It is claimed that Mark Twain once quipped “History doesn’t repeat Itself, but It often rhymes.” Whether or not he actually said this is immaterial; the quote itself speaks volumes. As any student of history can attest, there are few mistakes we can make today that have not already been committed by our ancestors, and perhaps the worst of these is oblivious complacency when alertness to danger is in order.
Even in the best of times, our world and nation will face a great many problems, but history has shown again and again that we can muddle through as long as we don’t make our problems worse through our own foolishness. Arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity have been our species’ downfall in the past, and it seems likely this will continue to be the case in the future, but we can generally manage if just one of the three is slapping us in the face. However, when this unholy trinity of human failures arrives all at once, darkness tends to fall—very quickly.
Arrogance is always a problem for rich and powerful nations and their leaders because they forget about the values and sacrifices that made them rich and powerful in the first place while idiotically underestimating their enemies. Rome spent decades sneering at the barbarians outside their gates—until they had actually crashed the gates and destroyed their empire. A slide into foppish decadence doomed the the French Empire and gave us the guillotine, and the Czar was convinced that no power on earth could topple him from his throne right up the point when he was lined up and shot. Arrogance inevitably leads to disaster, and the refusal of America’s current leaders to recognize the idiocy of abandoning our major cities to mob rule and opening our borders to whomever wishes to illegally enter our country is a testament to the Biblical warning that “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”
The ignorance that presents itself as a blind and unreasoning faith in one’s own power often lives in the same neighborhood as arrogance and is likewise deadly to the futures of nations that are convinced they are invincible. Remembering the French Army burrowed within the massive fortifications of their impervious Maginot Line at the onset of World War Two, blissfully unaware that the Hitler was planning an end run around their flank that would lead to the fall of Paris a scant five weeks later, one is hard pressed not to recall Joe Biden recently bragging in an interview that “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history—not in the world—in the history of the world.” Our Maginot Lines of unsustainable government debt and obligations, a broad and frightening societal collapse, and an egregiously overextended military might make this quote seem ironically memorable to future historians tasked with chronicling our mistakes during these perilous times.
Plain old stupidity is always a problem, and the multiplier effect of trusting “experts” to manage our nation’s economy and educational institutions for too many disastrous years has exposed the deep fault line between common sense and self created catastrophes. The ongoing implosions of the electric car boondoggle and the fantastically inefficient windmill power industry are a stark reminder that what sounds good in a PowerPoint presentation will crash into real world limitations that experts always discount. Anyone who thinks that decades of handing the keys to our public schools to highly credentialed dimwits was a wise idea should take a peek at the horrible academic outcomes—our children have never been more stupendously stupid. Only recently, the state Board of Education in Oregon decided that students will not have to even bother proving basic mastery of reading, writing or math to graduate from high school until at least 2029. This move mirrors many other states who have dumbed down their own graduation requirements to the point of absurdity—if not outright educational fraud.
When they occur simultaneously—which certainly seems to be the case in America today—arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity endanger to the very existence of a nation, and we might be perilously close to this point today.
Watching the Bidenistas sleepwalking into a multi-front global war, one cannot help but hear the bloody rhymes of 1914 and 1939. Although Americans would be hard-pressed to learn this from our comatose mainstream media, our military bases in Syria and Iraq have been repeatedly attacked by militia supported by Iran, which is threatening to attack Israel if they move on the Gaza Strip. Should this happen, a brutal regional war that will ripple to every corner of our planet will ensue, and American land, sea, and air forces will surely be drawn into the fight. Should China decide to take advantage of this by moving against either Taiwan or the Philippines or Russia seize an opportunity to move beyond their current battles in Ukraine, we could see globalized conflicts quickly escalate far beyond anyone’s ability to control.
We may not yet be at the brink, but we are far too close to it for comfort, and the surpassing arrogance, ignorance, and stupidity of America’s current leadership should worry us all. Are we at the point where just one more crisis will prove to be one crisis too many? This is, at the present time, not at all certain. However, we can say with confidence that the stumblers and bumblers holding our nation’s future in their unsteady hands are not up to the task of navigating the many domestic and foreign challenges now before us.
The questions regarding where we will be as a nation a year or a decade from now are very soon to be answered, and we can only hope that the answers will be ones that protect our vital interests abroad, secure our safety at home—and usher in national leaders who are blessed with the wisdom and foresight that is so lacking in Washington today.