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Offline Land_Owner

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Life Among the Ruins
« on: March 09, 2023, 01:20:30 AM »
https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/06/life-among-the-ruins/

The few sowed the wind, and the many reaped their whirlwind.

By Victor Davis Hanson

March 6, 2023

American society is facing three existential crises not unlike those that overcame the late Roman, and a millennium later, terminal Byzantine, empires.

Premodern Barbarism
We are suffering an epidemic of premodern barbarism. The signs unfortunately appear everywhere. Over half a million homeless people crowd our big-city downtowns.

Most know the result of such Medieval street living is unhealthy, violent, and lethal for all concerned. Yet no one knows—or even seems to worry about—how to stop it.

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.

All accept that defunding the police, no-cash bail, Soros-funded district attorneys, and 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.

We have redefined felonies as misdemeanors warranting no punishment. Misdemeanors are now infractions that are not criminal. Infractions we treat as lifestyle choices. Normality, not criminality, is deemed criminal. We all know this will not work, but still wonder why it continues.

Many among the middle classes of our cities who can flee or move, do so—like 5th-century equestrians who left Rome for rural fortified farms before the onslaught of the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. 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.

The less well-off, without the means to leave, hope that their environs have hit bottom so things can only improve. The elite who caused this premodern catastrophe assumes they will always have the money and wherewithal to ensure that themselves and their own can navigate around or even profit from the barbarism they unleashed. For them the critic, not the target of criticism, is the greater threat.

The hard urban work of the 1990s and early 2000s—cleaner, safer subways, secure nightlife downtown, clean sidewalks, low vacancy rates, little vagrancy, and litter-free streets—so often has been undone, deliberately so. We are descending to the late 1960s and 1970s wild streets—if we are lucky the mayhem does not devolve even further.

A mere 10 years ago, if an American learned that a man was arrested for clubbing, robbing, or shooting innocents, and yet would be released from custody that day of his crime, he would have thought it an obscenity. Now he fears that often the criminal will not even be arrested.

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 L󰥺 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?

Would 100,000 annual lethal overdoses—12 times more than those who died over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined—from drugs that flow across the open border sway them? Or would it take 200,000, or 300,000 deaths before Joe Biden relented and ceased his chuckling?

What does a people do when its highest officials simply renounce their oaths of office and refuse to enforce laws they don’t like? Everyone knows the border will eventually have to become secure, but none have any idea whether it will take another 20, 30, or 50 million illegal entrants and 1 million more fentanyl deaths to close it.

Polls show race relations have hit historic lows. Much of the ecumenicalism of the post-Civil Rights movement seems squandered—almost deliberately so.

The Left now rarely mentions Martin Luther King, Jr. or even the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. Perhaps it knows it has violated the spirit and legacy of both.

Today, our identity politics leaders believe that the color of our skin, not the content of our character, certainly matters more. 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.

Read Professor Ibram X. Kendi and his message is implicit. For him, the problem with a Jim Crow-like system was not segregation or racial chauvinism per se, but merely who was doing the victimizing and who were the victims: so the original racism was bad; but racism in reverse is good.

We abhor violence, racism, and misogyny—in the abstract. Yet 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.

Most know that young black males under 30 commit violent crimes at well over 10 times their 3-4 percent demographic of the population—so often victimizing the nonwhite. All know that reality must remain unmentionable even as its causes need to be debated and discussed if lives are to be saved. Yet the greater crime seems not the crime itself, but even mentioning crime.

Postmodern Abyss
Postmodernism in our age is deadlier even than premodernism. Sexually explicit drag shows that allow the attendance of children 20 years ago would have been outlawed—by liberals worried over the trauma of the young watching performance-art simulated sex.

Now the children come last and the performers first—as ratified by the same liberals. But to fathom the new transitioning, simply learn from ancient transitioning and gender dysphoria, an unhappy classical theme from Catullus’ Attis poem (stimulatus ibi furenti rabie, vagus/ devolsit ili acuto sibi pondera silice/ itaque ut relicta sensit sibi membra sine viro) to Giton in Petronius’ Satyricon.

