{"id":9930,"date":"2017-03-10T12:45:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T20:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=9930"},"modified":"2021-07-26T10:26:49","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T17:26:49","slug":"dont-sweat-the-big-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dont-sweat-the-big-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Sweat the Big Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review<\/em><\/div>\n
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Politicians who cannot cope with the realities of governing should stop fantasizing about utopia.<\/div>\n
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The recent Academy Awards ceremony turned into a monotony of hate. Many of the stars who mounted the stage ranted on cue about the evils of President Donald Trump.<\/div>\n
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Such cheap rhetoric is easy. But first, accusers should guarantee that their own ceremony is well run. Instead, utter bedlam ruined the event, as no one on the Oscar stage even knew who had won the Best Picture award.<\/div>\n
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Stars issued lots of rants about Trump but were apparently unaware that one of the ceremony\u2019s impromptu invited guests was a recent parolee and registered sex offender.<\/div>\n
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Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg used to offer all sorts of cosmic advice on the evils of smoking and the dangers of fatty foods and sugary soft drinks. Bloomberg also frequently pontificated on abortion and global warming, earning him a progressive audience that transcended the boroughs of New York.<\/div>\n

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But in the near-record December 2010 blizzard, Bloomberg proved utterly incompetent in the elemental tasks for which he was elected: ensuring that New Yorkers were not trapped in their homes by snowdrifts in their streets that went unplowed for days.<\/div>\n
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The Bloomberg syndrome is a characteristic of contemporary government officials. When they are unwilling or unable to address pre-modern problems in their jurisdictions \u2014 crime, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate transportation \u2014 they compensate by posing as philosopher kings who cheaply lecture on existential challenges over which they have no control.<\/div>\n
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In this regard, think of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel\u2019s recent promises to nullify federal immigration law \u2014 even as he did little to mitigate the epidemic of murders in his own city.<\/div>\n
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Former president Barack Obama nearly doubled the national debt, never achieved 3 percent economic growth in any of his eight years in office, and left the health-care system in crisis. But he did manage to lecture Americans about the evils of the Crusades, and he promises to lower the seas and cool the planet.<\/div>\n
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Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, likewise ran up record debt during his tenure, culminating in a $25 billion deficit his last year in office. Schwarzenegger liked to hector state residents on global warming and green energy, and brag about his commitment to wind and solar power.<\/div>\n
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Meanwhile, one of the state\u2019s chief roadways, California State Route 99, earned the moniker \u201cHighway of Death\u201d for its potholes, bumper-to-bumper traffic, narrow lanes, and archaic on- and off-ramps. During California\u2019s early-February storms, the state\u2019s decrepit road system all but collapsed. A main access to Yosemite National Park was shut down by mudslides. Big Sur was inaccessible. Highway 17, which connects Monterey Bay to Silicon Valley, was a daily disaster.<\/div>\n
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Schwarzenegger\u2019s successor, Jerry Brown, warned of climate change and permanent drought and did not authorize the construction of a single reservoir. Now, California is experiencing near-record rain and snowfall. Had the state simply completed its half-century-old water master plan, dozens of new reservoirs would now be storing the runoff, ensuring that the state could be drought-proof for years.<\/div>\n
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Instead, more than 20 million acre-feet of precious water have already been released to the sea. There is nowhere to put it, given that California has not built a major reservoir in nearly 40 years.<\/div>\n
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The crumbling spillways of the landmark Oroville Dam, the tallest dam in the United States, threaten to erode it. Warnings of needed maintenance went unheeded for years, despite the fact that some 20 million more Californians live in the state (often in floodplains) than when the dam was built. Meanwhile, the state legislature has enacted new laws regarding plastic bags and transgendered restrooms.<\/div>\n
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We have become an arrogant generation that virtue-signals that we can change the universe when in reality we cannot even run an awards ceremony, plow snow, fix potholes, build a road or dam, or stop inner-city youths from murdering one another.<\/div>\n
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Do our smug politicians promise utopia because they cannot cope with reality? Do lectures compensate for inaction?<\/div>\n
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Do we fault past generations of Americans \u2014 who drank too many Cokes and smoked too many cigarettes \u2014 because we are ashamed that we lack their vision, confidence, and ability to build another Oroville Dam or a six-lane freeway, or to stop criminals from turning urban weekends into the Wild West?<\/div>\n
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Governors who cannot build a reservoir have little business fantasizing about 200-mph super trains.<\/div>\n
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And dense celebrities who cannot open the right envelope should not be sought for cosmic political wisdom.<\/p>\n

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http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/445596\/californias-ineffective-government-progressive-ideals-conflict-reality<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Politicians who cannot cope with the realities of governing should stop fantasizing about utopia. The recent Academy Awards ceremony turned into a monotony of hate. Many of the stars who mounted the stage ranted on cue about the evils of President Donald Trump. Such cheap rhetoric is easy. But […]<\/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":[1092,16,847,571,187,46,104,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2Aa","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9983,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/9983-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":9930,"position":0},"title":"03\/21\/17 From an Angry Reader:\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"03\/21\/17 From an Angry Reader: Sorry so many of the stars disagree with your politics, but it is an alternative fact to state that the envelope mixup was the fault of dense celebrities. The PWC representative, who handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty, along with his PWC associate in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9954,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/9954-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":9930,"position":1},"title":"Academy Untoward","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 17, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"03\/17\/17 From an Angry Reader: Mr. Hanson. 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Robert De Niro has exhausted the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11461,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/could-trump-win-20-percent-of-the-african-american-vote-in-2020\/","url_meta":{"origin":9930,"position":5},"title":"Could Trump Win 20 Percent of the African-American Vote in 2020?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 19, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The provocative Donald Trump certainly seems to be disliked by a majority of African-American professional athletes, cable-news hosts, academics, and the Congressional Black Caucus. 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