Guest Post by Victor Davis Hanson
The corruption of the Renaissance Church prompted the Reformation, which in turn sparked a Counter Reformation of reformist and more zealous Catholics.
The cultural excesses and economic recklessness of the Roaring 20s were followed by the bleak, dour, and impoverished years of the Great Depression.
The 1960s counterculture led to Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972, as “carefree hippies” turned into careerist “yuppies.”
So social, cultural, economic, and political extremism prompt reactions—and sometimes counterreactions.
The Bush-Clinton-Obama continuum of 24 years (from 1993 through 2015) cemented the bipartisan fusion administrative state. Trump and his “Make America Great Again” agenda were its pushback.
The counterreaction to the populism of the Trump reset—or Trump himself—is as of yet unsure.
Joe Biden’s tenure may mark a return to business as usual of the Bush-Clinton years. Or more likely, it will accelerate the current hard-left trajectory.
Either way, it seems that Biden is intent on provoking just such a pushback by his record number of early and often radical executive orders—a tactic candidate Biden condemned.
On almost every issue—open borders, blanket amnesties, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, promoting the Green New Deal, and hard-left appointees—Biden is touting positions that likely do not earn 50 percent public support.
When Biden made a Faustian bargain with his party’s hard-left wing of Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to win the election, he took on the commitment to absorb some of their agenda and to appoint their ideologues.
But he also soon became either unwilling or unable to stand up to them.
Now they—and the country—are in a revolutionary frenzy. The San Francisco school district has canceled over 40 schools honoring the nation’s best—Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln—largely on racist grounds that they are dead, mostly white males.
Statues continue to fall. Names change.
The iconic dates, origins, and nature of America itself continue to be attacked to meet leftist demands. And still, it is not enough for the new McCarthyites.
Social media are banning tens of thousands. Silicon Valley and Wall Street monopolies go after smaller upstart opponents.
A wrong word destroys a lifelong career. Formerly sane pundits now call for curtailing the First Amendment. Thousands of federal troops blanket a now-militarized Washington, D.C.
If Trump’s pushback tried to return to traditions ignored during the Obama years, Biden’s reset promises to become far more radical than Obama’s entire eight years.
Trump likely lost his second pushback term for two reasons—neither of which had anything to do with his reset agenda.
First, the sudden 2020 pandemic, quarantine, recession, summer-long demonstrations and riots, and radical changes in voting laws all ensured that 100 million ballots were not cast on Election Day, derailed a booming economy, and finally wore the people out.
Second, Trump underestimated the multitrillion-dollar power and furor of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the media, Hollywood, and the progressive rich. Those forces all coalesced against him and swamped his outspent and outmanned campaign.
With 24/7 blanket ads, news coverage, endorsements, and social media messaging, Trump sometimes was easily caricatured as a twittering disrupter. The inert and mute Biden in his basement was reinvented as the sober and judicious Washington “wise man” antidote to Trump’s unpredictability.
Had Biden continued his moderate campaign veneer, the current left-wing radicalism might not have prompted a counterreaction.
Instead, Biden is now unapologetically leading the most radical left-wing movement in the nation’s history.
Pundits thought Biden’s prior hints of a single four-year term would make him a weak lame duck. Instead, the idea of just one term has liberated the 78-year-old Biden. We forget that septuagenarians can be as reckless as 20-year olds. Some old guys can feel their careers only have a few remaining years and might as well go out with a bang—and a legacy.
For now, Biden enjoys a congressional majority for the next 24 months. He has no plans to run for reelection. He sees both realities as a liberating blank check to accomplish what the much more heralded rockstar Barack Obama never could.
Experts assured voters that Joe Biden would work on a bipartisan consensus and bring back “normality.” He would “unite” the country.
That will not happen. How ironic that Biden will not just be pushed and pressured by the radicals whom he brought to power, but he may be leading them forward to cement an even harder Left legacy.
Will there be a reaction to this extremism?
The Left is assured that radical changes in voting laws and demography, the fears of COVID-19, the Antifa-Black Lives Matter uprising, and anger at Trump over the January 6 Capitol riot have all permanently changed the electorate—and pushed it far leftward.
If they are wrong, they have instead alienated and insulted the American people, and will reap the whirlwind in 2022 of the wind they are now sowing.
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Biden didn’t win the election, he stole it. And how is voting going to fix this?
I like VDH but he won’t be allowed on TV if he states the obvious these days. He truly looks pained and used up.
Well…there always is the Burmese example???
Here’s why the Burmese Military just arrested the Government Leaders for Election Fraud.
Posted on February 4, 2021 by State of the Nation
Naturally, Obama’s shadow gov- er, I mean the “Biden administration” released a statement warning the Burmese Military that “We will get involved”. We saw the SEC friendly Jen Psaki put out a statement:
I respect VDH, but IMHO he will be seriously surprised by the “results” of the 2022 “election”… if he has not been placed in a secure re-education camp for seniors.
This could be interesting…
“All 16 Republicans in the Arizona Senate co-sponsored a resolution calling for the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to be held in contempt and arrested for refusing to comply with wide-ranging subpoenas for election equipment and materials.”
If there is nothing to see, why hide the facts?
Because uh, uh, uh ….. RACIST!!!!!