Current “science” is now synonymous with ideology, religion, or superstition. Lockdowns, mRNA vaccinations, masking, transgenderism, “climate change,” and green power brook no dissent. They are declared scientifically correct in the manner that the sun used to revolve around the earth, and any dissenting Galileo or Copernicus is cancel-cultured, doxxed, and deplatformed.

It is now verboten to cite the causes of the current upswing. We must remain silent about the classical exegeses that cults, pornography, and constructed sexual identities, when not biological, were the manifestations of a bored culture’s affluence (luxus), leisure (otium), and decadence (licentia/dissolutio).

The classical analyses of an elite collapse focus on a falling birth rate, a scarce labor force, ubiquitous abortion, an undermanned military, and a shrinking population. We suffer all that and perhaps more still.

Millions of young men are detached and ensconced in solitude, their indebted 20s too often consumed with video-gaming, internet surfing, or consumption of porn. Many  suffer from prolonged adolescence. Many assume that they are immune from criticism, given that the alternative of getting married, having children, finding a full-time job, and buying a house is society’s new abnormal.

Rarely has an elite society become so Victorian and yet so raunchy. A slip with an anachronistic “Gal” or “Honey” can get one fired. Meanwhile, grabbing one’s genitals while pregnant on stage before 120 million viewers is considered a successful Super Bowl extravaganza.

Our army is short of its annual recruitment by 25 percent. We all suspect but do not say out loud the cause. The stereotyping of poor and middle-class white males as both raging and biased, and yet expected yet to fight and die in misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, has finally convinced the parents of these 18-year-olds to say, “no more.”

Need we say anything about the lack of efficacy or morality of the Department of Justice, FBI, or CIA?

Or rather is there anything the FBI will not do?

Doctor court evidence? Hire Twitter to suppress the news? Monitor parents at school board meetings? Allow directors to lie under oath or “misremember” before Congress?

Swiping clean subpoenaed phones? Hiring fakers to compile dirt on a presidential candidate—and then using that known smear to hoodwink a judge to allow spying on Americans?

Suppressing evidence on a laptop to warp an election? Raiding an ex-president’s home with a SWAT-like team? Spying on Catholics in mass? Storming a home full of children of a man accused of a politically incorrect misdemeanor?

The more the military has been stalemated in Iraq, humiliated in Afghanistan, and dreading what China will soon do or what Iran will even sooner let off, the more it insists our priorities should be diversity, equity, and inclusion. Will that escapism ensure more lethal pilots, tank commanders, and Marine company commanders?

The mindsets of too many of our new generations of command are twofold: first to be promoted by virtue signaling woke policies that they must know eventually will hamper combat readiness, and then in the future to rotate at retirement into multimillionaire status by leveraging past expertise for defense contractors. Keep that in mind and almost every publicly uttered nonsense from our highest in the Pentagon makes perfect sense.

Them
There is a third challenge. Our enemies—illiberal, deadly, and vengeful—have concluded we are more effective critics of ourselves than are they. They enjoy our divided nation, torn apart by racial incivility, dysfunctional cities, and woke madness. (Notice how even the communists long ago dropped deadly Maoist wokeism, or how the Russians viewed the Soviet commissariat as antithetical to their military and economic agendas.)

Iran believes that this present generation of Americans would likely allow it to nuke Israel rather than stop its proliferation. China assumes that Taiwan is theirs and the only rub is how to destroy or absorb it without losing too many global markets and income. Russia  conjectures that the more we trumpet its impending defeat, the more it will destroy Eastern Ukraine and call such a desert peace.

Our “friends” can be as dangerous as our enemies.

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?).

Mexico drains $60 billion from its expatriates on the expectation that American subsidies will free up their cash to be sent home. The more the cartels run wild, the more money trickles down—while their top drug enforcement official Genaro García Luna was found guilty in a New York courtroom  for collusion with the cartels.

How did all of this so quickly erode our great country? 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 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. Sometime around the millennium, they felt their genius could change human nature and bring an end to history—if only they had enough power to force hoi polloi to follow their abstract and bankrupt theories that they had no intention of abiding by themselves.

And then the few sowed the wind, and so the many now reap their whirlwind.

