{"id":12559,"date":"2020-08-11T17:35:30","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T00:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12559"},"modified":"2020-08-11T17:35:36","modified_gmt":"2020-08-12T00:35:36","slug":"the-thin-veneer-of-american-civilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-thin-veneer-of-american-civilization\/","title":{"rendered":"The Thin Veneer of American Civilization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nine months ago, New York was a thriving, though poorly governed, metropolis. It was coasting on the more or less good governance of its prior two mayors and on its  ancestral role as the global nexus of finance and capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The city is now something out of a postmodern apocalyptic movie, \nreeling from the effects of a neutron bomb. Ditto in varying degrees \nMinneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco \u2014 the \nanti-broken-windows metropolises of America. Walking in San Francisco \ntoday reminds me of visiting Old Cairo in 1973, although the latter \nlacked the needles and feces of the former.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the present increasing rate of police defunding, homeless \nencampments, the emptying of jails and prisons, the green-lighting of \nrioting and vandalism, the flight of the wealthy, the revolutionary \nchange to Skype\/Zoom tele-working, and the exodus of upper-middle-class \nliberal families to safe houses in the New York and New England \ncountryside, once beautiful New York City is in danger of becoming the \nnation\u2019s aneurysm. That is, after the \u201crecovery,\u201d it and other blue \ncities may be seen as permanent weak veins and arteries prone to sudden \nfatal hemorrhaging that could implode at any moment, and thus may become\n metaphorically tied off, as the country reroutes around them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the old days of 2019, tolerant Americans more or less accepted \nthat finely crafted statues of sometimes less than inspiring and \nformerly illustrious (to some) heroes were part of our history. For \nexample, integral to California\u2019s rich historical culture were its \nmissions, acknowledged by Father Serra\u2019s numerous eponymous streets and \nstatues. No one in his right mind believed that renaming a mall named \nSerra at Stanford University would help mitigate the weekend murder rate\n in Chicago or the endemic poverty of illegal aliens in my own \nneighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2020\/08\/the-thin-veneer-of-american-civilization\/\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Nine months ago, New York was a thriving, though poorly governed, metropolis. It was coasting on the more or less good governance of its prior two mayors and on its ancestral role as the global nexus of finance and capital. The city is now something out of a postmodern [&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":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3gz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8549,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/san-francisco-one-sick-sanctuary-city\/","url_meta":{"origin":12559,"position":0},"title":"San Francisco: One Sick Sanctuary City","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 20, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"As is true daily in other sanctuary cities, San Francisco rolled the dice with someone else\u2019s safety, resulting in the murder of Kate Steinle.\u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJ Media The horrific \u2014 but likely preventable \u2014 death of Kate Steinle at the hands of five-time deported illegal alien\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Mexico&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Mexico","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/mexico\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"In this Tuesday, July 7, 2015 file photo, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, right, is lead into the courtroom by San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, left, and Assistant District Attorney Diana Garciaor, center, for his arraignment at the Hall of Justice in San Francisco. More than 1,800 immigrants that the federal government wanted to deport were nevertheless released from local jails and later re-arrested for various crimes, according to a government report released Monday, July 13, 2015. (Michael Macor\/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, Pool, File)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/juan-francisco-lopez-sanchez-kate-steinle-7-19-15-1-500x348.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11639,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-to-make-it-home-in-california-rules-for-the-modern-odysseus\/","url_meta":{"origin":12559,"position":1},"title":"How to Make It Home in California: Rules for the Modern Odysseus","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 4, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness I drove back from San Francisco not long ago to the rural San Joaquin Valley. It is only 200 miles. But in fact, it can feel like Odysseus trying to get back home to Ithaca from Troy. Walking to the car in San Francisco\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;California&quot;","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2259,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-fishy-tale\/","url_meta":{"origin":12559,"position":2},"title":"A Fishy Tale","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services California is in an uproar over water. Nearly a quarter-million acres worth of contracted federal irrigation deliveries have been cut from the big farms of the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in central California. The water in large part is being\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;September 2009&quot;","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":604,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/imams-of-islam-and-the-environment\/","url_meta":{"origin":12559,"position":3},"title":"Imams of Islam and the Environment","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In the Arabic media, there are reports that Muslim clerics \u2014 energized by the sudden emergence of Egypt\u2019s new president, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood \u2014 are agitating to demolish the Egyptian pyramids. According to the imams, the pharaohs\u2019 monuments represent \u201csymbols\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Islam&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7880,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/versailles-in-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":12559,"position":4},"title":"Versailles in California","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Versailles or San Francisco, it\u2019s good to be the king. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJ Media\u00a0 California is run from a sort of Pacific Versailles [1], an isolated coastal compound of elite rulers physically cut off from its interior peasantry. To understand how California works \u2014 or rather does\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Identity Politics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Identity Politics","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/identity-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8723,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/are-sanctuary-cities-the-new-confederates\/","url_meta":{"origin":12559,"position":5},"title":"Are Sanctuary Cities the New Confederates?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online There are now 340 sanctuary cities in the United States \u2014 and the list is growing. All of them choose to ignore federal immigration law by refusing to report detained undocumented immigrants to federal authorities under most circumstances. Partly as a result, deportations\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;California&quot;","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via media@limitgov.org","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Kate-law-needed-to-end-sanctuary-cities-500x388.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12559"}],"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=12559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12560,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12559\/revisions\/12560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}