Progs are in the process now of purging the military of anyone resembling a conservative. They want a Cristero War. No intention to have any real elections. RINO pee pants showed with the Cheney vote that they will be no help. Hoping and praying Trumps takes the long drawn out election fraud theory route for the Senate trial. It would grind everything to a halt. Any time we can do that we must.
Voting? Seriously? This is my prediction: the Republicans lost their bargaining chip of having a voter base. Nearly all of them may still think that the public will be, again, conned into voting, but they are going to be very surprised when they realize in 2022 that no one is voting anymore. This will give the Democrats an absolute power but it’s because the Republicans ousted themselves for the spineless, corrupt pieces of shit that they are for everyone to see. They don’t have a voter base anymore, and I think that the Democrats know this. So the Republicans have nothing to bargain with the Democrats to split the power. And the Democrats will show the Republicans just how much power they can amass. We will have a Democrat supermajority due to fraud, of course, but also because nobody is going to bother with the elections. When this happens the country will go to war with itself because absolute power corrupts absolutely and we all know what the Democrats are going to do once they have the absolute power. This war will be unlike the previous war: it’s going to split the country along the rural-urban lines and it’s going to be counties going against the other counties and people vs the government. We are way past a peaceful solution to all of this unfortunate and it’s Republican’s fault for trying to play politics and thinking that the people won’t notice the traitors. They did notice and they will react to the Democrats superiority with violence. But the Republican party is dead, dead, dead.
The RINO/neocon/Never Trumper (Never Trumper =never listen to the people) faction finally Whigged out. Maybe a new party should blanket everyone and be called simply the Not F’ing Democrats. The NFD?
or NWO GOP
Sorry, no new party on a federal level will ever be allowed to survive.
I’m not saying that I have any solutions right now but one is shaping up to be: go local, county level local and be a nuisance during the monthly meetings open to the public. Watch them close it to the public. We can then join the local political circus demanding simply opening the counties fo lr the public as independents. Or sue them. The problem is that we are running out of time and we are leaderless and scattered, not united in any form, except maybe ideologically, over the internet. A lot of us lives in the suburbs and this very much prevents a smoot communication. I’m probably projecting because I don’t know people, don’t really meet with anyone, but these that do should do this enough to compensate for these that don’t. I’m not sure what to do, tbh. All I’m sure of is that we are running out of time and that voting in any of the federal or even state level elections is so rigged that it’s useless. The same machines are used on a county level. Maybe we all should demand paper ballots on the county level and make ourselves be a nuisance at the meetings. That would surely be a good choice of being a nuisance for a reason.
Just to add: I believe there is no peaceful solution. I believe that there will be uprising and if we don’t unite and organize said uprising will fail spectacularly and our grandchildren will be able to maybe mount another one. I read a lot about the history of Poland. They have hundreds of years of history of the resistance and uprising and I recommend everyone reading it. Especially after the WWII when they were handed over to the Soviets. For 2 decades they had an armed resistance killing the commies. 2 decades of fighting, armed. They failed for many reasons but mostly because the rest of the society was scared to join scared of the consequences of being against the system. It took over 40 years after that before they mounted a successful uprising and overthrew the hostile government. Polish society is similar to the American one: freedom loving and not trusting the government at all. This is why Poland is such a great read. The country ceased to exist fir over 100 years because her elites sold her to the highest bidder and it took Poles over 100 years to finally, successfully overthrow the hostile governments and get their (smaller in size) country back. There were multiple uprising during this 100 years though and all but 1 failed. So it’s the best read to any American that wants to understand what are the absolute requirements for an uprising/revolution to succeed. This and the revolutionary war/civil war read in regards to the American history.
Politics just don’t matter. Biden could sign an executive order mandating that each hour have an additional 10 minutes and another ounce in every pound, and it would be received with a bi-partisan consensus. We are in clown world, and the clowns (all the politicians, all their minions, all the corporate/corruptocrat lackeys, media types, academics; the whole crew) are convinced that they are on a durable, sustainable path. It’s crazy.
So let them go. Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake is what one famous person advised. As ugly as it is going to get, just let them go. Don’t co-operate, but don’t waste your time talking or interacting with them either. They will fail. It will take longer than we would like, but there is nothing we can do about it. Let patience and good humor be your hallmark.
Assume everyone asking for your political support is a fraud.
“Assume everyone asking for your political support is a fraud.”
– Brian Reilly
You have, perhaps, articulated a new maxim for posterity, Brian. Well done, sir.
Why do people assume things without asking directly?
It’s called mental laziness mixed in with brainwashing.
GAZ, The unmistakeable evidence is that everyone (no exceptions) in the political class lies most (more than 50%) of the time about most of the subjects on which they express an opinion. If asked, they say whatever they think is needed to garner whatever support (or failure to oppose) might be garnered.
There is no sense in talking to them, supporting them, or even voting. They all lie about everything that matters, even the ones you so desperately want to like.
This is the most important thing right now: stay armed by any means necessary because we will need it soon and because a society that loses its guns is done and can be ruled into the oblivion by the tyrants. If the majority gives their guns away it will take generations to take the country back, if ever, really.
Wrong.
2022 will be an even easier steal than 2020. Please don’t spout this false hope.