Offline Dee

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #1 on: March 09, 2023, 01:25:44 AM »
A simple synopsis. The weak and perverted, are in charge.
You may all go to hell, I will go to Texas. Davy Crockett
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Offline ironglow

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #2 on: March 09, 2023, 01:37:35 AM »
A clear picture, if folks would only look with an analytic mind. The people we trusted with our national course. have failed us miserably.
    ..And the everyday citizen in  many cases as a voter,  is entirely vacuous.  Consider how a sizeable number
  during the last election in Pennsylvania, voted for a man with a severely crippled mind. 

     ..And many are threatening commit the same error again, should our current president who seems to be suffering
    from dementia, decide to run again.

  Post modernism is madness, encapsulated in sick minds.
If you don't want the truth, don't ask me.  If you want something sugar coated...go eat a donut !  (anon)
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Offline Land_Owner

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #3 on: March 09, 2023, 02:00:04 AM »
A simple synopsis. The weak and perverted, are in charge.

Dee, you and IG "get it".  Others will too.  The article seemed to encapsulate and define most of the corruption into which our Nation is being steered. Sad times.  Sad, sad times. 

Big City dwellers beware.  Bring that corruption to a town near me or you (those that "get it") and there will be sparks.

Offline Dee

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #4 on: March 09, 2023, 02:11:05 AM »
A simple synopsis. The weak and perverted, are in charge.

Dee, you and IG "get it".  Others will too.  The article seemed to encapsulate and define most of the corruption into which our Nation is being steered. Sad times.  Sad, sad times. 

Big City dwellers beware.  Bring that corruption to a town near me or you (those that "get it") and there will be sparks.

A little over 2 years ago my mother passed away. She was the last reason for my staying in the area of Dallas/Ft Worth.
I'm now in a VERY RURAL area, and happy again. I'm over 50 miles from a city of any size. And with my past profession, I'm fully aware of what people are capable of, and incapable of.
I'm among people that while they may not fully comprehend what's happening elsewhere in this country, still, just want to be left alone, and are familiar with the firearm.

People today are no different than from the past. They weakly run from one fake leader to another, based on nuthin more than those fake leaders latest moves or speeches.

I base my safety on what I see, and myself. God will sort all this out in the  end, but in the meantime, my job is to get myself, and my family through this mess.
You may all go to hell, I will go to Texas. Davy Crockett
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Online DDZ

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #5 on: March 09, 2023, 02:39:16 AM »
Good article, and all so true. Much of it is by design to tear down America's greatness. Turn cities into cesspools, transfer of wealth, degradation of morality, and no longer uphold laws. Much of it is designed for depopulation, and turn America into a third world country. We now no longer have a free election system, and now have a lot of people in place of leadership that hate America.  I think the results are evident of that. 
Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.    Wm. Penn

Offline oldandslow

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #6 on: March 09, 2023, 03:56:10 AM »
All too true and I don't believe out fate will be any different than Rome's. We are to far gone and not enough want to change our course. The current sad excuse of a president reinforces my opinion.  It is a hundred miles to a city of any size and none of those are really large. At least my area, both in NM and TX, is conservative and doesn't allow the things that are happening in the liberal parts of the US. I feel it is just a matter of time before this ends but I doubt in will happen in the years I have left.

Offline ironglow

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #7 on: March 09, 2023, 04:52:23 AM »
From Dee;
   " I'm among people that while they may not fully comprehend what's happening elsewhere in this country, still, just want to be left alone, and are familiar with the firearm.

People today are no different than from the past. They weakly run from one fake leader to another, based on nuthin more than those fake leaders latest moves or speeches.

I base my safety on what I see, and myself. God will sort all this out in the  end, but in the meantime, my job is to get myself, and my family through this mess."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I can only add a hearty DITTO !
If you don't want the truth, don't ask me.  If you want something sugar coated...go eat a donut !  (anon)

Offline Ranger99

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #8 on: March 09, 2023, 08:11:41 AM »
Yessir
The original post may be lengthy,
but it's spot on and irrefutable

Lots of practices of modern
civilized society are being tossed
aside, particularly personal hygiene
and basic health practices
18 MINUTES.  . . . . . .

