{"id":11674,"date":"2019-02-20T13:00:53","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T21:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11674"},"modified":"2019-02-20T13:00:54","modified_gmt":"2019-02-20T21:00:54","slug":"the-new-nihilism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-nihilism\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Nihilism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Hoover Institution<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the 2020 election nears, there is as yet no coherent Democratic response to the Trump agenda. If Trump himself is unpopular and polarizing, his agenda is for the most part in sync with a majority of Americans who like the 3% annualized GDP growth; near-record peacetime unemployment; record natural gas and oil production; young, scholarly and constructionist justices; pro-Israel Mideast politics; and realism about NATO laxity, the flawed Iran Deal, and the Paris Climate Accord, Chinese mercantilism, and the past inability of the U.S. to translate battlefield victories abroad into lasting security and strategic advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet hatred of Trump himself, as well as fear of a successful Trump agenda, has unhinged his opposition. From 2017-19, progressives sought to abort the Trump presidency through furor at his person and often pathetic attempts to invoke the Emoluments Clause, the 25<sup>th<\/sup>&nbsp;Amendment, the Logan Act, Articles of Impeachment, the Mueller special counsel investigation, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe\u2019s counter-intelligence investigation of Trump, and cherry-picking federal justice to stay Trump initiatives. All failed. Now the Left has decided to offer not just invective, but a new array of alternatives\u2014often of a radical sort that we have not seen or heard about since the 1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Democratic Party is now in the hands of newcomer establishment figures such as Senators Corey Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Mazie Hirono; socialist Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; newly elected representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib; and activists like Linda Sasour, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, and the usual Hollywood celebrities\u2014all of whom Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and former Vice President Joe Biden futilely try to appease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hoover.org\/research\/new-nihilism\">Read the full article here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Hoover Institution As the 2020 election nears, there is as yet no coherent Democratic response to the Trump agenda. If Trump himself is unpopular and polarizing, his agenda is for the most part in sync with a majority of Americans who like the 3% annualized GDP growth; near-record peacetime unemployment; record [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1218,1161,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-32i","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10839,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-trump-an-island\/","url_meta":{"origin":11674,"position":0},"title":"Is Trump an Island?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review \u00a0 If Trump would let his deeds speak for themselves, he would quiet his enemies far more than he does with Twitter broadsides. No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Media&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10229,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-nightmares-and-the-realities-of-never-trump\/","url_meta":{"origin":11674,"position":1},"title":"The Nightmares and the Realities of Never Trump","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 30, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Rarely in the last half-century have so many elite conservatives and intellectuals been so estranged both from a Republican administration and from those who voted for it\u2014neither have they become so animated in their antipathy and disgust for a sitting president. During the 2016\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;McMaster&quot;","block_context":{"text":"McMaster","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/mcmaster\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12257,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-2018-blue-wave-that-wasnt-really\/","url_meta":{"origin":11674,"position":2},"title":"The 2018 Blue Wave That Wasn\u2019t, Really","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 20, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Editor\u2019s Note:\u00a0The following is the first of two excerpts from the revised and updated edition of\u00a0The Case for Trump, out Tuesday from Basic Books. Throughout\u00a0the summer and early autumn of 2018, election experts had often predicted a massive blue wave of radical progressive pushback\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10945,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-year-of-achievement-the-case-for-the-trump-presidency\/","url_meta":{"origin":11674,"position":3},"title":"A Year of Achievement: the case for the Trump presidency","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 7, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review As President Trump finished his first full year in office, he could look back at an impressive record of achievement of a kind rarely attained by an incoming president \u2014 much less by one who arrived in office as a private-sector billionaire without either\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;NATO&quot;","block_context":{"text":"NATO","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/nato\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12214,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/neversanders\/","url_meta":{"origin":11674,"position":4},"title":"NeverSanders?","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 24, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Almost everything the Democratic Left said about Donald Trump causing a Republican Party implosion proved untrue\u2014and yet is proving true this year of the Democrats. Trump\u2019s agenda, for the most part, was Reaganesque, with a few important exceptions\u2014closing the border and enforcing immigration law,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10909,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/trumps-midterm-known-unknowns\/","url_meta":{"origin":11674,"position":5},"title":"Trump\u2019s Midterm Known Unknowns","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 24, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 \u2018Shy\u2019 Trump voters, a booming economy, consumer confidence, looming investigations, anti-Trump frenzy \u2014 all add up to uncertainty in the 2018 elections. \u00a0 Conventional wisdom and media hopes are now combining to warn us of what is shaping up as a Trump wipeout\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;DOJ&quot;","block_context":{"text":"DOJ","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/doj\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11674"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11675,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11674\/revisions\/11675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}