Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club links to Victor Davis Hanson’s post this weekend on California’s End Times and concludes, “Dr. Hanson’s observations about the Left’s unreasonable expectations are probably true. But what does he hope to achieve by stating them?”
Does he hope that against all odds that the Left will come to their senses? Perhaps, because that’s the logical thing to do. But history suggests that logic doesn’t always prevail. Historically doomed societies never come to their senses. That’s why they were doomed. Their feedback loop was permanently disconnected; not simply unplugged but bricked over.
There is a sense in which arguing with the Left is a futile proposition. All that remained to those caught up in historically collapsing societies was to get out of dodge or head for the lifeboats. Berchtolt Brecht observed that failing systems only knew how to double down. “Even in Atlantis of the legend, the night the seas rushed in, the drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.” Nobody got out of Atlantis by arguing with the Atlanteans. When the ATM stops dispensing money and people press the keys harder, conversation is really at an end. In California’s case the left’s response to crisis is more of the same: more open borders, more Green industry, more regulation. That’ll fix it.
It won’t of course. So what happens next?
“European nations begin seizing private pensions,” notes an ominous headline at the Christian Science Monitor.
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