflicts of interest by sentencing the convicted to an alternate treatment center in which she and her partner had financial interests.
Why would the state allow those with little legal certification to become de facto judges? Why would their records of freeing dangerous criminals not come under scrutiny?
The result of those unanswered questions was that DeCarlos Brown entered a train with a knife, silently jumped up, and lethally slashed the throat of Ms. Zarutska in the seat ahead. She had no idea she was sitting in front of a career, violent, and released felon from a family of violent felons—and was now to become the prey of a cold-blooded, racist killer.
Four passengers sitting adjacent to, ahead of, and behind Brown did nothing as he attacked Zarutska. Nor did they render her aid, as they callously sidestepped her in her death throes. He seemed to have muttered, “Got the white girl,” as he walked away from that lethal attack and got off the train.
The system was now breaking: why did riders not have to buy tickets to enter the train? Why was there no security on the train? Why did not one nearby passenger intervene either to stop the attack, render assistance to the dying Zarutska, or seek to apprehend Brown for the police?
And then the broken system utterly collapsed—as happened in Los Angeles, where fires raged, no official either cared or had any solution, and nine months later, the charred ruins sit mostly untouched.
Once disgraced Mayor Bass tried to restore her reputation by hogging TV microphones and blasting the Trump administration for arresting and deporting violent and criminal illegal aliens, living exempt and free in her city, as the ruins of an entire neighborhood sit mostly untouched.
Almost immediately after the Zarutska murder, the left-wing media nexus was confronted with a dilemma. The light rail video had already been released by the police. Yet left-wing mayor Vi Lyles immediately lectured the public not to blame the homeless Brown. She urged the video not be seen so it would not stir up animosities. She called the evil work of Brown a “tragedy” and pontificated that arresting people would not be a solution.
North Carolina Governor Josh Stein was silent too long about the murder, despite posting all sorts of extraneous news stories. In contrast, he had earlier been quick to editorialize upon the death of George Floyd.
Once popular rage forced his public statement, Stein blabbered about all the anti-crime bills he introduced, but the former Attorney General of North Carolina kept quiet about his state, which allows an incompetent Stokes, with zero legal training, to release lethal criminals onto the public.
Add up the systemic failures to find the common denominator.
An “honor system” that requires no paid ticket to ride the public train is a prescription for disaster, especially when there are no nocturnal security officers on it. No city official seemed concerned about it.
It does no good to bar passengers from carrying concealed weapons if they are never at least superficially searched as they enter the train or surveilled by guards while on it. No city official cared about that either. In a climate of defunding the police, cashless bail, and the ending of stop-and-frisk, no such preemptive action apparently was warranted.
Stokes should never have been a magistrate. She was untrained, unqualified, and had possible financial conflicts of interest that should be investigated. She will not be because she feels her DEI status got her a job without the requisite qualifications and will ensure it when evidence argues otherwise. Anyone who tries to fire her will be demonized as a racist, homophobic bigot.
Brown should have been in prison for the rest of his life for the string of felonies he had committed. He was not because university-spawned, foundation-funded, and politician-empowered “critical race theory” and “critical legal theory” argue, as the mayor alluded, that arrest, conviction, and incarceration do not work and are somehow unfair and not the answer to crime. His freedom can be seen as a symptom of reparatory justice, as was the fate of his inevitable future victims.
The four nearby passengers together might have stopped Brown from murdering Zarutska, or they could have at least rendered first aid, even if in vain. Yet they knew well the unpredictable nature of inner-city crime, and the recent demonization of the heroic Daniel Penny. The nearby passengers also represent a societal moral collapse. If they were fearful of their own safety in letting Brown murder Zarutska, then they had no such reasonable subsequent fear of the departed Brown when they got up and walked by the dying young woman.
Mayor Lyles does not care about innocent passengers murdered by career criminals. She is assured instead that she had been elected and reelected by DEI/woke/leftist orthodoxy. In this case, she accordingly on spec claimed arrests do not work, the homeless bear no culpability, and videos that show reality lead to politically incorrect conclusions. Those orthodoxies overrode any humane concern for the victim or future innocent victims to come.
She correctly understood that any moral outrage expressed against freed felons, the homeless epidemic, or racially based crime would entail political risks, since her constituents preferred to hear her therapeutic gobbledy-gook.
The dominant and left-wing legacy media suffocated the story because it judged Zarutska’s death as mere collateral damage that was acceptable as the price of maintaining a narrative that there is not really a Black inner-city crime problem. And to the extent such daily violence makes that narrative untenable, the media either must suppress the evidence or manipulate it, as did the mayor, to indict society at large for inordinate crime.
