Sometimes unexpected and dramatic events strip away the thin covering of respectability and convention, exposing and negating long-existing but hitherto hidden pathologies.
Events over the past three years, such as the destruction of our southern border, the October 7th massacre and subsequent war in Gaza, campus protests, the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, and the systematic efforts to weaponize our bureaucracy and our courts, have all led to a fundamental reassessment of American culture and civilization.
Since the 1960s, universities have been hotbeds of left-wing protest, sometimes violent.
But the explosion on campus after October 7 marked a major turning point.
The masked left-wing protesters were unashamedly and virulently anti-Semitic, and students, especially from elite schools, expressed contempt for both the middle-class police officers tasked with preventing their violence and vandalism and the maintenance workers who had to clean up their trash.
Rioters occupied buildings, attacked Jewish students, called for the destruction of Israel, and defaced American monuments and commentary.
Pressed by journalists to explain the reasons for their protests, most students knew nothing about the politics or geography of Palestine in which they were protesting.
The public concluded that the more elitist a campus is, the more ignorant, arrogant, and hateful its students appear to be.
The Biden administration has destroyed the southern border. 10 million illegal immigrants have flooded into the United States without any audit. Almost every day, the news reports details violent acts by illegal immigrants and their unrealistic demands for more free accommodation and assistance.
At the same time, thousands of Middle Eastern students invited by universities on student visas are blocking traffic, occupying bridges, disrupting graduation ceremonies, and generally flouting the laws of their American host country.
The end result is that Americans are reevaluating their entire attitude towards immigration: the borders will soon be closed, immigration will be primarily meritocratic, small-scale, and legal, and there will be zero tolerance for immigrants or resident visitors who break the laws of their host country.
Americans are also reassessing their attitudes toward traditional bureaucracies, courts, and government agencies.
The public still cannot accept that the once-respected FBI has partnered with social media to suppress news stories, spy on parents at school board meetings, and stage performance-art SWAT raids on the homes of perceived political opponents.
The Department of Justice’s lenient attitude toward the villain Hunter Biden while trying to strictly pursue former President Donald Trump for illegally deleting files in the same way as current President Joe Biden has caused the public to lose faith not only in Attorney General Merrick Garland but also in the American judicial system itself.
The shenanigans of prosecutors like Fani Willis, Letitia James and Alvin Bragg, and obviously biased judges like Juan Merchant and Arthur Engoron, only reinforced the reality that the American justice system was mired in a Third World-style tit-for-tat battle.
The same politicization has all but discredited the Pentagon; its investigations into “white” rage and white supremacy found no such orchestrated conspiracies within the military. But these unicorn hunts likely contributed to a 45,000-man recruiting shortfall among the very demographic that died twice as often as the general population in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Add in the humiliating flight from Kabul, the surrender of $50 billion worth of weapons to Taliban terrorists, the recent embarrassment of the Gaza docks fiasco, and a string of political diatribes by retired generals and admirals, and the result is a huge task for the military to regain public confidence.
They will have to return to meritocracy, emphasize combat effectiveness, enforce uniform military law, and begin to either win wars or avoid wars they cannot win.
Finally, we are witnessing a sharp reversal of the two political parties. The old populist Democrats who championed the lunch bucket worker have been transformed into a raucous coalition of the super-rich and the subsidized poor. Support for open borders, illegal immigration, the war on fossil fuels, transgenderism, critical legal and race theory, and the woke agenda are causing the party to lose support.
The Republican Party is similarly reinventing itself, moving away from its stereotypical image as aristocrats and corporate bosses and towards an image rooted in the middle class.
Even more radically, a new populist Republican party is beginning to appeal to voters on the basis of common class and cultural concerns rather than racial or tribal interests.
The consequences of all these revolutions will shake America for decades to come.
In the near future, a degree from Georgia Tech or Purdue may be a much better sign of being an educated, socially-minded citizen than any Harvard or Stanford brand.
As immigration becomes fully legal, meritocratic, and manageable, we will abandon our failed salad bowl approach to immigration and return to the melting pot.
To avoid further eroding public trust, agencies like the FBI, CIA, Department of Defense, and Department of Justice will need to re-earn, rather than simply assume, the public’s trust.
And we may soon accept the reality that the Democratic Party will reflect the values of Silicon Valley billionaires, university presidents, and mayors of Democratic cities, while the Republican Party will be the home of an ecumenical middle class of blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and whites.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author of “World War II: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won,” published by Basic Books. To contact him, please email: Author vdh@gmail.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
