Victor
Davis Hanson asked the following question: “Will America awaken from the
COVID-19 crisis as a roaring giant or crying baby?” and made the question the
title of his column.
The
column also came under the subtitle: “We must ensure Americans control food,
fuel, medicine and strategic industries.” It was published on April 8, 2020 in
The Washington Times.
To
answer the question, Hanson first brought up the example of WWII when America
that was still in a state of lethargy in the wake of the Great Depression, was
invigorated by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and grew to become the
military giant that destroyed the Japanese empire. Hanson offered that example
as a possible pattern that America might repeat in the wake of the COVID-19
attack on its people.
But
being the realist that he is, Victor Hanson realized that times and
circumstances between then and now were not exactly the same. And so, he drew
up a list of the obvious differences that exist between the two situations. In
so doing, he highlighted the fact that in the twentieth century, America had an
industrial potential that grew so big in a short period of time, it gave the
country a GDP that was greater than the combined domestic products of all its
friends and enemies in Europe and Asia.
As
to the situation today, America is not fighting an enemy that can be defeated
by relying on its potential to build fleet and escort carriers. Instead,
America is fighting an invisible enemy by relying, to a large extent, on the
resources of China, a rival that could someday become America's foe. Victor
Hanson is confident that the corona virus will be defeated, but he worries
about the future relation with China.
Hanson
is worried because he realizes that America is lacking the social cohesion and
political maturity that will make it possible for it to push back against a
China that seems to have designs for the world; plans that are incompatible
with America's interests, at times even directly opposed to them. He realizes,
as do the pundits and the politicians, that America needs to bring back the
vital industries it used to have and were moved to China from where America now
imports what it no longer makes to keep its economy going.
But
he warns that to bring back those industries will not happen unless and until
Americans stop bickering and suffering amnesia. They should stop scapegoating
and playing the blame game, he suggests. They must face the fact that America
is in a crisis, he goes on to say, instead of engaging in idle talk about the
effect of the virus on particular groups, for example. As to the conduct of
politicians, he wants to see a prohibition on the possible setting of
congressional inquiries on who said what and when about the virus.
Instead
of playing those silly games, Hanson wants to see, “bipartisan commissions
decide how best to return key industries to the United States, prepare for the
next epidemic, and pay down the enormous debt that America incurred to defeat
COVID-19.” He also wants to see a probe into the idea of curtailing the
business of fracking as well as a probe into the release of fresh water into
the Pacific Ocean. This said, he posits that, “the choice is ours whether
America awakens as a roaring giant or a crying baby”.
As
to America's relation with China, Victor Hanson wants to recalibrate that
relationship. He questions the wisdom of allowing 15,000 Chinese to fly into
America each day, of having 360,000 Chinese students enrolled in US colleges,
and of funding hundreds of labs on university campuses where they conduct joint
research with Chinese academics.
To
someone familiar with the history of the world as it unfolded during the last
two and a half centuries, Victor Hanson's presentation sounds like the
complaint of a former colony that is feeling a neocolonial pressure exerted on
it by a former colonial master. And so, on behalf of the colony, Victor Hanson
is blaming the colony’s current woes on the would-be neocolonial power.
On
the other hand, to someone familiar with the life cycle of organisms, what’s
happening to America sounds more like the description of an organic entity
whose evolution started like any other but was suddenly accelerated such that
the organism that had grown normally from infancy to puberty to adolescence,
has unexpectedly skipped maturity and gone directly into a steep descent to a
state of politico-cultural senility.
Now,
senile America depends on caregivers to provide it with the essentials of life that
sustain it. They also provide it with advice on how to conduct itself on both
the national and international stages.
That
is, China and a number of other countries provide America with the goods and
services that keep its people supplied with their daily needs.
As
well, the Jews provide America with the advice that maintain its domestic
political system in a state of paralysis, and make its foreign policy look like
a burlesque kind of pathetic joke.