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This is our president at his best form!
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American Armageddon
Victor Davis Hanson August 11, 2021
What started out as elite woke nonsense now warps everyone’s daily life.
Americans are growing angrier by the day in a way different from prior sagebrush revolts such as the 1960s Silent Majority or Tea Party furor of over a decade ago.
The rage at the current status quo this time is not just fueled by conservatives. For the first time in their lives, all Americans of all classes and races are starting to fear a self-created apocalypse that threatens their families’ safety and the American way of life.
The border is not just porous as in the pre-Trump past. It is nonexistent. Some 2 million people may cross illegally in the current fiscal year—with complete impunity.
There is zero effort to stop them. Officials daily hector Americans to get vaccinated and tested for COVID. But they are mute about illegal entrants, some of them infected with the virus.
Have we ever had a president who made no pretense about destroying federal immigration law and asking of Americans what he does not of illegal aliens?
Joe Biden has also conceded that his hold on housing evictions deliberately defied a Supreme Court ruling. He added that he probably did not have the legal authority to ignore the court, but did not really care.
As in the case of demolishing immigration law, the president seems either unaware or proud that he is insidiously dismantling the Constitution.
America has also never quite seen such overt and multifaceted efforts to undermine the foundations of free-market capitalism.
At a time of resurging GDP, low unemployment, and record worker shortages, Biden has announced that renters can continue to avoid paying what they owe their landlords—even after a prior year of such free housing.
In a rebounding economy amid record debt, the government is still sending workers unemployment benefits that are more remunerative than the paychecks they would earn if employed.
Such insanity means not only that labor-short employers cannot provide goods and services to American consumers. The new ethos also institutionalizes the pernicious idea that it is smarter to stay home and idle than to get a job and be productive.
Biden is also considering further extending exemptions for the repayment of $1.7 trillion in student loans. That amnesty will only further mainstream this growing notion that borrowing money entails no legal or moral obligation to pay it back.
No one seems to acknowledge that both students and the universities—which lured them to borrow—knew exactly the risks they were taking. Meanwhile, millions of American youth, the working classes who choose not to attend college, and those who paid their loans off or whose parents saved enough over the years to cover their tuition obligations, will subsidize those who renege of their debts by paying higher taxes.
Inflation is roaring back as the administration is printing trillions of new dollars that do not reflect commensurate gains in productivity or population.
Soaring prices are a direct result of incentivizing the unemployed not to work, while discouraging manufacturers and producers of food, gas, oil, timber, mineral, and metals.
The crime wave likewise is not accidental. It is the logical result of deliberate nihilistic policies of releasing thousands of criminals from jails and prisons, defunding and defaming the police, and empowering woke mayors and prosecutors to contextualize crime as the fault of society, not of the criminal.
In response, millions of Americans now simply avoid the mayhem and chaos of blue-state big cities.
Race relations have regressed 50 years. Under the fad of critical race theory, the color of our skins is now deemed essential to who we are.
Most Americans still integrate, assimilate, and intermarry. But the current woke revolution is an elite, top-down effort to smear a self-critical and always improving nation, as some sort of contemporary racist hellhole.
George Orwell would say of these cultural Marxists that they grab power in the present to reinvent the past in order to control our futures.
All this multifaceted chaos is not just faculty lounge stuff. We are beginning to see the collective craziness filter down to disruptions in our everyday lives.
Airliners cannot take off due to fuel shortages. Automobiles, houses, gas, and lumber are in short supply.
Consumers can’t get their roofs fixed or their houses painted or the trees trimmed as employers plead to their idle government-subsidized employees to come back to work.
No one knows whether our laws even still exist—or at least exist haphazardly depending on who breaks them.
Thieves steal with brazen impunity. The police predicate arresting suspects on criteria that have nothing to do with breaking the law.
Scared Americans have lost faith in the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, the CDC, and most of the federal bureaucracies that are as politicized as they are increasingly incompetent.
What started out as elite woke nonsense now warps everyone’s daily life. If we don’t wake up from wokeness, we will continue on our sure trajectory to self-inflicted, systemic paralysis—followed by civilizational collapse.
About Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won and The Case for Trump.
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It has been fascinating watching the Democrat Party disintegrate almost as quickly as the Afghanistan Government has in the face of the Taliban onslaught. Democrats were once known as a group of politicians who would unite in order to spend your money and create circumstances where more voters would be dependent on government largess.
Democrats are still anxious and more than willing to spend your tax money in order to create government and party dependency but now they fight about it.
The $3 plus T "infrastructure" pork fest has revealed some within the party think it too much to spend on, essentially, more welfare. The party used to be united when it came to maintaining a positive relationship with Israel. Today, the radical Muslims within their ranks have ended this foolishness. Democrats used to maintain they were for law and order but, of late, they would rather allow chaos and murder to take over the streets of cities they control.
