Is the western world returning to medieval times?

Victor Davis Hanson is a historian and a great writer.  If you're not familiar with his writing you're missing a huge education--because those who refuse to learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it, eh?

(For purists, Santayana actually wrote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.")  

I've extensively edited VDH's piece below, and I encourage you to read the original, at this link.

In summary, Hanson says western technology has made fabulous societies possible, but socialists, communists and the Left are working like crazy to destroy it all, taking us back to the faaabulous middle ages.
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For most people, the story of the medieval world was one of crowded cities, constant violent crime and occasional outbreaks of deadly plagues—the result of unclean urban conditions, rotting food, fouled water, open sewage, and unchecked rats, fleas and lice. 

Modern technology gave us the means to solve all those problems--and western societies did solve 'em--but only temporarily.  Because as anyone with a functioning brain can easily see, most big, Leftist-ruled cities are returning to medieval conditions.  You just didn't notice, in part because the Lying Mainstream Media refuses to tell ya.

Touring the magnificent cathedrals or "basilicas" (basilicae?) of Rome, Cologne, Paris, Florence, Milan and Seville you can see the emergence of brilliance starting in roughly 1400 A.D.

Oh wait...the Left demands that you not use that abbreviation today!  In another decade almost no one will know what that means.  The approved term is...do you know?  If you're an academic you sure as hell do, cuz if you use "A.D." you won't be given tenure.  Wow.

You think I'm kidding.

Go back farther:  The Romans built aqueducts that brought water 80 miles from mountains to Rome without a single pump.  Rome ruled the world--and yet was eventually destroyed by barbarians and collapsed around 450 A.D. 

No worry, citizen, cuz a mere 900 years later advanced societies had recovered the knowledge of Roman engineers and politicians.

900 years.  No big deal, eh?

We're now about 600 years after that recovery, so you'd think we'd have progressed a LOT, eh?  And for decades we did: western cities became jewels.  But somehow, starting about 1970, big cities in western nations started to resemble medieval ones: rampant crime, filth, disease and total dysfunction.

Unlike the rulers of medieval times, our rulers (soothingly called "officials" to disguise the truth) know how to stop disease, crime and filth--but have clearly chosen not to.  And you may wonder why.  You should ask why, and should be mad as hell by the answer.  (Spoiler: you'll never get an answer; the leftist bastards aren't that stupid.)

The deliberate mis-rule by your rulers stems from leftist ideology, which divides the world into “oppressors” and the blameless “oppressed.”  Leftists bleat that thugs, murderers, drug addicts, rapists and other demons are victims, and that the top priority of society must be to reward the killers and rapists--cuz dey iz "victims," eh?

Now, if Democrat/leftist rulers (pols) really believed their bullshit, they'd share their homes and elite islands (Martha's Vineyard) with the demons, eh?  But of course they don't: They live in clean, crime-free enclaves.  

For the terminally uninformed, the case of Martha's Vineyard is immensely instructive here: That island is totally inhabited and ruled by leftist/liberals/Democrats, who bleat that we MUST open ouah borders to duh whole world.  So a few years ago, to make a point, Florida's conservative governor flew two planeloads of invaders to Martha's Vineyard. 

And because the leftists/Democrats who live there are totally NOT hypocrites, they warmly welcomed the arrivals, built housing for 'em, and gave 'em food and money to live like regular folks, eh?

Hahahahahaha!  Just kidding.  The hypocritical leftists sons of whores picked up the phone and called the leftist shithead governor of their state and demanded that the governor get the invaders the hell off their faaaaabulous, crime-free enclave!

And like magic, that happened just 48 hours after the illegals arrived!  Wow!  Leftist rule in action, eh?

If you never heard about that it's because you're uninformed.

So: Obozo and bribem threw open our southern border to the whole world.  Not surprisingly, the U.S. was invaded by roughly 20 million unskilled, illiterate foreigners--9 million under Obozo and 11 million under bribem.  The Democrats then demanded that we house and feed the invaders, give 'em medical care and free college tuition.

Democrat governors ORDER their cops not to help arrest and deport the illegals.  Bribem even ordered the federal gruberment NOT to use the term "illegal aliens," but instead to use "undocumented Americans."  See how cunning that is?

It's against the law for people to camp on public sidewalks or someone else’s property—and yet the rulers of EVERY (yes) Democrat/leftist-ruled city ignore those laws.

Defecation, urination and drug injection are now routine on the sidewalks of Democrat-ruled cities.  And Dem pols totally ignore it--not a single critical word.  Not only that, they've ordered their cops NOT to arrest anyone for those crimes.  And when a city's rulers allow its streets and sidewalks to become medieval, should we be surprised by outbreaks of deadly medieval diseases like typhus--or that the storm drains now wash raw sewage from sidewalks into the ocean without treatment?