America’s inner cities are veritable war zones, as evidenced by a Ukrainian refugee fleeing her war-torn homeland only to be murdered in a supposedly safe and peaceful America. The crime rate is falling only because it has recently dipped from unsustainable highs of three years earlier and is thus seen in relative, not absolute, terms. In addition, big city police departments are under political pressure either not to report violent crimes to the FBI’s nationwide monitoring departments or to reclassify them as nonviolent offenses.
Very few columnists or opinion journalists dealt with the racial nature of the killings because to do so, despite the plethora of evidence, was seen as either career-ending or, in a cost-benefit analysis, not worth the smears of “racist!”
The commentator Van Jones’ postmortem blasted the late Charley Kirk as a racist for identifying racist elements in the killing. But to do so, Jones conveniently did not mention why the utterly unqualified Stokes was a judge in the first place, why she let Brown out, why she co-ran a treatment center to which she sentenced criminals, why African-American Brown attacked Zarutska and not any of the four male and female black adjacent passengers (80 percent of those passengers in his immediate vicinity), why he likely uttered, “I got that white girl” after he cut her throat, why the four black passengers simply sidestepped the dying Zarutska, why the mayor claimed arresting criminals was not the answer, and why the media smothered the story.
The one common denominator again was DEI, a toxic ideology that recalibrated accepted norms for purposes of race-based social engineering. It filters throughout society as a victim/victimizer binary in which professed victims believe they are either entitled to exemption from legal consequences or deserving of race-based preferences for perceived oppression.
In truth, the Charlotte systems’ collapse, like the Palisades fire, is a textbook case of ideology, chauvinism, and DEI destroying meritocratic norms and empiricism.
As such, it can turn anything from a fire season in Los Angeles to a nocturnal train ride in Charlotte into an utter collapse of civilizational norms.
Such landmines exist in the thousands nationwide, from the illegal alien truck driver who was given a special California license without knowing English and then dispassionately U-turned his truck and killed three innocents (and was supported by millions of signatures pleading for a special exemption for his felonious behavior) to the left-wing and media support of illegal alien Obregón Garcia. His antisocial crimes and harm he did to society at large were also seen as acceptable collateral damage to the greater crusade for open borders and mass illegal immigration.
That Garcia was a proven wife-beater, likely human trafficker, probable gang member, and certainly a serial illegal alien under suspended orders of deportation apparently matters little, given his DEI credentials of being a minority, illegal, and a deportee.
The final tragic irony is that all of the above derive from racial and ethnic essentialism and chauvinism, masked as victimhood, ensuring critics are recast as victimizers.
I am a Democrat. I am not against what he said. I do believe that the demise of our moral compass is the worst thing noted. How do we walk by a dying person? How do we not assist? How did we get here.
I also believe that we are highly uneducated and/or believe that nothing changes so how does my vote matter? Many never review who is running for office, what their credentials are and/or may not vote. Being Democrat or Republican, right or left, shouldn’t be the end all tell all. How do we pull together when the division is thrown at us daily. We should be pulling for each other to have a life that is protected for the good of all. We have fire hydrants. We count on them working. We have trains, plains, football stadiums, schools—we count on being able to use them without getting our throats cut or mass murdered. Pay attention to who you vote for as they are making the decisions that affect our lives.
Educate minorities, the right complains they’re taking our jobs. Suppress education and its, ninjas are ignorant.
DEI is about the hiring process, not qualification. A black pilot must still pass flight school.
Ps. 1 of 4 flights on 9/11, 3 men, sheep dogs, took action; then the sheep joined in. No sheep dogs on the other 3 flights, and the sheep sat quiet… This isn’t a moral breakdown, it’s human nature. That incident is NOT normal, shock and fear are real.
Not holding minorities (or anyone else) accountable for criminal behavior is the height of racism. What it says is that the minority person (e.g., a black person) is incapable of living within the minimum norms of a civil society. Thus, their uncivilized behavior must be forgiven, because they simply cannot do any better.
Interesting that Dr Hanson seems to be the only one (or perhaps one of the few) pointing out that no one else in that car try to help the poor girl.
Ron Nixon always makes good posts.
Follow the Scott Adams rule and stay strapped.
No one is coming to save you.
Qualifications to Become a Magistrate in North Carolina
Basic Requirements
Age: Must be at least 21 years old.
