Our Parasitic Generation

American Greatness ^ | 11 Dec, 2022 | Victor Davis Hanson

[MtnClimber]

Yes, there is a lot of ruin in great nations. But even America is by now running low on it.

Are we sure that there is all that much ruin left in the United States?

We are $31 trillion in collective debt. The new normal is $1.5 trillion budget deficits. The military is politicized and short of recruits. We trade lethal terrorists for woke celebrity athletes as if to confirm our enemies’ cynical stereotypes.

Our FBI is corrupt and discredited, collaborating with Silicon Valley contractors to suppress free speech and warp elections. We practice segregation and racial discrimination and claim we do not because the right and good people support it and, anyway, the victims deserve it. The country has seen defeat before but never abject, deliberate humiliation as in Kabul, when we fled and abandoned to the terrorist Taliban a $1 billion embassy, a huge, remodeled air base, thousands of friends, and tens of billions of dollars in military hardware—and hard-earned deterrence.

We are witnessing the breakdown of basic norms essential for civilized life, from affordable food and fuel to available key antibiotics and baby formula. Old Cairo seems safer than an after-hours subway ride or stroll at dusk in many major American cities. Medieval London’s roadways were likely cleaner than Market Street in San Francisco. Speech was freer in 1920s America than it is now.

The Breakdown of Basic Society

Our California always is a preamble to America’s future. Our present is likely your tomorrow.

Each summer here we impotently expect forest conflagrations. Millions of acres of flames pour more millions of tons of smoke and carbon and soot in the skies. Tens of millions of hated combustion engines cannot begin to match the natural blankets of aerial dirt.

[MtnClimber]

Leftists always wreck economies and societies.

[MMusson]

Inflation is a way of metabolizing the debt. Overspending is why we have it.

[MtnClimber]

VDH ping

[SaveFerris]

(We are $31 trillion in collective debt)

Try over $204 trillion dollars with The National Debt and Unfunded Liabilities.

Any wonder the Godless Globalists want nuclear war and eating bugs?

When the USA goes down, so does much of the world 🌍.

[Tell It Right]

VDH’s column is chilling.

[Sicon]

We are approaching an historic 50 million residents who were not born in the United States

I'd bet it is a much higher number even than that.

[texas booster]

Ping! Out to the Victor Davis Hanson list

Our California always is a preamble to America’s future. Our present is likely your tomorrow. 

What was bequeathed to us from a state of 15 million—magnificent aqueducts, once brilliantly designed freeways and airports, superb universities and schools, perfectly engineered reservoirs, and downtowns of majestic skyscrapers—in a California of 41 million are frozen in amber or in decay. They have few updates and even fewer replacements. The decrepitude recalls the weedy forums and choked fountains of Vandal-era Roman cities, which is what happens when a later parasitic generation mocks but still consumes what it inherits but cannot create. 

Our great universities, once the most esteemed in the world from Berkeley and Stanford to UCLA and USC, grow burdened with commissars, too many of their outnumbered faculties are weaponized, and their students have never been more confident in their abilities, and with so little reason for that confidence.

A return to syllabi and grading standards of just 30 years ago would result in mass flunkings. Failure on tests apparently means the test, not the test taker, is found wanting.

Another great read from Prof. Hanson.

FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR

Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall

American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness

His website: Victor Davis Hanson

Please let me know if you want on or off this new VDH ping list.

As a reminder, Professor Hanson has asked that we do not post the full article of his writings. Thank you for following the link to finish his article.

[Sicon]

a once famously lawful America has become a veritable land of thieves

And many of them are our so-called "leaders".

[Ezekiel]

Victor Davis Hanson: so knowledgeable of history, yet the Moriarty of his generation.

So many negative waves so early in the morning. People eat this stuff up, following their favorite pied pipers for to procure their next fake food fix.

Evil: it's on every street corner. Pigeons in the park, fish in a barrel, or sand on the sea shore -- it takes zero skill to fill huge Hefty bags. So easy, a blind man could do it.

Good: it takes a little faith to find it, but the light of a 1000 suns it is. There's no going back to the dungeons of darkness, yet some people never learn.

The last 30 seconds of Rabbi Mendel Kessin's recent shiur:

You really have to appreciate Yaakov and Esav's story, because it is so pivotal to what's happening now. The fight between subduing evil and bringing down kedusha [holiness], the origins of Mashiach ben Yosef and Mashiach ben Dovid, you see.

And the two different jobs of Yaakov and Esav. I mean, all of this is with us today. But you have to really, really be fascinated with the way the Torah deals with this, that it can use one set of psukim -- verses -- to describe two different events. That's astounding.

***

"American Greatness"

What Is the Significance of King David's Harp?

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on!

The Battle Hymn of the Republic
The United States Army Field Band

(John Brown's Body)

He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true
He frightened old Virginia till she trembled through and through
They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew
But his soul goes marching on..

[laconic]

Scary, but true. I think its largely the reason that a lot of us are moving to Red States like Florida, Texas, Idaho, South Dakota, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Kind of like redoubts against fast creeping Bolshevism.

[Rummyfan]

Somehow, some way, this needs to be arrested and reversed.

[LouAvul]

What's the purpose of articles such as these? All doom and no solutions? The author is merely trying to sell copy?

The United States is at the precipice. We're staring into the abyss. What's next? Balkanization? Totalitarian control by mongrels who are demon possessed?

Whatever scenario, there is nothing that indicates our sinful, soulless nation has any hope.

Stupid liberals. Stupid libertarians. Stupid complacent republicans.

[9YearLurker]

Victor’s an interesting case. Clearly very smart and his historical context is reliably fun.

But he’s been a senior colleague with Henry Kissinger out there at the Hoover for decades and reliably avoids the full catastrophe in progress. Biden’s admin has probably had 5 million illegals entering every 6 months.

It’s not just a cast flabby country and growing caste system we have, but a depopulation agenda and a full on CCP social credit lockdown and control system, complete with a programmable CBDC with a surveillance and weapon state built right out there in Silicon Valley.

[Tell It Right]

As you move into red states, please assimilate into our culture of loving God and loving our fellow man. Leave the hedonistic, gaia-worshipping faith in only government in the blue states.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

I often think that VDH is going to end up arguing with himself on the streets.

[LouAvul]

VDH is a man who makes his living viz writing. He's got to remain relevant while trying to peddle sensationalism. The latter is the heart of journalism.

But by now, any cognizant person realizes America is dying. What's the use of even noticing? We're imploding and all who are in a position to stop it? They're stealing supplies for their gold plated bunkers.

At some point, the inevitable, "every man for himself." I need to stay off the internet. It's a constant diet of defeatism.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

I know that I would appreciate some ideas, and VDH portends to be an intellect who should be able to deliver them, but never does.

I do think America, and perhaps the Internet specifically, needs to grow up and get over its ADD attention span. I’m O.K. with solutions that may be laid out over years, decades and generations. It took a long time to get us where we are, it may take as long to get out.

[9YearLurker]

Except that’s not really how the history of republics has gone.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

If you mean that it will be unavoidably lost, you may well be right.

I suppose that a republic gives people the government they want until they are too complacent to oppose it changing into something else.

None of this means that there should not be opposition to this, however historically futile it may be, though.