Monasteries of the Mind - Victor Davis Hanson

  VDH’s Blade of Perseus (victorhanson.com)

"Its metaphor is California’s Oroville dam: Aging greens believe that it never should have been built; but since it was, it came in handy for the good life; but no one should spend any money on its repair; but when it nearly fails, we were all warned that it was never a good idea. And so no more dams will be built for our children."

. . ."There is now something called the “Resistance,” which by its nomenclature poses that its opposition to Trump is reminiscent of European partisan resistance to Hitler: Affluent progressives are now on the barricades to stop another Holocaust? Cities now nullify federal law in the spirit of the Old Confederacy. A federal judge doesn’t enforce federal law because he says he does not like what the president and his associates said in the past, during the campaign. Op-ed writers overseas wait eagerly for the president’s assassination. At CNN, Fareed Zakaria, wrist-slapped for past plagiarism, melts down while screaming of Trump’s “bullsh**.” Madonna says she has “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.” All the insanity reminds one of the old Kingston Trio ballad: . . .

"Bad filibusters are now good ones. Vowing to kill, hurt, or remove the president and first family is hip, when it used to be felonious. States’ rights and nullification are now Confederate-cool. Free speech is hate speech. Censorship is a mere trigger warning. Assimilation is cultural appropriation. The nasal voiced thirtysomethings on the news, in their retro outfits of high-water pants and horn-rimmed glasses, impart worldly wisdom as our new Eric Sevareids.

"When we all wish to be victims, there are too few oppressors to go around. Or perhaps the Boomer generation is going out in a fit of frenzied self-recognition: It enjoyed all that was given to it, did not accomplish much itself, and left a mess to its successors. Its metaphor is California’s Oroville dam: . . .

"Hardly. The new monastics were already watching less and less of the National Football League before the televised tantrums of Colin Kaepernick. After his multimillionaire stunts seemed to catch on with other players, many viewers quit entirely. The appeasement of his crudity by Kaepernick’s multimillionaire bosses and teammates might explain why NFL audiences (and revenues) are down.

"In this age of pan-politicization, sports, like everything else, is not exempt from wealthy elites’ guilt-ridden obsessions with race, class, and gender agendas — as a $20-million-per-annum, mediocre, and pampered quarterback refuses to stand for the National Anthem, or as Beyoncé does last year’s Super Bowl half-time show as an amateurish paean to Black Lives Matter and the old Black Panthers.

"It’s become more painful to watch TV sports analysts than the gladiatorial hits of the game itself: Aging veterans seek to recapture their cool by passing themselves off as political pundits who contextualize interceptions and fumbles in terms of abstract politics.. They’re oblivious that, in the court of identity politics, the NFL is itself found culpable: According to the logic of “disparate impact” and proportional representation, about 12 percent of the population is “overrepresented” through its nearly 70 percent membership on NFL teams." . . .