The Strange Paradoxes of Our Age

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POLITICS & POLICY

The Strange Paradoxes of Our Age

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

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February 19, 2019 6:30 AM

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Protesters march against President Trump’s proposed border wall in El Paso, Texas, January 26, 2019. (Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters) From race, to environmentalism, to wealth, the gulf between ideological rhetoric and reality has rarely been wider.

Modern prophets often say one thing and do another. Worse, they often advocate in the abstract as a way of justifying their doing the opposite in the concrete.

The result is that contemporary culture abounds with the inexplicable — mostly because modern progressivism makes all sorts of race, class, and gender exceptions for politically incorrect felonies, an appeasement that ensures an absence of deterrence and thus even more transgressions.

Paradox No. 1: Merchants of Hate. We are told that white, racist young men are preying on people of color, obsessed with skin color (and gender), and emancipated by Donald Trump’s Klan-like MAGA army. In truth, the purveyors of such theories are themselves merchants of hate, who stereotype and demonize on the basis of skin color. And they do so, largely for anticipated career advantages, on the principle that supposed victims of white bigots can translate such ill treatment into publicity and, with it, attention and career enhancement. How did this epidemic of hate happen in 2019 America?