Democrats claimed to be protectors of minorities all the while engaging in policies and legislation that destroyed families and increased government dependency. Now they favor defunding the police in high crime areas where blacks predominantly live
Democrats were never hip on adequate military funding because it left them with less dollars for welfare but , at least, they were willing to spend on defense because it meant jobs in their towns and states. Now they have walked away from any pretense of funding the military and would rather spend on climate change.
An entire shift in priorities has occurred within Democrat ranks because radicals are in control and most centrist Democrats cower and find themselves out flanked and intimidated. As I noted they have actually increased their penchant for spending. and do this by ignoring the debt their spending incurs.
Because inflation has increased, the pandemic remains insoluble and the border crisis grows declining poll numbers indicate Democrats have some fence mending issues and time is ebbing.
For the time being obsessing about Trump seems their only solution.
Divisions within the party persist and many former Democrat voters among the Hispanic and black community are having second thoughts. As electioneering starts in earnest it will make for interesting times and opportunities but Republicans have a solid history of losing when winning is a lay up so stay tuned and watch the flow of dollars cascade, inflation rise and dependency grow. It has generally been the bucket that bails Democrats out and may well do so again.
Democrats lack an alternative approach because they are incapable of rational thinking.
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The Hard Bigotry of No Expectations
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Pete Buttigieg Evades Question On Where Biden Is Moving Illegal Migrants Into America
Peter Buttigieg diverted an essential question about where the federal government is taking the illegal immigrants, which won’t be answered.
Regardless of whether the question is answered doesn’t solve any problem. It seems to be a diversional question to get others to seek the answer, but it’s not as crucial as other questions that need to be answered.
First of all, regardless of what anyone thinks about the federal government moving illegal immigrants around the country, stop asking where the federal government is taking them. To answer this question, it would place the undue risk of harm on the migrants and cause an uproar in the location they’re being housed.
Anyone taken into federal custody has certain rights of privacy and protection of the federal government, even if they aren’t a legal citizen. Before asking where they’re going, we need to focus on why it’s happening and how President Joe Biden can be impeached because of it.
The oath of Office that Joe Biden took protects states from invasion, which would be illegal immigrants being pumped into every state. It’s unprecedented and unwelcomed. We can’t be complacent with abuse from the federal government, abusing our rights, and abusing the Constitution.
If this were a genuine humanitarian effort, the border would be strictly enforced to protect citizens first, then consider immigration policies and effectively implement a strategy to handle migrants who enter the United States. The Biden administration is controlling immigration backward with no anticipation of turning it around. Asking questions is important, but asking the right questions is much more critical.
Illegal immigrants are going somewhere, but we will never know that answer. You can assume they’re being sent to Republican states, and when given legal status, the Democrats expect them to vote Democrat. It probably won’t work because former President Donald Trump got record numbers from Latino voters.
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Iceland Chapter 5
Chapter 5
First, here is the answer to yesterday’s pop quiz. We had several entries, but no one had the correct answer. On Vigur Island, there are many nests of Arctic Cranes. They nest in the tall grass, and the mommas are very protective of their little ones. They will dive bomb your head if you get too close. Since they go for the highest part of you, we were all holding the sticks up to keep them from attacking our heads. As far as I know, no one was bombed, but they did fly very low and made a lot of squawking noise if you got close to a next.
Second, I’ve had some reports that people were not able to open the photos from Chapter 4. If you could not open them, just type this into your browser It should work.
www.mmemery.com/Iceland-chapter-4
Now, on to the next couple of days. At the end of Chapter 4, we had been whale-watching, somewhat unsuccessfully. The next morning we woke up off Grimsey Island, way to the north. It was a glorious, sunny day with temperatures in the 60’s. Here we would hike about 2.5 miles to stand at the Arctic Circle. (And then 2.5 miles back.) The hike was mostly uphill on a “road” that was unpaved most of the way, with lots of stones. Jim had brilliantly purchased us some collapsible walking sticks. These were essential for this walk, and made me feel much more secure on my feet.
We made it to the imaginary line at the top of the hill. (Since the line is imaginary, why couldn’t they just draw it down by the harbor?) There is a large round rock at the Arctic Circle, with a round hole drilled into it where the imaginary line passes, I guess.
Behind the rock was a sad scene. A sheep lay there on her side, dead. She was obviously pregnant, and perhaps died trying to deliver her lamb. We don’t know. She lay on a cliff overlooking the bay, so at least she had a nice view as her last.
I didn’t lug my big camera along on this trek, which was a good decision. There wasn’t much to see, but Jim used his phone to take a few photos.
