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The Absurdities of Our Age
American Greatness ^ | 22 May, 2023 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 05/22/2023 4:34:13 AM PDT by MtnClimber

What cannot go on, will not go on and all the absurdities of the present will end with a bang not a whimper.

A sign of a civilization in headlong decline is its embrace of absurdities. Unfortunately for the United States, we are witnessing an epidemic of nihilist nonsense. Here are a few examples:

Reparations

How could a dysfunctional state like California even contemplate $800 billion in reparations?

The state currently faces a $31 billion annual deficit—and it’s climbing. Its $100 billion high-speed rail project is inert, a veritable Stonehenge of concrete monoliths with a foot of track.

California’s income tax rates are already the highest in the nation. Its sales taxes, electricity rates, and gas taxes and prices are among the steepest in the country. And for what?

Crime, homelessness, and medieval decay characterize the once great downtowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles. It is now not safe to walk alone in any major California city after dark.

Shoplifting and smash-and-grab theft are no longer treated as crimes. The result is the mass flight of brand stores from our downtowns and inner cities, with all the accustomed cries of “racism,” even as racist public prosecutors pick and choose whether to indict the arrested on the basis of race.

California infrastructure, once the best in the county, is now among the worst. Decaying and crowded freeways, inadequate water storage, and pot-holed streets are the new norm.

The state’s public schools are dysfunctional. Once premier public universities are spiraling headlong into decline—junking scholastic tests for admissions, using illegal racial quotas to warp admissions, and institutionalizing racialized dorms and graduation ceremonies.

Even if California enjoyed a huge surplus, even if 300,000 residents were not fleeing the state each year, even if California had a history of being a Confederate slave state...

(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: communism; vdh; victordavishanson; wokeism
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1 posted on 05/22/2023 4:34:13 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

The level of insanity certainly seems to be increasing at an exponential rate. How much longer can it go on without breaking down? But, maybe that is the goal.


2 posted on 05/22/2023 4:34:31 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: texas booster

vdh ping


3 posted on 05/22/2023 4:34:57 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber
"The Absurdities of Our Age"

Start with Joe Biden and it's all down hill from there.....

4 posted on 05/22/2023 4:39:23 AM PDT by unread ("It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required." W. Churchill.)
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To: MtnClimber

“What cannot go on, will not go on and all the absurdities of the present will end with a bang not a whimper.”

Yep. The Gods of the Copybook Headings sooner or later will return. Sadly it won’t be pleasant for any of us.

“And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”

Rudyard Kipling


5 posted on 05/22/2023 4:42:58 AM PDT by aquila48 (Do not let them make you "care" ! Guilting you is how thery control you. )
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To: MtnClimber
Attempting to argue any point with both Victor Davis Hansen and/or Thomas Sowell is like an 80 year old man entering the ring with Mike Tyson in his prime.
6 posted on 05/22/2023 4:49:09 AM PDT by Tupelo (A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand)
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To: MtnClimber

California and Newsome have no intention of paying reparations.

They’ve whetted the appetite, however, and expect to a reap advantage in the chaos when the reparations are not forthcoming.


7 posted on 05/22/2023 4:50:00 AM PDT by IncPen ("Inside of every progressive is a Totalitarian screaming to get out" ~ David Horowitz)
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To: MtnClimber

The goal is Communism. Period.


8 posted on 05/22/2023 4:58:20 AM PDT by TTFlyer (Lenin: that by the infliction of terror, a well-organized minority can conquer a nation.)
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To: MtnClimber

All the questions raised which turn on fairness as the basis for applying the leftist standards right back at them: Leftist claim fairness but they do things to DESTROY. Fairness doesn’t ever actually figure into it.


9 posted on 05/22/2023 5:01:11 AM PDT by TalBlack (We have a Christian duty and a patriotic duty. God help us.)
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To: MtnClimber

Great article by VDH, as always.


10 posted on 05/22/2023 5:03:10 AM PDT by SharpRightTurn (“Giving money & power to government is like giving whiskey & car keys to teenage boys” P.J. O’Rourke)
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To: MtnClimber
How could a dysfunctional state like California even contemplate $800 billion in reparations?

Idiot.

They are NOT "contemplating" $800 billion.

They are deadly serious about the FIRST DOLLAR, which creates a legal debt and sets the precedent that white people as a class 1) Owe black people money; and 2) After the first dollar is paid on this "debt", will be accruing interest and mounting annual appropriations until the end of time.

