It’s become almost a cliché that the United States of America, once a shining beacon of freedom to the world, is increasingly becoming less of a model and more of a bad experiment of political culture, a country that is losing its moral compass and is becoming more and more dysfunctional with each passing year. Until some time ago such kinds of observations were typical of left-wing intellectuals and activists, but in the last few months/years they have become bipartisan, though of course for opposite reasons.
One of the maîtres à penser—probably the most prominent one—of this new approach to understanding the evolution—or, better, involution—of American political culture is Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno. A good summary of his views on how America has changed in these past few years is a recent American Greatness article that explains how, by whom and for what purpose American civilization has been turned upside down, which is why “we have a rendezvous soon with the once unthinkable and unimaginable.” In the last six months, he says, we have borne witness to a series of iconic moments evidencing a self-induced collapse of American culture. “The signs are everywhere,” he explains, “and cover the gamut of politics, the economy, education, social life, popular culture, foreign policy, and the military.” Although he doesn’t explicitly say it, the implicit message is that America is descending into a sort of madness.
How else can we explain why the Biden administration fled from Afghanistan, leaving behind billions of dollars of advanced military weaponry and equipment in the hands of Taliban? Or why has the Pentagon revolutionized the entire system of recruitment, promotions, and tenure in the armed forces, “by predicating them in large part on race, gender, and sexual orientation rather than merit or battlefield efficacy?” [...]
Read more: America’s Descent into Madness and Back
