Decadence

I'm usually not a fan of Victor Davis Hanson, he is too much of the crotchety old classicist, nothing good has happened since the death of Pericles and all that. And his writing on California, or "Mexifornia" often seem to be only one step from the basest nineteenth century nativism.

But then he is also a sensitive and brilliant man, and reading him, especially his work on the Classics themselves, his book on Hoplite warfare is one of the finest works of historical imagination I have ever read, and I continue to read him. This column on the election and the decline of California is one of the most melancholic things I have read, and every word is truth. How a state so beautiful, can be so self destructive is one of the great mysteries for the ages. It is awful how belief in a modern and advanced California based on Progress and optimism, where all problems can be solved and the future is glorious is in a way of the same sort as belief in the Republican values of Ancient Rome or the idealism of Confucius lamenting the decline of morals since the time of the Duke of Zhou.

Fundamentally I believe there are no Golden Ages, and that we can only look forward, but living in California, that seems like such an antique and unrealistic belief: That belief in the future and in the idea of improvement is a dream out of another age.