An Epidemic of Premodern Barbarism

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America is facing an epidemic of existential crises, believes Victor Davis Hanson. In American Greatness, VDH outlines “Life Among the Ruins,” what Mr. Hanson refers to as “terminal Byzantine Empire.”

Over 1/2 million Homeless Occupy Big Cities

So public defecation, urination, fornication, and injection continue unabated. Progressive urban pedestrians pass by holding their noses, averting their gazes, and accelerating the pace of their walking. The greenest generation in history allows its sidewalks to become pre-civilizational sewers. In a very brief time, we all but have destroyed the downtowns of our major cities—which will increasingly become vacant in a manner like the 6th-century A.D. Roman forum.

Defunding the Police, No-Cash Bail, Soros-Funded District Attorneys

Radical changes in jurisprudence have destroyed deterrence. The only dividend is the unleashing of a criminal class to smash-and-grab, carjack, steal, burglarize, execute, and assault—with de facto immunity. Instead we are sometimes lectured that looting is not a crime, but lengthy incarceration is criminally immoral.

Felonies Are Redefined as Misdemeanors

Infractions we treat as lifestyle choices, warranting no punishment. Normality, not criminality, is deemed criminal. We all know this will not work, but still wonder why it continues.

Onslaught from the Visigoths

Like 5^th century equestrians who left Rome for rural fortified farms before the onslaught of the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, the middle class flee, continues VDH:

For most of our lives we were lectured that the old southern states—Florida, Tennessee, Texas—were backward and uninviting. Now even liberals often flee to them, leaving behind supposedly cosmopolitan Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, and New York. The more people leave the blue states, the more those states praise themselves as utopian.

What Happened to Our Border

A once secure border no longer exists. Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas simply demolished it and allowed 6-7 million foreign nationals to cross illegally into the United States without audits—to the delight of their apparent constituent, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

What would shame a Biden or Mayorkas? What would change their minds? Billions of dollars spent on social services for the lawbreaking at the expense of the American poor?

A visitor from another world might conclude Mexico has done more damage to America than North Korea, Iran, and Russia combined. It has, by intent, flooded our border with 20 million illegal aliens. It has allowed cartels with Chinese help to conduct multibillion-dollar profiteering by killing 100,000 Americans per year (did the Kremlin ever match that tally in a half century of the Cold War?).

Identity Politics

The color of our skin matters more than the content of our character.

The practitioners of the new tribalism in some sense fear outlawing segregation and discrimination by race. They know to do so would end racially restricted houses and safe spaces, racially exclusive graduations, and race-based admissions, hiring, and promotion on campus.

Abhor Violence, Racism, Misogyny in the Abstract

… the entire hip-hop industry would find no audience—or so we are told by its appeasers—if rappers refrained from “ho” misogyny, brags of violence against law enforcement, and self-described proprietary use of the N-word.

“Science” Grounded in Ideology, Religion, Superstition

Lockdowns, mRNA vaccinations, masking, transgenderism, “climate change,” and green power brook no dissent.

How has America eroded so quickly?

Our crisis was not the next generation of foreign Hitlers and Stalins. It was not earthquakes, floods, or even pandemics. It was not endemic poverty and want. It was not a meager inheritance from past generations of incompetents. Nor was it a dearth of natural resources or bounty.

Instead, writes VDH,” our catastrophe arose from our most highly educated, the wealthiest and most privileged in American history with the greatest sense of self-esteem and sanctimoniousness.”