A New York Times –bestselling historian charts how and why societies from ancient Greece to the modern era chose to utterly destroy their foes, and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time.
War can settle disputes, topple tyrants, and bend the trajectory of civilization—sometimes to the breaking point.
In The End of Everything , military historian Victor Davis Hanson narrates a series of sieges and sackings that span the age of antiquity to the conquest of the New World to show how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration. In the stories of Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlan, he depicts war’s drama, violence, and folly. Highlighting the naivete that plagued the vanquished and the wrath that justified mass slaughter, Hanson delivers a sobering call to contemporary readers to heed the lessons of obliteration lest we blunder into catastrophe once again.
The Thebans’ first decision, disastrous in retrospect, was a complete miscalculation of both their military power and their prestige and influence among the city-states. Their confidence in the Theban army was anachronistic, as if they were back thirty-five years earlier in the days of the Theban hegemony (371—362 BC). Moreover, for some reason the Thebans believed that if they alone dared defy Alexander, thousands of other Greeks would flock to their cause.…
The problem was not just that the Thebans had an antiquated or indeed romantic view of their own past. They also had never fully appreciated the military revolution brought about by Philip II and his once rustic and slighted Macedonians. His new army’s use of the longer pike, or sarissa; a much better integrated use of larger contingents of heavy and light cavalry and assorted missile troops; the élan and drill of a professional phalanx; the key inspirational role of a mounted king at the head of his army — a force now much larger than the population of most city-states…
On 30 December 2024 I included a discussion about the Nightly Recharge™ that I found in Polar Flow. A week or 10 days later my lowest heart rate for the night was over 43 which I have set as an arbitrary trigger to start taking ibuprofen to reduce inflammation. Also that night my 4 hour average heart rate per the Nightly Recharge™ was 4 beats over the rolling average which I have also set as a target for intervention. Plus the HRV was below the rolling average. I sent this information to my VA ‘doctor’ and she responded that she wanted to get me a Holter Moniter to see what was going on with my heart.
I have had NO heart symptoms but I was willing to go for it. Well, it turned into a real bureaucratic mess. There is my ‘doctor’, the Cardiac Department in Tucson and some unnamed Holter Monitor company. The only one that I was able communicate with being my ‘doctor’. I did receive two Secure Messages from the Cardiac Department but the Secure Messaging system would not allow me to reply directly to them. So after a couple weeks the request was withdrawn – the reason being that I MUST have a telephone for the Monitor company to call me if they detect some irregularity. I said they could send me an email or a USPS letter but apparently I MUST have a telephone.
I’m doing research on a Wellue 24-Hour ECG Recorder, that is not medical grade, but certainly a step up from my watch. If I do get it I’ll see if my ‘doctor’ wants to get the reports that will be available. If not, I’m also going to see if the doctor in Naco, MX, a block from my dentist, would be willing to receive the reports. This may provide an answer to my ‘doctors’ wanting to see what is going on with my heart then if there is a problem maybe my ‘doctor’ can get Tucson Cardiac to do something?
I still haven’t come up with a name for what follows the Bidenverse. But I’m reminded of the “Reconquista”. Since most of us are victims of American Education I’ll explain my reasoning. Starting in the year 711 the Umayyad Caliphate invaded and subjugated Spain and Portugal.
Europe failed badly. That part of Christendom collapsed fast, most of it in less than a decade. If you were there you might have been terrorized.
But, it did come back. Slowly, with fits and starts, the Iberian peninsula was “recaptured”. It took centuries, officially completed in 1492 (a year you might remember for other reasons). The point is, the Reconquista did return that part of Europe to it’s original society but also it didn’t. A lot of time passes. Something like post Roman Europe returned but it was more like mid-Renaissance. “Normalcy” returned in a new but still “normal-ish” state.
That’s what I think about Trump. Despite the left going apeshit, most of what he’s trying to do is “restore”, not “build anew”. When Trump said “there are just men and women and not 50 other flavors” that’s not new, it’s something that would be unquestioned even just a few years ago. The idea that the FBI should solve crimes instead of cover them up, that’s “restore” not “from way out in right field”. The idea that borders are borders isn’t particularly weird; the opposite is flat out nuts. — I Have Been Enjoying The Reconquista by AdaptiveCurmudgeon