Saturday, September 5, 2020

POWERFUL WORDS, POWERFUL HISTORY

Take a minute or two and read and think about what was just written by Hanson
In February, New York was the world’s most dynamic metropolis. By August, the city was more like the ruins of Ephesus. It is not all that hard to blow up a culture. You can do it in a summer if you haven’t much worry about others.
When you loot and burn a Target in an hour, it takes months to realize there are no more neighborhood Target-stocked groceries, toilet paper, and Advil to buy this winter.
You can in a night assault the police, spit at them, hope to infect them with the coronavirus, and even burn them alive. But when you call 911 in a few weeks after your car is vandalized, your wallet is stolen, and your spouse is violent, and no one comes, only then do you sense that you earlier were voting for a pre-civilized wilderness.
You can burn down a Burger King in half an hour. But it will take years to find anyone at Burger King, Inc., who would ever be dumb enough to rebuild atop the charred ruins – to prepare for the next round of arson in 2021 or 2023.
Today’s looter carrying off sneakers and smartphones in 10 years will be tomorrow’s urban activist, understandably but in vain demanding stores return to a charred no man’s land, to do their fair share, and to help restore the downtown, neighborhood, inner-city, or the “community.”
What he wrote is not merely a recital about history. He talks about what the cities, the universities and others have done to themselves as they burned down our civilization in the cities. I will miss some of them when they are fully gone and lost to the darkness but he captures how our idiots have managed to destroy some of the most amazing places mankind ever built.

2 comments:

Bobo the Hobo said...

Excellent column by VDH! Ironically, this morning The Abbeville Press sent this to my morning feed (long read but totally worth it): https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-battle-of-athens-tennessee/

In my salad days, I swore an oath to protect and defend; that oath has not expired. We are not defeated yet.

HMS Defiant said...

and I don't think 'we' ever will be. I'm a little concerned about you and me and those like us maybe starting to think that we need to institute something horrible. We already started the ball rolling when we created delta at gitmo. I'm not happy about that but was OK with it at the time. The option was pointless meaningless trials and God spare me. I found it much better as obama took power and just decided to kill them all with drones and missiles. That's the thing about the democrats. They think what is right out there in front of them is horrible but roll over and except the execution of the enemies of the State.
Movie, LA Confidential. There was a way that the city maintained order. It doesn't work when the press is in the room and breathlessly reporting every shin splint like its the crime of the century.
On the other hand, I honestly have no idea how to do it differently but I wouldn't do it.