We had a lovely lunch on the ship before arriving at Húsavik, southeast of Grimsey. This wasn’t much of a town as far as we could tell. They did have a hot spring bath, so we went to that to soothe our sore muscles after the 5-mile hike. Icelanders have no modesty, and they are perfectly happy to strip down in the locker room, take a group shower, and then put on their suits and head out to the hot water. Nowadays, they have separate men’s and women’s locker rooms, and they’ve even added a couple of cublcles where you can change in private, but most of the Icelandic ladies and girls were happily showering together. Surprisingly, even teen-aged girls whom one would imagine would be very body-conscious, were soaping up with not even a hint of embarrassment. Not this little old lady, however. I wore my suit under my clothes from the ship and kept it on for my shower. After our “dip”, I used one of the scarce changing rooms.
The location of this hot pool could not have been more beautiful. It was an infinity-type edge, overlooking the sea. Spectacular.
The plan was to be there for almost 2 hours. Way too long for me, especially since it was a warm, sunny afternoon. I was out of the pool after about 20 minutes. Jim was happy to leave a bit early, too, so we walked back to the ship, about a mile or mile and a quarter. This resulted in a record number of steps for me for the day – over 18,000! Woohoo!
We decided to go to the Sushi restaurant for an early dinner. Normally, reservations are required for this, but we were able to sit at the bar and watch the chef at work. He made us a chicken tempura as an appetizer, and then a salmon roll and an asparagus roll, which we split. Then we went across the hall to the main dining room for dessert and coffee, and a wee dram of port for me. Dessert was a coffee crème brûlée for me and blueberry tarte à la mode for Mr. Emery. Fabuloso! (That is not the Icelandic word for it.)
This morning we had arrived in Vopnafjordur. This is a village of a few hundred people that used to be a large farming and fishing town. The farms have dwindled in number, and the fishing is now on a quota system, so there isn’t as much work for people as there once was. Our guide told us that, back in the 1800’s, a big volcano had erupted and forced all the farmers from the highlands down to the lower elevations. They also suffered a double-whammy a bit later, when a large fire burned a lot of the town, couple with a shipwreck of a trading vessel just off their coast. The men from the town had to go and save everyone on the ship, which was bringing in needed stores of wheat and other food. They saved all the sailors, but all of the goods onboard were lost. The town then just had to wait for the next ship to arrive and bring them the food they had expected on the first boat.
Vopnafjorder is at the northern end of what is called East Iceland. It sits near the south end of a fjord which I can’t find named on any map but my guess it that it is called Vopnafjord. We took a bus to see some of the scenery around this fjord. We drove past a black-sand beach, where I would have like to stop at least long enough to take some photos, but nei. We drove around the south end of the fjord and up the eastern side to see Gljúfursárfoss, a waterfall (foss) that is almost entirely hidden from the road. (I asked the guide to pronounce the name very slowly, but it didn’t help.) We walked to the end of a field, and there it was, on our right, plunging down 150 feet to run into the fjord. Very picturesque. The walk to and from was a bit rocky, so I was wishing we had brought the walking sticks, but we made it.
Our next stop was a short distance farther up the side of the fjord. It was a cliff overlooking the fjord where, at some times during the year, there are large colonies of birds. Not so much today, but it was pretty scenery. Back at the bus, they had kindly set up coffee and hot chocolate, along with lamb, bread, and some doughnut-like things. The coffee and hot chocolate would have been great on a cold, blustery day, but today was calm and warm. I would have liked some lemonade instead. (Jeesh, are you NEVER happy?)
Our final stop was called Skjóljürur Beach. Again, it was a rocky path down the cliff to the rocky beach, so I quit about half-way down. The view was lovely. There were rock outcroppings along the shore, including one that the locals believe looks like an elephant. See what you think when you view the photos. There was a large amount of driftwood on the beach, which they have determined floated here from Siberia! It was mostly just logs, not the cute, twisted branches we think of as driftwood. This was literally wood that drifted off from a mill or some such place. How it got here from Siberia is a good question. Apparently, it went up to the Arctic and then down. Quite surprising.
Our guide told us about the local lore in this part of the country. They believe that a whale was sent to harm the people, and that a dragon appeared and sent the whale packing. The dragon then became the emblem of Vopnafjördur. The dragon is one of four guiding spirits of Iceland, one for each major region. The other three are a bull, vulture, and giant. The four of them appear on the Icelandic Coat of Arms. Icelanders are big with tales from their sagas about elves, trolls, and spirit guides.
We were back on the ship by lunchtime, and then had two talks during the afternoon. We were supposed to stop at a cliff full of Puffins, but all the Puffins have left for the season, so we are just continuing on to the next stop. The lectures were on the Viking’s long boats and how they enabled them to reach such distant destinations. The second one was on glaciers and ice fields. We’ll be visiting the 4th largest glacier in the world tomorrow.
Here are the photos from yesterday and today.
https://www.mmemery.com/Chapter-5-Iceland
If clicking on the link doesn’t work, type this into your browser:
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