Splendid Isolation

Two articles have surfaced, and I believe they should be read one after the other.

The first is by Victor Davis Hanson, and of course is therefore worth reading all by itself:

[U]ntil recently there were still a few institutions we considered sacrosanct, incorruptible, and invincible amid faith-based assertions, toxic woke fads, civil dissension, and hatred of the past. One certainly was the military. Another was “science,” or rather the scientists, researchers, and investigators who devoted themselves to disinterested empiricism. And, a third, was the sacred idea of the “law,” or the idea that Americans respect our statutes because they were crafted by ourselves and applicable to all, equally, and without exception.
All three have lost their luster. Americans do not trust them, at least not in the old way. Perhaps it was the 2020 perfect storm of plague, quarantine, recession, riot, a contentious election, and red/blue antipathies that ripped off the scab and exposed beneath something far different than what the public had assumed.

Read it all, then follow up with this one:

It isn’t just BLM against bikers, or school systems against parents, or black against white, or Hispanic against Asian, or young against old, or left against right, or gay against straight, or vaxers against anti-vaxers, or mask wearers against mask refusers; it is the intent of government officials to inflame these conflicts to the point of violence that is the concern. His response was a slow shake of the head, a shrug of the shoulders saying what he preferred not to say.
The fact is, there is no D-Day, but rather the slow accumulation of grievances until the load can no longer be carried. His words came back to me over the whole conversation. “We’re not that stupid.” The trouble with combat veterans, like my father (Korea), is they tend to be non-confrontational in such situations, because they can smell an ambush, not because they fear engagement, but half measures won’t suffice and until they are ready to go full-on, all other responses seem tepid, but the rage builds.
This climate is being manufactured. Those who are sure they will win are goading on the conflict. Those who are not sure they will win, refuse to fight at half measure, harming only their families and friends, enraging a brutal enemy without the resolve to complete the mission. What the enemies of the people should be afraid of, if they had any sense, is a fighting force having put it off until there was nothing left to lose, but coming out dedicated to the eradication of their enemies as the only possible solution.
Caught in the middle of this brewing conflict is law enforcement. This is something they should recognize, but they have not thus far. They seem willing to be the fodder; the useful idiots of the tyrannical regimes. If they could only look into the face of what confronts them, they might choose differently, but I doubt they would. Most of them agree to impose tyranny as a means of securing their pensions, as if they can suspend their duty as American citizens while in uniform and pick it back up when they shed it. Consciously or sub-consciously they are making a decision to violate their oaths in order to receive their shekels from tyrants.

This situation, by the way, seldom turns out well for the camp followers.  At best, they’re treated as collaborators and shunned, or else they lose everything — rank, prestige and respect — and at worst they’re killed, either by the resistance in situ  or by the regime that follows.  “Just obeying orders” has held no water ever since 1945.

Both the above are bleak theses;  but these are bleak times we live in.