The Cycles of Revolutions in Our Midst

American Greatness ^ | 15 May, 2022 | Victor Davis Hanson

[MtnClimber]

The world is fragmenting and changing in all different directions. Unfortunately, contemporary America is offering no guidance.

We are witnessing a number of radical military, social, and political revolutions that are changing the United States—and the world—in fundamental ways that we still have not appreciated.

The taboo about never mentioning the first-strike use of nuclear weapons in a major conventional war is now apparently over. Vladimir Putin routinely threatens their use. Communist China hints at its growing nuclear capability and is hell-bent on rushing into production a huge new nuclear missile force. The world is defining nuclear incineration down.

The more China and North Korea talk about nukes, the more necessary it is that uneasy democracies such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan will make adjustments. And the more the United States bows out of its prior role of extending its nuclear umbrella over Western democracies, the more likely these societies will consider going nuclear themselves. Should Iran acquire nuclear weapons—and its patrons Russia and China seem to be ensuring that it will—then the long feared but heretofore never reified nuclear Middle East arms race will finally break out, as the petro-rich Arab world tries to deter Iran’s unhinged theocrats.

There is also a revolutionary vacuum occurring abroad. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are trying to figure out whether there is still any old-style American deterrence, or whether the woke progressives now in power in Washington dislike the customs and traditions of the United States even more than they do.

Lots of disasters have contributed to the current perilous state of affairs, including the precipitous American retreat from and humiliation in Afghanistan. Add in voluntary cutbacks in oil and gas production by the West, and the subsequent embarrassment of a superpower beseeching thuggish regimes to send us their

[MtnClimber]

The left only knows how to destroy things.

[redangus]

And they are doing a mighty fine job of it. They understand the slow March through the institutions that was started in the 60’s. They understand the “Brezhnev” ratchet theory that political and social movement is always to the Left. And they understand the “Art of War”.

Our side sometimes talks a good story, but few are willing to suffer the inconvenience of cutting off the spigot to punish woke companies. We continue to shop at Amazon/Walmart/Target/Kroger’s, talk and surf on Verizon and ATT, search on Google, keep up with friends and family on FB, drink Cokes and drive American cars. 80 million people could bring these companies to heel, but only if we were willing to make them see the errors of their ways by cutting their profits. But they have learned they have nothing to fear from us, but much to fear from the woke mob.

[sauropod]

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