Victor Davis Hanson on the Illusion of Invincibility

VDH's analysis of the mistakes of once-prominent civilizations is a preview of a likely future, researched and written by a master.

The US has many enemies - internal and external. But the growing mountain of debt may be our biggest enemy. It cannot be 'defeated' and cannot be paid off when so many citizens are getting a free ride.

I am reading this book now, and it's very good. At first, it's tempting to dismiss his arguments because he's written about ancient land battles. There hasn't been a land battle here since Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox 159 years ago. When we consider what we're losing--the Enlightenment within Western Civilization, his arguments become dire, grim, and as relevant as today's front page. The Enlightenment meant trusting in the law, trusting in good government, and trusting fair-minded citizens. Our Founders wrote our original documents as admirers of the Enlightenment. We are losing those markers to lawless tribalism, to violence as a means to governance. To me, an historic marker to a nation's decadence and decay is antisemitism. Just like a Theban facing Alexander the Great's army, I can't believe we're here.

Sorry VDH, but many of us out here know full well this can happen here. Why many men think and ponder about the fall of Rome. What we are struggling with is how do we get the worthless politicians out of office. There is hope when you look at El Salvador and Argentina. Those leaders have started to turn their country around. We need people in office that will make the hard decisions and follow through. Hope Trump will get in a cut size of Government.

You need to look at the COVID years to see government and media power. So few controlled so many. Lies were the order of the day. And sadly, the Church (for the most part) aquiesced. Next time it may be different. If not, this country is over.

Victor Davis Hanson is one of my favorite contemporary military historians. The other is John Keegan.

I am currently reading VDH's book which is excellent but also not exactly analogous to the present situation. In VDH's book, once powerful countries / entities are overwhelmed by superior external military powers while the populace didn't see this coming. My take is that the US, and Western civilization, have allowed themselves to be taken over by governmental, communication and financial oligarchies whose modus operandi is "might makes right". In this process the traditional moral and ethical structures have been jettisoned and replaced with anarchy (sold as a new type of morality based on DEI and reparations}. The innate instability of this new "structure" requires the institutions which gain from this instability to enforce compliance though tyranny disguised as fairness while playing one portion of the population off against the other. This entity can remain militarily strong relative to other global rivals. The real question is: Is this "game / reality" sustainable when 200,000,000+ people in a country of 300,000,000+ people, a country founded on the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as well as equal justice under the law, know exactly what is going on and why?

America gave the world “The Jerry Springer Show”, “The View”, Cheez Whiz and a “dish” consisting of canned chili in a bag of Fritos. American adult males can be seen wearing cut-off jeans and trucker’s hats that say things like “I’d Rather be Fishin” or “World’s Greatest Grandpa” while they walk around WalMart with their tramp-stamped, midriff revealing, cut-off jeaned, overweight women. Americans spend money on things like artificially flavored frozen sugar water and sugar coated gelatin shaped to look like worms. It occurs to me that a fairly tiny fraction have ever heard of Carthaginians or Byzantines but most know about the Aztecs -they are a college football team. We are a country largely made up of self-indulgent halfwits who believe themselves brilliant because…well, duh…college. Books like Hanson’s will be lost on almost all but all of us will suffer the fate of the stupid and lazy.

This book is not about technology, weapons, battle tactics or level of civilization. It's about human nature. We are failing that test.

Wonderful comments....thank you, all!! VDH is a national treasure. I suspect we're all having trouble believing "we're here". But there you have it; human nature will always need a moral compass, else all is lost!

History shows that democracies/republics last about 250 years, and then implode from internal forces, largely due to the voters realizing that they can sell their votes for a price.