{"id":13444,"date":"2021-05-24T20:18:35","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T03:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=13444"},"modified":"2021-05-24T20:18:42","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T03:18:42","slug":"feet-of-clay-icons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/feet-of-clay-icons\/","title":{"rendered":"Feet-of-Clay Icons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ <em>American Greatness<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Americans mostly have given up on familiar institutions for entertainment, guidance, or reassurance. What now do Hollywood, network news, the media in general, Silicon Valley, the NBA, NFL, MLB, or higher education all have in common?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A propensity to lecture Americans on their moral inferiorities, a general ethical decline in their own disciplines, and a strange obsession to acquire great wealth while living in contrast to what they advocate for others. Add also incompetence. Movies are mostly bad now. The network news is blow-dried groupthink. There is no \u201cpaper of record\u201d anywhere. Twitter and Facebook no longer even try to hide their politicized contortions of warped rules and twisted protocols.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amgreatness.com\/2021\/05\/23\/feet-of-clay-icons\/\">READ MORE&#8230;.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Americans mostly have given up on familiar institutions for entertainment, guidance, or reassurance. What now do Hollywood, network news, the media in general, Silicon Valley, the NBA, NFL, MLB, or higher education all have in common?&nbsp; A propensity to lecture Americans on their moral inferiorities, a general ethical decline [&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-3uQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12261,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-psychology-of-viral-paradoxes\/","url_meta":{"origin":13444,"position":0},"title":"The Psychology of Viral Paradoxes","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 24, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review There are a lot of known unknowns and paradoxes in these times of uncertainty. Here are a few. 1) Trump is criticized as both \u201cracist\u201d and \u201cxenophobic\u201d in his condemnations of the \u201cChinese\u201d virus, while he\u2019s also criticized for \u201cappeasing\u201d President Xi when he\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12379,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-left-is-what-it-once-loathed\/","url_meta":{"origin":13444,"position":1},"title":"The Left Is What It Once Loathed","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 19, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Compare the current progressive view about civil liberties against the old liberal positions of the past. Surveillance and spying on U.S. citizens? Remember liberal Senator Frank Church of Idaho and his 1975 post-Watergate select Senate investigative committee? It found the CIA, FBI, and NSA\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1348,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-tale-of-two-surges\/","url_meta":{"origin":13444,"position":2},"title":"A Tale of Two Surges","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services From 2007 to 2009, a surge of 20,000 troops under the generalship of David Petraeus saved a mostly lost war in Iraq. Petraeus\u2019s counterinsurgency doctrine helped win over the population, as the surge in troops gave greater security to Iraq\u2019s government and military.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Iraq&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Iraq","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iraq\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12045,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-socialism-guarantees-failure-and-suffering-so-why-do-so-many-americans-support-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":13444,"position":3},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson: Socialism guarantees failure and suffering \u2013 So why do so many Americans support it?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 8, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Fox News Multiple forms of socialism, from hard Stalinism to European\u00a0redistribution, continue to fail. Russia and China are still struggling with the legacy of genocidal communism. Eastern Europe still suffers after decades of Soviet-imposed socialist\u00a0chaos. Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea and\u00a0Venezuelaare unfree, poor and failed states. Baathism\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11944,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-strange-case-of-white-supremacy\/","url_meta":{"origin":13444,"position":4},"title":"The Strange Case of \u2018White Supremacy\u2019","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 14, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Any majority population must be careful not to revert to pre-civilized tribalism and oppressing minority groups. The United States, like every other country that enjoys diverse populations has struggled from its beginning to ensure equality, sometimes unsuccessfully, and only at the cost of thousands\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3694,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/give-petraeus-a-chance\/","url_meta":{"origin":13444,"position":5},"title":"Give Petraeus a Chance","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"How about a moratorium on 2008 politics for a bit? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The haggling over various resolutions and nit-picking (inasmuch as no one is seriously going to cut off funding) the surge is surreal. Whatever critics think of its rationale, it is clear that something\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;February 2007&quot;","block_context":{"text":"February 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/february-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13444"}],"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=13444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13445,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13444\/revisions\/13445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}