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Failure Is the Only Option
As I watch the work of the Biden Administration unfold, I can’t help but wonder if there is an overarching and hidden lesson that we are supposed to learn. Does anyone remember a time when any administration has made so many disastrous decisions in just over one year? It’s as if we are supposed to learn from all these outcomes that the US has failed, and will continue to fail, at every level.
Here is a partial list of the devastating results of their policies: lack of response to the Russian threat; meaningless response to China; ineptitude of Kamala Harris; gas prices; re-emergence of energy dependence; withdrawal from Afghanistan; shortages in supply chain; colluding with media; chaos at the border; inflation now over 8%; crime; war on parents; empowering Iran; damaging our relationship with Israel.
Again, it’s just a partial list. (Feel free to add more in the comments.)
First, how is it possible for the administration to fail so often and badly? Inexperience? Naivete? Ideology? Lack of policy clarity? All of the above?
Is it possible that they want the United States to utterly fail as the leader of the free world? Ron Kapito of Blackrock says he feels satisfaction that younger people are no longer able to buy things they need due to inflation and shortages; is he saying that he thinks the American people need to be punished for living in the most prosperous country in the world?
These circumstances, I believe, are about more than the Great Reset; a person can’t possibly find any redeeming or beneficial qualities in destroying the United States. Is it possible that by triggering scarcity they hope we will be crushed by our losses, and then will turn to them to pick up the pieces and establish a new world order, that we will embrace their benevolence?
If failure and scarcity become a new way of life in this country, I think the elite have profoundly misjudged us. Even the everyday idealists of the Left will begin to realize that they miss their “stuff.” They will notice the difficulties in acquiring the most basic materials. The rest of us will continue to grow in our awareness of the elite’s deceptive plans. And we will be very unhappy.
We will come to understand that failure wounds the human soul when it begins to emerge as a way of life.
We will remember what it meant to live with prosperity and a sense of well-being.
We will refuse to relinquish our success and contentment to their absurd demands.
But we must wake up.
* * * *
If the Left is successful and we slowly descend into failure, what are their expectations for how we will be regarded by the rest of the world? Perhaps they don’t care. Perhaps they hope that the world will be impressed, even delighted, by our willingness to degrade our preeminence; that we desire to be just like everyone else (as Obama predicted); that we will be seen as colleagues and not elitists.
I don’t think that will happen.
I suspect that some leaders of other countries would appreciate our loss of status, and revel in our lessening power. But others will be saddened by our decline on the world stage. They will be baffled by our willingness to give up all that we have achieved; they will wonder how we could possibly relinquish our status and power. And some countries will realize that the country that could be counted on to intercede and be a bastion for the world will have disappeared into the mundane.
We will indeed become like everyone else. And it will be a tragedy.
An overwhelming loss—for us and the rest of the world.
Published in Domestic Policy
All of these failures, and many more elements of our everyday culture, ultimately have the same purpose: to persuade the people of America that their country doesn’t deserve their affection and respect, and is not worth fighting for.
There are still a lot of us who love our country and will fight for it. The relentlessness of the attack is going to backfire big-time. A Reset is coming, but it’s not the one the manipulators expect.
I’m doing HR McMaster’s “Dereliction of Duty” on audiobooks. I would have to say that the Johnson administrations run between late ‘63 to early ‘65, maybe mid ‘65, would rival the incompetence of what we’re seeing with the Biden administration. And for the most part for the same reasons: hardheaded intellectualism totally divorced from reality combined with a compliant press core and a neutered joint chiefs of staff.
VDH has something pithy to say on the subject. Not surprisingly. He is one of the best voices of sanity in the current maelstrom, not least because of his historical perspective.
I am drawn to R R Reno’s idea that the great Post-War Consensus was that strong beliefs – in God, in nation, in family, in truth itself – lead inevitably to an aggressive and destructive totalitarianism, usually given the name ‘fascism’. The project to destroy all verities – in the name of avoiding another Holocaust – has acquired its own ineluctable ‘logic’ of ‘criticism’ so that everything must be debunked, undermined and subverted. There is no coordinated project to replace the society thus destroyed with anything else – the destruction is the point.
That this plays into the hands of those who do believe in something – Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Xi thought, for example – is hardly considered, and if it is, is seen to be only fair after the terrible things the West did in WW2/colonialism/ruining the environment.
I believe that they have used these verities as an excuse to destroy religion, values and society as a whole. And to avoid another Holocaust. Good grief.
Point taken, Mountie. I’d point out that he’s only completed just over one year in office. He’s still got lots of time to do further damage.
The Lesson: Don’t elect a befuddled old senile democrat who has been wrong on everything in his entire political life, because Trump.
Sad.
As always, VDH writes an outstanding and comprehensive description of our current situation. So many people will be broken under the tyranny of the Left. Thanks, Doug.
Ron Kapito is just evil.
What I do not get is that with all this failure the Democrats will still be voted in again and again and again. They pretty much rule every point of authority in the culture. Any advance we make, any push back, any vote we win get automatic overruled by the courts. I do not understand a people that want their own destruction so much. It is like they long for it. That they want the death of the nation they are a part of.