Offline gypsyman

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #9 on: March 10, 2023, 02:36:47 AM »
The 3 outcomes, all though I'm not sure which one it will be, is what I see as possibilities down the road. Balkanization, which is already in progress. Part of the state of Oregon east of the mountains, wants to separate and join Idaho. You might see other area's want to do the same. Conservative sections don't want to be part of a small section of a state that is run by liberals/progressive's. The United State's will follow suite of Eastern Europe over the last 600+ years. Second might just be a civil war of sorts. Not sure of who would be on what side. Conservative's come in all race's and religions, as well as the liberals and progressive's. Last would be like a combination of the first 2. Small bands of people in the country would form for protection/security. Large metropolitan areas would go into a chaos, and pretty much destroy themselves trying to survive. None of them a happy outcome.
We keep trying peace, it usually doesn't work!!Remember(12/7/41)(9/11/01) gypsyman

Offline Land_Owner

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #10 on: March 10, 2023, 10:49:48 PM »
Kevin Costner's "The Postman", is a post-apocalyptic America (feel good) movie in which a drifter dons a postal uniform, mailbag, and a lie to bluff a fortified town into feeding him.  The lie and the man take on a life of their own as the symbol of hope against a "bad man" and his conscript Army of thugs who are pillaging the land. 

Some of that movie thinking, rural clannish survival behavior, will likely be the stuff of a future America after a "world shifting" event.

Offline Dee

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #11 on: March 11, 2023, 01:25:18 AM »
Defend yourself with a firearm and the police will leave with your firearm which will be "evidence" until the case is cleared.
The problems go on and on.
While an interesting read, I think everyone will sit back and watch their neighbors fall one at a time, until the country is totally dominated by whom ever.

Germanys' army willingly dominated it own population "twice", as have other countries military. It's a pipe dream to believe it would be anything like a movie, which never depicts the misery of starvation, and the brutal suffering which actually happens.

Beating an F16, or a Blackhawk helicopter, or a drone all equipped with flir or other heat detection technology will be next to impossible.
AND NEIGHBORS WILL RAT OUT NEIGHBORS FOR PROMISES OF REWARD.

And for those who think it wouldn't happen in their lifetime, we Texans never thought that the United Mess would "TOTALLY ABANDON" the border. BUT THEY HAVE.


WHILE THE REST OF THE UNITED MESS GOES ABOUT THEIR EVERYDAY LIVES. THEY ARE THE FROG IN THE PAN, WAITING  ON  THE  WATER TO BOIL.

AND THE BORDER STATES AND THEIR POPULATIONS ARE LEFT TO DEFEND THEMSELVES, AND THEIR FAMILIES, AND THEIR PROPERTY, WHILE THE "UNITED MESS GOVERNMENT" DOES EVERYTHING TO THWART OUR EFFORTS. .
You may all go to hell, I will go to Texas. Davy Crockett

Offline gene_225

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #12 on: March 11, 2023, 01:59:31 AM »
Kevin Costner's "The Postman", is a post-apocalyptic America (feel good) movie in which a drifter dons a postal uniform, mailbag, and a lie to bluff a fortified town into feeding him.  The lie and the man take on a life of their own as the symbol of hope against a "bad man" and his conscript Army of thugs who are pillaging the land. 

Some of that movie thinking, rural clannish survival behavior, will likely be the stuff of a future America after a "world shifting" event.

Found the "Postman" encouraging, but "The Road" left a question about the kid's survival. You could see it going either way. Actually, would recommend reading the book "The Postman" since there are some significant differences between it and the movie.

Offline Ranger99

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Re: Life Among the Ruins
« Reply #13 on: March 11, 2023, 04:10:09 AM »
. . . . Some of that movie thinking, rural clannish survival behavior, will likely be the stuff of a future America after a "world shifting" event.

We've already seen anarchy/mob rule, and
the mad max/postman/the road/omega man
scenarios played out in the blm/antifa riots,
the saint floyd and similar burnings and lootings.
All the near anarchy/full panic mode with the
covid mess.
So it's not some science fiction or steven king
movie coming to a theater near you.
It's very real and possible
Can't say it out loud though.
Everybody will ostracize you as
an evil survivalist or supremacist
or whatever the handy term of the
day is. Won't be too awful long before
self defense is a crime like it is in
great britain and their territories.
Won't even be able to possess a
kitchen knife without gubmint sanction
18 MINUTES.  . . . . . .