Some Thoughts for Presidents' Day

As for the state of the American union, it is not looking very good. And that is putting it mildly. Now that the impeachment farce has ended, the only salient fact about it was that the Chief Justice chose not to attend. Say what? It means that Chief Justice Roberts did not consider it to be a serious political event. It was political theatre, put on for those who know nothing else.

And yet, the Democratic Party, having gained full control over two branches of government, has no other agenda than fighting what Victor Davis Hanson called the ghost of Trump. One suspects that it's all they know how to do, beyond spending money that we do not have.

Sad to say, but Hanson’s evaluation of the current state of the union rings rather true. 

So here are a few excerpts, via Maggie’s Farm:

Meanwhile, life in America goes on.

Yet few of our leaders are very worried about the existential crises left unaddressed by their obsessions with the ghost of Trump.

Take the debt. It is now nearly $28 trillion, and it is growing by almost $2 trillion a year. No one in D.C. talks about reducing the annual budget deficit. Nor do officials find ways to balance the budget. The idea of paying off the monstrous debt remains a fantasy.

Instead, our elected representatives argue over whether to borrow another $1 trillion or more likely $2 trillion, without worry of where it comes from or how it will be repaid.

But money is not completely a construct.

We will eventually pay for our profligacy either with steeper taxes, higher inflation, 1970s-like stagflation, or permanent zero interest. Or eventually America will renounce its debt and destroy the credibility of the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of dollars and countless hours of once-productive labor are diverted to unproductive ideological censorship, career canceling, and indoctrination.

Our allies, such as democratic France, warn America that it is cannibalizing itself — and becoming dangerous to others. Our enemies, such as the totalitarian Chinese, are delighted with our suicidal wokeness.

The cost is not just the expense of cleaning up the billions of dollars of destruction from the summer riots, the thousands of memorials and statues destroyed and defaced, the hundreds of schools and buildings to be renamed.

This means that intellectual life in America is being systematically stifled. As you know by now, French intellectuals, including leaders of the left-of-center government now consider American wokeism a cultural poison, something to be avoided.

When you opine about America’s having lost the ability to provide moral leadership in the world-- charge most often leveled against Donald Trump-- keep in mind that the rest of the world sees America’s elite intellectuals embracing the religion of wokeism, and they are not buying it. They understand that such a systematic censoring of speech and thought can come to no good.

Hanson continues:

Something similarly frightening is now occurring in the United States. 

Scholars, journalists, artists, and educators feel they must mouth politically correct platitudes. They constantly hedge their public discourse in fear of career cancellation. They strain to synchronize their research with some approved woke ideology to save their livelihoods.

As I said, the news is not good.