Citizenship: Must be a citizen of the United States.
Residency: Must be a resident of North Carolina.
Education: A high school diploma or equivalent is required.
Training and Certification
Initial Training: Within six months of taking the oath of office, a magistrate must complete a basic training course of at least 40 hours covering civil and criminal duties.
Continuing Education: Starting in 2022, magistrates are required to complete at least 12 hours of training annually in civil and criminal duties. This training must include specific topics such as summary ejectment laws.
Additional Information
Certification Program: Magistrates can pursue certification in civil law, criminal law, or both through a combination of courses and seminars offered by the School of Government. Participation in this program is optional.
Duties: Magistrates are responsible for various judicial functions, including issuing search and arrest warrants, conducting initial appearances, and setting conditions of pretrial release.
These qualifications ensure that magistrates are well-prepared to handle their responsibilities within the judicial system.
“(DEI)… filters throughout society as a victim/victimizer binary in which professed victims believe they are either entitled to exemption from legal consequences or deserving of race-based preferences for perceived oppression.”
Welcome to the 2040s, when whites are a plurality, and the rest chant, “By any means necessary.”
So maybe it’s time we put a stop to this.
I enjoyed the polemical editorial. Thank you.
When people cannot even figure out if they are male or female or if they should consider an attempt to change that, and enough people are willing to humor them to ” include them ” because telling them the truth may hurt their feelings, common sense and logic are long gone. Thank you God for truth tellers like VDH.
God Bless America.
DEI is a good example of a “Civil Religion”, whose self interest lies in making “Morals” into a murky swamp.
My elderly father in his last years lamented that all three of his children were Republicans and that he was a Democrat all his life. All of us(his children) educated and with advanced degrees and two of us are military veterans, explained that the Democrat party had left us, we didn’t leave the Democrat party. We explained to him that loyalty for us was to the country, not to a political party. When we explained that to him he understood our position. Later that same year he informed all of us that he voted for Ronald Reagan (once a Democrat) for President. Party loyalty took a back seat for him.
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
Not sure who originally said this, but it certainly rings true today. Especially when looking back at all of the hope and optimism of the 1960s that came with the passage of Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts, the Great Society and War on Poverty programs, and the ending of the Vietnam War, and seeing what our country has devolved into since then. The idea that we should judge people by the “content of their character, not by the color of their skin” which was inculcated into every American’s psyche, has now been tossed into the rubbish bin and replaced with a new virulent strain of racial chauvinism.
Until we can figure out how to produce more Dr. Ben Carsons and fewer Terese Stokes’ our descent into hell and perdition will continue.
On the first night of Rosh Hashanah, “Leshana Tova Tikatev Vetaichatem”, (“May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year”). And G*d bless America.
As you often say, “the bicostal elites in power and vote for this, never have to suffer the consequences of their illiberialism.”
There is additional information on the magistrate’s position available from the NC Judicial branch’s website. But it turns out that what the website refers to as a “magistrate fact sheet” is rather a fact sheet on the entire judicial branch in North Carolina, the “Judicial Branch Quick Facts Card”. It lists statistics and facts, such as how many of the different kinds of judicial officers there are, how many of each, how many cases were filed, the budgets.
There’s no info here on what exactly the qualifications are to be a magistrate.
They are not elected but selected by the judiciary of the district court.
Sounds like a sinecure.
Thinking about the magistrate office in North Carolina, and why a person with no experience as a lawyer or judge was in that office, I decided to look it up. I suspected that the position might be an elected one, and that it might go back to a time when the role was more of an executive officer, carrying out tasks for the court systems. I thought it might be akin to a justice of the peace in some states.
From the site North Carolina Judicial Branch, page Court Officials, or https://www.nccourts.gov/learn/court-officials#magistrates-3629:
A magistrate is an independent judicial officer, recognized by the North Carolina Constitution as an officer of the district court. Magistrates perform numerous duties in both civil and criminal proceedings. Magistrates are not elected, but are nominated for office by the clerk of superior court, appointed by the senior resident superior court judge, and supervised by the chief district court judge. A magistrate serves an initial term of two years, with subsequent terms of four years.
Responsibilities
Criminal proceedings including
Conduct initial appearances
Set conditions of release
Issue warrants
Other responsibilities
Civil proceedings including
Hear small claims cases
Enter orders for summary ejectment (evictions)
Determine involuntary commitments
Perform marriages (the only civil official in the state who can perform a marriage)
Other responsibilities
It has been said that democracy cannot exist without a moral underpining. The example often cited is the person picking up trash in public without others bearing witness. And yet, morality cannot be legislated; it’s more a spiritual matter.
