VICTOR DAVIS HANSON – THE WORLD JANUARY 20, 2017

 

NATIONAL REVIEW
THE WORLD ON JANUARY 20, 2017
by VICTOR DAVIS HANSON March 14, 2017
 @VDHANSON
 Red-blue tensions at home, mounting dangers abroad. Most
 Americans are worried about our domestic crises. Obama
 left office after doubling the debt to $20 trillion. Near-zero
 interest rates over eight years have impoverished an entire
 generation of seniors — and yet remain key to servicing the
costs of such reckless borrowing. Over the last eight years,
 GDP never grew at 3 percent annually, the first time we’ve
 seen such low growth since the Hoover administration.

Obamacare spiked health-care premiums and deductibles
while restricting access and reducing patient choices. Racial
 politics are at a nadir and make one nostalgic for the
environment before 2009. Red-blue tensions are at an all-
time high, and suddenly there is talk of 1860s-like
 Confederate nullification of federal laws. It’s now the norm
 for prominent commentators to call for the murder, forced
 removal, or resignation of the current president. A New
 York Times columnist asked the IRS to commit a felony by
sending him Trump’s tax returns, and then he boasts by
 providing his own address. The Democratic party is nearly
 ruined, reduced to a shrill coastal party animated not by an
 agenda but by unhinged hatred of Donald Trump and a new
 religion of race, class, and gender politics.  Given all that, we
 sometimes forget the dire situation abroad — or rather
 ignore that our indecision and misdirection reflect inter
nal chaos and looming fiscal crises. The ramifications of
 setting faux-redlines, the reset with Russia, and then the
 reset of reset, radical defense cuts, and nonstop
 contextualization of and apology for past Ameri
can behavior — all of which in part grew out of cultural wars
 at home or were connected to economic uncertainty — have
 led to a volatile world.  Here are the challenges Obama left
 behind: 1) The Obama radical reset with Putin, followed by
 about-face hostility to Russia, followed by near hysterical
 charges of collusion with the Trump campaign have made
 relations with the world’s second-largest nuclear power
 more dangerous than at any time since the height of the Cold
 War. Russia has received signals that it would face no
 consequences for its behavior, then that there might be
 consequences in theory but not in fact, and finally that it
 went from being a friend to an existential enemy without
 much pause in between. It will be  both necessary and nearly
 impossible to normalize relations with Putin.
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