That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? They don’t believe they ARE part of it. They’ve even been taught, very likely, that “their country” actually hates THEM.
Maybe they just disagree with your view of things, Susan. There are six things on your partial list in the second paragraph about which you and I probably disagree, and we’re both generally conservative, I think.
I am with them on that. I am starting to believe it hates me and frankly may enjoy watching it tear itself up.
I don’t know that I agree. First, the country is the people; we are the ones who make it what it is. Unfortunately there is a small, radical and angry part of our people who do want to destroy the country. And if we don’t respond, they may very well make it happen.
But I believe that most people don’t want to destroy the U.S. They are either naive, unaware, uneducated on what is actually taking place, because they focus narrowly on their everyday lives. They also haven’t wanted to get involved in conflict.Yet we see that when they are directly affected, they start to wake up, such as reactions to parents and schools, transgender issues, inflation, and all the other issues that are damaging our country. My hope is that they will be inspired to act.
It’s hard to know whether to rely on certain sources of information, I think.
As an example, Susan, you mention “re-emergence of energy dependence” on your list. This appears to be incorrect. I don’t know where you got such information. I have a general sense that this claim has been made by people on the political right, and it appears to be false, as far as I can tell.
Here’s a graph of net oil imports from 1973 to 2021. Imports generally ran 5 million barrels/day or more through 2016. The only two years in this period in which we were a net oil exporter were 2020 and 2021. This illustrates the end of energy dependence, at least in oil.
Here’s the data on natural gas imports and exports (sorry, I can’t link the graph, though you can create it at the interactive site). We were a net gas importer from 1973 to 2016, became a small net exporter in 2017, and are now a very big gas exporter. This, too, illustrates the end of energy dependence.
It seems to me that people on both political sides often believe things that just ain’t so. At least, they ain’t so as far as I can tell.
What looks like failure to us is trumpeted as necessity and statesmanship in our news media. Biden is quite unpopular, but he’s not losing name recognition any time soon.
During the 1980 presidential debate between Reagan and Carter, Ronald Reagan asked, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”. Reagan won by a landslide.
To be clear, I said rival not exceed. And yes, there is three years of history yet to be written. Sadly.
Susan: First, how is it possible for the administration to fail so often and badly? Inexperience? Naivete? Ideology? Lack of policy clarity? All of the above?
How bout wanting to fail? How bout wanting to decimate the middle and lower classes so they will gladly welcome the strong, all knowing, all controlling hand and what appears to be the loving handouts of the Great Reset? Then we will all be happy and own nothing.
So I would agree that most people don’t want to destry the U.S., but some people with power and influence do. George Soros is a candidate. He’s a smart man, but when he finances campaigns of varous elected prosecutors who turn around and don’t prosecute violent crimes, as we’ve seen along many west coast cities, what other motive is there?
And those prosecutors who were elected, as they see their cities degrade more and more under their policies, and continue them — what of them?
The subject of the OP focuses on the presidency, and there have been some who brought us to this point. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs are an example. Yet the bitter fruits of that program did not manifest themselves right away. Though a harsh man personally, you can argue that his actions were meant to be enlightened.
But now it’s all in plain view. And the smart people in the administration know what they’re doing. The White House staff is probably filled with twenty-something young aides that don’t realize that. But anyone over 40 probably knows exactly what they’re doing.
I think you’re exactly right, Al. The young ones think they are supporting a great cause and essentially being led around by the nose by their elders. It’s a sad sight.
FDR? And you could almost pick any 12-month period during his reign. From extending the Great Depression to extending the war in Europe to financing the USSR’s submission of Eastern Europe for generations, all while destroying any constitutional limits to Federal government, you’ve got to say his administration set a pretty high bar.
Very true! But I don’t think we knew his administration was a genuine disaster until after it was over. We know we are living through a disaster now.
I can clear this up.
In all of 2020 (Trump’s last year in office), the U.S. was exporting more oil than it imported, with the exception of a two-month dip into the red in May and June. This net export reversed itself and the U.S. became a net importer of petroleum in March 2021, about two months after Biden’s executive orders to ban drilling took effect, immediately crashing U.S. oil production by 20%. Oil companies struggled to ramp-up production despite the Biden restrictions, and managed a steady comeback throughout the year. The U.S. continued underwater, being a net importer for the next nine months (with occasional monthly surges into the black) until December of 2021 when we had a gigantic boom in oil exports. This boom in the last month of last year was just enough to put the U.S. total for that year just a smidgen into the black (export plus) for the whole year. Data from the next two months however, (this past January and February), puts the U.S. back in the hole as a net importer of oil by an average of 1,200 barrels per day.
So as of the latest data in February, the U.S. is importing more oil than we are exporting.
You can read the government month-by-month net export/import data here.
You can see the month-by-month U.S. oil production data in both graph form and table form here.
Thanks so much, Steve. Very helpful.