The PRINCIPLE is what's at stake here - making whites into a perpetual debtor class, subject to increasing legal penalties and eventually violence over failure to pay the "debt".

The dollar amount (which will never be paid) is unimportant.

11 posted on 05/22/2023 5:10:07 AM PDT by Jim Noble (It is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government)
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To: SharpRightTurn

This article should be committed to memory by all staunch patriots. He sums it all up very concisely.


12 posted on 05/22/2023 5:12:58 AM PDT by fhayek
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To: unread

It started way before him.


13 posted on 05/22/2023 5:15:57 AM PDT by sauropod (“If they don’t believe our lies, well, that’s just conspiracy theorist stuff, there.”)
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To: MtnClimber

“reparations” is the new bait and switch after student loan forgiveness.


14 posted on 05/22/2023 5:23:08 AM PDT by shoff (Vote Democrat it beats thinking!)
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To: MtnClimber

Unfortunately, this has gone on too long...Todays young people seem to just accept this and us older crowd are dying off and can’t fight back with any strength...I have always thought that a breaking point would be reached and concerned people would band and defeat this BS, but now I think it’s too late....


15 posted on 05/22/2023 5:36:00 AM PDT by JBW1949 (I'm really PC.....Patriotically Correct)
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To: MtnClimber

Wow! Hanson lays it all out in a way that really makes you think and then get angry at what is happening. I couldn’t stop reading and thought of the things that I had forgotten over the last few years like some of the things Comey did. Very good article.


16 posted on 05/22/2023 6:13:46 AM PDT by JoJo354 (We need to get to work, Conservatives!)
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To: Alberta's Child; Alouette; AndyJackson; Aria; Basket_of_Deplorables; BatGuano; beaversmom; ...
Ping! Out to the Victor Davis Hanson list

If so, are we to tally up the half-century role of racial quotas to calibrate all the impoverished whites of the last 50 years who were discriminated against in admissions and hiring?

Have there not been existing reparations from the decades-long implementations of racial preferences and exemptions—or perhaps in some $20 trillion dollars in reparatory transferences during a half-century of Great Society entitlements?

This is a really good discussion from Prof Hanson, regarding the absurdities of our present age.

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.

Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience.

17 posted on 05/22/2023 7:39:39 AM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: Tupelo

Sowell and Hansen are intellectual giants. I wish I knew more about the Hoover Institute. How does it even survive?


18 posted on 05/22/2023 7:46:34 AM PDT by Spok (“Winston, how many fingers am I holding up?”)
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To: MtnClimber

That is among VDH’s best. He does an outstanding job of cataloging all the absurdities and disjunction in the USA.

He closes with “So we will keep up borrowing and printing bread-and-circus money until, like the late fourth-century polis, or late imperial Rome, there is finally no money for the upkeep of infrastructure, domestic law and order, and deterrence against foreign enemies.”

You cannot escape the fact that California infrastructure is crumbling. Roads everywhere have not been maintained, surfaces are eroded, and cracks and potholes are everywhere. I drove from the Bay Area to Boise the past two days and roads everywhere are a disaster.


19 posted on 05/22/2023 8:56:11 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (I don’t like to think before I say something...I want to be just as surprised as everyone else…)
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To: MtnClimber
How could a dysfunctional state like California even contemplate $800 billion in reparations?

Easy. The name of the white liberal game is to rile up blacks with lies and offers of victim hood and revenge. Then pull the run out from under them.

Playing blacks for fools gets the vote out. California NEVER had any intention of giving blacks the money. For one thing they don't have the money and for another thing states are NOT allowed to 'print' money.

It was NEVER going to happen.

Democrats have used they style of trick to convince hopeful fools that they "COULD HAVE HAD" THE MONEY (or whatever's being offered as bait at the time) IF ONLY IT WEREN'T FOR 'WHITE SUPREMACISTS'... A lie liberal elites know how to sell to 'get out the black vote'...

Lucky for Gov. Newsom the bimbos and pretentious 'men' of the US press are as corrupt and vile as he is... Newsom is playing blacks for fools. Popcorn time.

20 posted on 05/22/2023 9:02:03 AM PDT by GOPJ (How many 'intelligence' goons & thugs live in mansions on $180,000 a year? And drive expensice cars?)
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