It seems to me that these politicians, even citizens, act in a blatantly amoral manner for their own particular reasons instead of just doing the right thing at the time. How do we reverse the moral decline of this country?
My original comment isn’t likely to make it past the censors.
It is being “moderated.”
How very dare you.
I wonder if our civilisation is less “civilized” than the Romans. What in Rome caused them to coin the phrase: “de mortuis nihil bonum”, as they worshipped pagan gods and did not, as the Jews or Christians, believe in the dignity of the individual.
Victor: As always, an objective commentary on the sad state of affairs in our society. Fatalistically speaking once again, I sent an email to Governor Stein early last week asking him to take action against Stokes and have her removed. As of this morning, no response other than the typical ‘thank you and we will get back to you.’ I also asked family/friends to email the Governor and sadly the responses I received just reaffirm what I believe many people are experiencing. The expression ‘Flying high on Monday, but shot down on Tuesday’ seems to capture the prevailing attitude. Our hopes for the rule of law to take precedent sadly end when these laws just seem to be swept under the political rug. My family & friends just say….”what good will it do if we send an email?” Of course I pass no judgement on them but Norman Vincent Peale said it best; “Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause of fear.” I keep you, Sami and Jack in my prayers and stay healthy.
Liberal white women elect mooncalves like Lyles and Bass. Not too long ago, these women would have been church ladies. They would’ve been extremely active in a Presbyterian, Methodist, or Episcopalian church, where they would delight in gossiping, judging everyone, and running the show. Now, the LGBTQs run those places.
Note to Garry Evans: I agree totally with your view that we must vote out the Democrats. They only pursue increasing and maintaining their power, and sadly, far too many folks simply vote Democrat because of FDR, family history or whatever other rationale they can use….
Liberal white women elect mooncalves like Lyles and Bass. In the old days, these women might have been annoying, harpie, & judgmental church ladies. Since they don’t go to church now, they must find another outlet for their righteous need to boss, fix and decorate.
For over 40 years, coinciding with the closure of mental hospitals nationwide, the inmates have been running the asylum. Each time the left captures an important social norm and destroys it the law-abiding taxpayers who expect their government to govern are put into greater harm’s way.
All politics is local they say- so in Charlotte there’s no security, no fare collection by design!
God forbid you catch a fare-beater, or a murderous fare-beater.
Their transportation system has it’s own system of “justice”, you might as well spin a roulette wheel except the spinner wouldn’t co-own one of the choices on the wheel. I’m sure everyone knows that the class of people riding this train are far removed from the class who wrote these laws, they worship at the DEI gospel and don’t care much to protect and serve their law abiding citizens. There have to be dozens of Charlottes around the USA, including Staten Island NY, where the subway is essentially free if you want it to be.
One wonders who these people think they work for and why the voters haven’t figured out that corruption and incompetence is costing them their lives in many ways.
The public should be up in arms but sadly, the voters in these and other places are at fault for voting in useless ‘representatives’.
Just remember that elections have consequences. Look at the big cities like Chicago. The citizens elected that Mayor!
Nobody can pull together and articulate the forces undermining our society better than Professor Hanson. I think the majority of US citizens can see it, but those in power are good at manipulating the narrative. We just need to keep exposing the truth and holding people accountable, like Professor Hanson does so well.
VDH please read this article by Harvard economists.
When the city is dangerous people who can move do thus removing their vote.
Same if there is a government made barrier to private enterprise. Who benefits?
See if this formula might apply to California, Illinois, New York , Venezuela etc.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/shleifer/files/curley_effect.pdf
VDH: Your treatises are invariably spot-on; always worth reading and sharing.
While conservative minds appreciate and applaud this continued wisdom of analysis, the left will never read it. You need a weekly television program to express your lucid understanding to a viewing audience.
We are watching the Great Experiment dissolve
because ignorance allows manipulation.
Few, if any, speak as clearly as VDH.
Here’s another question:
Why weren’t there 100K angry Charlotte residents protesting outside the courthouse demanding the firing of that fake judge? It would happen quickly!
The rest of the country doesn’t speak up enough against this minority of Marxist troublemakers.
You are absolutely correct Professor Hanson.
We need to make these hate America Democrats permanently impotent. Register to vote and vote them out of office. This beautiful country will not survive this evil much longer.