The priority for today’s leftist/Dem mayors and council-whores is to consider proposals for taxpayer-funded “sexual-relief facilities,” to give homeless people “private sexual relief through masturbation.”  That's not hyperbole--it's an actual proposal to the city council of LA.

Instead of arresting sidewalk campers, Dem rulers pay city workers in hazmat suits to wash "politically correct" feces, urine, blood and needle into storm drains. These modern marvels carry the mess out to pollute the ocean--cuz dat make it someone else's problem, eh?

Democrat/leftist rulers fine the law-abiding for emitting one part per billion of X in their waste--while allowing the "oppressed" to do as they wish.

Let's look at another area (and I can do this all day):

To deliver everything everyone needs requires trucks.  These have evolved from simple horse-drawn wagons to 80,000-pound semi's running at 70 or 80 miles per hour.  Got it?

It shouldn't surprise you that it takes a lot of skill and training to drive one of those big rigs, so states *originally* established fairly strict rules for giving people licenses to drive these things. 

Originally you had to pass a background check, including drug screening, and then pass a written test, then a thorough two-hour, in-person test of their driving skills.  And it worked to weed out the incompetent.

Except years ago the shitty leftist-ruled states began giving such licenses to illegal aliens who couldn't read road signs.

Say, that'll work well, eh?

And you think, What *possible* motive could states like Cali and NY have for giving commercial driver's licenses to illegals who couldn't read road signs, eh?  Where was the payoff?

Ohhh, dat it: duh payoff.  Fake "schools" took cash to give illegals certificates, and DMV workers took bribes (or obeyed orders from superiors) to give the illegals commercial licenses without testing.

The result?

Thousands of incompetent drivers. Many cannot distinguish a yield sign from a stop sign, and most cannot read a word of English. They drive as they please—racing, swerving, and veering, 80,000-pounds of kinetic energy.

But what was the payoff for leftist pols?  It let 'em feel "virtuous"--"woke."  Morally superior to the rest of us.

Let's go to a different indicator:

In December of 2024, in the shithole of NYC, Luigi Mangione ran up behind the CEO of a health-insurance company and shot him.  Straight-up assassination.

A few weeks ago he pleaded guilty to federal charges stemming from the assassination--yet thousands of young leftist females (?) continue to  fawn and slobber over him--cuz the they regard the assassination as "politically correct violence," thus a good thing.  Just as the Left crowed about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Many on the Left not only celebrated over Kirk's assassination but also mocked those who mourned him. 

When Lindsay Clancy strangled her three helpless small children, leftist/Dem women fawned over her, claiming she was actually the victim. 

Still think we've advanced?   

Our ancestors determined that actually enforcing laws reduces crime--not because the prospect of being caught, charged, convicted and sentenced to prison deters thugs (hint: it doesn't) but because it takes 'em off the streets for up to decades.

Yet Marxism (leftism, socialism) opposes this as "unfair."  The rationalization is that the thief or killer grew up in poverty so didn't know right from wrong."  Seriously.

Leftists ("wokies") insist that the thugs they champion must never suffer the consequences of their destructive ideology.  "Cuz dey wuz 'oppressed.'"

The Left can get away with this because they have the power to ensure that no homeless druggies are camping on the lawns of leftist Malibu celebrities, eh?

Similarly, shit-head leftist pols like Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom never worry about being mugged or stabbed in their "progressive, crime-ridden cities because they have 24/7 personal security details.

Nice, eh?
 
Leftist/socialist/Dem pols are taking our big cities back to medieval conditions.  And no one seems to be a bit concerned.

And there's a reason: the progressives, socialists, and Marxists bleat that they “care.”  They've decreed that the rape victim of an illegal alien is a nothing--just collateral damage that you must accept to ensure that the illegal alien remains free to stay in the U.S, unquestioned.

Today's leftist--a medievalist--demands that the 30-year military veteran be thrown out of the military for refusing the experimental mRNA vaccine—while at the same time welcoming the unvaccinated, COVID-infected illegal alien who, even as we were locked down and prohibited from attending funerals or church, strolled across the Rio Grande without a word from your leftist rulers.

The Left is all about virtue-signaling—at someone else’s expense.

Thus we arrive at the racist, white-hating murderer Decarlos Brown—now deemed “too incompetent to stand trial” after stabbing unarmed 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska in the throat three times, from behind, unprovoked, on a tram in a Democrat-ruled shithole.  Brown could be the poster child of our modern medievalism.

Source: American Greatness blog

https://amgreatness.com/2026/09/01/progressive-regression-and-the-new-medievalism/